Those Dale Girls Part 30

Simple enough these frocks were, but Hester wore hers with an air that gave them something of her personality and made her distinctive wherever she appeared. There was never anything nondescript about Hester. And her moods were so many and so varied that her cousin Nancy, who did not in the least understand her, told the Colonel despairingly that she must be a witch-there certainly was not a drop of Fairleigh blood in her.

Julie, forced to be quiet through indisposition, was regarded by her cousin as really quite patrician and not in the least-and this was a wonderful admission-not in the least vulgarized by work. Colonel Driscoe agreed to her last statement and let the rest go. He found that the simplest way to avoid argument.

Kenneth Landor became a frequent caller and grew to be an immense favorite with the household, but he seldom had the satisfaction of more than a few words with Hester. One morning he rode over and deemed the Fates more than kind when, finding Julie on the porch, she sent him down into the garden, where she said he would find Hester helping George Was.h.i.+ngton pick blackberries.

His first glimpse of her was a sun-bonnet; then two sadly stained hands reaching up among the bushes, then a white figure in sharp relief against the green; then Peter Snooks barked and she turned and saw him.

"Good morning," she said sweetly, from out of her sun-bonnet, giving him a look that seemed propitious. "Have a blackberry?"

"Thanks, don't mind if I do. May I help pick?"

"If you like. I can't stop, you know, for old Aunt Rachael is expecting them for dinner. We're great cronies, she and I. I steal out to the kitchen quarters often to see her when Cousin Nancy is not looking."

"Do you mind pus.h.i.+ng back that sun-bonnet?" he asked beseechingly. "I know you're inside of it somewhere and I should like to see you."

She laughed and pushed it half way back. "If that does not suit you I'll take it off altogether."

"Oh, don't do that, it's so-so nice," not daring to say how adorable he thought she was in it. "I like it the way you have it now. I never knew sun-bonnets could be so frilled and furbelowed."

"It is Nannie's-she is making Julie and me each one. She says they are a fad this year. They are pretty, aren't they? But somehow they feel hot and then I just tie the strings loose and let it hang down my back like that. Cousin Nancy says a girl who will do that has absolutely no regard for her complexion. It would be funny, wouldn't it, if I took to worrying about things like that? Why, where is George Was.h.i.+ngton? Gone?

And you're shockingly lazy! You haven't picked a berry since you came!"

"I-I beg your pardon," scarcely able to take his eyes off her, "I really mean to help."

"How is Captain Loomis?" she asked, seeing that he seemed unable to do much of anything but stare at her. "Have you seen him to-day?"

"That little Virginian? He haunts our camp and talks to me by the hour about you! He is madly in love with you."

"He is too silly to be anything else," munching a berry.

"I do not like your way of putting it."

"I mean," she explained, swinging her sun-bonnet by one string, "that he does not know how to be sensible and I do not like him well enough to bother to teach him, so, as he is around a good deal I have to politely put up with him. I should think you knew me well enough by this time to know how I hate silly people."

"Do you ever politely put up with me?"

"Sometimes," teasingly.

"Hester, Hester," called a fresh young voice, "are you down there? Come up out of the garden quick! It's so cool this morning father says he'll take us over to camp to see that fascinating Mr. Landor."

Hester ducked her head in her sunbonnet and fled.

When she reappeared half an hour later she was in her riding habit, looking so trig and tailor-made and altogether conventional that Kenneth wondered if she could be the same mischievous sprite who had run away from him in the garden.

It was arranged that Landor should escort them over, and the adroit Hester managed that he should start off in advance with Nannie, she and the Colonel bringing up the rear. Julie and Mrs. Driscoe waved them off, then returned to their work of sewing for the soldiers. For Mrs. Driscoe was the president of a ladies' patriotic aid society and found plenty for herself and the girls to do.

Hester looked forward with eagerness to reaching Camp Alger, which, though only six miles distant from Wavertree Hall, they had not yet visited. She rode along at first chatting gayly to the Colonel but at last was forced to keep her mouth closed on account of the dust. And who that experienced it, will ever forget the dust of that June in Virginia!

Inches deep on the roads it lay in a thick brown powder which, at the slightest disturbance from man or beast, rose in choking waves, covering and submerging everything; while in the immediate vicinity of Alger, where the sentries warned every one that a gait other than a walk was not permitted in and about the camp, it smothered them to the verge of suffocation.

They approached their destination by way of the little village of Falls Church, where over the rough and winding road traveled a constant procession. It was said by the darkies in Virginia that spring, that all the "poor white trash" in Fairfax County had abandoned their farms and taken to "toting" people to Camp Alger. Vehicles of every description were going back and forth carrying people from the station to the camp, sometimes officers, sometimes soldiers, often visitors; in every case the seating capacity of buggy, carryall or wagon was stretched to its utmost capacity. Intermingled with this motley array were the army wagons loaded with camp provisions and paraphernalia, on the top of which usually perched two or more soldiers. These, drawn by four mules and driven by an antiquated darky, seemed to Hester the most interesting thing on the road, though possibly she made an exception in favor of the mounted orderlies flas.h.i.+ng in and out through the crowd or an occasional mounted officer who saluted Kenneth and stared at the girls in open admiration.

