Steve"s chuckle of appreciation was answer enough.
"I didn"t know," he admitted, "but it"s like him. And it was no more than reasonable, either--that request--even if it is funny. He has been cook for me; but he"s been doctor and nurse and countless other things in as many crises. He"s the most trustworthy and capable adviser, too, that any man ever had."
She scanned his face closely at the timbre of those words. Then, with face averted, "Didn"t he embroider you a--a sofa-cushion, too, once?"
she inquired, quite demurely.
Steve grew very red.
"Who told you that?" he blurted, and Barbara giggled again.
"Mr. Ainnesley, I think. Then it is true? I--I never believed it before."
Watching the blood creep up beneath his tanned skin, she told herself that she did like more than a little the way his eyelids crinkled when he grinned.
"We were in San Domingo that year," he explained none too composedly.
"It was near Christmas, and Joe wouldn"t consider any of the native wares as a gift. So he--he worked it himself in--in yellow worsted on a red background. I have it still, displayed in a conspicuous place in the shack up-river. But now I"ll wager that you can"t guess what the motto is across its front. He told me that he didn"t care for it particularly himself, but it was the only one he could find. You can"t guess, but you are permitted to try."
And he gasped when she threw back her head and burst into her gurgling, throaty laugh.
""What is home without a father?"" she sing-songed. And when they were both sober-faced again she added:
"I want to know him, please! Can"t I meet him, Mr. O"Mara?"
Side by side they turned in at the millyard, between towering piles of aromatic raw planks. Behind them Caleb and Allison had lost still more ground while the latter paused to speak a peremptory word in the ear of a mildly intoxicated, red-headed riverman who was pouring forth his whole soul in the refrain of "Harrigan, That"s Me!" And almost immediately, in answer to Barbara"s question, Steve pointed across to a short, plump figure in conversation with McLean, the mill superintendent. Even at that distance his broad face gleamed from the closeness of a recent shave; even at that distance it was quickly apparent to the girl that his garb was as near a replica of O"Mara"s own clothes as his lack of height and extra weight would permit.
"Will you bring him?" she asked eagerly. "Will he come?"
But the question was unnecessary. Joe Morgan--Fat Joe to the river-front and the construction squad--was already hustling in their direction, even before Steve, with that slow smile tugging at his lips, had finished a.s.suring her that it was never necessary to summon Joe into the presence of an attractive member of the opposite s.e.x. He came without being called. Barbara had a closer and closer view of him, until he stopped at last directly in front of them and bowed. She wanted to laugh at that wide face--at the grandiloquent flourish with which he removed his hat--and would have had she not recalled the grave respect with which the man beside her had referred to him a moment before. His eyes were palest blue, his nose a smooth pink mound in an expanse of pink, pink cheeks. She noted that his teeth were as white and even as those of O"Mara himself. Fat Joe bowed again.
"Morning, Chief," he saluted, in that thin and reedy tenor which none but fat men have.
Then Barbara laughed.
Steve managed the presentation with extreme punctility and left them.
When he returned, almost an hour later, he heard them both laughing long before he came into view, and on the way back up the hill the girl detailed for him much of her conversation with Fat Joe.
"Hereafter I shall be more dignified when in your presence," she informed him in as deep a ba.s.s as she could summon. "I had no idea how great and important a man was escorting me when I came down this hill!
But Mr. Morgan has enlightened me."
With that she discovered that she could still tease him, almost as easily as she had teased the st.u.r.dy small boy of the uncouth shoes and napping trousers.
"Joe is necessarily prejudiced in his opinion," he argued, "and therefore shouldn"t be taken too seriously."
"He told me that you had one regrettable characteristic, however," the girl went on. "He lamented your strength at the ancient and honorable pastime of stud-poker! And he also bewails your taste in literature.
Why, he tells me that you are indicted to d.i.c.kens and Dumas--he didn"t p.r.o.nounce it that way, either--and even fall back upon Shakespeare, in dark and dour hours. No, I am positive that Mr. Morgan docs not approve of such fiction. He confided to me that he finds more entertainment, of a winter"s night, in perusing a Sears-Roebuck or a Montgomery-Ward catalogue. And--and do you know what I admitted to him? No? Well, I told him that some of the happiest moments of my life had been spent in just such fashion. I"ve always thought they were fascinating!"
She badgered him on the way back up the hill that morning, but when they paused for a moment at the edge of the close-cropped lawn which rolled back to the stucco and timber house facing the river, she abandoned her facetiousness.
"Why should there be any--any element of personal danger in this work you are doing, Mr. O"Mara?" she asked. "And did I do wrong in mentioning to Mr. Morgan how that man came out of that--place, and glared so at you?"
His rejoinder should have been very rea.s.suring.
"So Joe has been hinting at that mystery stuff again, has he? After listening to him one is almost compelled to believe that I run daily a veritable gauntlet of nameless perils."
Barbara stood, small fists buried in her sweater pockets, studying his smile of amus.e.m.e.nt.
"I shouldn"t like to believe so," her voice was faintly diffident.
