Phebe, Her Profession Part 30

"I wanted to see you," he went on, as he seated himself once more. "I am going away, to-morrow night, and before I went, I had something I wished to tell--to explain, that is, to you all."

A sudden tension seemed to make itself felt throughout the group. No one of them had the remotest idea of what he was about to say, yet even Dr.

McAlister drew his chair a few inches nearer, while Cicely, in her corner, fairly bounced in her excitement.

"Well, let her go," Billy remarked, after a moment when the guest seemed to find it hard to open the subject.

"Why, you see, I may seem very silly and egotistic to speak of it; but--The fact is, didn't any of you think it was strange that I didn't try to go into the surf for Mac, yesterday?"

Three of the women before him made a polite murmur of dissent. The fourth was silent; but Dr. McAlister said frankly,--

"Yes. It wasn't at all like my idea of you, Mr. Barrett."

The young man looked pleased.

"Thank you, doctor," he said heartily. "I value that sort of compliment.

But I didn't want to go away from here and leave you to think me an arrant coward. The truth is, I shouldn't have been of much use to Mac or to myself. I'm not swimming, this summer, for I was unlucky enough to break my arm, last June, and it's not at all strong yet."

Quickly Billy put out his hand.

"I'm glad to know this, Barrett," he said. "I haven't been quite fair to you."

"I wish you had told us before," Theodora added laughingly. "We haven't had time to compare notes yet; but there is no telling what some of us may have thought about it. But isn't it very bad for your music, Mr. Barrett?"

"It came at an inconvenient time," he admitted; "for I was in the middle of some work, and I have had to let it all go."

"How did it happen?" Hope asked sympathetically. "I hope it wasn't a bad break."

"A compound fracture of the right arm," he replied. "It wasn't a pleasing break; but it was a good deal more pleasing than the way it happened."

"How was that?" Billy looked up expectantly, for the young man's tone was suggestive of a story yet untold.

Gifford Barrett laughed.

"It was very absurd, very ignominious; but the fact is, I was run into by a woman, one day in a pelting shower, and knocked heels over head off my bicycle."

Sitting in the doorway, Phebe had been holding a book in her hands. Now it fell to the floor with a crash.

"Drop something, Babe?" Hubert asked amicably.

"Yes, my book," she answered shortly.

"I shall never forget my emotions at the time," Gifford Barrett was saying to Billy. "I had been off for a long ride, one day, and was caught, on the way home, in this heavy shower. The road was all up and down hill, and just as I came down one hill, the damsel came down the other. She had lost both her pedals, and you've no idea how she looked, bouncing and b.u.mping along, with her soaked skirt flopping in the wind.

She hadn't even the grace to be pretty, so there wasn't an atom of romance in the affair from first to last. She was a great, overgrown country girl, and tied on the front of her wheel she had a bundle that I took for some sort of marketing stuff; but, just as she met me, it popped open and out tumbled a whole a.s.sortment of bones, human bones, legs and arms and a skull. What do you suppose she could have been doing with them? She was too young and fair to have been an undertaker."

"They might have belonged to her ancestors, and she have been taking them home for burial," Hubert suggested.

Mr. Barrett chuckled in a manner which suggested the composer in him had not entirely ousted the boy.

"Anyway, she is short a skull. I sent out, the next day, and had it brought to me. I have it yet."

"Did she hit you?" Theodora asked.

"Hit me! I should think she did. She was large, and she came at me with a good deal of force. The last I remember, I felt the crash, and I knew I had had the worst of it." He rubbed his arm sympathetically at the recollection.

"What became of you?" Mrs. McAlister inquired. "Did she pick you up and carry you home?"

"Not she. She was an Amazon, not a Valkyrie within hailing distance of Valhalla."

"Who was she?" Theodora asked. "The story ought to have a sequel."

"It hasn't. It ended in mystery. The girl vanished into thin air, and a man, driving by, found me lying in the mud, with a skull on one side of me and a white sailor hat on the other, neither of them my property."

"Just rode away and left you with a compound fracture?" The doctor's tone was incredulous.

"Apparently, for she was never heard of again; at least, I never found out who she was. It was very funny and very unromantic; but it laid me up for a few weeks, and my arm doesn't grow strong as fast as it should, so I have to be careful of it. No swimming or golf for me, this year.

Meanwhile, I am waiting to hear of a buxom damsel who lacks one skull and one white straw Knox hat, size six and one-eighth. Then, when I meet her, I shall take my vengeance."

"I hope you will find her," the doctor said vindictively. "If one of my daughters had done such a thing, I would disown her. Babe, it is growing chilly. I wish you'd bring out some rugs."

But Phebe had vanished from her seat in the doorway.

The full moon was laying a silvery path across the restless waves, when Gifford Barrett finally rose to go. There was a cordial exchange of farewells, of good wishes for the coming winter, of hopes of another meeting, yet Mr. Barrett was not quite content, as he slowly walked away to his hotel Mrs. Farrington's cordiality and Cicely's evident woe at his departure could not quite atone for the lack of a word and a glance of friendly good-bye from Phebe. One's liking is not altogether a matter of free will. In spite of himself, Gifford Barrett liked the blunt, outspoken, pugnacious Phebe far better than the girls whose honeyed words and ways he had found so cloying.

Farewell parties are all the fas.h.i.+on at Qantuck station and few people are allowed to depart, unattended. However, Mr. Barrett's fame, and his manifest wish to hold himself aloof from the people about him had had their effect, and he went trudging down to the station the next afternoon quite by himself. On the platform, to his surprise, he found Mrs. Holden and Mac waiting for him.

"Mac insisted upon saying good-bye," Hope said half apologetically; "and I really hadn't the heart to refuse him. Besides, I wanted to thank you again for your many kindnesses to my small boy. Mothers appreciate such things, I a.s.sure you, Mr. Barrett."

The young man's face lighted. He liked Hope, and, from the first, he had dropped his professional manner and met her with the simplicity of an overgrown boy.

"We've had great times together; haven't we, Mac?" he inquired.

"Yes, lots; but now I'm going to see my truly papa," Mac observed.

"Are you going soon?" Mr. Barrett asked Hope.

"Next week, I think. Mr. Holden has written so appealingly that I dare not keep him waiting any longer. The others will stay down for September; but Hubert will go off island with me, next week, and start Mac and me on our way to Helena."

"And may I ask my sister to call on you?"

"Please do. Mac's mother doesn't have time to make many calls; but I should like to know your sister, and then I shall be sure to hear when you are in Helena again."

"Perhaps you'll let me write to you, now and then," he suggested, with a shyness that was new to him. In his past life, he had never met a woman quite like Mrs. Holden and he was anxious to win her liking and to hold it, once won.

"I wish you would," she said cordially. "But your train is waiting.

Ought you to get on board?"

He took a hurried leave of her. Then he turned to Mac.