Stranded in Arcady

"You sent Bandish back to town after you were through with him?" Prime inquired.

"Yes. I had taken a pair of handcuffs along, just on general principles, and I lent him my engineer to run the launch. Afterward, I kept on up-stream in the Sprite, hoping to meet you coming down; and hoping against hope that we would be able to beat the calendar back to Ottawa."

"We never should have beaten it if the old Scotchman hadn't taken a hand," was Prime's comment. "He saved us at least a full day."

Grider was edging toward the door. "I guess you don't need me any more just now," he offered. "I'm due to go and thank the good-natured lumber king who lent me the Sprite. By and by, after the dust has settled a bit, I'll come around and show you where Mr. Shellaby holds forth."

"One minute, Mr. Grider," Lucetta interposed hastily. "We can't let you go without asking your forgiveness for the way in which we have been vilifying you for a whole month, and for what we both said to you last night. I must speak for myself, at least, and – "

"Don't," said Grider, laughing again. "It's all in the day's work. As it happened, I wasn't the goat this time, but that isn't saying that I mightn't have done something quite as uncivilized if you had given me a chance. You two gave me one of the few perfect moments of a rather uneventful life last night when you made me understand that you were giving me credit for the whole thing – as a joke! I only wish I could invent one half as good. And that reminds me, Don; can you – er – do you think you'll be able to put a real woman into the next story?"

For some few minutes after the barbarian had ducked and disappeared a stiff little silence fell upon the two he had left behind. In writing about it Prime would have called it an interregnum of readjustment. He had gone to a window to stare aimlessly down into the busy street, and Lucetta was sitting with her chin in her cupped palms and her eyes fixed upon the rather garish pattern of the paper on the opposite wall. After a time Prime pulled himself together and went back to her.

"It is all changed, isn't it?" he said, in a rather flat voice. "Everything is changed. You are no longer a teacher, working for your living. You are an heiress, with a snug little fortune in your own right."

She looked up at him with the bright little smile which had been brought over intact from the days of the banished conventions.

"Whatever you say I am, you are," she retorted cheerfully. "Only I can't quite believe it yet – about the money, you know."

"You'd better," he returned gloomily. "Besides, it is just what you said you wanted – neither too little nor too much: one hundred thousand at a good, safe six per cent will give you an income of six thousand a year. You can travel on that for the remainder of your natural life."

"Easily," she rejoined. "And you can write the leisurely book and marry the girl. Perhaps you will be doing both while I am getting ready to go on my travels. You won't insist upon going back to Ohio with me now, will you? You – you ought to go straight to the girl, don't you think?"

"You are forgetting that I said she was an imaginary girl," he parried.

"You said so at first; but afterward you admitted that she wasn't. Also, you promised me you would show me her picture after we should get out of the woods."

"I have never had her picture," he denied. "I said I would show you what she looks like. Come to the window where the light is better."

She went with him half-mechanically. Between the two windows there was an old-fashioned pier-glass set in the wall. Before she realized what he was doing he had led her before the mirror.

"There she is, Lucetta," he said softly; "the only girl there is – or ever will be."

She started back with a little cry, putting out her hands as if to push him away.

"No, Donald – a thousand times no!" she flashed out. "Do you think I don't know that this is only another way of telling me how sorry you are for me? You know well enough what people will say when they hear how we have been together for a whole month, alone; and in your splendid chivalry you would – "

He did not let her finish. The hotel parlor was supposed to be a public room, but he ignored that and took her in his arms.

"From the first day, Lucetta, dear – from the very first day!" he argued passionately. "And it grew and grew with your absolute, your simply angelic trust in me until I was half-mad with the desire to tell you. But I couldn't tell you then; I couldn't even let you suspect and still be what you were believing me to be. Don't you think you could learn, in time, you know, to – to – "

Her face was hidden, but she made her refusal quite positive.

"No, Donald, I can never learn it – again. Because, you see, in spite of the other girl I was believing in – that you made me believe in – I – Oh, it was wicked, wicked! – but I couldn't help it! And all the time I was sc-scared perfectly frantic for fear you would find it out!"

"You were, were you?" he laughed happily. "Perhaps I did find it out – just a little…"

It was something like an hour later, and an overruling Providence had graciously preserved the privacy of the public parlor for them during the entire length of the precious interval, when Prime looked at his watch and said: "Heavens, Lucetta! it's nearly noon! Let's go quickly and beard the Shellaby in his den before he goes to luncheon. The fairy fortune may escape us yet if we don't hurry up and nab it."

She had risen with him, and her eyes were shining when she lifted her face and let him see them.

"As if the money, or anything else in this world, could make any difference to either of us now, Donald, dear!" she protested, with a fine scorn of such inconsequent things as fairy fortunes.

And Prime, seeing the unashamed love in the shining eyes, joyously agreed with her.

The End