第25章

"I should like to hear how you described me."

"I will tell you sometime. It was an elaborate description. I could n't get through with it now before we landed."

The old town had come out of the haze of the distance,--a straggling village of weather-beaten wood and weather-beaten white paint, picturesque, but no longer a vision of gray stone and pale marble. A coal-yard, and a brick locomotive house, and rambling railroad sheds stretched along the water-front. They found their way easily enough through the sparse shipping to the steps at the end of the wooden pier, where Libby dropped the sail and made his boat fast.

A little pleasant giddiness, as if the lightness of her heart had mounted to her head, made her glad of his arm up these steps and up the wharf; and she kept it as they climbed the sloping elm-shaded village street to the main thoroughfare, with its brick sidewalks, its shops and awnings, and its cheerful stir and traffic.

The telegraph office fronted the head of the street which they had ascended. "You can sit here in the apothecary's till I come down," he said.

"Do you think that will be professionally appropriate? I am only a nurse now."

"No, I wasn't thinking of that. But I saw a chair in there. And we can make a pretense of wanting some soda. It is the proper thing to treat young ladies to soda when one brings them in from the country."

"It does have that appearance," she assented, with a smile. She kept him waiting with what would have looked like coquettish hesitation in another, while she glanced at the windows overhead, pierced by a skein of converging wires. "Suppose I go up with you?"

"I should like that better," he said; and she followed him lightly up the stairs that led to the telegraph office. A young man stood at the machine with a cigar in his mouth, and his eyes intent upon the ribbon of paper unreeling itself before him.

"Just hold on," he said to Libby, without turning his head. "I've got something here for you." He read: "Despatch received yesterday. Coming right through. George Maynard."

"Good!" cried Libby.

"Dated Council Bluffs. Want it written out?"

"No. What 's to pay?" `

"Paid," said the operator.

The laconically transacted business ended with this, the wire began to cluck again like the anxious hen whose manner the most awful and mysterious of the elements assumes in becoming articulate, and nothing remained for them but to come away.

"That was what I was afraid of," said Libby. "Maynard was at his ranch, and it must have been a good way out. They're fifty or sixty miles out, sometimes. That would account for the delay. Well, Mrs. Maynard doesn't know how long it takes to come from Cheyenne, and we can tell her he's on the way, and has telegraphed." They were walking rapidly down the street to the wharf where his boat lay. "Oh!" he exclaimed, halting abruptly.

"I promised to send you back by land, if you preferred."

"Has the wind fallen?"

"Oh, no. We shall have a good breeze:"

"I won't put you to the trouble of getting a horse. I can go back perfectly well in the boat."

"Well, that's what I think," he said cheerily.

She did not respond, and he could not be aware that any change had come over her mood. But when they were once more seated in the boat, and the sail was pulling in the fresh breeze, she turned to him with a scarcely concealed indignation. "Have you a fancy for experimenting upon people, Mr. Libby?"

"Experimenting? I? I don't know in the least what you mean!"

"Why did you tell me that the operator was a woman?"

"Because the other operator is," he answered.

"Oh!" she said, and fell blankly silent.

"There is a good deal of business there. They have to have two operators," he explained, after a pause.

"Why, of course," she murmured in deep humiliation. If he had suffered her to be silent as long as she would, she might have offered him some reparation; but he spoke.

"Why did you think I had been experimenting on you?" he asked.

"Why?" she repeated. The sense of having put herself in the wrong exasperated her with him. "Oh, I dare say you were curious. Don't you suppose I have noticed that men are puzzled at me? What did you mean by saying that you thought I would be equal to anything?"

"I meant--I thought you would like to be treated frankly."

"And you would n't treat everybody so?"

"I wouldn't treat Mrs. Maynard so."

"Oh!" she said. "You treat me upon a theory."

"Don't you like that? We treat everybody upon a theory"--"Yes, I know"

"And I should tell you the worst of anything at once, because I think you are one of the kind that don't like to have their conclusions made for them."

"And you would really let women make their own conclusions," she said.

"You are very peculiar!" She waited a while, and then she asked, "And what is your theory of me?"

"That you are very peculiar."

"How?"

"You are proud."

"And is pride so very peculiar?"

"Yes; in women."

"Indeed! You set up for a connoisseur of female character. That's very common, nowadays. Why don't you tell me something more about Yourself?

We're always talking about me."

He might well have been doubtful of her humor. He seemed to decide that she was jesting, for he answered lightly, "Why, you began it."

"I know I did, this time. But now I wish to stop it, too."

He looked down at the tiller in his hands. "Well," he said, "I should like to tell you about myself. I should like to know what you think of the kind of man I am. Will you be honest if I will?"

"That's a very strange condition," she answered, meeting and then avoiding the gaze he lifted to her face.

"What? Being honest?"

"Well, no--Or, yes!"

"It is n't for you."

"Thank you. But I'm not under discussion now."

"Well, in the first place," he began, "I was afraid of you when we met."

"Afraid of me?"

"That is n't the word, perhaps. We'll say ashamed of myself. Mrs.

Maynard told me about you, and I thought you would despise me for not doing or being anything in particular. I thought you must."

"Indeed!"