IV
I had my hand upon the garden-gate, and Hardress had just turned the corner below, going toward Cambridge Street, when Bettie came upon the porch.
“Well,” she said, “and who’s your fat friend, Mr. Sheridan?”
“I can’t stop now, dear. I forgot to tell John about something which is rather important—”
“Gracious!” Bettie Hamlyn said; “that sounds like shooting. Why, it is shooting, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said I.
“—Quite as though the Monnachins and the Massawomeks and all the other jawbreakers were attacking Fairhaven as they used to do on alternate Thursdays, and affording both of us an excellent opportunity to get nicely scalped in time for dinner. So I don’t mind confessing that it was against precisely such an emergency I declined to turn out an elaborate suite of hair; and now I expect the world at large to acknowledge that I acted very sensibly.”
“It is much more likely to be some drunken countryman on his monthly spree—” I was reflecting while Bettie talked nonsense that there had been no less than four shots. I was wondering whom the last was for. It would be much pleasanter, all around, if Hardress had sent it into his own disordered brain. Yes, certainly, three bullets ought amply to account for an unprepared and unarmed and puny Charteris. …
So I said: “Well, I suppose my business with John must wait for a while. Besides, Bettie, you are such a dear in that getup. And if you will come down into the garden at once, I will explain a few of my reasons for advancing the assertion.”
Standing upon the porch, she patted me ever so lightly upon the head. “What a child it is!” she said. “I don’t think that, after all, I shall put twenty-six candles on your cake next week. The fat and lazy literary gent is not really old enough, not really more than ten.”
“—And besides, apart from the proposed discussion of your physical charms, I have something else quite equally important to tell you about.”
“Oh, drat the pertinacious infant, then I’ll come for half an hour. Just wait until I get a hat. Still, what a worthless child it is! to be quitting work before noon.”
And she would have gone, but I detained her. “Yes, what a worthless child it is—or rather, what an unproverbial sort of busy bee it has been, Bettie dear. For his has been the summer air, and the sunshine, and the flowers; and gentle ears have listened to him, and gentle eyes have been upon him. Now it is autumn. And he has let others eat his honey—which I take to include all that he actually made, all that wasn’t in the world before he came, as Stella used to say—so that he might have his morsel and his song. And sometimes it has been Sardinian honey, very bitter in the mouth—and even then he has let others eat it—”
“You are a most irrelevant infant,” said Miss Hamlyn, “with these insectean divagations—Dear me, what lovely words! And of course if you really want to drag me into that baking-hot garden, and have the only fiancée you just at present possess laid up by a sunstroke—”