FullReads

“The Dicky, and the Hasty Pudding!” she commented. “Weren’t you the Smarty?”

Paul, who was standing with a well-worn pillow in his hand, turned and said hungrily:

“Oh, you know Harvard?”

“Why, I’m Radcliffe!” she said simply.

Paul was stupefied.

“Why, but you never SAID so! I thought yours was some Western college like your brother’s!”

“Oh, no; I went to Radcliffe for four years,” said she, casually. Then, tapping a picture thoughtfully, she went on: “There’s a boy whose face looks familiar.”

“Well, but–well, but–didn’t you love it?” stammered Paul.

“I liked it awfully well,” said Patricia. “Alan, you’ve got that one a little crooked,” she added calmly. Paul decided disgustedly that he gave her up. His own heart was aching so for old times and old voices that it was far more pain than pleasure to handle all these reminders: the photographs, the yacht pennant, the golf-clubs, the rumpled and torn dominoes, the tumbler with “Cafe Henri” blown in the glass, the shabby camera, the old Hawaiian banjo. Oh, what fun it had all been, and what good fellows they were!

“It was lovely, of course,” said Patricia, in a businesslike tone; “but this is real life! Cheer up, Paul,” she went on (they had reached Christian names some weeks before). “I am going to have two darling girls here for two weeks at Thanksgiving, just from Japan. And think of the concert next month, with Harry Garvey and Laurette Hopps in a play, and Mrs. Tolley singing ‘What Are the Wild Waves Saying?’ Then, if Alan sends you to Sacramento, you can go to the theatre every night you’re there, and pretend”–her eyes danced mischievously–“that you’re going to step out on Broadway when the curtain goes down, and can look up the street at electric signs of cocoa and ginger beer and silk petticoats–“

“Oh, don’t!” said Paul; and, as if she were a little ashamed of herself, she began to busy herself with the book-case, and was particularly sweet for the rest of the evening. But she wouldn’t talk Radcliffe, and Paul wondered if her college days hadn’t been happy; she seemed rather uneasy when he repeatedly brought up the subject.

But a day or two later, when he and she were taking a long ride and resting their horses by a little stream high up in the hills, she began to talk of the East; and they let an hour, and then another, go by, while they compared notes. Paul did most of the talking, and Miss Chisholm listened, with downcast eyes, flinging little stones from the crumbling bank into the pool the while.

A lazy leaf or two drifted upon the surface of the water, and where gold sunlight fell through the thick leafage overhead and touched the water, brown water-bugs flitted and jerked. Once a great dragon-fly came through on some mysterious journey, and paused for a palpitating bright second on a sunny rock. The woods all about were silent in the tense hush of the summer afternoon; even the horses were motionless, except for an occasional idle lipping of the underbrush. Now and then a breath of pine, incredibly sweet, crept from the forest.

Paul watched his companion as he talked. She was, as always, quite unself-conscious. She sat most becomingly framed by the lofty rise of oak and redwood and maple trees about her. Her sombrero had slipped back on her braids, and the honest, untouched beauty of her thoughtful face struck Paul forcibly. He wondered if she had ever been in love–what her manner would be to the man she loved.

“What did you come for, Paul?” She was ending some long sentence with the question.

“Come here?” Paul said. “Oh, Lord, there seemed to be reasons enough, though I can’t remember now why I ever thought I’d stay.”

“You came straight from college?”

“No,” he said, a little uneasily; “no. I finished three years ago. You see, my mother married an awfully rich old guy named Steele, the last year I was at college; and he gave me a desk in his office. He has two sons, but they’re not my kind. Nice fellows, you know, but they work twenty hours a day, and don’t belong to any clubs,–they’ll both die rich, I guess,–and whenever I was late, or forgot something, or beat it early to catch a boat, they’d go to the old man. And he’d ask mother to speak to me.”