The Place of Honeymoons - Page 66/123

"You're on!" he cried. Here was a lark. He turned the dog and the

purchases over to the proprietor, who promised that they should arrive

instantly at the villa.

Then the two men sought the quay to engage a boat. They walked shoulder to

shoulder, flat-backed, with supple swinging limbs, tanned faces and clear

animated eyes. Perhaps Harrigan was ten or fifteen pounds heavier, but the

difference would have been noticeable only upon the scales.

* * * * *

"Padre, my shoe pinches," said Nora with a pucker between her eyes.

"My child," replied the padre, "never carry your vanity into a shoemaker's

shop. The happiest man is he who walks in loose shoes."

"If they are his own, and not inherited," quickly.

The padre laughed quietly. He was very fond of this new-found daughter of

his. Her spontaneity, her blooming beauty, her careless observation of

convention, her independence, had captivated him. Sometimes he believed

that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself

mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of

his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. She possessed the sins

of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a Judith. She was the

most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered.

The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she

was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and

formalities. Some day she would revert to the original type, and then he

would be glad to renew the acquaintance. In rather a shamefaced way (a

sensation he could not quite analyze) he loved the father. The pugilist

will always embarrass the scholar and excite a negligible envy; for

physical perfection is the most envied of all nature's gifts. The padre

was short, thickset, and inclined toward stoutness in the region of the

middle button of his cassock. But he was active enough for all purposes.

"I have had many wicked thoughts lately," resumed Nora, turning her gaze

away from the tennis players. She and the padre were sitting on the lower

steps of the veranda. The others were loitering by the nets.

"The old plaint disturbs you?"

"Yes."

"Can you not cast it out wholly?"

"Hate has many tentacles."

"What produces that condition of mind?" meditatively. "Is it because we

have wronged somebody?"

"Or because somebody has wronged us?"

"Or misjudged us, by us have been misjudged?" softly.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Nora, springing up.