"No, I'm going to shoo him in here right now," answered David, bent upon
the immediate accomplishment of his scheme for the relief of his very
independent lady-love from her friendly durance. "You just wait and get a
line of moon-talk ready for him. Keep that rose in your hand and handle
your eyes carefully."
"Oh, but it's impossible!" exclaimed Caroline with real alarm in her
voice. She rose and the flower fell shattered at her feet. "I'm going to
have a little business talk with the major before Captain Cantrell and
the other gentlemen come. I have an appointment with him. Won't you leave
it to the gods?"
"No, for the gods might not know Phoebe. She'd hunt a hot brick for a
sick kitten if I was freezing to death, and besides I need her in my
business at this very moment."
"Caroline, my dear," said the major from the door into the library, "from
the strenuosity in the tones of David Kildare I judge he is discussing
his usual topic. Phoebe and Andrew have just gone and left their good-bys
for you both."
"Now, Major," demanded David indignantly, "how could you let her get away
when you had her here?"
"Young man," answered the major, "the constraining of a woman of these
times is well-nigh impossible, as you should have found out after your
repeated efforts in that direction."
"That's it, Major, you can't hang out any signal for them now; you have
to grab them as they go past, swing out into space and pray for strength
to hold on. I believe if you stood still they would come and feed out of
your hand a heap quicker than they will be whistled down--if you can get
the nerve to try 'em. Think I'll go and see." And David took his
studiedly unhurried departure.
"David Kildare translates courtship into strange modern terms," remarked
the major as he led Caroline into the library and seated her in Mrs.
Matilda's low chair near his own.
"The roses are blooming this morning, my dear," he said, looking
with delight at the soft color in her cheeks and the stars in her
black-lashed, violet eyes. A shaft of sunlight glinted in the gold of her
hair which was coiled low and from which little tendrils curled down on
her white neck.
She was very dainty and lovely, was Caroline Darrah Brown, with the
loveliness of a windflower and young with the innocent youngness of an
April day. She was slightly different from any girl the major had ever
known and he observed her type with the greatest interest.
She had been tutored and trained and French-convented and specialized by
adepts in the inculcating of every air and grace with which the women of
vaster wealth are expected to be equipped. Money and the girl had been
the ruling passions of Peters Brown's life and the one had been all for
the serving purposes of the other. It had been the one aim of his
existence to bring to a perfect flowering the new-born bud his southern
wife had left him, and he had succeeded. Yet she seemed so slight a
woman-thing to be bearing the burden of a great wealth and a great
loneliness that the major's eyes grew very tender as he asked: "What is it, clear, a crumpled rose-leaf?"