"My day has been rather strenuous," he confessed. "But you make me ashamed. Won't you be merciful and try me again?" And this time he knew what he was saying, and meant it.

"It is hardly worth repeating," she qualified--nevertheless, she did repeat it.

Ballard, listening now, found the little note of distress in the protest against play-building in the wilderness; and his heart warmed to Miss Dosia. In the sentimental field, disappointment for one commonly implies disappointment for two; and he became suddenly conscious of a fellow-feeling for the heiress of the Van Bryck millions.

"There is plenty of dramatic material in Arcadia for Mr. Wingfield, if he knows where to look for it," he submitted. "For example, our camp at the dam furnishes a 'situation' every now and then." And here he told the story of the catapulted stone, adding the little dash of mystery to give it the dramatic flavour.

Miss Dosia's interest was as eager as her limitations would permit. "May I tell Mr. Wingfield?" she asked, with such innocent craft that Ballard could scarcely restrain a smile.

"Certainly. And if Mr. Wingfield is open to suggestion on that side, you may bring him down, and I'll put him on the trail of a lot more of the mysteries."

"Thank you so much. And may I call it my discovery?"

Again her obviousness touched the secret spring of laughter in him. It was very evident that Miss Van Bryck would do anything in reason to bring about a solution of continuity in the sympathetic intimacy growing up between the pair on the opposite side of the table.

"It is yours, absolutely," he made haste to say. "I should never have thought of the dramatic utility if you hadn't suggested it."

"H'm!--ha!" broke in the major. "What are you two young people plotting about over there?"

Ballard turned the edge of the query; blunted it permanently by attacking a piece of government engineering in which, as he happened to know, the major had figured in an advisory capacity. This carrying of the war into Africa brought on a battle technical which ran on unbroken to the ices and beyond; to the moment when Colonel Craigmiles proposed an adjournment to the portico for the coffee and the tobacco. Ballard came off second-best, but he had accomplished his object, which was to make the shrewd-eyed old major forget if he had overheard too much; and Miss Van Bryck gave him his meed of praise.

"You are a very brave man, Mr. Ballard," she said, as he drew the portieres aside for her. "Everybody else is afraid of the major."

"I've met him before," laughed the Kentuckian; "in one or another of his various incarnations. And I didn't learn my trade at West Point, you remember."

IX

THE BRINK OF HAZARD

The summer night was perfect, and the after-dinner gathering under the great portico became rather a dispersal. The company fell apart into couples and groups when the coffee was served; and while Miss Craigmiles and the playwright were still fraying the worn threads of the dramatic unities, Ballard consoled himself with the older of the Cantrell girls, talking commonplace nothings until his heart ached.

Later on, when young Bigelow had relieved him, and he had given up all hope of breaking into the dramatic duet, he rose to go and make his parting acknowledgments to Miss Cauffrey and the colonel. It was at that moment that Miss Elsa confronted him.

"You are not leaving?" she said. "The evening is still young--even for country folk."

"Measuring by the hours I've been neglected, the evening is old, very old," he retorted reproachfully.

"Which is another way of saying that we have bored you until you are sleepy?" she countered. "But you mustn't go yet--I want to talk to you."

And she wheeled a great wicker lounging-chair into a quiet corner, and beat up the pillows in a near-by hammock, and bade him smoke his pipe if he preferred it to the Castle 'Cadia cigars.

"I don't care to smoke anything if you will stay and talk to me," he said, love quickly blotting out the disappointments foregone.

"For this one time you may have both--your pipe and me. Are you obliged to go back to your camp to-night?"

"Yes, indeed. I ran away, as it was. Bromley will have it in for me for dodging him this way."

"Is Mr. Bromley your boss?"

"He is something much better--he is my friend."

Her hammock was swung diagonally across the quiet corner, and she arranged her pillows so that the shadow of a spreading potted palm came between her eyes and the nearest electric globe.

"Am I not your friend, too?" she asked.

Jerry Blacklock and the younger Miss Cantrell were pacing a slow sentry march up and down the open s.p.a.ce in front of the lounging-chairs; and Ballard waited until they had made the turn and were safely out of ear-shot before he said: "There are times when I have to admit it, reluctantly."

"How ridiculous!" she scoffed. "What is finer than true friendship?"

"Love," he said simply.

"Cousin Janet will hear you," she warned. Then she mocked him, as was her custom. "Does that mean that you would like to have me tell you about Mr. Wingfield?"

He played trumps again.

"Yes. When is it to be?"

"How crudely elemental you are to-night! Suppose you ask him?"

"He hasn't given me the right."

"Oh. And I have?"

"You are trying to give it to me, aren't you?"

She was swinging gently in the hammock, one daintily booted foot touching the floor.

"You are so painfully direct at times," she complained. "It's like a cold shower-bath; invigorating, but shivery. Do you think Mr. Wingfield really cares anything for me? I don't. I think he regards me merely as so much literary material. He lives from moment to moment in the hope of discovering 'situations.'"

"Well,"--a.s.sentingly. "I am sure he has chosen a most promising subject--and surroundings. The kingdom of Arcadia reeks with dramatic possibilities, I should say."

Her face was still in the shadow of the branching palm, but the changed tone betrayed her changed mood.

"I have often accused you of having no insight--no intuition," she said musingly. "Yet you have a way of groping blindly to the very heart of things. How could you know that it has come to be the chief object of my life to keep Mr. Wingfield from becoming interested in what you flippantly call 'the dramatic possibilities'?"

"I didn't know it," he returned.

"Of course you didn't. Yet it is true. It is one of the reasons why I gave up going with the Herbert La.s.sleys after my pa.s.sage was actually booked on the _Carania_. Cousin Janet's party was made up. Dosia and Jerry Blacklock came down to the steamer to see us off. Dosia told me that Mr. Wingfield was included. You have often said that I have the courage of a man--I hadn't, then. I was horribly afraid."

"Of what?" he queried.

"Of many things. You would not understand if I should try to explain them."

"I do understand," he hastened to say. "But you have nothing to fear.

Castle 'Cadia will merely gain an ally when Wingfield hears the story of the little war. Besides, I was not including your father's controversy with the Arcadia Company in the dramatic material; I was thinking more particularly of the curious and unaccountable happenings that are continually occurring on the work--the accidents."