"Oh, Julie!"

For a moment they clung together. Then Julie gave a hysterical laugh.

"What a silly old goose you were to go having absurd thoughts about me, and how dared you, how _dared_ you think I was in love with any one?"

"I did not know," penitently, "you kept so still about Monsieur Gremond and he _was_ in love with you, wasn't he?"

"Yes dear. He came this afternoon and I sent him away. We do not want to have secrets from each other, do we, old girl, but I never talked to you much about him because there was a time when I did not quite know whether I cared for him or not. Perhaps back in the old days, if he had asked me, I might have said yes, but I doubt it-it was more a sort of fascination he exercised over me for awhile and now I am truly thankful he has come and gone. He has removed every particle of doubt as to my att.i.tude toward him."

"Oh, I am so glad. I couldn't bear the thought of his carrying you off to France."

Julie's eyes opened wide. "Did you suppose I'd go away and leave you and Daddy and the rest?" in a tone of astonishment.

"Some Prince Charming is coming along to carry you off some day, Julie dear," said Hester, who could bring herself to regard such an event with some degree of complacency now that it was not an immediate fact. "I'm not quite such a selfish pig" (she never spared herself in the matter of epithets), "as to expect to have you always."

"I think we are sufficient unto each other now, dear," said Julie seriously, "and we may always be, for all the years to come; but if some day our lives should change-a new interest enter in-we'll share it and make it beautify the lives of both of us just as we've always shared every joy and sorrow ever since we were babies." She kissed her sister solemnly.

"You blessed Julie!" was the response.

When the gas was out and Hester, the irrepressible, finally in bed, the light of the full moon came streaming into the little room. And lingering with a caressing touch it fell upon a white pillow on which a curly golden head and a sleek dark one lay pressed close together. In the solemn stillness the breathing of two slender forms told that the excitement of the past forty-eight hours had at last ended in much needed sleep.

CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Driscoe was not a reasonable woman, never had been reasonable, had no desire to be reasonable; it was therefore not to be expected that she would take a reasonable att.i.tude toward Sidney Renshawe when he went down to Virginia early that spring and asked her for her Nannie. In vain did he argue and cajole, in vain did the dear Colonel remonstrate, in vain did little Nannie cry and plead; to one and all she turned a deaf ear. It was no-no-no then and forever.

The County discussed the situation freely and wondered that so worldly a mother should frown upon so eligible a _parti_. Sidney Renshawe was well born, fairly rich, rising steadily in his profession; all the County knew that much, though it is doubtful if any one of them had ever been in Radnor. What if Renshawe's hair was red and his mustache a trifle bristly? Didn't that add a touch of strength to his face and suggest a resemblance to a certain Prisoner of Zenda, who, though only a man in a book, as every one said, was, nevertheless, the most idolized of heroes.

As for poor little Nannie, it was plainly to be seen she was losing flesh over the situation.

As she wrote the girls, she was "torn by conflicting emotions," using the well-worn phrase because the poor little thing had no words of her own in which to express her feelings. She had never had complex feelings before. Hitherto her life had consisted in loving and being loved, which led her naturally enough into a similar state of things with Sidney Renshawe, who came, saw and conquered her girlish heart. The Colonel was her stanch friend and ally. He liked Renshawe and felt he was just the man to whom he could trust his little girl when the time came to give her up. And that was not necessarily imminent, for if Mrs. Driscoe was unreasonable Renshawe certainly was not and was willing to wait one, two, three years if need be. But Mrs. Driscoe remained obdurate and the household was plunged into a state of strained atmospheric conditions such as had never been known before.

"I can't help loving him and it isn't wrong to love him, is it?" little Nannie would say appealingly to the Colonel.

"No, no, Puss, be patient. We'll win her over soon." It is doubtful if the Colonel believed this cheerful prophecy, but the child had to be comforted.

Renshawe had remained two weeks with his friends at the plantation adjacent to the Driscoes, seeing Nannie every day. Mrs. Driscoe did not refuse him this boon but, declined to receive him herself and intimated so plainly that the man's room was preferable to his company that the girl took little pleasure in his visits and agreed with him that it was far better he should go away. Without her mother's permission she refused to become engaged but the night previous to his departure she allowed him to slip on her finger a certain simple little ring which he reminded her he had been carrying in his pocket since the night they met. The next day he went north leaving his heart in Virginia, with a delicious sense of its security in Nannie's keeping. The consciousness was strong within him that the winning of such as she was worth the waiting.

And Mrs. Driscoe all this while went about with the aggrieved air of one whose troubles were scarcely to be understood by an unsympathetic world.

If she had been put to it she could have given no reason for her opposition to Renshawe, for she had none and had shown him marked favor at the beginning. But that was before, as she told the Colonel, "her suspicions were aroused." From the moment they were, Renshawe was made unpleasantly conscious of it.

While Nannie, sustained by the Colonel and the County's backing, got what solace she could out of the days that were so long and oh! so lonely after Sidney left her, he, back in Radnor, turned for comfort to the Dale girls, who took him into their hearts for Nannie's sake and soon learned to like him for his own. He became a frequent visitor, calling usually Sunday afternoons when he felt he would be less likely to disturb them, and he wrote Nannie that except a certain little girl in Virginia whose name he would never divulge, they were the sweetest girls he had ever known and the bravest. But he did not tell Nannie how as he came to observe them more closely he discovered in their faces little careworn lines which told a tale their lips never would have disclosed and how about Julie, especially, there was a subdued, almost intense manner, as if she were holding herself in a vise. They never spoke of their work or their cares to him or any one else and made light of any pa.s.sing reference to their business. Indeed, as far as Sidney might have known from them, they lived quite like other girls.

In regard to his friend Gremond's previous connection with them or of his call on Julie, Renshawe knew nothing. The Frenchman left town the day following that on which he had seen Julie and had not referred to the Dales in any way either to him or Dr. Ware, who was left to draw his own conclusions. This was not so simple as might be supposed, for while in one light the man's sudden disappearance looked as if Julie might have given him his conge, viewed from another point, especially taken in connection with a certain happy light in Julie's eyes these days when he caught her glance, it led him to believe that perhaps the girl had given him her promise but required that he should wait yet a longer time to claim her. The Doctor longed to know and wearied himself with imagining why she did not confide in him. But since she did not, delicacy forbade his mentioning Gremond's name.

Another person who did some speculating over Gremond was Mrs. Lennox, but being a woman she arrived at her conclusions quickly and decided that his precipitous flight to France when he had been booked for some weeks in Radnor, argued ill for the result of his trip across the country. She was not at home the one time he had called on her and the fact that he was not at more pains to seek her out and continue the confidential relations established in her sanctum on his previous visit, satisfied her that he could not have found what he was so eagerly seeking. Being a sympathetic woman she was sorry, but she would have thought more of him had he chosen to tell her the outcome of his affairs. As he did not, she dismissed him from her mind altogether, having agreed with Miss Marston one day when they were discussing him, that he was a clever man but after all a trifle too self-centered. To tell the truth Mrs. Lennox had been mistaken in her a.n.a.lysis of his character and it annoyed her.

A fortnight after the wedding the Dale girls were devouring with eager eyes one morning a very small note and a very large check which they could scarcely read, so great was their excitement.

"Oh, what a relief!" cried Julie, "to know that everything pleased Mrs.

Truxton, and how good she was to write such a kind appreciative note to people like us whom she scarcely knows! Let's go and read it to Bridget."

Bridget, when she heard it, was reduced to tears and presently they were all laughing and crying together, for the work of this first big order had been more of an anxiety than any one of them cared to acknowledge, while its success expressed so kindly by their thoughtful customer meant as much in its way as the accompanying check, which fairly dazzled them.

"One hundred and twenty-five dollars!" cried Hester ecstatically. "We're millionaires! Oh- oh-oh! to think of our _earning_ so much money!" She waved the check wildly over her head and even insisted that Peter Snooks should have a sniff at it before she said, "Wouldn't you just like to frame it and keep it forever?"

"I know what I should like best of all to do with it," said Julie.

"I bet Miss Hester can guess by the knowin' look in her eyes," said Bridget. "It's meself that knows too, what your blessed selves is thinkin'."

"Of course you both know," Julie said quietly, "we want to begin to pay Dr. Ware rent."

They went the next afternoon to his office. On the doorsteps they encountered Miss Ware, who turned about as she saw them approach.

"Don't let us detain you," said Julie politely, "we have just come for a little business talk with your brother."

"Ah!" she replied, "I fancied you got about all of that sort of thing you wanted at home. You'd better come upstairs and let me make you some tea-you look peaked, both of you. Philip ought to give you a tonic.

Tell him I said so, and come up afterward. I insist upon it and shall have the tea ready. It will not do you any harm to sit down in a different atmosphere for a while. I suppose you do get sick to death of a kitchen."

There was no doubt that Miss Ware possessed to perfection the faculty of rubbing one the wrong way, but Julie deemed it wise not to decline these overtures and made no further protest against her going in with them.

"Horrid old thing! How I hate her!" whispered Hester, as Miss Ware went on upstairs and they waited a moment in the Doctor's ante-room.

"So do I, but she's _his_ sister and she means well."

"You'd find excuses for the old boy himself."

"No, I wouldn't," laughed Julie, "but-here's Dr. Ware."

He bowed to them as he entered from the private office and pa.s.sed by with an elderly man, with whom he was in deep conversation. In a moment he returned and greeted the girls warmly.

"Well," he said, giving each a hand, "this is delightful. Come into the other room. That was old Mr. Landor-Kenneth's father, by the way-did you notice him? He is about half Kenneth's size, but he has force enough for a dozen men. I wish you girls knew him."

He pulled out chairs as he talked and ensconced the girls comfortably, then stood against the table facing them with arms folded and the smile on his face which Bridget vowed was "like the blessed sun for warmin'

the c.o.c.kles of your heart."

"It is good to have you here," he said heartily, "I wish you came more often. Perhaps," with a laugh that showed the gleam of his white teeth, "I do not give you a chance-I go so often to see you."

"If you came every hour of the day it wouldn't be too often," exclaimed Hester, who never loved people by halves. "But Julie is going to do the talking to-day. I intend to keep still."

"As if you could! Well, Julie?" smiling at her.

"We have come to have a little business talk with you," she said, twisting her fingers together nervously and finding it a little difficult to begin.

"Delighted to be so honored," he replied lightly, bowing low.