Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/295

Rh "The post-office," Farringdon explained, "is at the other end of the street. Service is beginning, I dare say. Shall we wait until it is over, or post the letter now?"

"No; after service," she agreed, and inopportunely the letter slipped from her hand and fell, with the address down, on the grass. She stooped hurriedly, but he was before her, and picking it up, returned it scrupulously, with the right side down, as it had fallen. She slipped it quickly, almost guiltily, into her prayer-book.

The church was small, the congregation smaller, and the clergyman a little weary of the empty benches. But the two faces in the Manstey pew were so bright, so vivid with the vigor of youth, that his jaded mind freshened to meet the interest of new hearers.

But neither Edith nor Farringdon listened attentively to the sermon, for their minds were busy with other things. He was thinking of the girl beside him, whose hymnal he was sharing, and whose voice, very sweet and clear, if of no great compass, blended with his own fine tenor. Her thoughts could not stray far from the letter and—from other things!

The benediction sent them from the cool dimness into the sunlight, and she looked down the street toward the post- office.

"It's quite at the other end of the street," Farringdon said, opening his umbrella and tentatively discouraging the effort. "By the way, your letter won't leave, I remember, until the seven-o'clock train. The Brathwaites are leaving by that train; you can send your letter down then."

She found herself accepting this proposition, for the blaze of the sun on the length of the dusty street was deterring. They walked back almost in silence the way they had come; but with his hand on Mrs. Manstey's gate and the house less than two hundred yards away, Farringdon paused.

"You have been writing to ' Chris- topher, he said, quietly. "I don't want you to send the letter." He was quite pale, but she did not notice it or the tensity of his face; his audacity made her for the moment dumb.

"You don't want me to—!" She positively gasped. "I never heard of such—"

"Impertinence," he supplied, gravely, "It looks that way, I know, but it isn't. I can't stand on conventions—I've too much at stake. I don't mean to lose you—as you lost your letter!"

She thought she was furious. "You knew it was my letter!" she accused.

They had paused just within the gate, in the shade of a great mulberry-tree that stood sentinel.

"Forgive me," he said. "Not at first but I guessed it. My name," he added, "is Christopher, too."

He took a crumpled sheet, that had been smoothed and folded carefully, from his pocket. "Do you remember what you wrote?" he asked, in a low voice.

Her face was crimson.

"It blew to me. Such things don't happen every day." He had taken off his hat, and, bareheaded, he bent and looked questioningly into her eyes. "My name is Christopher," he repeated. "I can't—it isn't possible—that I can let another Christopher have that letter."

Her eyes fell before his.

"I"—he paused—"I play tennis very well, you said. I play to win! What I give to the interest of a game—"

"Is nothing to what you give to the interests of Christopher!"

As she mockingly spoke, Farringdon caught a glimpse of one or two people strolling down from the house. "That letter," he hastily said,—"you can't take it from me! Do you remember that wind? It blew you to me! Dearest, darling, don't be angry. You can't take yourself away."

A little smile touched her lips—mutinous, but tremulous, too, and something in her look made his heart beat fast.

"I didn't—The last letter wasn't like the first," she said, incoherently, but it seemed he understood.

"I knew you were you as soon as I saw you," he said, idiotically.

"And," she murmured, as they walked perforce to meet the people coming toward them down the drive, "after all, you were Christopher!"