Rose MacLeod

								

happiness awaited her, but as if she could almost put her eager finger
on it. And there was Electra, not so many rods away, drawbridge up and
portcullis down, inquiring, "Is she a grisette?" Afterwards it seemed to
Peter as if his sympathy for the distressed lady went to his head a
little, for he lifted her hand and kissed it. But he did not speak, save
to himself, going down the stairs:--
"It's a damned shame!"
When he went out on the veranda, grannie made a smiling comment:--
"What a pretty child! Tom Fulton did well. He was a bad boy, wasn't he,
Peter?"
"Yes, grannie," said Peter, from the veranda rail where he sat picking
rose leaves, "Tom was about the limit."
"Well! well! poor girl. Maybe it's as well he went while she knew only
the best of him."
Peter was not sure she did know only the best, but he inquired,--
"Shall I have time to run down and see Osmond before dinner?"
"You'd better. He was here waiting when the carriage came. When he saw
her, he slipped away."
"Rose?"
"Rose? Is that her name? Now isn't that pretty! Maybe you'll find him
before you get to the plantation. I shouldn't wonder if he'd think it
over and come back."
Peter did meet him in the lane lined with locusts on each side, walking
doggedly back to the house. Some things the younger brother had
forgotten about him, the beauty of the dark face that looked as if it
had been cut out of rock, the extraordinary signs of strength, in spite
of that which might have appealed to pity. Osmond had grown rugged with
every year. His long arms, ending in the brown, supple hands, looked as
if they were compact of sinewy potencies. And on his shoulders, heavier
than Christian's burden, was that pack he must carry to the end of life.
He saw his brother coming, and stopped, and Peter, as if to save him the
sense of being looked at from afar, even by his own kin, ran to meet
him. They did not take hands, but the older brother gave him a slap on
the shoulder.
"Well, boy!" said he.
There were tears in Peter's eyes.
"Look-a-here," he cried, "I'm sniveling. Coming up to the house?"
"No. I've been there once this morning. You come back with me."
They turned about, and walked on through the lane. It led to the
plantation; this was the nursery, here were the forcing beds, and all
the beneficent growing things that had saved Osmond's life while he
tended them, and also earned his bread for him, and Peter's bread and
paints.
"Well, boy," said Osmond, "you've brought a girl with you. That was why
I cut. Who is she?"
"Tom Fulton's wife--his widow."
Osmond knew Electra very well. Some phases of her were apparent to him
in his secluded life that her lover, under the charm of an epistolary
devotion, had never seen.
"Does Electra know it?" he asked.
"I told her." Peter's tone added further, "Shut up, now!" and Osmond
tacitly agreed.
"Coming down to dinner?" he asked safely.