Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/33

Rh and of the surrounding country, which he and Gerald explored together. He liked to think that ancestors of his own had been inheritors of these green lanes, and pleasant mellow stretches. Then, too, after the first few days, he could not help seeing that they really began to like him, which of course was reassuring, and tapped his own warm friendliness, which was always ready enough to be released. And besides, he got by accident what he took to be a hint as to the trouble. He was passing the half-open door of Lady Sherwood’s morning-room, when he heard Sir Charles’s voice break out, “Good God, Elizabeth, I don’t see how you stand it! When I see him so straight and fine-looking, and so untouched, beside our poor lad, and think—and think—”

Skipworth hurried out of earshot, but now he understood that look of aversion in the old man’s eyes which had so startled him at first. Of course, the poor old boy might easily hate the sight of him beside Gerald. With Gerald himself he really got along famously. He was a most delightful companion, full of anecdotes and history of the countryside, every foot of which he had apparently explored in the old days with Chev and the younger brother, Curtin. Yet even with Gerald, Cary sometimes felt that aloofness and reserve, and that older protective air that they all showed him. Take, for instance, that afternoon when they were lolling together on the grass in the park. The Virginian, running on in his usual eager manner, had plunged without thinking into an account of a particularly daring bit of flying on Chev’s part, when suddenly he realized that Gerald had rolled over on the grass and buried his face in his arms, and interrupted himself awkwardly. “But, of course,” he said, “he must have written home about it himself.”

“No, or if he did, I didn’t hear of it. Go on,” Gerald said in a muffled voice.

A great rush of compassion and remorse overwhelmed the Virginian, and he burst out penitently, “What a brute I am! I’m always forgetting and running on about flying, when I know it must hurt like the very devil!”