The Little Red Chimney | Page 5

interruption once he had possession.
The Candy Man breathed deeply, and smiled to himself. It was a day to
inspire confident dreams, for the joy of fulfilment was over the land.
Was it the sudden fear that some other dreamer might be before him, or
a subconscious prevision of what actually awaited him, that caused him
to quicken his steps as he neared the arbour? However it may have been,
as he took at a bound the three steps which led up to it, he came with
startling suddenness upon Miss Bentley entering from the other side,
her arms full of flowers. Their eyes met in a flash of recognition which
there was no time to control. She bowed, not ungraciously, yet distantly,
and with a faint puzzled frown on her brow, and he, as he lifted his hat,
spoke her name, which, as he was not supposed to know it, he had no
business to do; then they both laughed at the way in which they had
bounced in at the same moment from opposite directions.
With some remark about the delightful day, the Candy Man, as a
gentleman should, tried to pretend he was merely passing through, and

though it was but a feeble performance, Miss Bentley should have
accepted it without protest, then all would have been well. Instead, she
said, still with that puzzled half frown, "Don't go, I am only waiting
here a moment for my cousin, who has stopped at the superintendent's
cottage." She motioned over her shoulder to a vine-covered dwelling
just visible through the trees.
"Please do not put it in that way," he protested. "As if your being here
did not add tremendously to my desire to remain. I am conscious of
rushing in most unceremoniously upon you, and----"
Hesitating there, hat in hand, his manners were disarmingly frank. Miss
Bentley laughed again as she deposited her flowers, a mass of pink and
white cosmos, upon a bench, and sat down beside them. She seemed
willing to have him put it as he liked. She wore the same grey suit and
soft felt hat, jammed down any way on her bright hair and pinned with
a pinkish quill, and was somehow, more emphatically than before, the
Girl of All Others.
How could a Candy Man be expected to know what he was about?
What wonder that his next remark should be a hope that she had
suffered no ill effects from the accident?
"None at all, thank you," Miss Bentley replied, and the puzzled
expression faded. It was as if she inwardly exclaimed, "Now I know!"
"Aunt Eleanor," she added, "was needlessly alarmed. I seem rather
given to accidents of late." Thus saying she began to arrange her
flowers.
The Candy Man dropped down on the step where the view--of Miss
Bentley--was most charming, as she softly laid one bloom upon another
in caressing fashion, her curling lashes now almost touching her cheek,
now lifted as she looked away to the river, or bent her gaze upon the
occupant of the step.
"Do you often come here?" she asked, adding when he replied that this
was the third time, that she thought he had rather an air of
proprietorship.

He laughed at this, and explained how he had set out to pay a visit to a
sick boy at St. Mary's Hospital, but had allowed the glorious day to
tempt him to the park.
Below them on the terraced hillside a guard sat reading his paper;
across the meadow a few golfers were to be seen against the horizon.
All about them the birds and squirrels were busily minding their own
affairs; above them smiled the blue, blue sky, and the cousin, whoever
he or she might be, considerately lingered.
Like the shining river their talk flowed on. Beginning like it as a
shallow stream, it broadened and deepened on its way, till presently
fairy godmothers became its theme.
Miss Bentley was never able to recall what led up to it. The Candy Man
only remembered her face, as, holding a crimson bloom against her
cheek, she smiled down upon him thoughtfully, and asked him to guess
what she meant to do when some one left her a fortune. "I have a
strange presentiment that some one is going to," she said.
"How delightful!" he exclaimed, but did not hazard a guess, and she
continued without giving him a chance: "I shall establish a Fairy
Godmother Fund, the purpose of which shall be the distribution of good
times; of pleasures large and small, among people who have few or
none."
"It sounds," was the Candy Man's comment, "like the minutes of the
first meeting. Please explain further. How will you select your
beneficiaries?"
"I don't like your word," she objected. "Beneficiaries and fairy