“But, Mr. Canby! Why do you want to do this for me?”
“I said I was fond of you,” he returned gruffly.
‘But I... I don’t know what to say.” She was sitting up very straight on the seat, rigid. “It is so — it’s like a dream! A beautiful dream! You really like me so well? I’m not always a good girl, you know. Often I am... I am... méchante. And you want me to come and live with you always, and have nice things. Oh! I... I...”
“Well, what do you say?” His voice lacked a little of being steady.
For a moment there was no reply. Then all at once the boat rolled crazily to one side as she jumped from her seat and bounded amidships to where he sat at the oars; and before Canby quite knew what she was about she had dropped on her knees before him and put her hands on his shoulders, drawing him forward, and planted a vigorous kiss on his cheek.
“There!” she cried like a delighted child, and kissed the other cheek too.
III
Not counting Nella Somi, there were two people who met with surprises that night that made it memorable for them.
The first was Mrs. Janet Morton Haskins. Telling herself that she knew men, when she had seen her middle-aged brother attracted by the girl from the East Side Vacation Club she refrained from interfering by a single word or gesture; it would have only added fuel to his ardor; and when he had returned after dinner for a tête-à-tête row on the river her thoughts were cynical. Even good old Fred, it seemed, was capable of things.
Thus far her reflections. Imagine, then, her stupefied indignation when good old Fred returned at ten o’clock with the girl, helped her into his roadster, went upstairs for her luggage and put that in also, and then announced calmly:
“I’m taking Nella home with me. You wouldn’t adopt her, so I will!”
Janet almost shrieked. She did, in fact, raise her voice; but, by the time intelligible words came to her lips, the roadster had disappeared down the driveway, so suddenly that for a full hour she succeeded in persuading herself that it was only a bad dream. Out of justice to her it should be added that when she awoke to the reality of it she didn’t even take the trouble to go to the telephone and call him up. Perhaps she did know something about men, after all.
The second surprised individual was Mr. Garrett Linwood. Having temporarily given up gin fizzes for fear of their effect on his golf score, he had taken a pitcher of lemonade and an interesting book to the billiard room at Greenhedge, and had reached chapter XIV a little before eleven o’clock, when he heard his host’s automobile outside. Chapter XIV being mostly description of scenery, which he detested, he threw down the novel and strolled idly down the hall to the door, and, arrived there, stopped short and opened and closed his eyes two or three times as if to wake himself up. For this thing that he saw surely could not be: Fred Canby crossing the threshold with a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl by his side! Or was it a witch, or a fairy? Linwood blinked harder, and he heard his friend address someone as Nella and tell her that this was Mr. Linwood, his guest.
Linwood bowed mechanically, still wondering when he would wake up, and stood by in stupor while he heard Canby send for his housekeeper and say to her:
“This is Miss Somi, Mrs. Wheeler, the young lady I spoke about this evening. She is going to live with us. I suppose her room is ready? Then you will show her, please. I’ll take you over your new home tomorrow, Nella. Bedtime now. I’ll send your things up immediately. Good night.”
Later, in the library, Linwood sat and listened to his friend’s wondrous tale; and though he was a fairly skeptical man he did not smile overmuch during the recital. When it was over he said calmly:
“Canby, you’re a fool!”
“I wasn’t aware I had asked for your opinion,” the other retorted.
“True enough; you didn’t. But remember I’m as much beyond fifty as you are beyond forty, and besides, having had a wife of my own for a total of twenty-one years — bless her memory! — I’ve studied the creature on its native soil. Nothing against Miss — What’s her name? Thanks! — Nothing against Miss Somi; I don’t know her at all, and I don’t intend to offer any advice or begin any argument. I merely make the observation: Canby, you’re a fool; but the thing’s done. You have sworn that you have no personal intentions in the matter, matrimonial or otherwise, and you’re a sincere and honest man. May you never have any regrets; and that sentiment should be sanctified in burgundy.”
Whereupon Canby rang a bell and the burgundy was brought.
The following morning, up early and out of doors, Canby found Linwood in a corner of the lawn near the garage lustily swinging his driver at a parachute ball. They had barely exchanged greetings when they heard footsteps and, glancing up, saw Nella Somi coming down the path. She was bareheaded, without a parasol, and the glow of health and youth was all about her like a radiance.
“Good morning!” Canby called, and she crossed over.
As she nodded to them on her approach, turning her vivid blue eyes from one to the other, Canby simply stood and looked at her as though there were nothing else in the world worth doing.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
She laughed a little. “To tell the truth, I did,” she confessed. “Comme une marmotte. When I went to bed I was so excited I was sure I wouldn’t sleep at all — and I don’t know what happened!”
When they were alone again a little later Linwood looked at his host and said:
“By Jove, Canby, now I know you’re a fool. A rare wind-flower. What does Pope say: ‘Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.’ She has done so.”
After breakfast Linwood went off to the golf links, and Canby showed Nella about her new home. Compared with magnificent Roselawn, Greenhedge was quite unpretentious. The house was of brick and stone, high and old-fashioned, set in the midst of a grove of ancient elms, with terraced lawns sloping toward a small pond on one side and the driveway and gardens on the other. Completely surrounding the whole was a broad and high hedge, trimmed square; in the rear, beside the garage, there were kennels with a dozen Irish wolf-dogs, and a disused tennis court lay between there and the house. Nella displayed an eager childish interest in everything; she patted the dogs and picked a bouquet in the garden, and it was decided that the tennis court should be put in commission without delay.
When they returned for a tour of the house they were joined by Mrs. Wheeler, and Canby observed that Nella was already in the good graces of the old housekeeper. Everything pleased her, giving Canby delight in her pleasure; and when they reached the room where the portraits of past Canbys were hung she examined each of them critically, listening meanwhile to the other’s not too sympathetic remarks on the various virtues and vices of his ancestors. In the billiard room he taught her how to hold a cue and make a carrom; she was enchanted.
“By the way, about your own room,” Canby observed as they wandered on to the piazza after lunch, “you may do as you please about it, you know. Those hangings have been up I don’t know how long and will have to come down anyway; you shall have it decorated to suit yourself.”
“You are too good to me, Mr. Canby,” she replied simply.
They strolled out under the trees and sat down in a garden swing.
“I was talking to Mrs. Wheeler about it this morning,” Canby resumed, “and we thought it would be a good idea to fit out that room next to yours as a dressing-room. They’re connected, you know. There’s so much extra space, we might as well make use of all we can.”