"Certainly _not_, sir. Thank you, sir. There have been several telephone calls for you, sir."

Oliver sighs--he is really awake now--it will be less trouble to get up than to try and go back to sleep. Besides, if he tries, that bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned automaton in front of him will probably start shaking him gently in its well-trained English way.

"Telephone calls? Who telephone-called?"

"The name was Crowe, sir. The lady who was calling said she would call again around lunch time. She said you were to be sure to wait until she called, sir."

"Oh, yes, certainly." Politely, "And now I think I'll get up, if you don't mind?"

"Oh, no, sir," rather scandalizedly. "You are in need of nothing, sir?"

Oliver thinks of replying, "Oh, just bring me a little more sleep if you have it in the house," but then thinks better of it.

"No, thanks."

"Very good, sir," and the automaton p.u.s.s.yfoots away.

Oliver still half asleep manages to rise and find slippers and a wrapper and then pads over to an empty bathroom where he disports himself like a whale. To his surprise he discovers himself whistling--true, the sunlight has an excellent shine to it this morning and the air and the sky outside seem blue and crisp with first fall--but even so.

"Nancy," he murmurs and frowns and finishes his bath rather gloomily--a gloom which is in no wise diminished when he goes downstairs to find everybody nearly through lunch and Ted and Elinor, as far away from each other at the table as possible, quite sure that they are behaving exactly as usual while the remnants of the house-party do their best to seem tactfully unconcerned.

Oliver, while managing to get through a copious and excellent lunch in spite of his sorrows, regards them with the morose pity of a dyspeptic octogenarian for healthy children. It is all very well and beautiful for them now, he supposes grimly, but sooner or later even such babes as they will have to Face Life--Come Up Against Facts--

He is having a second piece of blueberry pie when he is summoned to the telephone. Rather tiresome of Mother, really, he thinks as he goes out of the dining-room--something about his laundry again most probably--or when he is coming back.

"h.e.l.lo, Oliver?" "h.e.l.lo, dear. Anything important?"

Mrs. Crowe's voice has a tiny chuckle in it--a chuckle that only comes when Mrs. Crowe is being very pleased indeed.

"Well, Oliver, that depends--"

"Well, Mother, _honestly_! I'm right in the middle of lunch--"

"Oh, I'll call up again, if you'd rather, Oliver dear." But Mrs. Crowe for private reasons doesn't seem to be at all ashamed of taking up so much of her son's very valuable time.

"Only I _did_ think it would interest you--that you'd like to know as soon as possible."

Impatiently, "Yes. Well?"

"Well--a friend of yours is coming to see you on the three o'clock. A _rather_ good friend. We thought you'd be back by then, you see, and so--"

Oliver's heart jumps queerly for an instant.

"_Who_?"

But the imp of the perverse has taken complete charge of Mrs. Crowe.

"Oh--a friend. Not a childhood one--oh, no--but a--good--one, though you haven't seen each other for--more than three weeks now, isn't it? You should just be able to make it, I should think, if somebody brought you over in a car, but of course, if you're so busy--" "_Mother_!"

Then Oliver jangles the little hook of the telephone frantically up and down.

"Mother! Listen! Listen! Who is it? Is it--honestly?"

But Mrs. Crowe has hung up. Shall he get the connection again? But that means waiting--and Mother said he would just be able to make it--and Mother isn't at all the kind that would fool him over a thing like this no matter how much she wanted to tease. Oliver bounds back toward the dining-room and nearly runs into Elinor Piper. He grabs her by the shoulders.

"Listen, El!" he says feverishly. "Oh, I'll congratulate you properly and all that some time but this is utterly everything--I've got to go home right away--this minute--toot sweet--and no, by gum, I won't apologize _this_ time for asking you to get somebody to take me over in a car!"

XLVIII

She was sitting on the porch of the house--a small figure in the close blue hat he knew, a figure that seemed as if it had come tired from a long journey. She had been talking with his mother, but as soon as the car drew up, Mrs. Crowe rose quickly and went into the house.

Then they were together again.

The instant paid them for all. For the last weeks' bitterness and the human doubt, the human misunderstandings that had made it. And even as it opened before them a path some corners and resting-places of which seemed almost too proud with living for them to dare to be alive on it--both knew that that fidelity which is intense and of the soul had ended between them forever an emptier arrogance that both had once delighted in like bright colors--a brittle pride that lives only by the falser things in being young.

They had thought they were sure of each other in their first weeks together--they had said many words about it and some of them clever enough. But their surety now had no need of any words at all--it had been too well tempered by desolation to find any obligation for speech or the calling of itself secure.

They kissed--not as a pleasant gesture, and no fear of looking publicly ridiculous stopped them.

The screen door behind Nancy pushed open. Jane Ellen appeared, Jane Ellen, by the look of her, intent upon secret and doubtful business, a large moth-eaten bear dangling by its leg from one of her plump hands.

She was too concerned with getting her charge through the door to notice what was happening at first but as soon as she was fairly out on the porch she looked about her. The bear dropped from her fingers--her eyes grew rounder than b.u.t.tons and very large.

"Why it's Oliver and he's kissing Aunt _Nancy_!" she squeaked in a small voice of reproachful surprise.

XLIX

Whatever the number was of the second-cla.s.s stateroom on the _Citric_, it was rather too far down in the belly of that leviathan to have suited fashionable people. But Oliver and Nancy had stopped being fashionable some time before and they told each other that it was _much_ nicer than first-cla.s.s on one of the small liners with apparent conviction and never got tired of rejoicing at their luck in its being an outside.

It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things--once there had actually been a porpoise--and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was a fact beyond dispute.

"Time to get up, dear!" This is Oliver a little sternly from the upper berth. "That was your bath that came in a minute ago and said something in c.o.c.kney. At least I _think_ it was--mine's voice is a good deal more like one of Peter's butlers--" "But, Ollie, I'm so _comfortable_!"

"So am I. But think of breakfast."

"Well--breakfast is a point." Then she chuckles, "Oh, Ollie, wouldn't it have been _awful_ if we'd either of us been bad sailors!"

"We couldn't have been," says Oliver placidly. "We have too much luck."

"I know but--that awful woman with the face like a green pea--oh, Ollie, you'd have hated me--we are lucky, darling."

Oliver has thought seriously enough about getting up to be dangling his legs over the edge of his shelf by now.

"Aren't we?" he says soberly. "I mean I am."