Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/428

392 screwed it into his left eye, and examined his daughter.

"It's true, and I thought I'd better tell you," she said, breathlessly.

"Yes," he agreed, "it's as well to let me know. Ah—er—how did it occur?"

"Why, I don't know, father. I was feeding Omar bonbons and looking over the map of South Florida, and thinking about nothing in particular, when Jim came in. He said he was going to Palm Beach, and I said, 'How jolly!' and he sat down and picked up Omar, and—I don't know how it was, but I began to think him very attractive, and the first thing I knew I—it—happened!"

"Oh! So that's the way it happened?"

"I think it was, father."

"No doubt you'll outgrow it."

"Do you think so, father?"

"I haven't a doubt of it, little daughter."

"I have."

Mr. Delancy dropped his monocle and looked at the fire. The fire was all right.

"Do you—do you suppose that Jim is—does—thinks—knows—" she faltered.

"I never speculate on what Jim is, does, thinks, or knows," said her father, thoughtfully, stirring the embers and spoiling a perfectly good fire. When he looked up again she had gone.

"One theory smashed!" observed Mr. Delancy. "I'll try another, with separation as the main ingredient."

He sat down before the fire and lighted a fresh cigar, which wasn't good for him.

"Must avoid making a martyr of Jim or there will be trouble," he mused. "There remains another way—make a martyr of myself."

He sat swinging his monocle around his forefinger, gazing vacantly at the pattern the shadows cast across the hearth.

"Avalon!" he said, abruptly. "Avalon! The 'back-to-nature' business, 'grass-cure' and all. It can't harm either Catharine or me, I fancy,—or any other pair of donkeys!"

"11.30

"—Everything is spoiled, after all! Father's failing health has suddenly become a serious matter, and we are going to try the 'nature cure,' or whatever they call it, at Avalon Island. I had no idea he was really ill. Evidently he is alarmed, for we have only been here six days, and in a few minutes we are to start for Avalon. Isn't it perfectly horrid? And to think that you are coming this evening and expecting to find us here!

"Father says you can't come to Avalon; that only invalids are received (I didn't know I was one, but it seems I'm to take the treatment too!), and he says that nobody is received for less than a month's treatment, so I suppose that bars you even if you were self-sacrificing enough to endure a 'nature cure' for the pleasure of spending two weeks with [me, crossed out] us.

"I'm actually on the verge of tears when I think of all we had planned to do together! And there's my maid at the door, knocking. Good-by. You will write, won't you?

"—Your father was right: they refuse to take me at Avalon. As soon as I found your note I telegraphed to Avalon for accommodations. It seems Avalon is an island, and they have to wait for the steamers to carry telegrams over from the mainland. So the reply has just reached me that they won't take me for less than a month; and my limit from business is two weeks or give up my position with your father.

"Yesterday I came out here to Holy Cross Spring to shoot ducks. I'd scarcely begun shooting, at dawn, when along came a couple of men through the fog, rowing like the mischief plump into my decoys, and I shouted out, 'What the deuce are you about?' and they begged my pardon, and said they had thought the point unoccupied, and that the fog was thicker than several things,—which was true.

"So I invited them into the blind to—oh, the usual ceremony—and they came, and they turned out to be Jack Selden—the chap I told you about who was so decent to me in Paris—and his guide.