Ailsa Paige | Page 9

heart failed her and she let him scramble away.
"There! He'll probably chew up everything," she said. "What a
sentimental goose I am!"
"The first trace of real sentiment I ever saw you display," began
Camilla reflectively, "was the night of my party."
Ailsa dug with energy. "That is absurd! And not even funny."
"You were sentimental!"
"I--well there is no use in answering you," concluded Ailsa.
"No, there isn't. I've seen women look at men, and men look back
again--the way he did!"
"Dear, please don't say such things!"
"I'm going to say 'em," insisted Camilla with malicious satisfaction.
"You've jeered at me because I'm tender-hearted about men. Now my
chance has come!"
Ailsa began patiently: "There were scarcely a dozen words spoken----"

Camilla, delighted, shook her dark curls.
"You've said that before," she laughed. "Oh, you pretty minx!--you and
your dozen words!"
Ailsa Paige arose in wrath and stretched out a warning arm among her
leafless roses; but Camilla placed both hands on the fence top and
leaned swiftly down from the veranda steps,
"Forgive me, dear," she said penitently. "I was only trying to torment
you. Kiss me and make up. I know you too well to believe that you
could care for a man of that kind."
Ailsa's face was very serious, but she lifted herself on tiptoe and they
exchanged an amicable salute across the fence.
After a moment she said: "What did you mean by 'a man of that kind'?"
Camilla's shrug was expressive. "There are stories about him."
Ailsa looked thoughtfully into space. "Well you won't say such things
to me again, about any man--will you, dear?"
"You never minded them before. You used to laugh."
"But this time," said Ailsa Paige, "it is not the least bit funny. We
scarcely exchanged----"
She checked herself, flushing with annoyance. Camilla, leaning on the
garden fence, had suddenly buried her face in both arms. In feminine
plumpness, when young, there is usually something left of the
schoolgirl giggler.
The pretty girl below remained disdainfully indifferent. She dug, she
clipped, she explored, inhaling, with little thrills, the faint mounting
odour of forest loam and sappy stems.
"I really must go back to New York and start my own garden," she said,
not noticing Camilla's mischief. "London Terrace will be green in

another week."
"How long do you stay with the Craigs, Ailsa?"
"Until the workmen finish painting my house and installing the new
plumbing. Colonel Arran is good enough to look after it."
Camilla, her light head always ringing with gossip, watched Ailsa
curiously.
"It's odd," she observed, "that Colonel Arran and the Craigs never
exchange civilities."
"Mrs. Craig doesn't like him," said Ailsa simply.
"You do, don't you?"
"Naturally. He was my guardian."
"My uncle likes him. To me he has a hard face."
"He has a sad face," said Ailsa Paige.
CHAPTER III
Ailsa and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Craig, had been unusually reticent
over their embroidery that early afternoon, seated together in the front
room, which was now flooded with sunshine--an attractive, intimate
room, restful and pretty in spite of the unlovely Victorian walnut
furniture.
Through a sunny passageway they could look into Ailsa's
bedroom--formerly the children's nursery--where her maid sat sewing.
Outside the open windows, seen between breezy curtains, new buds
already clothed the great twisted ropes of pendant wistaria with a
silvery-green down.
The street was quiet under its leafless double row of trees, maple,

ailanthus, and catalpa; the old man who trudged his rounds regularly
every week was passing now with his muffled shout:
Any old hats Old coats Old boots! Any old mats Old suits, Old flutes!
Ca-ash!
And, leaning near to the sill, Ailsa saw him shuffling along,
green-baize bag bulging, a pyramid of stove-pipe hats crammed down
over his ears.
At intervals from somewhere in the neighbourhood sounded the
pleasant bell of the scissors grinder, and the not unmusical call of
"Glass put in!" But it was really very tranquil there in the sunshine of
Fort Greene Place, stiller even for the fluted call of an oriole aloft in the
silver maple in front of the stoop.
He was a shy bird even though there were no imported sparrows to
drive this lovely native from the trees of a sleepy city; and he sat very
still in the top branches, clad in his gorgeous livery of orange and black,
and scarcely stirred save to slant his head and peer doubtfully at last
year's cocoons, which clung to the bark like shreds of frosted cotton.
Very far away, from somewhere in the harbour, a deep sound jarred the
silence. Ailsa raised her head, needle suspended, listened for a moment,
then resumed her embroidery with an unconscious sigh.
Her sister-in-law glanced sideways at her.
"I was thinking of Major Anderson, Celia," she said