Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/41

Rh The doctor chuckled vastly and stumped up the steps and into the dining room.

"Will you look at this lot of hoary old highbinders!" he cried.

The little room was filled with men. The selection of the company was Sing Toy's, not the Colonel's. Therefore no one was there who had not fine raiment, respectability, an appreciable bank account and years of discretion. Your Chinaman is conventional. Hilarity there was, but not noisy hilarity. Only thin board and batten intervened between them and wives. On the table were bourbon and rye whisky.

Outside the guests had nearly all arrived. Mrs. Peyton had disappeared in the house in pursuit of some final directions or arrangements. The Colonel for the moment stood alone, looking pleasedly around the groups on his green lawn and under his green trees. His eyes lighted with especial pleasure at the sight of two latecomers, and he deserted his post to meet them as they came down the drive.

"Brainerd, my boy, I am so glad to see you here. The day would not have been complete without you. It was good of you to come after all; and to bring my Puss. How is she?"

"Hate a crowd," returned Brainerd. "Don't know why I came. Not going to stay long."

He was a long, loose-jointed man, slow moving, cool in manner, with cool gray eyes a little tired and a little sad, a ragged, chewed-looking moustache, and with long, lean brown hands. A round spot of colour burned high on his cheekbones. His expression was sardonic and his manner bristly in a slow, wearied fashion. He was dressed in loose rough tweeds that looked old but of respectable past.

The individual referred to by the Colonel as Puss, however, seemed informed with all the vitality missed in the other. She was at first glance a very large child of twelve or thirteen but a second inspection left the observer a little puzzled. Her dress was short and her long slim legs had few curves of maturity: she wore the frock of a child with a bright coloured Roman sash; her tumbled hair was tied with a ribbon. But her poise was that almost of a grown woman, and she carried with her a calm