"Papa," said Florence, next morning, as they two sat alone at breakfast, her mother having reported a headache and failed to appear, "let's go somewhere, away from folks, for a week or so."
"Why this sudden change of front?" her father queried. "Not being of the enemy I'm entitled to the plan of campaign, you know."
Florence observed him steadily, and the father could not but notice how much more mature she seemed than the prairie girl of a few months ago.
"There is no change of front or plan of campaign as far as I know," she replied. "I simply want to get away a bit, that's all." She returned to her neglected breakfast. "There's such a thing as mental dyspepsia, you know, and I feel a twinge of it now and then. I think this new life is being fed to me in doses too large for my digestion."
Mr. Baker eventually acquiesced, as anyone who knew him could have foretold he would do. His wife, also, when the plan was broached to her, hesitatingly agreed, but at the last moment balked and declined to go; so they left without her.
The small town to which they went had ample grass and trees, and a small lake convenient. A farmer's family reluctantly consented to board and lodge them; also to give them the use of a bony horse and a disreputable one-seated wagon. After their arrival they promptly proceeded to segregate themselves from their fellow-boarders. The first day they fished a little, talked, read, slept, meditated, and smoked--that is, Mr. Baker did, enough for two; and Florence assisted by rolling cigarettes when the bowl of the meerschaum grew uncomfortably hot. The next day they repeated the programme, and also the next, and the next.
"I think I could stay here always," said Mr. Baker.
"I rather like it myself," Florence admitted.
Nevertheless, they returned promptly on schedule-time. Mrs. Baker was awaiting them, her stiff manner indicating that she had not been doing much else while they were away. Without finesse, one member of the two delinquents was informed that a certain man of considerable social prominence, Clarence Sidwell by name, had called daily, and, Mrs. Baker fancied, with increasing dissatisfaction at their absence. Florence found in her mail a short note, which after some consideration she handed without comment to her father.
He read--and read again. "When was this mailed?" he asked.
"Over a week ago," answered Florence. "It has been here for several days."
It was therefore no surprise to the Englishman when that very evening, as he sat on the front veranda, his heels on the railing, watching the passage of equipages swift and slow, he saw a tall young man, at whom passers-by stared more than was polite, coming leisurely up the sidewalk, inspecting the numbers on the houses. As he came closer, Mr. Baker took in the details of the long free stride, of the broad chest, the square uplifted chin, with something akin to admiration. Vitality and power were in every motion of the supple body; health--a life free as the air and sunshine--was written in the brown of the hands, the tan of the face. Even his clothes, though not the conventional costume of city streets, seemed a part of their wearer, and had a freedom all their own. The broad-brimmed felt hat was obviously for comfort and protection, not for show. The light-brown flannel shirt was the color of the sinewy throat. The trousers, of darker wool, rolled up at the bottom, exposed the high-heeled riding-boots. About the whole man--for he was very near now--there was that immaculate cleanliness which the world prizes more than godliness.