Kipley, tidying up the room with an accentuation of her usual briskness, gave him as indulgent a look as the formation of her rigid cast of countenance would permit.
“Wearin’ out your watch case won’t hurry up that train none,” she observed, as she straightened a china cat on the mantel into an expectant attitude.
It had been her gift the previous Christmas to John Carrington, and her admiration of it extended to the hope that it would pleasingly impress the returning traveler.
“Miss Elenore was fondest of animals, though,” she murmured, absently.
John Carrington’s eyes twinkled appreciatively. He did not share Mrs. Kipley’s admiration for her feline gift.
“Ned will appreciate that cat, though, Mrs. Kipley,” he said, genially. “You know he’s been studying art;” but with the word a shadow came over his face.
“It’s hard on the lad, bringing him back,” he said. “Yellow Dog will look pretty crude to him, I expect.”
He moved his head restlessly, and the leg in its swinging splint became more exasperatingly painful.
Of course it would be only natural for Ned to have grown away from home ties. It was an unspoken thought against which he had braced himself for all these ten days. If the boy came back half-heartedly, contemptuous of the place, indifferent to the mine, alienated from his father – that was the touch of the thumbscrew.
And yet, he told himself wearily, six years was a long time. The boy was talented, cultured, used to all the refinements of an older civilization. What wonder if – And if he, through love for his son, and carrying out his mother’s wishes for his future, had been responsible for the separation which might mean all this?
Ah, well, he was not the first father, nor the last, to think out these same things, and try to see them dispassionately.
“He was real spry about starting,” said Mrs. Kipley.
John Carrington’s face relaxed.
“Caught the first boat,” he said. Then “Is his room ready and comfortable?” he demanded, as he had demanded many times.
“I wouldn’t worry about that room none, if I was you,” said Mrs. Kipley, serenely.
“Did you remember about the cigars and a decanter of whisky?” he asked.
Mrs. Kipley looked at him in a patient exasperation.
“They’s two kinds of cigars, every brand of cigarettes Kipley could lay hands on in Yellow Dog, the biggest decanter full of whisky, the motto ‘Love One Another,’ that my Sunday-school class worked for me last winter; red-white-and-blue soap in the soap dish, and two pincushions with a French motto worked on each of ’em. Hemmy did ’em in black and white pins. She thought’t would make it seem more like Paris to him. One says ‘Vive Napoleon,’ and the other says ‘Veuve Cliquot.’ Kind of twins, you see.”
John Carrington’s mouth twitched. Then he frowned slightly. For would the boy understand? If he were not amused – if he were merely contemptuous!
“Hemmy’s picking some flowers for the house now,” Mrs. Kipley went on, serenely. “And Kipley’s took a saddle horse besides the road wagon, so’s if Mr. Ned wanted to ride over, he could.”
The case of John Carrington’s watch came open once more. If the train was on time, and Ned did choose the saddle horse, another ten minutes – But would he? The lad was a bit of a dandy. Carrington had smiled indulgently over some of his tailor’s bills. Probably you couldn’t coax him on a horse, even in Yellow Dog, unless he was arrayed in all the proper paraphernalia.
But what was that clatter of horse’s hoofs – fast and furious – faster and more furious than any Yellow Dog had heard since the day three weeks ago when the Carrington team, terrorized by a small boy’s premature bunch of firecrackers, had run away, and John Carrington, thrown from the wreckage of his light buggy, had been brought home with a badly fractured leg?
Mrs. Kipley looked out of the window.
“Merciful sakes!” she ejaculated, startled.
Not an accident to Ned, John Carrington prayed, with stiff, dry lips and apprehensive eyes.
“Of all things!” Mrs. Kipley murmured; and her tone indicated that she was now past surprise, and merely numbered with the numb.
Some one was running up the veranda steps; the door was flung open, and a tall, dark, slender boy in a marvelous suit of dull gray velveteens stood on the threshold.
A long, crimson-lined cape was flung over his arm. He tossed it from him. And “Dad!” he cried, exultantly, and was across the room, with his arms around his father’s neck, and had kissed him on both cheeks.
“French fashion, dad!” he laughed, flushing suddenly.
“Now we’ll do it the Anglo-Saxon way;” and he caught both his father’s hands in his own and wrung them heartily. “It’s great to be home again,” he said, buoyantly.
And the joyful light in his eyes was unmistakably genuine.
John Carrington’s face softened amazingly. Happiness such as he had not known for six years gripped him. The warm ardor of his son’s embrace, the touch of the soft, boyish lips, unnerved him, but he liked it astonishingly. It was so naïf, so unspoiled, so reassuring against that dread of alienation he had endured, that he felt submerged in the warm, comfortable certitude of his son’s affection. He gripped the lad’s hands strongly, and surveyed him with a proud, fatherly interest.
The blue eyes that looked frankly into his own were like the lad’s mother’s, like Althea’s; the face that smiled gayly at him was alight with youthful energy, and the mouth, though the lips were a trifle full, had firm and resolute lines.
It was no dawdling dreamer that he saw, but an action-lover.
He nodded satisfiedly.
“You’ll do, lad,” he said, briefly.
Then he smiled as he caught sight of Mrs. Kipley, standing with the rigidity of an automaton, dust cloth in hand.
“You remember Mrs. Kipley,” he said, significantly. The boy wheeled instantly.
“Don’t I!” he said, laughingly, and something in his advance galvanized Mrs. Kipley into life again.
“None of your French fashions with me,” she said, severely, extending her right hand to him, less in greeting than as a rampart.
He swept a wonderful bow over it. Bent to it as a courtier might have done, and kissed its wrinkled, work-hardened back lightly. Then he straightened up to look her full in the eyes, and laughed his bubbling laugh once more.
“Do you still make those wonderful twisted doughnuts, Mrs. Kipley?” he asked, gayly. “I’ve bragged about them in Paris till they’re famous.”
Mrs. Kipley was scrutinizing the back of her hand minutely, to see if it was still intact. Finding it apparently uninjured, she drew breath and looked the surprising apparition in the face. Her own relaxed to his handsome, dashing youth and to his praise.
“I guess
