"'Tis he--yon varlet!" I heard a stern voice hiss at my ear. "Beshrew
me, but it shall go hard with him! I'm loading her up with marbles
now!" But I had no more than time to persuade my two lieutenants to
modify this purpose, and partially to disarm themselves, before the
two groups were mingling, with much chattering and laughing and gay
saluting.
Edouard, hat in hand, was on deck before our fenders touched the
wharf, laughing and grasping my hands and looking up at my flag.
"I knew you were coming," said he. "Fact is, all the country's been
looking for you. Davidson just got in a couple of hours ago--and you
know his lady is an old friend of Mrs. Manning's. And----"
He was shaking the hands of Mrs. Daniver and Helena almost before I
could present them. Auntie Lucinda bestowed upon him the gaze of a
solemn and somewhat tear-stained visage (though I saw distinct
approval on her face as she caught sight of the great mansion house
among the giant oaks, and witnessed the sophisticatedness of the group
on the landing, and the easy courtesy of Edouard himself).
"By Jove! old man!" the latter found time to say to me, "I
congratulate you--she's away beyond her pictures." He did not mean
Mrs. Daniver; and he never had seen Helena before. I could only press
his hand and attempt no comment as to the congratulations, for part of
that was a matter which yet rested in a sealed envelope in my pocket;
and at best it must be three or four days.... But then, with a great
flash of arrested intelligence, it was borne in upon me that perhaps,
after all, it was not so much a question of the tardy United States
mails! Because yon varlet, fat and saucy, and well content with life,
already, by some means and for some reason, had outrun the mails. He
was here, and we had met. It need not be four days before I could
learn my fate.... I reached into my pocket and looked at my sealed
orders. No matter what Davidson's letter held, here was Davidson
himself.
"Oh, I say, there, you Harry, confound you!" roared Davidson to me in
his great voice above the heads of everybody. "I say, what did I tell
you?"
Now I had not the slightest idea what Davidson had told me, nor what
he meant by waving a paper over his head. "They've signed Dingleheimer
for next year! Now what do you think of that? World's championship,
and good old Dingleheimer for next year--I guess that's pretty poor
for them little old Giants, what?" And he smiled like one devoid of
all care as well as of all reason.
I myself smiled just a moment later--after I had greeted the Manning
ladies, had seen Helena step up and kiss Sally Byington fervently,
directly on the cheek, whose too keen coloring I once had heard her
decry; had slapped Edouard joyously on the shoulders and pointed to my
pirate flag and gloomy black-visaged crew--I say I also smiled
suddenly when I felt a hand touch me on the shoulder.