For a moment Peter could not speak. He lay with dropped eyelids, fighting lest the sudden relief from the long strain should unman him before these who had been paying tribute to his manhood. But after a short s.p.a.ce he looked from Mr. Townsend to his son.
"I "ll come," said he, and forgetting his bandaged hands, started to hold one out. Then he smiled whimsically, and added in an odd tone, "If you "re not afraid of the bad omen in taking on a man with a pair of hands like these?"
"Not much, when we remember what put them in that shape!" declared Murray, in a tone of great satisfaction; and his father gave an emphatic a.s.sent.
"What do you think "s going to happen _now_?" cried Nancy, rushing out upon Peter"s porch, a week later.
"Give it up. But nothing can surprise me, after recent events," replied Peter, removing his gaze for a moment from the morning newspaper pinned up in front of him to the excited face of his sister, but looking immediately back again at the absorbing column of business news he had been with some difficulty perusing. His hands had been slow in recovering from the severe injuries they had received.
"This will. Somebody"s going to be married."
"Remarkable. But such events have occurred before in the history of nations," replied her brother, abstractedly.
"Not at the Townsend house, for Murray married Jane over here. Ah, ha!
I thought you "d give me your undivided attention at last," crowed Nancy, triumphantly.
Peter did his best to look unconcerned, but his heart had begun to thump quite suddenly and disconcertingly. He waited. He forgot the newspaper.
"Have n"t you noticed how devoted Brant Hille has been for the last year?" Nancy demanded.
"No."
"Then you "ve been blind."
"I "ve been busy."
"How oddly you speak! Is your throat sore?"
"Don"t tease, Nan. I"m not up to it." It was no use trying to look unconcerned.
Nancy saw, and took pity on him, as she might not have done if he had been upon his feet. "It"s Olive, then--though I believe I could have made you think it was Shirley. It"s not Brant Hille"s fault that it is n"t, I can tell you that. Olive"s going to marry an Englishman she met last summer abroad--Mr. Arthur Crewe of Manchester. It"s just announced.
The wedding "s to be the first of July. You "ll be on crutches, Peter.
Is n"t that lucky? You can go."
"Oh, yes, I "ll dance at the wedding!" agreed Peter, looking as if the shot that missed him had come uncomfortably close.
"It"s going to be a big wedding--a gorgeous one. Is n"t that like Olive? Shirley"s to be maid of honour, and there "ll be six bridesmaids. Six ushers--and you "d have been one if you had n"t broken your leg. Olive told me so."
"Compensation in all things," murmured Peter.
"The best man is the Englishman"s brother. Olive says he "s stunning.
Would n"t it be funny if he and Shirley should take a fancy to each other? The maid of honour and the best man often do, you know."
"Very interesting. I should say you had been taking a course of novels, you "re so full of possible plots." And Peter eyed his newspaper as if he preferred its practical columns to his sister"s outlines of sentimental situations. Nancy laughed.
"Shirley"s to have a vacation, for a week before the wedding. Perhaps she "ll find time to get over to see you oftener, then."
"She "s been over to see me."
"How many times?"
"Twice."
"For how long?"
"Five minutes, the first time, three, the second."
"How many other people present?"
"A dozen or so."
"Have a satisfactory visit?"
"Oh, very!" Peter hit the newspaper with his elbow, and it fell down.
"What have you got it in for me this morning for, Sis?" he demanded, wrathfully.
Nancy stopped laughing and looked serious. "It won"t hurt you any. It may wake you up. I just want you to know that I "m honestly and truly worried about Brant Hille."
Then she vanished, and Peter lay wishing he had two good legs, that he might get up and go and see for himself just how much all this meant. He read the newspaper no more that morning; it lay forgotten on the floor where it had fallen.
The weeks went by slowly enough to the convalescent, impatient to begin his new work, and full of plans for it. Long talks with Murray helped most to make the waiting endurable, and the two young men grew to know and respect each other still more deeply than ever before. Everybody was kind. Both Mr. and Mrs. Townsend came often to see Peter; and even Olive, although at times distraught with the business of preparation for her approaching marriage, found a half-hour now and then in which to slip across to Gay Street and talk with him.
At these times she found decided refreshment in his society, for Peter"s ideas on the subject of matrimony were both novel and sensible, and in after years she often found herself remembering and putting into practice one or another of his quizzical maxims, founded on much shrewd observation.
"You are coming to my wedding, you know," she said, on the last of these occasions, three days before the date set for that event. "And I want you at dinner the evening before, so you may get to know Mr. Crewe, and he you, as well as you can in one short evening. I"m so disappointed he could n"t be here all this week, as he planned."
"Dinners?--weddings?--on these sticks?" scoffed Peter, that day promoted to crutches and finding them as yet merely invitations to ironic humour.
"Certainly. If you make them an excuse for staying away, I shall never forgive you."
"Please let me off from the dinner. If you "ll put me in the porch, and let me be found there afterward, I "ll agree, but I can"t hobble out to the table on crutches of torture."
"Not even to take out Shirley?" Olive glanced at him mischievously, and saw him colour slightly as he answered:
"That would be an inducement if anything would. But I "m sure you "ll adopt my point of view if I beg you to."
"Then I shall have to send her in with Geoffrey Crewe--or Brant Hille."
"Will the men stay behind when the ladies come out?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then I prefer the porch," persisted Peter, comfortably; and Olive acknowledged that he had chosen the wiser part.
So on Tuesday evening, when Shirley, in the midst of a rainbow-tinted group of young women, floated airily out from the brightly lighted and oppressively warm dining-room to the cool, softly lighted recesses of the great porch, it was with a sense of refreshing change that she went straight to the big chair by a pillar, where Peter sat waiting for her.
As she dropped into a low seat by his side, she thought she had never seen him show to greater advantage, although he could not rise to do her honour, and could only say, with a straight, upward glance, "This is kind of you. I "ve been thinking for an hour how you "d look when you came out that door."