The next morning Ardmore knocked at Griswold's door as early as he dared, and went in and talked to his friend in their old intimate fashion. The associate professor of admiralty was shaving himself with care.
"You won't have any hard feelings about that scarlet fever business, will you, Grissy? It was downright selfish of me to want to keep the thing to myself, but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and carry it through and then show you how well I pulled it off."
"Don't ever refer to it again, if you love me," spluttered Griswold amiably, as he washed off the lather. "I, too, have ruled over a kingdom, and I have seen history in the making, _quorum pars magna fui_."
"But I say, Grissy, there is such a thing as fate and destiny and all that after all; don't you believe it?"
"Don't I believe it! I know it!" thundered Griswold, reaching for a towel. He lifted a white rose from a glass of water where it had spent the night and regarded it tenderly. "The right rose under the right star, and the thing's done; the rose, the star and the girl,--the combination simply can't be beat, Ardy."
Ardmore seized and wrung his friend's hand, for the twentieth time; but he was preoccupied, and Griswold, fastening his collar at the mirror, hummed softly the couplet:
"Grissy!" shouted Ardmore, "she never did it!"
"Oh--bless my soul, what was I saying! Why, of course she wasn't the one! Not Miss Dangerfield--never!"
"Well, you like her, don't you?" demanded Ardmore petulantly.
"Of course I like her, you idiot! She's wonderful. She's--"
He frowned upon the scarf he had chosen with much care, snapped it to shake the wrinkles out, humming softly, while Ardmore glared at him.
"She's wise," Griswold resumed, "with the wisdom of laughter--accept that, with my compliments. It's not often I do so well before breakfast. And now if you're to be congratulated before I go back to the groves of Academe pray bestir yourself. At this very moment I have an engagement to walk with a lady before breakfast--thanks, yes, that's my coat. Good-by!"
Breakfast was a lingering affair at Ardsley that morning. The two governors and the national guard officers who had spent the night in the house were not in the slightest hurry to break up the party, for such a company, they all knew, could hardly be assembled again. The governors were a trifle nervous as to the attitude of the press, in spite of Collins' efforts to dictate what history should say of the affair on the Raccoon; but before they left the table the Raleigh morning papers were brought in and it was clear that the newspaper men were keeping their contract.
