The Key Note. Burnham Clara Louise

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СКАЧАТЬ his steps thither as the crowds poured off the train. All Boston seemed to have decided to come to Maine for the summer.

      Soon he saw her – he felt at once it was she – looking about undecidedly as she came. She was a short, plump girl of seventeen or eighteen, at present bent a little sideways from the weight of the suitcase she was carrying. Philip strode forward and seized the suitcase with one hand while he lifted his hat with the other.

      "Here, you let that alone!" said the girl decidedly, her round eyes snapping.

      "Isn't this Miss Trueman?"

      "Why, yes, it is," she returned, but she still looked suspicious and clung to her suitcase. Nobody need think she wasn't up to all the tricks. "Did my aunt send you to meet me?"

      "She certainly did."

      "Then you know her name. What's her name?" The upward look was so childlike in its shrewdness that it stirred the spirit of mischief.

      "Why – let me see, Lucilla, isn't it?"

      "You give me that suitcase this minute." The girl pulled on the handle with a muscular little hand.

      "Why, Veronica," Philip's smile became a laugh. "Santa Veronica, what a very unsaintlike voice and expression you're using."

      She laughed, too, then, and relinquished her burden. "You do know me. Who are you?"

      "Miss Burridge's man-of-all-work. Name, Philip Barrison."

      "So she gave you such a job as this. How did you pick me out?"

      "That wild look around for the transfer office." They were now moving toward it.

      "It wasn't wild. I didn't need you at all. Aunt Priscilla needn't have bothered. I have a tongue in my head and money in my pocket, and Puppa said that's all anybody needs if she has any brains."

      "But I have to do what my employer orders, you see," replied Philip.

      Veronica looked him over. Fresh from the barber and in correct summer garb, he was an extremely good-looking object.

      "Oh, yes, it isn't your fault," she returned generously, "but is it a swell place Aunt Priscilla's got?" She looked him over again while he stopped at the transfer window and checked her trunk.

      "The Wayside Inn," replied Philip with dignity.

      "Well, I've come to help her," said the girl. "But I've never done any serving. I haven't any uniform or anything like that."

      "It isn't necessary. Look at me. I don't look like a footman – or a butler – or anything like that, do I?"

      "No," said Veronica, her round eyes very serious. "You look like a – like a common – gentleman."

      "Thank you, Miss Trueman. I'll try to deserve your praise."

      Philip took her and her suitcase across town in a cab, and aboard the little steamer, and found the best spot he could for them to sit.

      "Puppa says this bay is noted for its picturesqueness," said Veronica, when they were settled.

      "Quite right," returned Philip, putting in her lap one of the magazines he had bought on the wharf.

      "No, thank you," she returned. "I shan't read. I'm going to look. Puppa'll expect me to tell him all about it. He was delighted at my having a chance to come to the seashore. He thought it would do my health so much good."

      Philip regarded her round cheeks, round eyes, and round, rosy mouth.

      "Your health? You look to me as though if you felt any better you'd have to call the doctor."

      "Yes, I'm not really ailing – but I freckle. Isn't it a shame?" She put one hand to her nose which had an upward tilt.

      "Oh, that's all right," laughed Philip. "Call 'em beauty spots."

      She sat, pensively continuing to cover her nose with her silk-gloved hand.

      "Perhaps you're hungry. I ought to have bought you some chocolates," said Philip. "Perhaps there's time still." He looked at his watch.

      Veronica smiled. It was a pleasant operation to view and disclosed a dimple. "Did Aunt Priscilla give you money to buy me candy? Don't bother. I have some gum. Would you like some?" As she spoke, she opened her handbag.

      Philip bent a dreadful frown upon her. "Do you chew gum?" he asked severely.

      "Yes, sometimes, of course. Everybody does."

      "Then you deserve to freckle. You deserve all the awful things that can befall a girl."

      "Well, for a hired man," said Veronica, her hand pausing in its exploration, "you have the most nerve of any one I ever saw."

      She seemed quite heated by this condemnation, and instead of the gum drew out a vanity box and, looking in the mirror, powdered her nose deliberately.

      Philip opened his magazine. The whistle blew and the boat began to back out of the slip. Veronica regarded her companion from time to time out of the tail of her eye, and at a moment when his manner indicated absorption in what he was reading, she replaced the vanity case in her bag and when her hand reappeared, it conveyed something to her mouth.

      "I wouldn't," said Philip, without looking up. She colored hotly.

      "Nobody asked you to," she retorted.

      Then all was silence while the steamer, getting its direction, began moving toward the islands that dotted the bay.

      The girl suddenly started.

      "If there aren't those people!" she ejaculated.

      "What people?" asked Philip.

      "They came on in the same car with me from Boston. See that dark man over there with a young boy? I couldn't help noticing them on the train. You see how stupid the boy looks. He seemed so helpless, and the man just ignored him when he asked questions, and treated him so mean. I just hate that man."

      Philip regarded the couple. They presented a contrast. The man was heavily built with a sallow, dark face, his restless eyes and body continually moving with what seemed an habitual impatience. The boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, had a vacant look, his lips were parted, and his position, slumped down in a camp-chair, indicated a total lack of interest in his surroundings.

      "Tell me about Aunt Priscilla," said Veronica suddenly. "I haven't seen her since I was twelve years old. My mother died then. She was Aunt Priscilla's sister and Aunt Pris was willing to take me if Pa wanted her to, but he didn't and we moved away, and I've never seen her since. Of course, she writes sometimes and so do I. Has she many boarders?"

      "Only one so far, but then she's a goddess. You've read your mythology, haven't you? This is the goddess Diana."

      "Say, you're awfully fresh, do you know that?" remarked Veronica. "You treat me all the time as if I was a baby. I've graduated from high school and very likely I know just as much as you do."

      "I shouldn't doubt that," returned Philip. "On the level, you'll see when you get to the Inn that I'm telling the truth. Diana is passing for the present under the title of Miss Wilbur."

      "One boarder!" exclaimed СКАЧАТЬ