An Open-Eyed Conspiracy | Page 9

looked cross. I can't exactly imagine a cross goddess."
"There were lots of cross goddesses," I said rather crossly myself; for I saw that, after having trodden my romance in the dust, she was willing I should pick it up again and shake it off, and I wished to show her that I was not to be so lightly appeased.
"Perhaps I was thinking of angels," she murmured.
"I distinctly didn't say she was an angel," I returned.
"Now, come, Basil; I see you're keeping something back. What did you try to do for those people? Did you tell them where you were stopping?"
"Yes, I did. They asked me, and I told them."
"Did you brag the place up?"
"On the contrary, I understated its merits."
"Oh, very well, then," she said, quite as if I had confessed my guilt; "they will come here, and you will have your romance on your hands for the rest of the month. I'm thankful we're going away the first of August."
CHAPTER III

The next afternoon, while we were sitting in the park waiting for the Troy band to begin playing, and I was wondering just when they would reach the "Washington Post March," which I like because I can always be sure of it, my unknown friends came strolling our way. The man looked bewildered and bored, with something of desperation in his troubled eye, and his wife looked tired and disheartened. The young girl, still in white duck, wore the same air of passive injury I had noted in her the night before. Their faces all three lighted up at sight of me; but they faded again at the cold and meagre response I made to their smiles under correction of my wife's fears of them. I own it was base of me; but I had begun to feel myself that it might be too large a contract to attempt their consolation, and, in fact, after one is fifty scarcely any romance will keep overnight.
My wife glanced from them to me, and read my cowardly mind; but she waited till they passed, as they did after an involuntary faltering in front of us, and were keeping on down the path, looking at the benches, which were filled on either hand. She said, "Weren't those your friends?"
"They were the persons of my romance."
"No matter. Go after them instantly and bring them back here, poor things. We can make room for them."
I rose. "Isn't this a little too idyllic? Aren't you rather overdoing it?"
"Don't speak to me, Basil! I never heard of anything so atrocious. Go on your knees to them if they refuse! They can sit here with me, and you and he can stand. Fly!"
I knew she was punishing me for her own reluctance; but I flew, in that sense of the term, and easily overhauled them in the tangle of people coming and going in the path, and the nursemaids pushing their perambulators in either direction. Hat in hand I delivered my message. I could see that it gave the women great pleasure and the man some doubt. His mouth fell open a little; their cheeks flushed and their eyes shone.
"I don't know as we better," the wife hesitated; "I'm afraid we'll crowd you." And she looked wistfully toward my wife. The young girl looked at her.
"Not at all!" I cried. "There's an abundance of room. My wife's keeping the places for you,"--in fact, I saw her putting her arm out along the bench, and explaining to a couple who had halted in front of her that the seats were taken--"and she'll be disappointed."
"Well," the woman consented, with a little sigh of triumph that touched me, and reanimated all my interest in her and in her friend. She said, with a sort of shy, instinctive politeness, "I don't know as you and Mr. Deering got acquainted last night."
"My name is March," I said, and I shook the hand of Mr. Deering. It was rather thick.
"And this--is our friend," Mrs. Peering went on, in presentation of me to the young lady, "Miss Gage, that's come with us."
I was delighted that I had guessed their relative qualities so perfectly, and when we arrived at Mrs. March I glibly presented them. My wife was all that I could have wished her to be of sympathetic and intelligent. She did not overdo it by shaking hands, but she made places for the ladies, smiling cordially; and Mrs. Deering made Miss Gage take the seat between them. Her husband and I stood awhile in front of them, and then I said we would go off and find chairs somewhere.
We did not find any till we had climbed to the upland at the south- east of the park, and then only two iron ones, which it was useless to think of transporting. But there was