ONE afternoon, three days after this, Simon Walton drove down the street to Dearing’s, and, alighting at the front gate, he carefully haltered his horse to the hitching-post with a rope he always carried under the buggy-seat. Then he opened the gate and trudged¹ up the walk to the door.

Margaret saw him from the window of her room upstairs, and, thinking that he had called to see her uncle or her brother, she hurried down-stairs.

“Did you want to see my uncle?” she asked, sweetly.

“No, I didn’t, Miss Margaret.” Walton had taken off his broad-brimmed felt hat, and stood shifting it awkwardly from one hand to the other, a look at once grave and agitated² on his gaunt face.

“Well, my brother is at his office,” the girl threw tentatively into the pause that had ensued; “at least, he said he was going there when he left here about two o’clock.”

“I didn’t want to see him, either,” and the old man tried to smile, but the effort was a grim failure. “The truth is, Miss Margaret, if I may make so bold, I wanted to see you. There is a little matter I sort o’ thought you and me might talk over maybe to mutual³ gain and profit.”

“You want to see me, really?” Margaret started. “Well, won’t you come in?”

Walton glanced into the wide hall doubtfully and fanned himself with his hat. “I don’t know; it must be kind o’ stuffy⁴ inside on a sweltering day like this, ain’t it?” he said, awkwardly. “Ain’t there a place out under the trees somewhere where we could set a minute? I was here one day with the General, and round that way—” Walton nodded his shaggy head to the right and broke off helplessly.

“Oh yes, and there are some chairs there, too,” Margaret answered. She was now quite grave, and she led the way with a certain erectness⁵ of carriage and with an air of restraint that was visible even to the crude sensibilities of her caller.

The chairs under the trees were reached. Walton seized the most comfortable-looking one, and for no obvious reason settled it firmly on the sod. “Now,” he said, and with bended body he waited for her to take it. When she had complied, he took a seat himself, dropping his hat on the grass beside him, only to recover it without delay, that it might rest on his sharp, unsteady knee. He looked up at the unclouded sky, at the overhanging

分享到：