Ailsa Paige | Page 7

to say: "You will give me the next?"
"No."
"Then the next----"
"No," she said, not moving.
A young fellow came up eagerly, cocksure of her, but she shook her
head--and shook her head to all--and Berkley remained standing beside
her. And at last her reluctant head turned slowly, and, slowly, her gaze
searched his.
"Shall we rest?" he said.
"Yes. I am--tired."
Her dainty avalanche of skirts filled the stairs as she settled there in
silence; he at her feet, turned sideways so that he could look up into the
brooding, absent eyes.
And over them again--over the small space just then allotted them in
the world--was settling once more the intangible, indefinable spell
awakened by their first light contact. Through its silence hurried their
pulses; through its significance her dazed young eyes looked out into a
haze where nothing stirred except a phantom heart, beating, beating the

reveille. And the spell lay heavy on them both.
"I shall bear your image always. You know it."
She seemed scarcely to have heard him.
"There is no reason in what I say. I know it. Yet--I am destined never to
forget you."
She made no sign.
"Ailsa Paige," he said mechanically.
And after a long while, slowly, she looked down at him where he sat at
her feet, his dark eyes fixed on space.
CHAPTER II
All the morning she had been busy in the Craig's backyard garden,
clipping, training, loosening the earth around lilac, honeysuckle, and
Rose of Sharon. The little German florist on the corner had sent in two
loads of richly fertilised soil and a barrel of forest mould. These she
sweetened with lime, mixed in her small pan, and applied judiciously to
the peach-tree by the grape-arbour, to the thickets of pearl-gray iris, to
the beloved roses, prairie climber, Baltimore bell, and General
Jacqueminot. A neighbour's cat, war-scarred and bold, traversing the
fences in search of single combat, halted to watch her; an early bee,
with no blossoms yet to rummage, passed and repassed, buzzing
distractedly.
The Craig's next-door neighbour, Camilla Lent, came out on her back
veranda and looked down with a sleepy nod of recognition and
good-morning, stretching her pretty arms luxuriously in the sunshine.
"You look very sweet down there, Ailsa, in your pink gingham apron
and garden gloves."
"And you look very sweet up there, Camilla, in your muslin frock and

satin skin! And every time you yawn you resemble a plump, white
magnolia bud opening just enough to show the pink inside!"
"It's mean to call me plump!" returned Camilla reproachfully. "Anyway,
anybody would yawn with the Captain keeping the entire household
awake all night. I vow, I haven't slept one wink since that wretched
news from Charleston. He thinks he's a battery of horse artillery now;
that's the very latest development; and I shed tears and the chandeliers
shed prisms every time he manoeuvres."
"The dear old thing," said Mrs. Paige, smiling as she moved among the
shrubs. For a full minute her sensitive lips remained tenderly curved as
she stood considering the agricultural problems before her. Then she
settled down again, naively--like a child on its haunches--and continued
to mix nourishment for the roses.
Camilla, lounging sideways on her own veranda window sill, rested her
head against the frame, alternately blinking down at the pretty widow
through sleepy eyes, and patting her lips to control the persistent yawns
that tormented her.
"I had a horrid dream, too," she said, "about the 'Seven Sisters.' I was
Pluto to your Diavoline, and Philip Berkley was a phantom that grinned
at everybody and rattled the bones; and I waked in a dreadful fright to
hear uncle's spurred boots overhead, and that horrid noisy old sabre of
his banging the best furniture.
"Then this morning just before sunrise he came into my bedroom, hair
and moustache on end, and in full uniform, and attempted to read the
Declaration of Independence to me--or maybe it was the Constitution--I
don't remember--but I began to cry, and that always sends him off."
Ailsa's quick laugh and the tenderness of her expression were her only
comments upon the doings of Josiah Lent, lately captain, United States
dragoons.
Camilla yawned again, rose, and, arranging her spreading white skirts,
seated herself on her veranda steps in full sunshine.

"We did have a nice party, didn't we, Ailsa?" she said, leaning a little
sideways so that she could see over the fence and down into the Craig's
backyard garden.
"I had such a good time," responded Ailsa, looking up radiantly.
"So did I. Billy Cortlandt is the most divine dancer. Isn't Evelyn
Estcourt pretty?"
"She is growing up to be very beautiful some day. Stephen paid her a
great deal of attention. Did you notice it?"
"Really? I didn't notice it," replied Camilla