Part 31

"Mr. Opp, if you want to say what you come to say, you haven't got but four minutes to do it in."

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Opp, gratefully, but helplessly; "I was just coming to that point. It's a matter--that--er--well you might say it is in a way pertaining--to--"

"Guin-never!" snapped Mrs. Gusty, unable longer to stand his hesitation. "I'd have been a deaf-mute and a fool to boot not to have known it long ago. Not that I've been consulted in the matter." She lifted a stiffened chin, and turned her gaze upward.

"You have," declared Mr. Opp, earnestly; "that is, you will be. Everything is pending on you. There has been no steps whatever taken by Miss Guin-never or I--rather I might say by her. I can't say but what I have made some slight preliminary arrangements." He paused, then went on anxiously: "I trust there ain't any personal objections to the case."

Mrs. Gusty made folds in her black-silk skirt and creased them down with her thumb-nail. "No," she said shortly; "far as I can see, Guin-never would be doing mighty well to get you. You'd be a long sight safer than a good-looking young fellow. Of course a man being so much older than a girl is apt to leave her a widow. But, for my part, I believe in second marriages."

Mr. Opp felt as if he had received a hot and cold douche at the same time; but the result was a glow.

"Then you don't oppose it, Mrs. Gusty," he cried eagerly. "You'll write her you are willing?"

"Not yet," said Mrs. Gusty; "there's a condition."

"There ain't any condition in the world I won't meet to get her," he exclaimed recklessly, his fervor bursting its bounds. "You don't know how I feel about that young lady. Why, I'd live on bread and water all the rest of my life if it would make her happy. There hasn't been a hour since I met her that she hasn't held my soul--as you might say--in the pa'm of her hand."

"People don't often get it so bad at our age," remarked Mrs. Gusty, sarcastically, and Mr. Opp winced.

"The condition," went on Mrs. Gusty, "that I spoke about, was your sister. Of course I never would consent to Guin-never living under the same roof with a crazy person."

The hope which was carrying Mr. Opp to the dizziest heights dropped to earth at this unexpected shaft, and for a moment he was too stunned to speak.

"Kippy?" he began at last, and his voice softened at the name. "Why, you don't understand about her. She's just similar to a little child. I told Miss Guin-never all about her; she never made any objections. You--you--wouldn't ask me to make any promises along that line?" Abject entreaty shone from Mr. Opp's eyes; it was a plea for a change of sentence. She had asked of him the only sacrifice in the world at which he would have faltered. "Don't--don't put it like that!" he pleaded, laying his hand on her arm in his earnestness. "I'm all she's got in the world; I've kind of become familiar with her ways, you know, and can manage her. She'll love Miss Guin-never if I tell her to. She shan't be a bit of care or trouble; I and Aunt Tish will continue on doing everything for her. You won't refuse your consent on that account, will you? You'll promise to say yes, now won't you, Mrs. Gusty?"

A slight and ominous cough in the doorway caused them both to start. Mr. Tucker, in widower's weeds, but with a jonquil jauntily thrust through his buttonhole, stood with his hand still on the knob, evidently transfixed by the scene he had witnessed.

For a moment the company was enveloped in a fog of such dense embarrassment that all conversation was suspended. Mrs. Gusty was the first to emerge.

"Howdy, Mr. Tucker," she said, rustling forward in welcome. "I didn't think you'd get here before five. Mr. Opp just dropped in to consult me about--about boarding a friend of his. Won't you draw up to the fire?"

Mr. Tucker edged forward with a suspicious eye turned upon Mr. Opp, who was nervously searching about for his hat.

"There it is, by the door," said Mrs. Gusty, eager to speed his departure; and as they both reached for it, the picture upon which it hung toppled forward and fell, face upward, on the floor. It was the portrait of Mr. Tucker mourning under the willow-tree which Miss Jim had left with Mrs. Gusty for safe-keeping.

Mr. Opp went home across the fields that evening instead of through the town. He was not quite up to any of his rôles--editor, promoter, or reformer. In fact, he felt a desperate need of a brief respite from all histrionic duties. A reaction had set in from the excitement of the past week, and the complication involved in Mrs. Gusty's condition puzzled and distressed him. Of course, he assured himself repeatedly, there was a way out of the difficulty; but he was not able to find it just yet. He had observed that Mrs. Gusty's opinions became fixed convictions under the slightest opposition, whereas Guinevere's firmest decision trembled at a breath of disapproval. He sighed deeply as he meditated upon the vagaries of the feminine mind.

Overhead the bare trees lifted a network of twigs against a dull sky, a cold wind stirred the sedge grass, and fluttered the dry leaves that had lain all winter in the fence corners. Everything looked old and worn and gray, even Mr. Opp, as he leaned against a gaunt, white sycamore, his head bent, and his brows drawn, wrestling with his problem.

Suddenly he lifted his head and listened, then he smiled. In the tree above him a soft but animated conversation was in progress. A few daring birds had braved the cold and the wind, and had ventured back to their old trysting-place to wait for the coming of the spring. No hint of green had tinged the earth, but a few, tiny, pink maple-buds had given the secret away, and the birds were cuddled snugly together, planning, in an ecstasy of subdued enthusiasm, for the joyous days to come.

Mr. Opp listened and understood. They were all whispering about one thing, and he wanted to whisper about it, too. It was the simple theme of love without variations--love, minus problems, minus complications, minus consequences. He took out his little packet of letters and read them through; then, unmindful of the chill, he stretched himself under the tree and listened to the birds until the twilight silenced them.

When he reached home at last, Miss Kippy met him at the door with a happy cry of welcome.

"D.," she said, with her arm through his, and her cheek rubbing his sleeve, "I've been good. I've let my hair stay up all day, and Aunt Tish is making me a long dress like a lady." She looked at him shyly and smiled, then she pulled his head down and whispered, "If I'm very good, when I grow up, can I marry Mr. Hinton?"

Miss Kippy, too, had been listening to the bird-song.

XIII

It was May when Willard Hinton arrived at the Cove and took up his abode at Mrs. Gusty's. For the first week he kept to his bed, but at the end of that time he was able to crawl down to the porch and, under the protection of dark glasses and a heavy shade, sit for hours at a time in the sunshine. The loss of his accustomed environment, the ennui that ensues from absolute idleness, the consciousness that the light was growing dimmer day by day, combined to plunge him into abysmal gloom.

He shrank from speaking to any one, he scowled at a suggestion of sympathy, he treated Mr. Opp's friendly overtures with open discourtesy. Conceiving himself on the rack of torture, he set his teeth and determined to submit in silence, but without witnesses.