Mrs. Duds Sister | Page 6

"We were old-fashioned, even for then," she said. "Everybody didn't do
so much, of course, as we did. Lizzie says we were just on the edge of
the new age. It certainly is different. And of course I wouldn't go back
to it for anything. After we came back from boarding-school it was all
changed. We moved, then, nearer the town. But, do you know, my
mother went to singing-school, and Lizzie was looking that up in a
book, the other day, to see what they did--she wanted it for a party!"
He laughed. "That is delicious!" he said.
"See what I found to-day!" she added, drawing a small object from her
pocket. "I hunted it up to show Miss Porter tonight. She was so
interested when I told her about it."
She showed him, with a tender amusement, a little slender white silk
mitten. Around the wrist was embroidered in dark blue a legend in Old
English script. He puzzled it out: A Whig or no Husband!
"That was mother's," she said, "the girls wore them then. She was quite
a belle, mother was! And when people ask me how Lizzie does so
much, I say that she inherits it. But at her age mother was broken down
and old. She had to be. There were nine of us, and here there's only
little Dudley, and it was so long before he came."
They sat quietly. The setting sun flamed through the crab-apples and
burnished the fur of the tortoise-shell cat. The mint smelled strong. The
sweet, mellow summer evening was reflected in her handsome face,
with its delicate lines, that only added a restful charm to forehead and
cheek. He had no need to talk; it was very, very pleasant sitting there.

A maid came out to get the mayonnaise, and the spell was broken. He
took out his watch.
"Just time to dress," he sighed. "Will you be here again? We must talk
old times once more."
She smiled and seemed to assent, but her eyes were not on him; she
was still in a revery. He walked softly away. She seemed hardly to
notice him, and his last backward glance found the quiet of the picture
unbroken; again it was a page from the Greenaway book.
He reached the terrace; laughter and applause from the piazza caught
his ear. Fresh from the atmosphere he had left, he stared in amazement
at the scene before him.
Swift figures were scudding from one to another of the four great elms
that marked out a natural rectangle on the smooth side lawn.
"Puss! puss! Here, puss!" a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in a
swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A
portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a
romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her
gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across to her
partner's tree.
"One more, one more, colonel. You can't give up, now you're caught!
One more before we go in!" called the pink girl.
"Here's Mr. Varian. Come and help us out--the colonel's beaten!" added
Mrs. Dud.
"Here, puss! here, puss!" With excited little shrieks and laughs they
dashed by, the colonel making ineffectual grabs at their elusive skirts.
Varian shook his head good-naturedly.
"Too late, too late!" he called back, and taking pity on the puffing,
purple colonel, he bore him off.

"Thank God! I'm just about winded! I'd have dropped in my tracks,"
complained the rescued man, breathing hard as they rounded the
shrubbery. In the corner two figures, half seen in the dark, leaned
toward each other an imperceptible moment. The colonel laughed
contentedly.
"When I see that sort of thing, I think we've made a mistake--eh,
Varian?" he said, half serious. "It's a poor job, getting old alone. Live at
the club, visit here and there, make yourself agreeable to get asked
again, nobody to care if you're sick, always play the other fellow's
game--little monotonous after a while, eh?"
Varian nodded. "Right enough," he said.
"Different ending to their route!" suggested the colonel, jerking his
elbow back toward the two in the shrubbery.
"That's it!" The answer was laconic, but the pictures that swept through
his brain took on a precision and color that half frightened him.
He had no idea how frequently he dropped in at the little court behind
the hedge after that. Sometimes he sat and mused alone there; more
than once he took a surreptitious afternoon nap. He developed a
dormant fancy for gardening, and walked with his new-old friend
contentedly among the deserted garden paths. He studied her hair
especially, wondering why it was that the little tender flecks of white
attracted him