“

I’m so sorry,” was what he said, as he kneeled to release her, and she was grateful that his tone was unmixed with amusement. She bit her lips, as by sheer strength of elbow and knee he snapped the offending bole short off—one of those quick exhibitions of reserved strength that every woman likes. Meanwhile he was uttering banal fragments of sentences: “I hope you’re not hurt. It was that unmannerly dog, I suppose. What a sword-edge that sliver has! A bad tear, I’m afraid. There!—now it’s all right.”

“I don’t know how I could have been so silly—thank you so much,” said Shirley, panting slightly from her exertions. “I’m not the least bit hurt—only my dress—and you know very well that I wasn’t afraid of that ridiculous dog.” A richer glow stole to her cheeks as she spoke, a burning recollection of a rose, which from her horse that morning at Damory Court, she had glimpsed in its glass on the porch.

Both laughed a little. He imagined that he could smell that wonderful hair, a subtle fragrance like that of sun-dried seaweed or the elusive scent that clings to a tuft of long-plucked Spanish moss. “Chum stands absolved, then,” he said, bending to sweep together the scattered jessamine. “Do you—do you run like that when you’re not frightened?”

“When I’m caught red-handed. Don’t you?”

He looked puzzled.

She pointed to the flowers. “I had stolen them, and I was trying to ‘’scape off wid ’em’ as the negroes say. Shocking, isn’t it? But you see, nobody has lived here since long before I was born, and I suppose the flower-thieving habit has become ingrown.”

“But,” he interrupted, “there’s acres of them going to waste. Why on earth shouldn’t you have them?”

“Of course I know better to-day, but there was a—a special reason. We have none and this is the nearest place where they grow. My mother wanted some for this particular day.”

“Good heavens!” he cried. “You don’t think you can’t go right on taking them? Why, you can ‘’scape off’ with the whole garden any time!”

A droll little gleam of azure mischief darted at him suddenly out of her eyes and then dodged back again. “Aren’t you just a little rash with other people’s property?”

“Other people’s?”

“What will the owner say?”

He bent back one of the long jessamine stems and wound it around the others. “I can answer for him. Besides, I owe you something, you know. I robbed you this morning—of your brush.”

She looked at him, abruptly serious. “Why did you do that?”

“Sanctuary. His two beady eyes begged so hard for it. ‘Twenty ravenous hounds,’ they said, ‘and a dozen galloping horses. And look what a poor shivering little red-brown morsel I am!’”

For just an instant the bronze-gold head gave a quick imperious toss, like a high-mettled pony under the flick of the whip. But as suddenly the shadow of resentment passed; the mobile face under the bent hat-brim turned thoughtful. “Poor little beastie!” she said meditatively. “We so seldom think of his side, do we! We think only of the run, the dog-music, the wild rush along the wet fields, with the horses straining and pounding under us. I’ve ridden to hounds all my life. Everybody does down here.” She looked again at him. “Do you think it’s wrong to kill things?” she asked gravely.

“Oh, dear, no,” he smiled. “I haven’t a single ism. I’m not even a vegetarian.”

“But you would be if you had to kill your own meat?”

“Perhaps. So many of us would. As a matter of fact, I don’t hunt myself, but I’m no reformer.”

“Why don’t you hunt?”

“I don’t enjoy it.” He flushed slightly. “I hate firearms,” he said, a trifle difficultly. “I always have. I don’t know why. Idiosyncrasy, I suppose. But I shouldn’t care for hunting, even with bows and arrows. I would kill a tiger or a poisonous reptile, or anything else, in case of necessity. But even then I should hardly enjoy it. I know some animals are pests and have to be killed. Some men do, too. But I don’t like to do it myself.”

“Wouldn’t that theory lead to a wholesale evasion of responsibility?”

“Perhaps. I’m no philosopher. But a blackbird or a red fox is so pretty, even when he is thieving, that I’d let him have the corn. I’m like the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado who was so tender-hearted that he couldn’t execute anybody and planned to begin with guinea-pigs and work up. Only I’m afraid I couldn’t even manage the guinea-pigs.”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t find many to practise on here. Do you raise guinea-pigs up North?”

