She lifted up her head. Of course it was Janice, and although she had been weeping, her eyes were as beautiful as ever.

"Oh, Jack!" she exclaimed, and happy the man who hears his name called in such a tone-even if it be only for once in the whole course of his existence.

He pitched his suit-case down upon the gra.s.s and took the maid in his arms.

What did anything matter; they both were lonely and both needed comforting.

He kissed her not once but twenty times,-not twenty times but a hundred.

"It's abominable you're being here," he said at last.

"I am very, very tired," she confessed.

"And you'll go back to the city when I go?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, doubtfully. "I don't know whether she'll let me."

Jack laughed.

"To-morrow I will beard Aunt Mary in her den," he declared; "now let's go in and-and-"

The hundred and first!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - TWO ARE COMPANY

To the large square room where he had slept (on and off) during a goodly portion of his boyhood life, Jack went to repose from his journey, there to meditate the situation which he had come to comfort, and to try and devise a way to better its existing circ.u.mstances.

It was a pleasant room, one window looking down the driveway, and the other leading forth to a square balcony that topped the little porch of the side entrance. There were lambrequins of dark blue with fringe that always caught in the shutters, and a bedroom suite of mahogany that had come down from the original John Watkins's aunt, and had been polished by her descendants so faithfully that its various surfaces shone like mirrors. Over the bed hung a tent drapery of chintz; over the washstand hung a crayon done by Arethusa in her infancy-the same representing a lady engaged in the pleasant and useful occupation of spinning wheat with a hand composed of five fingers, and no thumb. In the corner stood a cheval-gla.s.s which Jack had seen shrink steadily for years until now it could no longer reflect his shoulders unless he retired back for some two yards or more. There was a delectable closet to the room, all painted white inside, with shelves and cupboards and little bins for shoes and waste paper and soiled clothes.

Oh! it was really an altogether delightful place in which to abide, and the pity was that its owner had spent so little time therein of late years.

To-night-returning to the scene of many childish and boyish meditations-Jack placed his lamp upon the nightstand at the head of the bed and sat himself down on a chair near by.

It was late-quite midnight-for he and Aunt Mary's new maid had talked long and freely ere they separated at last. From his room he could hear the little faint sounds below stairs, that told of her final preparations for Lucinda's morning eye, and he rested quiet until all else was quiet and then leaned back upon the chair's hind legs and, tipping slowly to and fro in that position, tried to see just what he had better do the first thing on the following day.

[Ill.u.s.tration 7]

"'Yesterday I played poker until I didn't know a blue chip from a white one.'"

It was a riddle with a vengeance. It is so easy to say "I'll cut that Gordian knot!" and then pack one's tooth-brush and start off unknotting, but it is quite another matter when one comes face to face with the problem and is met by the "buts" of those who have previously been essaying to disentangle it.

"She won't let me go," Mrs. Rosscott had declared, "she won't consider it for a minute."

"But she must," Jack had declared on his side. "My dearest, you can't stay and play maid to Aunt Mary indefinitely, and you know that as well as I do."

"Yes, I know that," the whilom Janice then murmured. "It's getting to be an awful question. They want me to come home for Thanksgiving. They think that I've been at the rest-cure long enough."

Jack had laughed a bit just there, and then he suddenly ceased laughing and frowned a good deal instead.

"You were crying when I came," he said. "The truth is you are working yourself to death and getting completely used up."

"It is wearing, I must confess," she answered. "Yesterday I played poker until I didn't know a blue chip from a white one, and she won the whole pot with two little bits of pairs while I was drawing to a king. I begin to fear that my mind will give way. And yet, I really don't see how to stop. She is so sick and tired of life here and she isn't strong enough to go to town."

"I know a very short way to put an end to everything," said Jack. "I see two ways in fact,-one is to tell her the truth."

"Oh, don't do that," cried his fiancee affrightedly. "The shock would kill her outright."

"The other way,-" said Jack slowly, "would be for me to marry you and let her think that you _are_ Janice in good earnest."

"Oh, that wouldn't do at all," said the pretty widow. "In the first place she would go crazy at the idea of her darling nephew's marrying her maid,-and in the second place-"

"Well,-in the second place?"

"I wouldn't marry you,-I said I wouldn't and I won't. You're too young."

"But you've promised to marry me some day."

"Yes, I know-but not till-not till-"

"Not till when?"

"I haven't just decided," said Mrs. Rosscott, airily. "Not for a good while, not until you seem to require marrying at my hands."

"I never shall require marrying at anyone else's hands," the lover vowed, "but if you are so set about it as all that comes to, I shall not cut up rough for a while. Aunt Mary is the main question just now-not you."

"I know," said his lady in anything but a jealous tone, "and as she is the question, what are we to do?"

"You will go to bed," he said, kissing her, "and I will go to think."

"Can you see any way?" she asked anxiously.

Then he put his hands on either side of her face and turned it up to his own.

"You plotted once and overthrew my aunt," he said. "It's my turn now."

"Are you going to plot?"

"I'm going to try."

"I'll pray for your success," she whispered.

"Pray for me," he answered, and shortly after they had achieved the feat of saying good-night and parting once more, and the result of it all had been that Jack found himself tipping back and forth on the small chair, in the big room, at half-past midnight, puzzled, perturbed, and very much perplexed as to what to do first when the next morning should have become a settled fact. He was not used to conspiring, and being only a man, he had not those curious instinctive gifts of inspiration and luminous conception which fairly radiate around the brain of clever womankind.