The Open Question Part 52

"Why, of course; I'll go out and see her a moment."

"May I come, too?" asked Emmie.

"Yes, do." He glanced towards Val, but she turned away an indifferent face. "Come."

He went off with Emmie, leaving Val behind, consumed with longing to go, but feeling as if she were chained to her chair.

"I don't like to see him looking delicate," said John Gano.

"Delicate! What an idea!" remonstrated his mother.

"He is young to have that slight inclination to stoop."

"Mere habit. You see, he is so tall. A man of six feet can afford to stoop just a little. It's hardly perceptible."

John Gano shook his head.

"Thinner than he ought to be."

"My patience, but you're hard to please! As if a fat man weren't an abhorrence."

"I didn't say I wanted to see him porpoisical."

"A man of Ethan's age ought not to have an ounce of superfluous flesh."

"Well, I should say he hadn't."

"All of us have invariably been thin."

"Exactly what I have in mind. Ethan has all the physical characteristics of our family."

Out in the kitchen An' Jerusha was expressing similar sentiments.

"Law sakes! I's tickled t' death you's come home. Jes' de same as ebber; spit en image ob yo' father. I monstus glad t' see yo', Mars Efan. Been ve'y jubous 'bout yo' gitten back fo' I done kick de bucket," and she laughed to keep from crying outright.

Emmie brought him back in triumph to the parlor, and they all said good-night.

When Val got into bed and began the inevitable story where she left off the night before, behold, the hero's face was the face of her cousin, and the hero's voice was the voice of Ethan Gano.

Val woke next day with a flas.h.i.+ng sense of something wonderful having happened. She sat up in bed. Ah, yes! A bound, and she was out on the floor, pus.h.i.+ng wider open the heavy shutter.

Ah! how good the air smelled, a little frosty, and yet golden, with something in it aromatic, tingling. She raced through her toilet, but after it was finished she stood a long while in front of the gla.s.s.

Suddenly she threw back her head and snapped her fingers in the air.

Then she ran down-stairs. Going out by the veranda, she saw her cousin standing at the farther end, where the wisteria hung down in festoons.

He was looking out through the loops and tangles. He turned, hearing the suddenly arrested step.

"Good-morning, America," he said, coming forward with that easy swinging gait of his.

"Good-morning," said Val, half laughing, half offended.

She stood a little awkwardly, seeming not to see his hand. He only smiled, and leaned his tall figure in the fawn-colored clothes against the pillar.

"Tell me, America, do you have much weather as fine as this?"

"We have Indian summer in this country, if that's what you mean."

He looked so well against the pillar. Val longed to take up some nonchalant att.i.tude by the one nearest her, but she remembered it was black with the all-pervading coal-dust, and forbore being picturesque at the price.

"Of course," Ethan a.s.sented. "I'd forgotten you had a fifth season in your calendar. Naturally, the old regulation four wouldn't content you."

"I can't think why you talk as if you weren't an American yourself. You might be some poor foreigner--"

"Just what I am, I'm afraid."

"_You?_"

He nodded.

"That's the worst of living abroad a lot," he said: "you are always a foreigner there. But it's only when you come home, and find that you are more of a foreigner than ever, that you begin to mind."

"You don't look as if you minded much."

"Ah, that's the good face I put on."

("Horrid, sneering French ways," she commented to herself, not really thinking so, but feeling it a duty and a kind of instinctive defence to pretend she did. Something rueful in his laugh was not lost upon her.)

"Still, I do appreciate your Indian summer," he added.

"I should think so." She threw back her head and drew in the sweet, sun-laden air. "It's the very best time of all the year." He didn't answer. "Don't you think so?"

"I think it a little melancholy, for all it's so beautiful."

"How curious! It's the time that makes me happiest."

"Is it?"

"Perhaps you prefer spring?" She spoke as one condescending to childishness. "A good many people seem to."

"Yes, all the old, and all--"

"All what?"

"All foreigners."

The breakfast-bell rang.

No trays went up-stairs that morning. Everybody appeared, and the two girls couldn't remember when so gay a party had a.s.sembled in the dingy dining-room. But the pleasantry was of that strictly family character whose special savor is withheld from the outsider.