“Ah,” he said ruefully, “you tag me, too. Have I by chance a large letter N tattooed upon my manly brow? But I suppose it’s the accent. Uncle Jefferson catalogued me in five minutes. He said he didn’t know why I was from ‘de Norf,’ but he ‘knowed’ it. I’ve annexed him and his wife, by the way.”

“You’re lucky to have them. Unc’ Jefferson and Aunt Daph might have slipped out of a plantation of the last century. They’re absolutely ante-bellum. Most of the negroes are more or less spoiled, as you’ll find, I’m afraid.” She turned the conversation bluntly. “Had you seen Damory Court before?”

“No, never.”

“Do you like the general plan of the place?”

“Do I like it?” cried John Valiant. “Do I like it!”

A quick pleasure glanced across her face. “It’s nice of you to say it that way. We ask that question so often it’s become mechanical. You see, it’s our great show-place. We exhibit it to strangers as we show them the Natural Bridge and Monticello, and expect them to rhapsodize. Years ago the negroes would never set foot here. The house was supposed to be haunted.”

“I’m not afraid,” he laughed. “I wouldn’t blame any ghost for hanging around. I’m thinking of haunting it myself in a hundred years or so.”

“Oh, the specters are all laid long ago, if there ever were any.”

At that moment a patter of footsteps and shrill shrieks came flying over the last-year’s leaves beyond the lilac bushes. “It’s Rickey Snyder,” she said, peering out smilingly as two children, pursued and pursuer, burst into view. “Hush!” she whispered; “I wonder what they are up to.”

The pair came in a whirl through the bushes. The foremost was a seven-year-old negro girl, in a single short cottonade garment, wizened, barelegged and bareheaded, her black wool parted in little angular patches and tightly wrapped with bits of cord. The other was white and as freckled as a turkey’s egg, with hair cropped like a boy’s. She held a carving-knife cut from a shingle, whose edge had been deeply ensanguined by poke-berry juice. The pursued one stumbled over a root and came to earth in a heap, while the other pounced upon her like a wildcat.

“Hold still, you limb of Satan,” she scolded. “How can I do it when you won’t stay still?”

“Oh, Lawd,” moaned the prostrate one, in simulated terror; “oh, Doctah, good Doctah Snydah, has Ah gotter hab dat operation? Is yo’ sho’ gwineter twitter eroun’ mah insides wid dem knives en saws en things?”

“It won’t hurt,” reassured the would-be operator; “no more than it did Mis’ Poly Gifford. And I’ll put your liver right back again.”

“Wait er minute. Ah jes’ remembahs Ah fo’got ter make mah will. Ah leabs—”

“Nonsense!” objected the other irritably. “You made it yesterday. They always do it beforehand.”

“No, suh; Ah done clean fergot et. Ah leabs mah thimble ter de Mefodis’ church, en mah black en w’ite kitten ter Rickey Snydah, en—”

“I don’t want your old tabby!” said the beneficiary unfeelingly. “Now flatten out, while I give you the chloroform.”

“All right, Doctah. Ah’s in de free-ward en ’tain’t costin’ me er cent! But Ah’s mighty skeered Ah gwineter wake up daid! Gord A’mighty, ef Ah dies, save mah sinful soul! Oh, Mars’ Judge Jesus, swing dat cha’yut down en kyah me up ter Hebben! Rickey, yo’ reck’n, arter all, Ah’s gwineter be er black angel? Hesh-sh! Ah’s driftin’ away, Doctah, Ah’s driftin’ away on de big wide ribber.”

“Now you’re asleep,” declared the surgeon, and fell to with a flourish of the gory blade.

The other reared herself. “Huh! How yo’ reck’n Ah’s gwineter be ersleep wid yo’ chunkin’ me in de shoht-ribs wid dat ar stick? Ain’ yo’ done cyarvin’ me up yet?”

