The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 40/212

"What is it?" he asked; and he spoke in a whisper he might have used at

the bedside of a dying friend. He would not have laughed if he had known

he did so. She twisted the spear of grass into a little ball and threw it

at a stone in the water before she answered.

"Do you know, Mr. Harkless, you and I haven't 'met,' have we? Didn't we

forget to be presented to each other?"

"I beg your pardon. Miss Sherwood. In the perturbation of comedy I

forgot."

"It was melodrama, wasn't it?" she said. He laughed, but she shook her

head.

"Comedy," he answered, "except your part of it, which you shouldn't have

done. It was not arranged in honor of 'visiting ladies.' But you mustn't

think me a comedian. Truly, I didn't plan it. My friend from Six-Cross-

Roads must be given the credit of devising the scene-though you divined

it!"

"It was a little too picturesque, I think. I know about Six-Cross-Roads.

Please tell me what you mean to do."

"Nothing. What should I?"

"You mean that you will keep on letting them shoot at you, until they--

until you--" She struck the bench angrily with her hand.

"There's no summer theatre in Six-Cross-Roads; there's not even a church.

Why shouldn't they?" he asked gravely. "During the long and tedious

evenings it cheers the poor Cross-Reader's soul to drop over here and take

a shot at me. It whiles away dull care for him, and he has the additional

exercise of running all the way home."

"Ah!" she cried indignantly, "they told me you always answered like this!"

"Well, you see the Cross-Roads efforts have proved so purely hygienic for

me. As a patriot I have sometimes felt extreme mortification that such bad

marksmanship should exist in the county, but I console myself with the

thought that their best shots are unhappily in the penitentiary."

"There are many left. Can't you understand that they will organize again

and come in a body, as they did before you broke them up? And then, if

they come on a night when they know you are wandering out of town----"

"You have not the advantage of an intimate study of the most exclusive

people of the Cross-Roads, Miss Sherwood. There are about twenty gentlemen

who remain in that neighborhood while their relatives sojourn under

discipline. If you had the entree over there, you would understand that

these twenty could not gather themselves into a company and march the

seven miles without physical debate in the ranks. They are not precisely

amiable people, even amongst themselves. They would quarrel and shoot

each other to pieces long before they got here."