Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/209

 cleanness, that wholesomeness that had so appealed to Marvin—that somehow Madison found he was taking a delight in responding to, and, because it afforded him whimsical pleasure, chose to pretend that he was quite a genuine exponent of it himself.

He reached the end of the wagon track, and paused involuntarily on the edge of the Patriarch's lawn as he came out from the trees. Like low, lulling music came the distant, mellowed noise of waters, the breaking surf. And the cottage was a bower of green now, clothed in ivy and vine—upon the trellises the early roses were budding—fragrance of growing things blended with the salt, invigorating breeze from the ocean. And upon the lawn, flanked with its sturdy maples, all in leaf, that toned the sunshine in soft-falling shadows, stood, or sat, or reclined on cots, the supplicants who still tarried though the Patriarch had gone. And now one came reverently out of the cottage door from that room that was never closed; now another went in—and still another.

Madison smiled suddenly, broadly, with immense satisfaction and contentment—and then his eyes fixed quite as suddenly on the single-seated buggy that was coming toward him on the driveway across the lawn. That was Mamie Rodgers driving—and that was Helena beside her.

Madison recalled instantly the object of his visit—and instantly he whistled a rather surprised little whistle under his breath. How alluringly Helena's brown hair coiled in wavy wealth upon