Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/230

220 she disappeared through one of the French windows. "I should like to very much."

He saw, as he started toward the house again, the solitary and stately peacock, perched motionless on the moldering upper bar of a grape trellis. He couldn't help wondering why it had no mate. He couldn't help wondering how it endured that decrepid grandeur of burnished crest and plume unshared by another. And he couldn't help wondering, as he meekly followed the gaunt and solemn woman in rusty black across the parched lawn-slopes, just what was ahead of him.