HE tinkling of the telephone broke into their day-dream. "Aunt Liza's out; you'll have to answer it," she said.
He grumbled his resignation and hurried across the grass and into the living-room of the time-worn New England farmhouse. He paused to wave his hand to the country girl on the bench under the trees, then, still smiling, put the receiver to his ear to meet the crisis wholly unprepared. For he had unlimited youth and enthusiasm and was narrow enough to live with both, to the exclusion of wisdom; so that during his convalescence he had found it easy to forget the foreordained.
When he heard his mother's voice he took it for granted that she was calling
him from New York.
"What's gone wrong?" he shouted, to be sure the words would carry.
"I can hear you perfectly well, Freddy. You shouldn't exert yourself so. Nothing's wrong. Claire and I are at the station."
"Why have you come?" he snapped.
"To see about you," she calmly replied.
"About me!" he stumbled. Youth and enthusiasm were carried before the flood of recollection let loose by their presence here. "What can you want to see about me?"
Her voice vibrated to him challengingly. "Is it surprising I should want to know how you are picking up after the fever? It isn't necessary we should discuss that here, at all events. This 'phone is in the middle of a grocery store—quite; and most of the population is enjoying the novelty of seeing it used." There was a pause, then: "Haven't you a decent carriage to send for us? It isn't far, is it?"
"Fully two miles," he replied discouragingly, "and this is September; all the horses are in the fields."
"What are stables for?" she demanded. "If you weren't my only son, I'd turn back. Wait a minute."
He heard a man's voice echoing over the wire, with an offer to drive the ladies all the way to the Ringer's place for fifty cents.
"I've engaged a carriage," she resumed. "Good-bye." and he heard the wire snap dead. He replaced his own receiver reflectively, thrust his hands into his pockets, and, his lips pursed as though he would have whistled his discomfiture, sauntered across the porch and towards the bench. "Should he tell her?" he was asking himself.
She awaited him with a look sounding his delay. It was his custom to shorten as far as possible these moments of separation. She was a slip of a girl, scarcely more than eighteen, with dark hair parted in the middle and waving back to a knot gathered low on her neck. Her almost startlingly innocent eyes made his own for the first time waver, and he decided that, however much she might love him, she could not understand how unthinkingly he had led her and himself into this labyrinth.
"What is it?" she asked, as he returned to his place beside her.
"Nothing of any consequence. I'll tell you about it later." he answered to gain time, in a hope, whose deceit he recognized, that he would be able to think a peaceful way out for both of them.
After a few moments' silence she placed her hand on his. "They're not calling you back, Freddy? You're not strong enough yet."
His glance took in her plain, neat gown, which somehow fitted her charmingly. This unwelcome recall to his old life had not altered the great fact. "My mother is driving from the village—and a friend of hers. It's a little sudden." He viciously spoiled a mole's industry.
She felt his trouble vaguely. "Aren't you glad?"
"I hope I'm always glad to see my mother, but it's surprising; haven't heard from her in three weeks."
"Are you wondering whether to tell her about me?" Perhaps neither of them had put it into words before, but both had accepted it as a foregone conclusion. Her question brought the situation to him barer and more unpleasant than ever. Had he not come here to convalesce; had this crisis not arisen, it is conceivable that up to his wedding day, he would never have felt himself bound to Claire by his careless yielding to his mother's insistence. And now she was coming with Claire. Could it have been Bob Frazer, whose talk had brought them? Frazer had been out the week before, and he, of course, had eyes. But he had accepted it all as a matter of course. Claire had hidden in some remote, corner of his brain for weeks.
"If you think it better not," the girl said, rising. "I know you will do whatever is best. I'll go into the house now."
"Yes, I'd rather see them alone for a minute. I'll bring them in. Good-bye, Kate."