"We girls all wish we could come over and help hunt
the lost treasure. It must be simply splendid to live in
a house where there's a mystery,-secret passages and
chests of doubloons and all that sort of thing! My!
Squire Glenarm, I suppose you spend all your nights exploring
secret passages."
This free expression of opinion startled me, though
she seemed wholly innocent of impertinence.
"Who says there's any secret about the house?" I demanded.
"Oh, Ferguson, the gardener, and all the girls!"
"I fear Ferguson is drawing on his imagination."
"Well, all the people in the village think so. I've
heard the candy-shop woman speak of it often."
"She'd better attend to her taffy," I retorted.
"Oh, you mustn't be sensitive about it! All us girls
think it ever so romantic, and we call you sometimes the
lord of the realm, and when we see you walking through
the darkling wood at evenfall we say, 'My lord is brooding
upon the treasure chests.' "
This, delivered in the stilted tone of one who is half-quoting
and half-improvising, was irresistibly funny,
and I laughed with good will.
"I hope you've forgiven me-" I began, kicking the
gate to knock off the snow, and taking the key from my
pocket.
"But I haven't, Mr. Glenarm. Your assumption is,
to say the least, unwarranted,-I got that from a book!"
"It isn't fair for you to know my name and for me not
to know yours," I said leadingly.
"You are perfectly right. You are Mr. John Glenarm
-the gardener told me-and I am just Olivia.
They don't allow me to be called Miss yet. I'm very
young, sir!"
"You've only told me half,"-and I kept my hand on
the closed gate. The snow still fell steadily and the
short afternoon was nearing its close. I did not like to
lose her,-the life, the youth, the mirth for which she
stood. The thought of Glenarm House amid the snow-hung
wood and of the long winter evening that I must
spend alone moved me to delay. Lights already gleamed
in the school-buildings straight before us and the sight
of them smote me with loneliness.
"Olivia Gladys Armstrong," she said, laughing,
brushed past me through the gate and ran lightly over
the snow toward St. Agatha's.