It was the first time that Verrian had come down late, and it was his novel experience to find himself in charge of Mrs. Stager at breakfast, instead of the butler and the butler's man, who had hitherto served him at the earlier hour. There were others, somewhat remote from him, at table, who were ending when he was beginning, and when they had joked themselves out of the room and away from Mrs. Stager's ministrations he was left alone to her. He had instantly appreciated a quality of motherliness in her attitude towards him, and now he was sensible of a kindly intimacy to which he rather helplessly addressed himself.
"Well, Mrs. Stager, did you see a ghost on your way to bed?"
"I don't know as I really expected to," she said. "Won't you have a few more of the buckwheats?"
"Do you think I'd better? I believe I won't. They're very tempting.
Miss Shirley makes a very good ghost," he suggested.
Mrs. Stager would not at first commit herself further than to say in bringing him the butter, "She's just up from a long fit of sickness."
She impulsively added, "She ain't hardly strong enough to be doing what she is, I tell her."
"I understood she had been ill," Verrian said. "We drove over from the station together, the other day."
"Yes," Mrs. Stager admitted. "Kind of a nervous breakdown, I believe.
But she's got an awful spirit. Mrs. Westangle don't want her to do all she is doing."
Verrian looked at her in surprise. He had not expected that of the India-rubber nature he had attributed to Mrs. Westangle. In view of Mrs.
Stager's privity to the unimagined kindliness of his hostess, he relaxed himself in a further interest in Miss Shirley, as if it would now be safe. "She's done splendidly, so far," he said, meaning the girl.
"I'm glad Mrs. Westangle appreciates her work."
"I guess," Mrs. Stager said, "that if it hadn't been for you at the snow-fight-- She got back from getting ready for it, that morning, almost down sick, she was afraid so it was going to fail."
"I didn't do anything," Verrian said, putting the praise from him.
Mrs. Stager lowered her voice in an octave of deeper confidentiability.
"You got the note? I put it under, and I didn't know."
"Oh yes, I got it," Verrian said, sensible of a relief, which he would not assign to any definite reason, in knowing that Miss Shirley had not herself put it under his door. But he now had to take up another burden in the question whether Miss Shirley were of an origin so much above that of her confidant that she could have a patrician fearlessness in making use of her, or were so near Mrs. Stager's level of life that she would naturally turn to her for counsel and help. Miss Shirley had the accent, the manners, and the frank courage of a lady; but those things could be learned; they were got up for the stage every day.
Verrian was roused from the muse he found he had fallen into by hearing Mrs. Stager ask, "Won't you have some more coffee?"
"No, thank you," he said. And now he rose from the table, on which he dreamily dropped his napkin, and got his hat and coat and went out for a walk. He had not studied the art of fiction so long, in the many private failures that had preceded his one public success, without being made to observe that life sometimes dealt in the accidents and coincidences which his criticism condemned as too habitually the resource of the novelist.
Hitherto he had disdained them for this reason; but since his serial story was off his hands, and he was beginning to look about him for fresh material, he had doubted more than once whether his severity was not the effect of an unjustifiable prejudice.
It struck him now, in turning the corner of the woodlot above the meadow where the snow-battle had taken place, and suddenly finding himself face to face with Miss Shirley, that nature was in one of her uninventive moods and was helping herself out from the old stock-in-trade of fiction.
All the same, he felt a glow of pleasure, which was also a glow of pity; for while Miss Shirley looked, as always, interesting, she look tired, too, with a sort of desperate air which did not otherwise account for itself. She had given, at sight of him, a little start, and a little "Oh!" dropped from her lips, as if it had been jostled from them. She made haste to go on, with something like the voluntary hardiness of the courage that plucks itself from the primary emotion of fear, "You are going down to try the skating?"
"Do I look it, without skates?"
"You may be going to try the sliding," she returned. "I'm afraid there won't be much of either for long. This soft air is going to make havoc of my plans for to-morrow."
"That's too bad of it. Why not hope for a hard freeze to-night? You might as well. The weather has been known to change its mind. You might even change your plans."
"No, I can't do that. I can't think of anything else. It's to bridge over the day that's left before Seeing Ghosts. If it does freeze, you'll come to Mrs. Westangle's afternoon tea on the pond?"
"I certainly shall. How is it to be worked?"
"She's to have her table on a platform, with runners, in a bower of evergreen boughs, and be pushed about, and the people are to skate up for the tea. There are to be tea and chocolate, and two girls to pour, just as in real life. It isn't a very dazzling idea, but I thought it might do; and Mrs. Westangle is so good-natured. Now, if the thermometer will do its part!"
"I am sure it will," Verrian said, but a glance at the gray sky did not confirm him in his prophetic venture. The snow was sodden under foot; a breath from the south stirred the pines to an Aeolian response and moved the stiff, dry leaves of the scrub-oaks. A sapsucker was marking an accurate circle of dots round the throat of a tall young maple, and enjoying his work in a low, guttural soliloquy, seemingly, yet, dismayingly, suggestive of spring.
"It's lovely, anyway," she said, following his glance with an upward turn of her face.
