I met Miss Octavia in the lower hall. She was just in from the kennels. Her new Airedale was a perfect specimen of the breed, she declared, and she announced her intention of exhibiting him at all the reputable bench shows in America.
"I hope, Arnold, that you have not been without entertainment to-day."
"Miss Hollister, the three musketeers were fat monks asleep under the sunny wall of a monastery compared with me!"
"I am glad you are not bored. By the way, if you should by any chance see Hezekiah, you will kindly intimate to her that if she returns that Estabrook mare she borrowed this morning in reasonably good condition, I will overlook her indiscretion in taking it from the stable without permission."
She did not wait for a reply, but continued on to her room, and I went direct to the terrace. Cecilia and Pepperton were just going into the house to look up a book or piece of music which they had been discussing. Cecilia was making herself interesting, as she so well knew how to do, and she seemed in no wise anxious.
"We had forgotten tea," she said. "Aunt Octavia has just ordered it."
"She and Mr. Pepperton may have their tea. I believe the air outside will do you good for a little longer,--so if you don't mind, Pepperton, Miss Hollister will resume her promenade alone."
Pep has told me since that he thought me quite mad that afternoon. I bade Cecilia patrol the long terrace slowly. She turned up the collar of the covert coat and obeyed, laughing a little nervously but asking no questions. The scene could not have been more charmingly set. The great house loomed darkly behind her; beneath lay the garden, over which the dusk was stealing goldenly.
She paused suddenly as I watched from the window, and I stepped out to see what had attracted her attention. There into the garden from its farther entrance filed the six suitors who had previously come to sit beneath the windows of their stricken lady! Having failed to visit their wrath upon the perfidious Dick they had changed their clothes and returned to Hopefield. If Hezekiah had not expressly commanded me not to become the sixth man, I should have offered myself on the spot, and waited only until Cecilia had made the inevitable answer before summoning Wiggins to end the whole affair. Such, however, was not to be the order of events.