Part 39 (1/2)

”Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know.”

Joan laughed and blushed.

At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a suit the color of her eyes.

”She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill,” whispered Hannah on ahead. ”And all, I think, to surprise you.”

Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of s.h.i.+ning tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him.

In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found her clinging to Hannah in a panic.

When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing.

”Good-bye, Hannah dear!” she called, her eyes wet and wistful.

”Good-bye, Hetty! And--and don't forget to write me _all_ the news!

And don't let Toby catch the birds!”

Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears.

Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her ap.r.o.n back there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he had endured with merely surface patience.

”Don't cry, Joan, please!” he begged, understanding how dear familiar things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate.

Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay, the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark, intent, he chose to marvel with her.

They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven, having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of express trains and Pullmans, they dined in the train itself. Joan watched the flying landscape, dotted with snow and vanis.h.i.+ng lights, smiled with the s.h.i.+ning wonder of it all in her eyes, and could not eat. Kenny tried scolding and found her sorry, but she could not eat.

By eleven, when the train thundered into the terminal at Thirty-third Street, New York was wrapped in a scudding whirl of white dotted dizzily with lights. Already to Kenny, buoyant, excited and inclined to stride around in purposeless circles, the lonely farm was very far away. He was back again in his own world with the roar of the city in his ears--and Joan beside him. Ah! there he knew was the reason for his gladness. Joan was beside him.

The taxi he commandeered threaded its way south through a maze of lights, hurrying crowds and noisy, weaving traffic to a tenement in Greenwich Village. Joan, searching for the unknown sparkle of that Bohemian world she had been unable to envisage, stared at the unromantic bas.e.m.e.nt doors ahead and clung to Kenny's hand.

”It's quite all right, mavourneen,” he a.s.sured her mischievously.

”Bohemia and poverty rub shoulders down here. It's picturesque. And my club is only five blocks east. Beyond this door there's a mysterious magic tunnel that runs straight through the house to Somebody's back-yard. And in the back-yard is a castle and in the castle studios and skylights, electricity and steam heat and wide, old-fas.h.i.+oned fireplaces. Once it was a tenement--just like this with fifty dirty people in it--but Ann with her magic wand has changed it all.”

The bas.e.m.e.nt door at which he had been ringing a prolonged Morse dot and dash announcement of ident.i.ty clicked back and revealed a dimly lighted tunnel. At the end a flight of steps led up into a courtyard.

Kenny closed the outer door and blocked out the roar of the city. New York receded, its hum very far away. Their heels clanked loudly in the quiet.

As they climbed the steps and came out in the courtyard, Ann's windows, trimly curtained, twinkled pleasantly through the snow ahead.

A girl stood waiting in the doorway.

”h.e.l.lo, Ann!” called Kenny joyously. ”Is it you?”

”h.e.l.lo, Kenny!” cried a pleasant contralto voice. ”Hurry up. It's snowing like fury.”

Kenny seized Joan's hand and raced her across the courtyard and up the steps. When she came to a halt, shy and breathless, she was standing by a crackling wood-fire in a room that seemed all coziness and color and soft light.

A tall girl with black hair, a clear skin and intelligent eyes was smiling at them both.