The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 32

"Well," said McTavish again, "there's no use crying over spilt milk. But is your conscience up to a heavy load?"

"'Tis a meeserable vehicle at best," protested Traquair.

"You must pretend," said McTavish, "that you have not yet told me."

"Ah!" Traquair exclaimed. "You wish to think it over."

"I do," said McTavish.

Both were silent for some moments. Then Traquair said rather solemnly: "You are young, Mr. McTavish, but I have hopes that your thinking will be of a wise and courageous nature."

"Do you read Tennyson?" asked McTavish, apropos of nothing.

"No," said Traquair, slightly nettled. "Burns."

"I am sorry," said McTavish simply; "then you don't know the lines:

'If you are not the heiress born, And I,' said he, 'the lawful heir,' etc.

do you?"

"No," said Traquair, "I do not."

"It is curious how often a lack of literary affinity comes between two persons and a heart-to-heart talk."

"Let me know," said Traquair, "when you have thought it over."

"I will. And now if you will put me down--?"

He leaped to the ground, lifted his hat to the older man, and, turning, strode very swiftly, as if to make up for lost time, back toward the castle gate.

V

McTavish was kept waiting a long time while a servant took his letter of introduction to Miss MacNish, and brought back an answer from the castle.

Finally, midway of a winding and shrubby short cut, into which he turned as directed by the porter, he came suddenly upon her.

"Miss MacNish--?" he said.

"You're not Mr. McTavis.h.!.+--" She seemed dumfounded, and glanced at a letter which she carried open in her hand. "My sister writes--"

"What does she write?" asked McTavish eagerly.

"No--no!" Miss MacNish exclaimed hastily, "the letter was to me." She tore it hastily into little pieces.

"Miss MacNish," said McTavish, somewhat hurt, "it is evident that I give diametrically opposed impressions to you and your sister. Either she has said something nice about me, and you, seeing me, are astonished that she should; or she has said something horrid about me--I do hope it's that way--and you are even more surprised. It must be one thing or the other. And before we shake hands I think it only proper for you to tell me which."

"Let bygones be bygones," said Miss MacNish, and she held out her hand.

McTavish took it, and smiled his enigmatic smile.

"It is your special wish, I have gathered," said Miss MacNish, "to meet The McTavish. Now she knows about your being in the neighborhood, knows that you are a distant cousin, but she hasn't expressed any wish to meet you--at least I haven't heard her. If she wishes to meet you, she will ask you to call upon her. If she doesn't wish to, she won't. Of course, if you came upon her suddenly--somewhere in the grounds, for instance--she'd have to listen to what you had to say, and to answer you, I suppose. But to-day--well I'd not try it to-day."

"Why not?" asked McTavish.

"Why," said Miss MacNish, "she caught cold in the car yesterday, and her poor nose is much too red for company."

"Why do you all try to make her out such a bad lot?"

"Is it being a bad lot to have a red nose?" exclaimed Miss MacNish.

"At twenty-two?" McTavish looked at her in surprise and horror. "I ask _you_," he said. "There was the porter at Brig O'Dread, and your sister--they gave her a pair of black eyes between them, and here you give her a red nose. When the truth is probably the reverse."

"I don't know the reverse of red," said Miss MacNish, "but that would give her white eyes."

"I am sure, Miss MacNish, that quibbling is not one of your prerogatives. It belongs exclusively to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. As for me--the less I see of The McTavish, the surer I am that she is rather beautiful, and very amusing, and good."

"Are these the matters on which you are so eager to meet her?" asked Miss MacNish. She stood with her back to a clump of dark blue larkspur taller than herself--a lovely picture, in her severe black housekeeper's dress that by contrast made her face and dark red hair all the more vivacious and flowery. Her eyes at the moment were just the color of the larkspur.

McTavish smiled his enigmatic smile. "They are," he said.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss MacNish.

"When I meet her--" McTavish began, and abruptly paused.

"What?" Miss MacNish asked with some eagerness.

"Oh, nothing; _I'm_ so full of it that I almost betrayed my own confidence."

"I hope that you aren't implying that I might prove indiscreet."

"Oh, dear no!" said McTavish.

"It had a look of it, then," said Miss MacNish tartly.

"Oh," said McTavish, "if I've hurt your feelings--why, I'll go on with what I began, and take the consequences, shall I?"

"I think," said Miss MacNish primly, "that it would tend to restore confidence between us."

"When I meet her, then," said McTavish, "I shall first tell her that she is beautiful, and amusing, and good. And then," it came from him in a kind of eager, boyish outburst, "I shall ask her to marry me."

Miss MacNish gasped and stepped backward into the fine and deep soil that gave the larkspur its inches. The color left her cheeks and returned upon the instant tenfold. And it was many moments before she could find a word to speak. Then she said in an injured and astonished tone: "_Why?_"

"The Scotch Scot," said McTavish, "is shrewd, but cautious. The American Scot is shrewd, but daring. Caution, you'll admit, is a pitiful measure in an affair of the heart."

Miss MacNish was by this time somewhat recovered from her consternation. "Well," said she, "what then? When you have come upon The McTavish unawares somewhere in the shrubbery, and asked her to marry you, and she has boxed your ears for you--what then?"