"And you--you haven"t accepted my invitation for Friday. May I expect you? I didn"t tell you, but Archie--Archibald Wickersham--will be there, as well as Garry. So--so you won"t be entirely unacquainted."
And then, at those words, his face changed. All in one fleet second, in spite of the whole morning"s quick intimacy of mood and the spirit of companionship which to her had seemed a delightfully new yet time-tried thing, Barbara found that she could not read an inch behind those grave gray eyes. She found his quiet countenance as unreadable as that of the utmost stranger might have been. And while she waited, not entirely certain how displeased she was at his deliberation, a blackest of black horses soared splendidly over a fence to the north and came cantering down the road. The rider, a tall, bare-headed girl, lifted her crop in salute as she caught sight of them.
"My friend, Miriam Burrell," the girl murmured in explanation to Steve, and something had gone from her voice and left it conventionally impersonal. "She"s riding Ragtime, and isn"t he a beauty--almost as much a beauty as she is herself?"
The horse came on, to be reined up at last directly in front of the two at the roadside. Stephen O"Mara met for a moment the level, measuring glance of its rider, before Miriam Burrell turned to Barbara.
"I"ve enjoyed exceedingly our morning canter, Bobs," her alto voice drawled.
Then, before Barbara could reply, she threw one booted leg from the stirrup and dismounted. With the reins looped over her elbow she faced the man in blue flannel and corduroy, a tall, lithe figure with coppery red hair and whitest skin and doubly vivid lips.
"You"re Stephen O"Mara," she said, and the calmly direct statement might have been overbrusk had it not been for the modulation of her low voice. "You"re Stephen O"Mara, for a thousand!"
And she held out a gauntleted hand, the clasp of which corroborated the suggestion of wirelike strength in that lithely straight body.
Barbara Allison had never been able to a.n.a.lyze her preference for Miriam Burrell. Even the girl"s undeniable beauty of face had often puzzled her, for, taken each feature by itself, it was far more striking than beautiful. There was no color in her pale skin; her red mouth, if anything, was a trifle too wide, and her wide-set eyes were tip-tilted in an almost Oriental slant. Her utter lack of hypocrisy, her unsparing arraignment of fundamental motives--her own and those of all with whom she came in contact--often resulted in calmly direct comments which were stunningly disastrous to casual conversation. For Miriam Burrell told the truth to others, which was unusual enough to puzzle more than a few; she did not lie to herself, and that was an enigma to almost all. It resulted, of course, in a reputation for "unconventionalism."
There was scarcely a day pa.s.sed but that her coldly dispa.s.sionate dissection of this or that foible of their own set, did not startle or sometimes distress Barbara Allison; hardly a day but that her cool voice, which could be as tempered as edged steel, did not cut through the veneer of some custom or other and expose the crooked grain beneath. Barbara did not know just why she cared so deeply for Miriam Burrell--we scarcely ever realize that such a regard can be based only upon the deepest of deep-founded faith--but at that moment, while she and Steve were shaking hands so soberly, she felt very little, very much ignored; felt as though she did not share at all the understanding in their eyes.
"I"ve just asked Mr. O"Mara to come to my dance, Miriam," she said, "and how did you know him, pray? I"ve asked him, but he is unflatteringly long in accepting."
"Know him?" she echoed. "Know him! Oh, Mr. O"Mara and I have met before. I think just before the fall of the Roman Empire, wasn"t it, Mr. O"Mara? Weren"t they dragging me in at the wheel of a chariot one afternoon, when you were dealing out a gold piece to each of your legionaries?"
She laughed, dryly, and Barbara felt smaller and more forlorn and lonelier still.
"No doubt Mr. O"Mara hasn"t time to be flattering, Bobs," she commented. "But you will have time to come Friday, for a little while, won"t you?" she asked.
Steve glanced down at the hand which still felt the pressure of her buckskin clad fingers.
"I have to work--day and night--some weeks when things break badly," he told her simply. "If I can"--and he turned to Barbara--"if I can, I want to come."
Miriam nodded her head with brisk finality.
"If you can," she agreed. "Barbara, no doubt, has been telling you about Garret Devereau, hasn"t she? Yes--come if you can. I have heard, Mr. O"Mara, that you have once or twice fought your way out of the dark, when everybody else had lost hope. I want an opportunity to talk with--a specialist in such campaigns!"
Stephen O"Mara had read a meaning in the words of that contained, often abrupt, straightly tall girl of which Barbara Allison had not even dreamed. He stood watching them when they turned up the driveway, the horse Ragtime muzzling the woolly white sweater and following like a dog. But he wasn"t thinking of Miriam Burrell or of Garry Devereau, while he waited for Caleb and Dexter Allison to come up with him. He was wondering about Archie Wickersham--the Honorable Archie--thinking about that funny brawl of years before, which had not been so funny after all--wondering if----
It was past twelve that night when Miriam Burrell"s door was pushed softly open by a slim white figure which hesitated on the threshold; but the night-light was still burning upon the table. Barbara stood for a moment, staring at her friend, who was sitting bolt upright in bed.
"Then you aren"t asleep," she faltered. "Are you--reading?"