Old Crow

								

Raven took this with composure, as signifying the length as well as the
depth of his adoptive relation toward her, but Nan met it with
resentment. She left him and turned upon Dick.
"Now what," she said, "do you mean by that?"
"Why, Nan," said the poor youth, keeping a stiff upper lip, because he
recognized the signs of an approaching squabble, "I've told him. I'll
tell him again. Jack, we're engaged."
"We're nothing of the sort," said Nan, either in pure surprise or an
excellent simulation of it.
Dick met this doggedly.
"We are, too," he said. "You promised me."
"Maybe I did," Nan yielded. "But it was that awful night when you were
going out. We won't talk about that. I'd have promised you anything
then. I'd have promised anybody, just as I'd have given 'em coffee or a
smoke. But when we got back and you expected to begin from there, didn't
I tell you to shut up? I've told you to ever since. And I believe," she
added, with an acumen that struck him in the center, "you're only
dragging it out now to catch me--before him."
"I did shut up," said Dick, holding himself straight and using his mouth
tautly, "because your aunt was sick and then because she was worse. But
you needn't think I've shut up for good. Besides, it's only Jack I told.
He's nobody."
"No," said Raven mildly, "I'm nobody. Only I wish you wouldn't come here
to fight. Why can't you get it over on the steps, and then act like
Christians after you come in?"
Nan laughed. She was instantly and most obligingly sweet, as if wholly
bent on pleasing him. But Richard glowered. It was quite like her, he
thought, to sprinkle herself over with that May morning look of hers
when she knew she had the horrible advantage not only of being adorable
in herself, but a female to boot, within all the sanctities that still
do hedge the sex, however it behaves.
"You see," said Nan maternally, "in France we were living at high
pressure. Now everything's different. We mustn't be silly. Run away,
Dick, just as I told you, and leave me to talk to Rookie."
This was her name for Raven, saved over from childish days.
"All right then," said Dick. "But I sha'n't wait for you. I shall go to
Cambridge."
It was such an anticlimax of a threat, delivered in so determined a
voice, that he expected them to laugh, in a silly way they had of seeing
the merest foolishness always from the same angle. But, as he turned to
go, it was with the chill certainty that they had forgotten all about
him. Nan had settled herself by the fire and his uncle was bringing her
a footstool, an elderly attention, Dick floutingly thought, very well
suited to Aunt Anne, but pure silliness for a girl who flung herself
about all over the place. At any rate, he wasn't wanted, and he did go
to Cambridge and hunted up some of the fellows likely to talk sense; but
no sooner had he settled within their circle of geniality than he found
himself glooming over Nan and tempted to go back and break in on that