As they crossed the picket lines, the camp lay before them-row after row of tents (reminding Hester of the card houses she used to build when she was little) not "gleaming white" like the tents of story but brown with the dust. Desiring to show them about before dismounting Kenneth took them on by his troop and through the roads leading by the various regiments. Of the thirty thousand men, more than half were encamped in the fields, now resembling arid plains, so dest.i.tute were they of vegetation; while the rest, more fortunate, were scattered through the surrounding woods, lost to sight except for the flutter of a flag above the trees.

The party did not attempt to cover the full length of the camp, for the sun was getting very hot and Kenneth was anxious to get them back to his troop in time for dinner. This, her first meal at an officer's mess and in a tent, was one of the most novel and delightful Hester had ever known. Kenneth counted it the second time they had broken bread together and was blissfully happy. When it was over, in a fit of excessive magnanimity he hunted up Charley Bemis who he knew would like to see Hester again and brought him up to his tent, where the Colonel and the girls were resting. A little later they all strolled together over to the troopers' quarters, young Bemis being anxious to show them the troop mascot, a stunning bull-terrier. Down here, too, were the horses, picketed back of the tents, while working among them were several troopers, one of whom Hester especially noticed tall and very blonde, his skin tanned to a deep brown. He wore the regulation campaign outfit, but his s.h.i.+rt was sleeveless. About his neck was knotted a yellow handkerchief, his soft hat was pushed well back with an upward turn to the front and he was busily engaged grooming his horse.

"That man," said Kenneth, seeing that Hester observed him, "is the president of our coaching club at home and drives the best horses in Radnor. It's great the way he, and in fact all the fellows have buckled down to work. He's a chum of mine and I'd like immensely to have him meet you; I think you would enjoy him, too, but I won't call him over.

It would embarra.s.s him to death to be caught like that."

Hester looked at the trooper in admiration.

"Let's get out of the way before he discovers us," she said tactfully, "though I'd like to march straight over there and tell him how proud I am of him."

Nannie, who had ideas of her own, rode off with her father when they started home. A mile or two on, the Colonel stopped and waited for them to overtake them, when he said, if Hester and Landor would excuse them he and Nannie would stop at the house in front of which they had halted and make a call. So the girl and man rode on alone through the beautiful woods which led to-was it happiness or only Wavertree Hall?

"Have you enjoyed it?" he asked when they had gone a little way.

"Oh! so much."

"Even if you had to politely put up with me?"

"Well, there were others, you see. Mr. Bemis, and all those charming officers at dinner. Now I think of it, you never took us to the Virginia camp. Is Captain Loomis away?" looking up at him as if the whereabouts of that individual was the thing which most concerned her.

He laid his hand for a moment over hers. "It's no use," he said, "you can't put me off with Loomis or any other man."

The intense subdued manner in which he said it deepened the color in her cheeks, but her dimples played mischievously.

"What are you going to do about it?" she asked.

"Hester," he replied, "do you remember a night in April when you and I talked together and you were kind and said things that would inspire a man to do anything? It was the first time you had ever been serious with me and you thought it was the first time I knew of the serious side of you, but that was not true. You turned my life into a new, better channel from the moment I first set eyes on you, dear. And I loved you so that night on the coach that I didn't know how I was ever going to get through without telling you, but I didn't want to take advantage of your goodness and I knew you cared nothing for me, though I was determined you should some day." His voice rang out in the masterful way she had so often berated to Julie. "I am telling you this now because my opportunities of seeing you are so few and soon they may end altogether.

Oh! Hester," he cried, finding it impossible to restrain himself any longer, "couldn't you learn to love me a little before I go away?"

She had listened with eyes gazing straight ahead of her. As he finished she turned and looked at him fearlessly.

"Are you quite sure I have not learned already?" she said. And then as he was about to speak, "No, no, do not answer me. I cannot answer the question myself. Sometimes I like you and sometimes I want to run away from you and sometimes-sometimes-"

He held his breath and waited.

But she did not finish it.

"We should never get on," she said argumentatively, "we quarrel all the time. At least you do-I've an angelic disposition," complacently.

"I quarrel with you? How could I!" endeavoring to fall in with her mood.

"It is you who say shocking things to me, you bad thing; and sometimes, ah! sometimes, dear, you do hurt."

She touched him impulsively. "It is only teasing. I never mean to hurt-I wouldn't do it intentionally for the world." How penitent and sweet her voice was!

"Then won't you be kind to me, please, and love me a little bit?"

"A little bit? Would that satisfy you?"