The Wishing Moon Part 33

"Stop, Parks," Judith said, with new authority in her voice.

He stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and she slipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him.

"Go on," he said to the chauffeur. "It's too rough here for the car.

It's easier on foot. Miss Randall will walk with me."

The car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but a clumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and ugly thing, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. Judith watched it out of sight. Then and not till then she turned to her host.

"Aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully, as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration.

"Yes," said Judith serenely, unflattered by it.

"What are you going to say?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to shake hands with me."

A hand touched his lightly. It drew quickly away, but it was a confiding little hand.

"You don't seem surprised to see me."

"I'm not," said Judith.

"But you're glad to see me?"

"Yes."

"It's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room and won't leave it. I wanted----"

Judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they began to grope their way down the road. "You wanted to meet me."

She made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would have made it to Willard. All this was coquetry, as she and Willard understood it, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there was something strangely exciting about the fact that the Colonel understood it, too, and condescended to play at it. It was more exciting than usual to-night.

"Why should I want to meet you?" he said.

"I don't know."

"Why weren't you downstairs last night when I came to see your father?"

"I was tired."

"You weren't running away from me?"

"No."

"And you won't ever run away from me?"

"I don't know."

"You're afraid of me."

"Am I?"

"Aren't you?"

"I don't know," said Judith. "Look, there's the moon."

It was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. It looked reproachful and grave, like Neil's eyes. It was looking straight at Judith. Judith turned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonel saying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like the Colonel, either. n.o.body had ever spoken to her in just that voice before. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him and listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.

"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet to-night."

"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing moon. "I won't be afraid."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.

"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the look of you."

The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away--the big day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.

The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh, and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white ap.r.o.n like the completing touch to a correct toilette a.s.sumed deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.

Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.

"You don't sleep," she began.

"Neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son correctly.

"You work too hard." She had made an accusation that he could not deny, so he only smiled his quick, flas.h.i.+ng smile. "You won't even take a day to yourself."

"I'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon.

I'll have to go. I've got something special to look into."

"Where's Charlie?" she demanded at once.

"Oh, he's not troubling me to-day. He's safe at Madison with his new mare. He'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. He's due to break loose.

He's been good too long--too good to be true. He was in fine form last night." Mr. Charlie Brady's cousin grinned reminiscently.

"What do you mean?"

"He gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction.

Charlie claims I won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in ties."