The older man walked to the window and stood looking out upon the
distant mountains for a full minute before he faced about to say: "We
might as well run the boundary lines on this thing one time as another,
son. You don't like Honoria; you've made up your mind you're not going
to let yourself like her. I don't mean to make it hard for either of you
if I can dodge it. This is her home; but it is also yours, my boy. Do
you reckon you could--"
Evan Blount made affectionate haste to stop the half-pathetic appeal.
"Don't let that trouble you for a minute," he interposed. "I--Mrs.
Blount is a very different person from the woman I have been picturing
her to be; and if she were not, I should still try to believe that we
are both sufficiently civilized not to quarrel." Then: "Have you
breakfasted yet--you and Mrs. Blount? But of course you have, long ago."
"Breakfasted?--without you? Not much, son! And that reminds me: I was to
come up here and see if you were awake, and if you were, I was to send
Barnabas up with your coffee."
"You may tell Uncle Barnabas that I haven't acquired the coffee-in-bed
habit yet," laughed the lazy one, sitting up. "Also, you may make my
apologies to Mrs. Blount and tell her I'll be down _pronto_. There;
doesn't that sound as if I were getting back to the good old sage-brush
idiom? Great land! I haven't heard anybody say _pronto_ since I was
knee-high to a hop-toad!"
Farther on, when he was no longer in the first lilting flush of the new
impressions, Evan Blount was able to look back upon that first day at
Wartrace Hall with keen regret; the regret that, in the nature of
things, it could never be lived over again.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83