When the two visitors rose to go Aunt Ruth put in a plea for their remaining overnight.

"It's turned colder since you came up this morning, Mr. Kendrick," said she. "Why not stay with us and go back in the morning? We'd be so pleased to entertain you, and we've plenty of room--too much room for us two old folks, now the children are all married and gone."

To Richard's surprise his grandfather did not immediately decline. He looked at Aunt Ruth, her rosy, smiling face beaming with hospitality, then he glanced at Richard.

"Do stay," urged Uncle Rufus. "Remember how you took us in at midnight, and what a good time you gave us the two days we stayed? It would make us mighty happy to have you sleep under our roof, you and your grandson both, if he'll stay, too."

"I confess I should like to sleep under this roof," admitted Matthew Kendrick. "It reminds me of my father's old home. It's very good of you, Madam Gray, to ask us, and I believe I shall remain. As to Richard--"

"I'd like nothing better," declared that young man promptly.

So it was settled. Richard drove back to the store and gathered together various articles for his own and his grandfather's use, and returned to the Gray fireside. The long and pleasant evening which followed the hearty country supper gave him one more new experience in the long list of them he was acquiring. Somehow he had seldom been happier than when he followed his hostess into the comfortable room upstairs she a.s.signed him, opening from that she had given the elder man. Cheerful fires burned in old-fashioned, open-hearthed Franklin stoves, in both rooms, and the atmosphere was fragrant with the mingled breath of crackling apple-wood, and lavender from the fine old linen with which both beds had been freshly made.

"Sleep well, my dear friends," said Aunt Ruth, in her quaintly friendly way, as she bade her guests good-night and shook hands with them, receiving warm responses.

"One must find sweet repose under your roof," said Matthew Kendrick, and Richard, attending his hostess to the door, murmured, "You look as if you'd put two small boys to bed and tucked them in!" at which Aunt Ruth laughed with pleasure, nodding at him over her shoulder as she went away.

Presently, as Matthew Kendrick lay down in the soft bed, his face toward the glow of his fire that he might watch it, Richard knocked and came in from his own room and, crossing to the bed, stood leaning on the foot-board.

"Too sleepy to talk, grandfather?" he asked.

"Not at all, my boy," responded the old man, his heart stirring in his breast at this unwonted approach at an hour when the two were usually far apart. Never that he could remember had Richard come into his room after he had retired.

"I wanted to tell you," said the young man, speaking very gently, "that you've been awfully kind, and have done us all a lot of good to-day. And you've done me most of all."

"Why, that's pleasant news, d.i.c.k," answered old Matthew Kendrick, his eyes fixed on the shadowy outlines of the face at the foot of the bed.

"Sit down and tell me about it."

So Richard sat down, and the two had such a talk as they had had never before in their lives--a long, intimate talk, with the barriers down--the barriers which both felt now never should have existed. Lying there in the soft bed of Aunt Ruth's best feathers, with the odour of her lavender in his nostrils, and the sound of the voice he loved in his ears, the old man drank in the delight of his grandson's confidence, and the wonder of something new--the consciousness of Richard's real affection, and his heart beat with slow, heavy throbs of joy, such as he had never expected to feel again in this world.

"Altogether," said Richard, rising reluctantly at last, as the tall old clock on the landing near-by slowly boomed out the hour of midnight, "it's been a great day for me. I'd been looking forward with quite a bit of dread to bringing you up, I knew you'd see so plainly wherever we were lacking; but you were so splendidly kind about it--"

"And why shouldn't I be kind, d.i.c.k?" spoke his grandfather eagerly.

"What have I in the world to interest me as you and your affairs interest me? Can any possible stroke of fortune seem so great to me as your development into a manhood of accomplishment? And when it is in the very world I know so well and have so near my heart--"

Richard interrupted him, not realizing that he was doing so, but full of longing to make all still further clear between them. "Grandfather, I want to make a confession. This world of yours--I didn't want to enter it."

"I know you didn't, d.i.c.k. And I know why. But you are getting over that, aren't you? You are beginning to realize that it isn't what a man does, but the way he does it, that matters."

"Yes," said Richard slowly. "Yes, I'm beginning to realize that. And do you want to know what made me realize it to-day, as never before?"

The old man waited.

"It was the sight of you, sir--and--the recognition of the power you have been all your life;--and the--sudden appreciation of the"--he stumbled a little, but he brought the words out forcefully at the end--"of the very great gentleman you are!"

He could not see the hot tears spring into the old eyes which had not known such a sign of emotion for many years. But he could feel the throb in the low voice which answered him after a moment.

"I may not deserve that, d.i.c.k, but--it touches me, coming from you."

When Richard had gone back to his own room, Matthew Kendrick lay for a long time, wide awake, too happy to sleep. In the next room his grandson, before he slept, had formulated one more new idea:

"There's something in the a.s.sociation with people like these that makes a fellow feel like being absolutely honest with them, with everybody--most of all with himself. What is it?"

