accept an offer I’ve had for it or hold it till I get back from wherever I’m going. I also came to look at the family graves that belong to my care and see if they are getting the attention I had ordered. It wasn’t a very cheerful errand. Having concluded it, there was time to be passed till I could meet my man, so if I can be of any further service, it will relieve a tiresome monotony, and you will be doing me a favor. Where were you going when I met you on the mountain and your car balked?"
"Oh!" said Laurel with a startled look. "I was going in a great hurry to an appointment, but I guess it’s way too late for that now." She lifted her hand and glanced anxiously at her wristwatch. "Well, maybe not. Perhaps I had better go and see if anybody is there yet. I wouldn’t like them to think I hadn’t kept my word. If you would be so good as to take me to the high school. I was to have met the board there an hour ago. They are probably gone now. But at least I could say I came as soon as I was able."
"Sure!" said Phil. "Have you there in two minutes. But surely you’re not still in high school?" He gave her a mischievous grin.
She smiled appreciatively.
"No," she said, "nothing so good as that. I’m applying for a position as a substitute, in place of a teacher who is very sick. You see, that fabulous fortune you thought I was supposed to inherit vanished when my father died, and the ‘stone mansion’ was sold, so I am in search of a position to earn my living." She said it cheerfully, but there was a hint of sadness in her voice that made him look at her with a softened glance.
"Oh, I didn’t know. Well, suppose we see what we can find out. There goes the wrecking truck. Now, your car ought to be brought back soon. I told him I’d be back within an hour to find out about it. Let’s go!" His old car whizzed out to the highway, rushing along like one who knew the way, and Laurel sat still, wondering about it all. She ought to be thanking him again, but somehow it didn’t seem possible to get her gratitude across to him. He just didn’t take it. He was doing things as a matter of course, as if that was his business in life, just the way she remembered he used to clean the windshield of her father’s car and check the water and oil, sort of impersonally. It seemed to express a fineness of breeding that one would not look for in a man who was doing a menial task. It was as if to him no task was menial.
As she rode along by his side now, she had no sense that he was socially her inferior. In fact, if a Sheridan had ever had an overweening sense of class distinction, it was thoroughly purged out of Laurel now by the fire of sorrow.
As she considered the memory of the grim little farmhouse on the side of Crimson Mountain, sitting amid all the sadness of the past, it took on a kind of sacred dignity, like one who might have worn princely robes at some time long gone by but now sat in dull mourning clothes.
CHAPTER III
They arrived presently in front of the high school.
"They’ll be meeting in the principal’s office, I suppose, if they are still here," he said. "Would you like me to go in and find out?"
"Oh no. I’d better run in myself, and then if they are still there, I can save them a little time."
"Please don’t say that." He smiled. "My time is yours until I’ve seen you in possession of your car again. I’m really not in a hurry."
She looked into his frank eyes and quietly accepted his planning. "That’s very good of you," she said. "I thank you. I’ll be as quick as possible."
"All right. I’ll wait a few minutes now, in case they have left. And if the hour is up before you come, I’ll run across to the drugstore and telephone the garage."
She smiled and hurried up the walk into the school.
A moment later, he saw her shadow as she crossed the front window in the principal’s office and took a seat where he could see her.
He sat there in the car going over the strange events of the afternoon and trying to work them out clearly and define this odd feeling of exultation that seemed to dominate him, unlike any emotional stirring that had ever come to him before.
"Silly!" he said to himself. "She’s not in your class! Do all you can for her and then get on your way! Your paths will not cross again."
But still he sat and went over what had happened, remembering her tones of voice, the way she had lifted her eyes to look at him, the exquisite turn of cheek and lip and chin, the very likeness of her childish self when she used to come with the chauffeur and her doll. How strange life was! Why had she crossed his path just now when he was likely going away from this part of the world entirely? He would probably never see her again in this life after to-day. And she was the first young woman who had ever won his thoughts away from the path he had set himself to walk.
He had thought he was immune to the wiles of girls. He had kept his own way through college, had declined the few invitations that came to him, had been too busy to step into the world. Furthermore, he had lived too close to nature and the great outdoors to admire the artificiality of most worldly girls. He had merely glanced past them and escaped from all but passing contact.
But this girl was different. Or else perhaps he hadn’t looked at the others closely enough to see any beauty in them. He had never been quite so near to any girl before, since his mother died. He thrilled at the thought of Laurel in his arms. There hadn’t been time to think much about it while it was happening, but to hold that light, helpless figure had been like holding something very precious, preserving it from danger; and the soft pressure of her head against his shoulder, the touch of her hair against his face lingered in his thoughts as a costly perfume might that had touched his garments. Just to draw his breath and feel the sweetness over again gave him a new and exquisite pleasure that he had never before dreamed there might be in the world.
Of course she was not for him. She belonged to a world into which he could not enter. A world of fashion and culture in which he was utterly unfit to live. A costly world where only the wealthy could enter with ease. Of course she might say her father’s fortune was gone, but she had been brought up under its privileges. She had never had to struggle for a bare existence and would not understand what his struggling life had been. She was not for him!
And yet he would always be glad that he had been privileged to hold her close for those moments of danger. He would never forget the thrill of his very soul as he felt that soft hair on his cheek. He considered it most reverently and marveled at the power that memory had over his spirit. Or was it just over his senses?
Oh, this was madness. He must snap out of it quickly!
He passed a quick hand across his forehead impatiently, firmly over the cheek where her soft cloud of hair seemed still to linger, shook his head as if to shake the dreams out of his mind, and looked at his watch. There was plenty of time to go over to that drugstore across the road and make three or four phone calls that would practically cover the matter of the errands he had not been able to work in that afternoon. That would leave him free to do anything for the girl that she needed, without her having to know that she was hindering him. Indeed, those errands were not important. He had only planned them because he had this time off, and he wanted to kid himself into feeling that he had some home interests. Though of course it wouldn’t matter to a soul in Carrollton whether he called them up or not. But just to get his thoughts back into sensible, everyday, normal channels, he swung himself out of the car, snapped its door shut behind him, and strode across to the drugstore, at once immersing himself
