Page:A fool in spots (IA foolinspots00riveiala).pdf/88

 "And the scar I noticed upon the back of her right hand. How did that happen?"

"I will tell you," answered the Major, suggesting—"Maybe you'd like a smoke; suppose we go on the veranda?"

The guest assented, and taking his hat from a table, followed the other.

Scent of the lilacs fanned through the ivy, and the sodden trees dropped rain on the drenched grass.

"I think," said the Major, as they turned at the end of the veranda to retrace it again: "as you seem greatly interested in my pretty governess, I will give you the history of what you call a scar—that is a fern-leaf—a birth-mark."

Frost puffed away in a negligent manner of easy interest, and said:

"I should like to hear it."

"It takes me back to distant, cruel days of war—her father, Darwin Bell, was my friend; we were comrades; he had been brought up on a big plantation, just this side of the mountainous region—it is sixty miles from here—to the northwest. That mountain and the valley on which he lived were favorite haunts of mine in those memorable early days of my life. I was three years Darwin's junior, and never had I realized his being ahead of me until, at twenty-one, he brought home a wife.