“Dinner sounds good to me,” said the young man with a grim glimmer of a smile. “I guess I can accommodate you, madam. I haven’t had anything to eat since I left the camp last night.”
“Oh! You poor child!” said Miss Marilla, beaming on him with a welcoming smile. “Now isn’t it fortunate I should have asked _you_?” as if there had been a throng of passing soldiers from which she might have chosen. “But are you sure I’m not keeping you from some one else who is waiting for you?”
“If there’s any one else waiting anywhere along this road for me, it’s all news to me, madam; and anyhow you got here first, and I guess you have first rights.”
He had swung into the easy, familiar vernacular of the soldier now; and for the moment his bitterness was held in abeyance, and the really nice look in his eyes shone forth.
“Well, then, we’ll just go along in,” said Miss Marilla, casting another quick glance toward the house. “And I think I’m most fortunate to have found you. It’s so disappointing to get dinner ready for company and then not have any.”
“Must be almost as disappointing as to get all ready for dinner and then not have any,” said the soldier affably.
“I suppose your name doesn’t happen to be Richard, does it?” she asked with that childish appeal in her eyes that had always kept her a young woman and good company for Mary Amber, even though her hair had long been gray.
“Might just as well be that as anything else,” he responded, affably, willing to drop into whatever rôle was set for him in this most unexpected byplay.
“And you wouldn’t mind if I should call you Dick?” she asked with a wistful look in her blue eyes.
“Like nothing better,” he assented glibly, and found his own heart warming to this confiding stranger lady.
“That’s beautiful of you!” She put out a shy hand, and laid it lightly on the edge of his cuff. “You don’t know how much obliged I am. You see, Mary Amber hasn’t ever quite believed he was coming--Dick, I mean--and she’s been so kind, and helped me get the dinner and all. I just couldn’t bear to tell her he wasn’t coming.”
The young soldier stopped short in the middle of the road, and whistled.
“Horrors!” he exclaimed in dismay “Are there other guests? Who is Mary Amber?”