“Oh, nurse,” wailed Rickey, turning the drama into a new channel, “I can’t wake Greenie up! She won’t come out of the chloroform! She’s dying. Let’s all sing and maybe it’ll make it easier:

The melody, however, was too much for the prospective corpse. She sat up, shook the dead leaves from her hair and joined in, swaying her lean body to and fro and clapping her yellow-lined hands together in an ecstasy:

The two were a strange contrast as they sang, the negro child swaying with the emotionalism of her race and her voice dropping instinctively to a soft alto accompaniment to the other’s rigid soprano, and lending itself to subtle half-tones and minor cadences.

A twig snapped under Valiant’s foot. The singers faced about and saw them. Both scrambled to their feet, the black girl to look at them with a wide self-conscious grin. Rickey, tossing her short hair back from her freckled face, came toward them.

“My goodness, Miss Shirley,” she said, “we didn’t see you at all.” She looked at Valiant. “Are you the man that’s going to fix up Damory Court?” she inquired, without any tedious formalities.

“Yes,” said Valiant.

“Well,” she said critically, “you’ve got your job cut out for you. But I should say you’re the kind to do it.”

“Rickey!” Shirley’s voice tried to be stern, but there was a hint of laughter in it.

“What did I say now?” inquired Rickey. “I’m sure I meant it to be complimentary.”

“It was,” said Valiant. “I shall try to deserve your good opinion.”

“But what a ghastly play!” exclaimed Shirley. “Where did you learn it?”

“We were playing Mis’ Poly Gifford in the hospital,” Rickey answered. “She’s got a whole lot of little pebbles that they cut out—”

“Oh, Rickey!” expostulated Shirley with a shudder.

“They did. She keeps them in a little pasteboard box like wedding-cake, with a blue ribbon around it. She was showing it to Miss Mattie Sue yesterday. She was telling her all about it. She said all the women there showed each other their cuts and bragged about how long they were.”

Valiant’s merriment rang out under the trees, but Shirley was crimson. “Well, I don’t think it’s a nice play,” she said decidedly.

“That’s just the way,” murmured Rickey disconsolately, “yesterday it was Romeo and Juliet with the Meredith children, and their mother had a conniption fit.”

“Was that gruesome, too?”

“Not so very. I only poisoned Rosebud and June and stabbed myself. I don’t call that gruesome.”

“You certainly have a highly developed taste for the dramatic,” said Shirley. “I wonder what your next effort will be.”

“It’s to-morrow,” Rickey informed her. “We’re going to have the duel between Valiant and Sassoon.”

The smile was stricken from John Valiant’s face. A duel—the duel—between Valiant and Sassoon! He felt his blood beat quickly. Had there been such a thing in his father’s life? Was that what had blighted it?

“Only not here where it really happened, but in the Meredith orchard. Greenie’s going to be—”

“Ah ain’!” contradicted Greenie. “Ah ain’ gwineter be dat Valiant, nohow!”

“You are, too!” insisted Rickey wrathfully. “You needn’t be so pickety and choosety—and after she kills Sassoon, we put the bloodhounds on her trail.”

Greenie tittered. “Dey ain’ no dawg eroun’ heah’d tech me,” she said, “en ’sides—”

“But, Rickey,” Shirley interposed, “that wasn’t a murder. That was a duel between gentlemen. They don’t—”

“I know it,” assented Rickey cheerfully. “But it makes it more exciting. Will you come, Miss Shirley, deed and double? I won’t charge you any admission.”

“I can’t promise,” said Shirley. “I might stand the duel, but I’m afraid the hounds would be too blood-curdling. By the way,” she added, “isn’t it about time Miss Mattie Sue had her tea?”

“It certainly is, Miss Shirley!” said Rickey, with penitent emphasis. “I clean forgot it, and she’ll row me up the gump-stump! Come on, Greenie,” and she started off through the bushes.

But the other hung back. “Ah done tole yo’ Ah ain’ gwine be dat Valiant,” she said stubbornly.

“Look here, Greenville Female Seminary Simms,” Rickey retorted, “don’t you multiply words with me just because your mammy was working there when you were born and gave you a fancy name! If you’ll promise to be him, I’ll get Miss Mattie Sue to let us make molasses candy.”