The Lilac Girl Part 15

XII.

There was a bench outside the kitchen door at The Cedars, a slant-legged, unpainted bench which at one time had been used to hold milk-cans. Wade settled himself on this in company with several dozen gla.s.ses of currant jelly. From his position he could look in at the kitchen door upon Eve and Miss Mullett, who, draped from chin to toes in blue-checked ap.r.o.ns, were busy over the summer preserving. A sweet, spicy fragrance was wafted out to him from the bubbling kettles, and now and then Eve, bearing a long agate-ware spoon and adorned on one cheek with a brilliant streak of currant juice, came to the threshold and smiled down upon him in a preoccupied manner, glancing at the jelly tumblers anxiously.

"If you spill them," she said, "Carrie will never forgive you, Mr.

Herrick."

"Nonsense," declared Miss Mullett from the kitchen. "I'd just send you for more, Mr. Herrick, and make you help me put them up."

"I think I'd like that," answered Wade.

"It must be rather good fun messing about with sugar and currants and things."

"Messing about!" exclaimed Eve, indignantly. "It's quite evident that you've never done any of it!"

"Well, I stewed some dried apricots once," said Wade, "and they weren't half bad. I suppose you're going to be busy all the morning, aren't you?" he asked, forlornly.

"I'm afraid so."

"Indeed you're not," said Miss Mullett, decisively. "You're going to stop as soon as we get this kettleful off. I can do the rest much better without you, dear."

"Did you ever hear such ingrat.i.tude?" laughed Eve. "Here I've been hard at work since goodness only knows what hour of the morning, and now I'm informed that my services are valueless! I shall stay and help just to spite you, Carrie."

"I wanted you to take a walk," said Wade, boldly. "It's a great morning, too fine to be spent indoors."

"Is it?" Eve looked up at the fleecy sky critically. "Don't you think it looks like rain?"

"Not a bit," he answered, stoutly. "We're in for a long drought.

Zephania told me so not half an hour ago."

"Is Zephania a weather prophet?"

"She's everything. She knows so much that she makes me ashamed of myself. And she never makes a mistake about the weather."

Wade waited anxiously.

"We-ll," said Eve, finally, "if you're sure it isn't going to rain, and Carrie really doesn't want me--"

"I do not," said Miss Mullett, crisply. "A walk will do you good. She stayed up until all hours last night, Mr. Herrick, writing. I wish you'd say something to her; she pays no attention to me."

Wade flushed. Eve turned and shot an indignant glance at Miss Mullett, but that lady was busy over the kettle with her back toward them.

"I'm afraid she would pay less heed to me than to you," answered Wade with a short laugh. "But if you'll persuade her to walk, I'll lecture her as much as you wish."

"If I'm to be lectured," replied Eve, "I shan't go."

"Well, of course, if you put it that way," hedged Wade.

"Go along, dear," said Miss Mullett. "You need fresh air. But do keep out of the sun if it gets hot."

"I wonder," observed Wade, with a smile, "what you folks up here would do down in New Mexico, where the temperature gets up to a hundred and twenty in the shade."

"I'd do as the Irishman suggested," answered Eve, pertly, "and keep out of the shade. If you'll wait right where you are and not move for ten minutes I'll go and get ready."

"I won't ruffle a feather," Wade a.s.sured her. "But you'd better come before dinner time or I may get hungry and eat all the jelly."

Twenty minutes later she was back, a cool vision of white linen and lace. She wore no hat, but had brought a sunshade. Pursued by Miss Mullett's admonitions to keep out of the sun as much as possible, they went down the garden and through the gate, and turned countryward under the green gloom of the elms. Alexander the Great, laboring perhaps under the delusion that he was a dog instead of a cat, followed them decorously for some distance, and then, being prevailed on to desist, climbed a fence-post and blinked gravely after them.

"It really is nice to-day," said Eve. "When the breeze comes from the direction of the coast it cools things off deliciously. I suppose it's only imagination, but sometimes I think I can smell the salt--or taste it. That's scarcely possible, though, for we're a good twenty miles inland."

"I'm not so sure," he answered. "Lots of times I've thought I could smell the ocean here. Does it take very long to get to Portsmouth or the beach? Couldn't we go some day, you and Miss Mullett and the Doctor and I?"

"That would be jolly," said Eve. "We must talk it over with them. I'm afraid, though, the Doctor couldn't go. There's always some one sick hereabouts."

"Oh, he could leave enough of his nasty medicine one day to last through the next. He's one of the nicest old chaps I ever met, Miss Walton. He's awfully fond of you, isn't he?"

"I think he is," she answered, "and I'm awfully fond of him, I don't know whether I ought to tell this, but I have a suspicion that he used to be very fond of my mother before she was married. He's told me so many little things about her, and he always speaks of her in such a quiet, dear sort of way. I wonder--I wonder if he ever asked her to marry him."

"Somehow I don't believe he ever did," said Wade, thoughtfully. "I could imagine him being sort of shy if he were in love. Perhaps, while he was working his courage up to the sticking point, your father stepped in and carried off the prize. That happens sometimes, you know."

"I suppose it does," laughed Eve. "Or perhaps he was so busy quoting bits of poetry to her that he never had time!"

"That's so." Wade smiled. "There's one thing certain, and that is, if she did refuse him, he had a quotation quite ready for the occasion."

"''Tis better to have loved and lost' and so on?"

"Something of the sort," answered Wade. "I wonder, though, if that is true, Miss Walton?"

"What?" asked Eve.

"That it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

"I'm sure I don't know. Probably not. Perhaps, like a great many of the Doctor's quotations, it's more poetical than truthful."

"I think it must be," mused Wade. "It doesn't sound logical to me. To say that, when you've seen a thing you want and can't have it, you're better off than before you wanted it, doesn't sound like sense."

"Have you ever wanted much you didn't get?" asked Eve.

Wade thought a minute.

"Come to think of it, Miss Walton, I don't believe I have. I can't think of anything just now. Perhaps that's why I'd hate all the more to be deprived of what I want now," he said, seriously. She shot a glance at him from under the edge of the sunshade.

"You talk as though some one was trying to cheat you out of something you'd set your heart on," she said lightly.

"That isn't far wrong," he answered. "I have set my heart on something and it doesn't look now as though I'd ever get it."

"Oh, I hope you will," said Eve, sincerely.