And pondering this, he was lost in the world of dreams.

CHAPTER XVI

ENCOUNTERS

"By the way, Rob, I saw Rich Kendrick to-day." Louis Gray detained his sister Roberta on the stairs as they stopped to exchange greetings on a certain evening in March. "It struck me suddenly that I hadn't seen him for a blue moon, and I asked him why he didn't come round when he was in town. He said he was sticking tight to that new business of his up in Eastman, but he admitted he was to be here over Sunday. I invited him round to-night, but to my surprise he wouldn't come. Said he had another engagement, of course--thanked me fervently and all that--but there was no getting him. It made me a bit suspicious of you, Bobby."

"I can't imagine why." But, in spite of herself, Roberta coloured. "He came here when he was helping Uncle Calvin. There's no reason for his coming now."

Her brother regarded her with the observing eye which sisters find it difficult to evade. "He would have taken a job as nursemaid for Rosy, if it would have given him a chance to go in and out of this old house, I imagine. Rosy stuck to it, it was his infatuation for the home and the members thereof, particularly Gordon and Dorothy. He undoubtedly was struck with them--it would have been a hard heart that wasn't touched by the sight of the boy--but if it was the kiddies he wanted, why didn't he keep coming? Steve and Rosy would have welcomed him."

"You had better ask him his reasons, next time you see him," Roberta suggested, and escaped.

It was two months since she had seen Richard Kendrick. He seemed never so much as to pa.s.s the house, although it stood directly on his course when he drove back and forth from Eastman in his car. She wondered if he really did make a detour each time, to avoid the very chance of meeting her. It was impossible not to think of him, rather disturbingly often, and to wonder how he was getting on.

The month of March in the year of this tale was on the whole an extraordinarily mild and springlike piece of subst.i.tution for the rigorous, wind-swept season it should by all rights have been. On one of its most beguiling days Roberta Gray was walking home from Miss Copeland's school. Usually she came by way of the broad avenue which led straight home. To-day, out of sheer unwillingness to reach that home and end the walk, she took a quite different course. This led her up a somewhat similar street, parallel to her own but several blocks beyond, a street of more than ordinary attractiveness in that it was less of a thoroughfare than any other of equal beauty in the residential portion of the city.

She was walking slowly, drawing in the balmy air and noting with delight the beds of crocuses which were beginning to show here and there on lawns and beside paths, when a peculiar sound far up the avenue caught her ear. She recognized it instantly, for she had heard it often and she had never heard another quite like it. It was the warning song of a coming motor-car and it was of unusual and striking musical quality. So Roberta knew, even before she caught sight of the long, low, powerful car which had stood many times before her own door during certain weeks of the last year, that she was about to meet for the first time in two months the person upon whom she had put a ban.

Would he see her? He could hardly help it, for there was not another pedestrian in sight upon the whole length of the block, and the March sunshine was full upon her. As the car came on the girl who walked sedately to meet it found that her pulses had somehow curiously accelerated. So this was the route he took, not to go by her home.

Did he see her? Evidently as far away as half a block, for at that distance his motor-cap was suddenly pulled off, and it was with bared head that he pa.s.sed her. At the moment the car was certainly not running as fast as it had been doing twenty rods back; it went by at a pace moderate enough to show the pair to each other with distinctness.

Roberta saw clearly Richard Kendrick's intent eyes upon her, saw the flash of his smile and the grace of his bow, and saw--as if written upon the blue spring sky--the word he had left with her, "Midsummer." If he had shouted it at her as he pa.s.sed, it could not have challenged her more definitely.

He was obeying her literally--more literally than she could have demanded. Not to slow down, come to a standstill beside her, exchange at least a few words of greeting--this was indeed a strict interpretation of her edict. Evidently he meant to play the game rigorously. Still, he had been a compellingly attractive figure as he pa.s.sed; that instant's glimpse of him was likely to remain with her quite as long as a more protracted interview. Did he guess that?

"I wonder how I looked?" was her first thought as she walked on--a purely feminine one, it must be admitted. When she reached home she glanced at herself in the hall mirror on her way upstairs--a thing she seldom took the trouble to do.

A figure got hastily to its feet and came out into the hall to meet her as she pa.s.sed the door of the reception-room. "Miss Roberta!" said an eager voice.

"Why, Mr. Westcott! I didn't know you were in town!"

"I didn't intend to be until next month, as you knew. But this wonderful weather was too much for me."

He held her hand and looked down into her face from his tall height. He told her what he thought of her appearance--in detail with his eyes, in modified form with his lips.

"In my old school clothes?" laughed Roberta. "How draggy winter things seem the first warm days. This velvet hat weighs like lead on my head to-day." She took it off. "I'll run up and make myself presentable,"

said she.

"Please don't. You're exactly right as you are. And--I want you to go for a walk if you're not too tired. The road that leads out by the West Wood marshes--it will be sheer spring out there to-day. I want to share it with you."