The Gold of Chickaree Part 70

'He might live to me?just a little bit,?' so they ran. 'That is what I shall do to him,?under G.o.d,?always!'?Then tramp, tramp, came the words:

"The man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man,"?and if ever in her life Wych Hazel felt rebellious, she did so then. The old grievance of man's right of way,?the fact that it _was_ a right,?but with it a softer feeling, hurt and sore, that he could even wish for anybody else but her on such a journey; that _her_ right should not have come in there.

"The moon looks down on many brooks,?

"The brook can see no moon but one!"

He might at least have consulted her. Suppose she had asked somebody??Wych Hazel drew half of a very long sigh, choked the rest back, then raised her grave brown eyes, and answered,

'No.'

Did he see what was beneath them? For a peculiar fire leapt into the grey eyes. He spoke in the same tone he had used before.

'Suppose, Hazel, we lose twenty-five per cent. of our pleasure?

And suppose Primrose gains a hundred??' He was holding her close and tenderly, looking down into her eyes with all the power of his.

'Well,' said Hazel,?'I suppose she would.'

'And I suppose _we_ should. I ask n.o.body for _my_ pleasure to be a third with us. I suppose it will be a trial to me when we go home, to have Heinert at the dinner table and talking to me in the evening. And yet, Hazel, just because you are so much to me, I dare not but pour pleasure into every cup I see standing empty; even though I let a few drops of my own go.'

She answered softly 'Yes,'?yet was very near adding, 'But you are spilling _mine!'_?It was rather hard. Would he be always doing such things, over the head of her pleasure? But in the new life and purpose awake in her, Wych Hazel had found a new set of answers to trouble some questions. If the answers were also sometimes difficult, they were at least conclusive. And now, as she stood there, these words came:

"For even Christ pleased not himself."

"Even,"?what was she, to set up _her_ pleasure against anybody's good? A quiver crept round her lips for a minute?but then she looked up and laughed.

'I am just as perverse as I can be, to-night,' she said. 'Stroked all the wrong way. That disposes of everything.'

Rollo bent and pressed his lips to those soft trembling ones, and still holding her fast, caressed face and hair with the free hand; his face shewing more delight in her than Hazel was in a condition to observe; though the tenderness of tone and touch spoke their own language.

'Hazel?' he said softly.

She looked up, listening.

'I am curious about something.'

'I cannot say I shall be happy to gratify your curiosity, until I know what it is about.'

'It concerns the question, how you are going to ask my pardon for the thought that has been in your head?'

'I am not going to do it.'

'You ought. And you know that what you ought, you always, sooner or later,?do.'

'Ought I?' said Wych Hazel. 'Is it one of your prerogatives to have your pardon asked without cause?' But then she laid her face against his, in a way that was extremely womanish and not a bit self-a.s.serting.

Rollo stood still and added no more. He had read what was going on in her thoughts, and he knew that she was mistaken; but he also knew that words prove nothing, and as before, he waited. Only as at last he let her out of his arms, he said lightly,

'You will not lose anything in the long run, Hazel. People never do, by doing right.'

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

NOVICE WORK.

Mrs. Coles did not improve her position next day. 'What nights does Sacchi-sussi sing?' she asked, when Rollo had left the three ladies alone. Hazel answered that she had not noticed.

'They say she is wonderful, and beautiful, and everything. Do you suppose Dane will take us, if we ask him nicely?'

'I do not go.'

'To the opera? My dear! Not at all?'

'Not at all.'

'But why?'

Wych Hazel stood thinking. She was very shy of declaring herself?yet sometimes it must be done.

'A few years ago,' she said slowly, 'when the war was going on, two gentlemen came one night to see Mr. Falkirk. They told war stories; and I with my book of some study in my hand, sat still and listened. One story was this. A mutual friend of all the parties had laid the United States flag down in her drawing room as a floor- cloth, to be trodden under foot. Then the other gentleman spoke out and said his wife would not enter that house again while the war lasted! Mrs. Coles?at the opera and the theatre my flag is under foot.'

'Your flag!' said the lady in amazement.

'Yes,' Hazel answered with her colour stirring. 'You know what service I have sworn into.'

'I don't see where the flags come in,' said Mrs. Coles.

Hazel answered softly, gazing into the fire,?"Thou hast given a banner to thy chosen, that it may be displayed because of the truth."

'Then you mean to say,' broke out Mrs. Coles with a rising colour of her own tinging the pale face, 'that no Christians ever go to the theatre!'

'Do they carry their flag aloft there?' said Wych Hazel. 'Are they marching to victory under its folds? I could not carry mine. It would be trailing, drooping, union-down!?'

'Prue, Prue,' said Primrose, 'you know what papa always says.'

'Papa does not know the world!' said Mrs. Coles, waving _that_ down. 'And how about your favourite German?' she said, returning to the charge against Wych Hazel with equal ire and curiosity.

Wych Hazel answered again, still looking into the fire,?

' "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." '

The girl spoke so "at liberty,"?there was such freedom in the loyalty, the folds of the banner waved so gladly above her head,?

Mrs. Coles looked and hesitated. Then, spying as she thought a joint in the armour, so to speak, she sent out an arrow.

'And you call _that_ a good marching uniform, I suppose,' she said derisively, with a comprehensive glance that went from head to foot.