FullReads

“You are two days ahead of schedule, David. I’m glad to see you.”

Though Uriah Grey’s smile was bland and simple, beneath it lay a complicated maze of speculation; and the old man endeavored to read in the young man’s face the answers to those questions which so greatly concerned him. Uriah Grey’s eyesight was famous for two things: for its miraculous, almost chemical ability to detect the metals in ore and the gold in men. He sighed; but not so that David could hear. The magnate detected happiness where less than two weeks before he had read doubt, hesitation, and a kind of dumb misery.

“You have had a pleasant holiday?”

“A happy one, Mr. Grey.” David’s eyes twinkled and sparkled.

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, sir, I paid my debts and got back my collateral.”

“Well, sir?”

“I tasted whiskey,” said David. “I lighted a cigarette, I registered a bet of two cents upon the weather, and I made love.”

Uriah Grey with difficulty suppressed a moan.

“Did you!” he said dully.

“Yes,” said David. “I kissed the glove upon a lady’s hand.” He laughed. “It smelled of gasoline,” he said.

Mr. Grey grunted.

“And what are your plans?”

“What!” cried David offendedly. “Are you through with me?”

“No, my boy–no.”

David hesitated.

“Mr. Grey,” he began, and paused.

“Well, sir?”

“It is now lawful for me to make love,” said David; “but I should do so with a better grace if I had your permission and approval.”

Mr. Grey was puzzled.

“What have I to do with it?”

“You have a granddaughter….”

“What!” thundered the old man. “You want to make love to my granddaughter!”

“Yes,” said David boldly, “and I wonder what you are going to say.”

“I have only one word to say–Hurry!”

“David!”

Spools of silk rattled from her lap to the floor. She was frankly and childishly delighted to see him again, and she hurried to him and gave him both her hands. But he looked so happy that her heart misgave her for a moment, and then she read his eyes aright, just as long since he must have read the confession in hers. At this juncture in their lives there could not have been detected in either of them the least show of hesitation or embarrassment. It was as if two travellers in the desert, dying of thirst, should meet, and each conceive in hallucination that the other was a spring of sweet water.

Presently David was looking into the lovely face that he held between his hands. He had by this time squeezed her shoulders, patted her back, kissed her feet, her dress, her hands, her eyes, and pawed her hair. They were both very short of breath.

“Violet,” he gasped, “what is your name?”

“Violet.”

“Whose girl are you?”

“I’m David Larkin’s girl.”

“All of you?”

“All–all–all—-“

It was the beginning of another of those long, tedious afternoons. But to the young people concerned it seemed that never until then had such words as they spoke to each other been spoken, or such feelings of almost insupportable tenderness and adoration been experienced.

Yet back there in Aiken, Sapphira was experiencing the same feelings, and thinking the same thoughts about them; and so was Billy McAllen. And when you think that he had already been divorced once, and that Sapphira, as she herself (for once truthfully) confessed, was still twenty-five, it gives you as high an opinion of the little bare god–as he deserves.