"I don't believe a word of it is true," said Miss Worcester.
"What do you expect of autobiography?" demanded Hollanden, with asperity.
"Well, anyhow, Hollie," exclaimed the younger sister, "you didn't explain a thing about how literary men came to be so peculiar, and that's what you started out to do, you know."
"Well," said Hollanden crossly, "you must never expect a man to do what he starts to do, Millicent. And besides," he went on, with the gleam of a sudden idea in his eyes, "literary men are not peculiar, anyhow."
The elder Worcester girl looked angrily at him. "Indeed? Not you, of course, but the others."
"They are all asses," said Hollanden genially.
The elder Worcester girl reflected. "I believe you try to make us think and then just tangle us up purposely!"
The younger Worcester girl reflected. "You are an absurd old thing, you know, Hollie!"
Hollanden climbed offendedly from the great weather-beaten stone. "Well, I shall go and see that the men have not spilled the luncheon while breaking their necks over these rocks. Would you like to have it spread here, Mrs. Fanhall? Never mind consulting the girls. I assure you I shall spend a great deal of energy and temper in bullying them into doing just as they please. Why, when I was in Brussels–"
"Oh, come now, Hollie, you never were in Brussels, you know," said the younger Worcester girl.
"What of that, Millicent?" demanded Hollanden. "This is autobiography."
"Well, I don't care, Hollie. You tell such whoppers."
With a gesture of despair he again started away; whereupon the Worcester girls shouted in chorus, "Oh, I say, Hollie, come back! Don't be angry. We didn't mean to tease you, Hollie—really, we didn't!"
"Well, if you didn't," said Hollanden, "why did you–"
The elder Worcester girl was gazing fixedly at the top of the cliff. "Oh, there they are! I wonder why they don't come down?"
CHAPTER VI
Stanley, the setter, walked to the edge of the precipice and, looking over at the falls, wagged his tail in friendly greeting. He was braced warily, so that if this howling white animal should reach up a hand for him he could flee in time.
The girl stared dreamily at the red-stained crags that projected from the pines of the hill across the stream. Hawker lazily aimed bits of moss at the oblivious dog and missed him.
"It must be fine to have something to think of beyond just living," said the girl to the crags.
"I suppose you mean art?" said Hawker.
"Yes, of course. It must be finer, at any rate, than the ordinary thing."
He mused for a time. "Yes. It is—it must be," he said. "But then—I'd rather just lie here."
The girl seemed aggrieved. "Oh, no, you wouldn't. You couldn't stop. It's dreadful to talk like that, isn't it? I always thought that painters were–"
"Of course. They should be. Maybe they are. I don't know. Sometimes I am. But not to-day."
"Well, I should think you ought to be so much more contented than just ordinary people. Now, I–"
"You!" he cried—"you are not 'just ordinary people.'"
"Well, but when I try to recall what I have thought about in my life, I can't remember, you know. That's what I mean."
"You shouldn't talk that way," he told her.
"But why do you insist that life should be so highly absorbing for me?"
"You have everything you wish for," he answered, in a voice of deep gloom.
"Certainly not. I am a woman."
"But–"
"A woman, to have everything she wishes for, would have to be Providence. There are some things that are not in the world."
"Well, what are they?" he asked of her.
"That's just it," she said, nodding her head, "no one knows. That's what makes the trouble."
"Well, you are very unreasonable."
"What?"
"You are very unreasonable. If I were you—an heiress–"
The girl flushed and turned upon him angrily.
"Well!" he glowered back at her. "You are, you know. You can't deny it."
She looked at the red-stained crags. At last she said, "You seemed really contemptuous."
"Well, I assure you that I do not feel contemptuous. On the contrary, I am filled with admiration. Thank Heaven, I am a man of the world. Whenever I meet heiresses I always have the deepest admiration." As he said this he wore a brave hang-dog expression. The girl surveyed him coldly from his chin to his eyebrows. "You have a handsome audacity, too."
He lay back in the long grass and contemplated the clouds.
"You should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune," she said.
He threw another little clod at Stanley and struck him on the head.
"You are the most scientifically unbearable person in the world," she said.
Stanley came back to see his master and to assure himself that the clump on the head was not intended as a sign of serious displeasure. Hawker took the dog's long ears and tried to tie them into a knot.
"And I don't see why you so delight in making people detest you," she continued.
Having failed to make a knot of the dog's ears, Hawker leaned back and surveyed his failure admiringly. "Well, I don't," he said.
"You do."
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do. You just say the most terrible things as if you positively enjoyed saying them."
"Well, what did I say, now? What did I say?"
"Why, you said that you always had the most extraordinary admiration for heiresses whenever you met them."
"Well, what's wrong with that sentiment?" he said. "You can't find fault with that!"
"It is utterly detestable."
"Not at all," he answered sullenly. "I consider it a tribute—a graceful tribute."
Miss Fanhall arose and went forward to the edge of the cliff. She became absorbed in the falls. Far below her a bough of a hemlock drooped to the water, and each swirling, mad wave caught it and made it nod—nod—nod. Her back was half turned toward Hawker.
After a time Stanley, the dog, discovered some ants scurrying in the moss, and he at once began to watch them and wag his tail.
"Isn't it curious," observed Hawker, "how an animal as large as a dog will sometimes be so entertained by the very smallest things?"
Stanley pawed gently at the moss, and then thrust his head forward to see what the ants did under the circumstances.
"In the hunting season," continued Hawker, having waited a moment, "this dog knows nothing on earth but his master and the partridges. He is lost to all other sound and movement. He moves through the woods like a steel machine. And when he scents the bird—ah, it is beautiful! Shouldn't you like to see him then?"
Some of the ants had perhaps made war-like motions, and Stanley was pretending that this was a reason for excitement. He reared aback, and made grumbling noises in his throat.
After another pause Hawker went on: "And now see the precious old fool! He is deeply interested in the movements of the little ants, and as childish and ridiculous over them as if they were highly important.—There, you old blockhead, let them alone!"