“There, admire yourself!” exclaimed Polly, thrusting a hand mirror into her sister’s grasp. “I don’t believe you ever look at your profile or the back of your head! You are so busy enacting the part of your own mother-in-law that I only wonder you don’t insist upon wearing widow’s caps. Oh! I beg your pardon – I forgot that could only be done by forfeiting Simeon! Where do you keep your shirt-waists? This one isn’t half bad; let me help you into it.”
She chose the least antiquated blouse in Deena’s wardrobe, and pinned it into place with the precision of experience; next she hooked the new skirt round the waist and held the little coat for her sister to put on.
“Where is your hat?” she demanded.
Deena fetched a plain black straw, rusty from the sun and dust of two summers, and shook her head as she tried to pinch the bows into shape.
“I shall be like a peacock turned topsy-turvy,” she laughed – “ashamed of my head instead of my feet!”
Polly took it out of her hand.
“Of course, you cannot wear that with your hair done in the new way – besides, it spoils your whole costume. I saw quite a decent hat in a shop window in the next street. I’ll get it for you!” and she was out of the room like a flash of lightning.
Deena ran to the window and caught her mercurial sister issuing from the door below.
“Stop, Polly!” she called. “I cannot afford a new hat, and I cannot accept anything more – please come back.”
Polly made a little grimace and walked steadily down the path; at the gate she condescended to remark:
“Have all your last words said to your cook by the time I get back, for Ben will not want to wait.”
In ten minutes she returned with a smart little hat, and in answer to Deena’s remonstrances, she tossed the condemned one into the wood fire that was burning on the dining-room hearth; at the same instant the automobile arrived at the gate. Deena, nearly in tears, pinned the unwelcome purchase on her head, and followed her sister to the street. The hat set lightly enough on her curls, but it weighed heavily on her conscience.
After the manner of the amateur chauffeur, Ben was doubled up under the front wheels of his motor, offering a stirrup-cup of machine oil to the god of the car, but Stephen French stood at the gate, his grave face lighted up with the fun of a stolen holiday.
“You see a truant professor!” he exclaimed. “Simeon doesn’t approve; we couldn’t induce him to come. He said a day off meant a night on for him – he is so wise, is Simeon – but I positively had to do something in the way of sport; I am in a reckless mood to-day.”
“I’ll do the wrecking for you, if that’s all you want,” came from under the auto’s wheels.
Stephen conveyed his thanks.
“I dare say you will, with no effort on your part,” he said, opening the back door of the great, puffing monster. “Get in here, Mrs. Ponsonby. Ben likes his wife beside him in front, he says, because she understands how to run the machine when he blows his nose, but I think it is a clear case of belated honeymoon.”
Here Ben scrambled to his feet, his broad, good-humored face crimson from groveling.
“Deena, good-day to you,” he cried. “How perfectly stunning you look! I declare I thought Polly was the pick of the Sheltons, but, by Jove! you are running her hard. What have you been doing to yourself?”
Stephen French was delighted – he laughed his slow, reluctant laugh, and then he called to Ben:
“Turn round and see whether you dropped them in the road.”
“Dropped what?” asked Ben, his hand on the lever, making a black semicircle.
“Your manners,” said Stephen, and chuckled again.
“You go to thunder,” roared Ben, shooting ahead. “A poor, wretched bachelor like you instructing a married man how to treat his sister-in-law, and just because once upon a time I sat in your lecture room and let you bore me by the hour about protoplasms! Do you suppose I should dare admit to Polly that Deena is as handsome as she is? Why, man alive, a Russian warship off Port Arthur would be a place of safety compared to this automobile.”
Deena, laughing though embarrassed, was trying to cover the countenance that provoked the discussion with a veil, for her hat strained at its pins and threatened to blow back to Harmouth before the knotty point was settled as to who should pay for it.
They were flying between fields strewn with Michaelmas daisies and wooded banks gay with the first kiss of frost, and gradually Deena forgot everything but the exhilaration of rushing through the air, and their attitude of holiday-making. She was thoroughly at her ease with French; he was Simeon’s one intimate in the corps of professors, the only creature who was ever welcome at the Ponsonby table, the one discerning soul who found something to admire in Simeon’s harsh dealings with himself and the world. Their line of study naturally drew them together, but Stephen admired the man as well as the scholar; the purity of his scientific ambition, the patience with which he bore his poverty – for poverty seemed a serious thing to French, who was a man of independent fortune, and whose connection with the university was a matter of predilection only. With Ponsonby it was bread and butter, and yet he had ventured to marry with nothing but his splendid brain between his wife and absolute want. French stole a glance at Deena, who was looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her, and wondered whether she found her lot satisfactory; whether there were not times when Simeon’s absence was precious to her. Without disloyalty to his friend, he hoped so, for he had something to tell her before the day was over that might lead to a temporary separation, and he hated to think of those lovely eyes swimming in tears – all women were not Penelopes.
“She can’t care in that way,” he reflected. “Ponsonby is tremendous in his own line, of course, but no woman could love him.”
Perhaps he was mistaken – perhaps Mrs. Ponsonby loved her husband with all the fervor of passion, but she conveyed an impression of emancipation to-day, and of powers of enjoyment hitherto suppressed, that made Stephen doubt. She was like a child bubbling over with happiness, gay as a lark, as unlike her usual self in behavior as her modish appearance was unlike that of Simeon Ponsonby’s self-denying wife.
“Of course she won’t mind; why should she?” he decided, and yet determined to put off making his announcement till after lunch.
At Wolfshead they stopped at the little inn, found the one o’clock dinner smoking on the table, and sat down with the rest of the hungry company – employees of a branch railroad that had its terminus there; drummers in flashy shop-made clothes, and temporary residents in the little town. This jaunt had given them an appetite, and roast beef and apple tart disappeared at a rate that should have doubled their bill.
After lunch they strolled down to the beach, Deena starting ahead with French, while Polly went with Ben to get cushions from the automobile. The present generation seems to consider comfort the first aim of existence, though the trouble they take to insure it more than counterbalances the results in old-fashioned judgment.
Stephen stopped to light his cigar behind the shelter of a tree, and then came running after Deena, who was walking slowly toward the vast plain of blue water stretching to the east. She turned at the sound of his footsteps and waited for him, wondering what his classes would think if they could see their professor bounding along with his hat under his arm. There was something peculiarly charming in the lighter side of Stephen’s nature; a simplicity and boyishness, which was the secret of his popularity far more than his weightier qualities. The women of Harmouth called him handsome, but he had small claims to beauty. A well set-up figure rather above the medium height, dark hair grizzled at the temples, eyes that seemed to laugh because of a slight contraction of the muscles at the outer corners, and a nose decidedly too high and bony. The expression of the mouth was shrewd, almost