CHAPTER III
IN BETTY"S GARDEN
Ned Vaughan paused with a moment of indecision before the plain, old-fashioned, brick house in which Senator Winter lived on the Capitol Hill. It was a confession of abject weakness to decline her invitation to dinner with his brother and jump at the first chance to b.u.t.t in before the dinner hour.
Why should he worry? She was too serious and honest to play with any man, to say nothing of an attempt to flirt with two at the same time.
He refused to believe in the seriousness of any impression she had made on his brother"s conceited fancy. His light love affairs had become notorious in his set. He was only amusing himself with Betty and she was too simple and pure to understand. Yet to warn her at this stage of the game against his own brother was obviously impossible.
He suddenly turned on his heel:
"I"m a fool. I"ll wait till to-morrow!"
He walked rapidly to the corner, stopped abruptly, turned back to the door and rang the bell.
"Anyhow, I"m not a coward!" he muttered.
The pretty Irish maid who opened the door smiled graciously and knowingly. It made him furious. She mistook his rage for blushes and giggled insinuatingly.
"Miss Betty"s in the garden, sor; she says to come right out there----"
"What?" Ned gasped.
"Yiss-sor; she saw you come up to the door just now and told me to tell you."
Again the girl giggled and again he flushed with rage.
He found her in the garden, busy with her flowers. The border of tall jonquils were in full bloom, a gorgeous yellow flame leaping from both sides of the narrow walkway which circled the high brick wall covered with a ma.s.s of honeysuckle. She held a huge pair of pruning shears, clipping the honeysuckle away from the budding violet beds.
She lifted her laughing brown eyes to his.
"Do help me!" she cried. "This honeysuckle vine is going to cover the whole garden and smother the house itself, I"m afraid."
He took the shears from her pink fingers and felt the thrill of their touch for just a moment.
His eyes lingered on the beautiful picture she made with flushed face and tangled ringlets of golden brown hair falling over forehead and cheeks and white rounded throat. The blue gingham ap.r.o.n was infinitely more becoming than the most elaborate ball costume. It suggested home and the sweet intimacy of comradeship.
"You"re lovely in that blue ap.r.o.n, Miss Betty," he said with earnestness.
"Then I"m forgiven for making home folks of you?"
"I"m very happy in it."
"Well, you see I had no choice," she hastened to add. "I just had to finish these flowers before dressing for dinner. I"m expecting that handsome brother of yours directly and I must look my best for him, now mustn"t I?"
She smiled into his eyes with such charming audacity he had to laugh.
"Of course, you must!" he agreed, and bent quickly to the task of clearing her violet bed of entangled vines. In ten minutes his strong hand had done the work of an hour for her slender fingers.
"How swiftly and beautifully you work, Ned!" she exclaimed as he rose with face flushed and gazed a moment admiringly on the witchery of her exquisite figure.
"How would you like me for a steady gardener?"
"I hope you"re not going to lose your job on your brother"s paper?"
"It"s possible."
"Why?"
"We don"t agree on politics."
"A reporter don"t have to agree with an editor. He only obeys orders."
"That"s it," Ned answered, with a firm snap of his strong jaw. "I"m not going to take orders from this Government many more days from the present outlook."
Betty looked him straight in the eye in silence and slowly asked:
"You"re not really going to join the rebels?"
The slender boyish figure suddenly straightened and his lips quivered:
"Perhaps."
"You can"t mean it!" she cried incredulously.
"Would you care?" he asked slowly.
"Very much," was the quick answer. "I should be shocked and disappointed in you. I"ve never believed for a moment that you meant what you said. I thought you were only debating the question from the Southern side."
"Tell me," Ned broke in, "does your father mean half he says about Lincoln and the South?"
"Every word he says. My father is made of the stuff that kindles martyr fires. He will march to the stake for his principles when the time comes."
"You admire that kind of man?"
"Don"t you?"
"Yes. And for that reason I can"t understand why you admire a trimmer and a time server."
"You mean?"
"The Rail-splitter in the White House."
"But he"s not!" Betty protested. "I can feel the hand of steel beneath his glove--wait and see."
Ned laughed: