The Boss of Little Arcady Part 33

"Why did they call you 'Horsehead'?" she asked almost kindly.

"I never asked. It seemed to be a common understanding. Doubtless there was good reason for it, as good as there is for calling Budlow 'Fatty.'"

"What did you do?" she asked again.

"I went to the war with what I could take--nothing but a picture."

"And you lost that?"

"Yes--under peculiar circ.u.mstances. It seemed a kind thing to do at the time."

"And you came back with--"

"_With yours, Little Miss!_"

Some excitement throbbed between us so that I had involuntarily emphasized my words. Briefly her eyes clung to mine, and very slowly we relaxed from that look.

"I only wanted to say," she began presently, "that I shall have to believe your absurd tale of my picture being with you before you saw me.

Something makes me credit it--a strange little notion that I have carried that child's picture in my own mind."

"We are even, then," I answered, "only you are thinking more things than you say. That isn't fair."

But she only nodded her head inscrutably.

CHAPTER XXVI

A LITTLE MYSTERY IS SOLVED

The significance of Miss Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that night. After a third defeat this thread seemed to guide me to daylight from a tortuously winding cavern. At first the thing was of an amazing simplicity.

In a far room was a chest filled with forgotten odds and ends that had come back with me years before. I ran to it, and from under bundles of letters, old family trinkets, a canteen, a pair of rusty pistols, and other such matters, I brought forth an ambrotype--the kind that was mounted in a black case of pressed rubber and closed with a spring.

But even as I held the thing, flushed with my discovery, another recollection cooled me, and the structure of my discovery tumbled as quickly as it had built itself. Little Miss had found her own picture when she found _him_. Her mother had told me this definitely. It had been clutched in his hands, and she, after a look, had tenderly replaced it to stay with his dust forever. This I had forgotten at first, in my eagerness for light.

I pressed the spring that brought the face to my eyes, knowing it would not be her face. Close to the light I studied it; the face of a girl, eighteen or so, with dreaming eyes that looked beyond me. It could not be Miss Lansdale, and yet it was strangely like her--like the Little Miss she must once have been.

But one mystery at least was now plain--the mystery of my own mind picture. I had not looked at this thing for ten years, but its lines had stayed with me, and this was the face of my dreaming, carried so long after its source had been forgotten. The face of this picture had naturally enough changed to seem like the face of Miss Lansdale after I had seen her.

Perhaps it was the face of a Peavey; there was at least a family resemblance; that would explain the likeness to Miss Kate. This was not much, but it was enough to sleep on.

As I left the house the following morning, Miss Lansdale, her skirts pinned up, was among her roses with a watering pot and a busy pair of scissors.

As I approached her I had something to say, but it was, for an interval, driven from my lips.

"Promise me," I said instead, "never to wear a common-sense shoe."

She stared at me with brows a trifle raised.

"Of course it will displease Mrs. Eubanks, but there is still a better reason for it."

The brows went farther up at this until they were hardly to be detected under the broad rim of her garden hat.

Her answer was icy, even for an "Indeed?"--quite in her best Lansdale manner.

"Yes, 'indeed!'" I retorted somewhat rudely, "but never mind--it's not of the least consequence. What I meant to say was this--about those pictures of people, you remember."

"I remember perfectly, and I've concluded that it's all nonsense--all of it, you understand."

"That's queer--so have I." Had I been a third person and an observer, I would doubtless have sworn that Miss Lansdale was more surprised than pleased by this remark of mine.

"I haven't had your picture at all," I went on; "it was a picture of some one else, and I hadn't thought to look at it for a long time--had forgotten it utterly, in fact. That's how I came to think I knew your face before I knew you."

"I told you it was nonsense!" and she snipped off a rose with a kind of miniature brusqueness.

"But you shall see that I had some reason. If you find time to-day, step into my library and look at the picture. It's on the mantel, and the door is open. It may be some one you know, though I doubt even that."

With this I brazenly s.n.a.t.c.hed a pink rose from those within her arm.

"You see Fatty Budlow is coming on," I remarked of this bit of boldness.

"Let him come--he shan't find _me_ in the way." This with an effort to seem significant.

"Oh, not at _all_!" I a.s.sured her politely, and with equal subtlety, I believe.

Had I known that this was the last time I should ever look upon Miss Katharine Lansdale, I might have looked longer. She was well worth seeing for sundry other reasons than her need for common-sense shoes.

But those last times pa.s.s so often without our suspecting them! And it was, indeed, my good fortune never to see her again. For never again was she to rise, even at her highest, above Miss Kate.

She was even so low as Little Miss when I found her on my porch that afternoon--a troubled Little Miss, so drooping, so queerly drawn about the eyes, so weak of mouth, so altogether stricken that I was shot through at sight of her.

"I waited here--to speak alone--you are late to-day."

I was early, but if she had waited, she would of course not know this.

"What has happened, Miss Kate?"

"Come here."

Through my opened door I followed her quick step.

"You were jesting about that this morning,"--she pointed to the picture, propped open against a book on the mantel; and then, with an effort to steady her voice,--"you were jesting, and of course you didn't know--but you shouldn't have jested."

"Can it be you, Miss Kate--can it really be you?"

"It is, it is--couldn't you see? Tell me quickly--don't, don't jest again!"