The Trumpeter Swan

The Trumpeter Swan, by Temple
Bailey,

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Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens
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Title: The Trumpeter Swan
Author: Temple Bailey

Release Date: April 21, 2006 [eBook #18219]
Language: English
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THE TRUMPETER SWAN
by
TEMPLE BAILEY
Author of The Tin Soldier, Contrary Mary, Mistress Anne, Etc.
Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens

[Frontispiece: "When I am married will you sound your trumpet high
up near the moon?"]

"A sound from the clouds shall call thee from this earth."

New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
Copyright 1920 by The Penn Publishing Company

CONTENTS
I. A MAJOR AND TWO MINORS
II. STUFFED BIRDS
III. A WOLF IN THE FOREST
IV. RAIN AND RANDY'S SOUL

V. LITTLE SISTER
VI. GEORGIE-PORGIE
VII. MADEMOISELLE MIDAS
VIII. ANCESTORS
IX. "T. BRANCH"
X. A GENTLEMAN'S LIE
XI. WANTED--A PEDESTAL
XII. INDIAN--INDIAN
XIII. THE WHISTLING SALLY
XIV. THE DANCER ON THE MOOR
XV. THE TRUMPETER SWAN
XVI. THE CONQUEROR

ILLUSTRATIONS
"When I am married will you sound your trumpet high up near the
moon?" . . . . . . Frontispiece
"It's so heavenly to have you home."
Becky drew a sharp breath--then faced Dalton squarely--"I am going to
marry Randy."
"Oh, oh,", she whispered, "you don't know how I have wanted you."

THE TRUMPETER SWAN
CHAPTER I
A MAJOR AND TWO MINORS
I
It had rained all night, one of the summer rains that, beginning in a
thunder-storm in Washington, had continued in a steaming drizzle until
morning.
There were only four passengers in the sleeper, men all of them--two in
adjoining sections in the middle of the car, a third in the drawing-room,
a fourth an intermittent occupant of a berth at the end. They had gone to
bed unaware of the estate or circumstance of their fellow-travellers, and
had waked to find the train delayed by washouts, and side-tracked until
more could be learned of the condition of the road.
The man in the drawing-room shone, in the few glimpses that the
others had of him, with an effulgence which was dazzling. His valet,
the intermittent sleeper in the end berth, was a smug little soul, with a
small nose which pointed to the stars. When the door of the
compartment opened to admit breakfast there was the radiance of a
brocade dressing-gown, the shine of a sleek head, the staccato of an
imperious voice.
Randy Paine, long and lank, in faded khaki, rose, leaned over the seat
of the section in front of him and drawled, "It is not raining rain to
me--it's raining roses--down----?"
A pleasant laugh, and a deep voice, "Come around here and talk to me.
You're a Virginian, aren't you?"
"By the grace of God and the discrimination of my ancestors," young
Randolph, as he dropped into the seat opposite the man with the deep
voice, saluted the dead and gone Paines.

"Then you know this part of it?"
"I was born here. In this county. It is bone of my bone and flesh of my
flesh," there was a break in the boy's voice which robbed the words of
grandiloquence.
"Hum--you love it? Yes? And I am greedy to get away. I want wider
spaces----"
"California?"
"Yes. Haven't seen it for three years. I thought when the war was over I
might. But I've got to be near Washington, it seems. The heat drove me
out, and somebody told me it would be cool in these hills----"
"It is, at night. By day we're not strenuous."
"I like to be strenuous. I hate inaction."
He moved restlessly. There was a crutch by his side. Young Paine
noticed it for the first time. "I hate it."
He had a strong frame, broad shoulders and thin hips. One placed him
immediately as a man of great physical force. Yet there was the crutch.
Randy had seen other men, broad-shouldered, thin-hipped, who had
come to worse than crutches. He did not want to think of them. He had
escaped without a scratch. He did not believe that he had lacked
courage, and there was a decoration to prove that he had not. But when
he thought of those other men, he had no sense of his own valor. He
had given so little and they