"And now," said the aunt, "since you have dined, and have something to brace you up, I will 'tell my experience;'" and forthwith she related to the astonished Louise the adventure of the morning. The good lady had but accomplished her exciting account, when the valiant captors of the Apache drove up.
Miss Paulina, with the concentrated importance of her entire "Chapter," met and opened the door to her hero.
"Well?" asked she of the crestfallen athlete.
"No: ill!" replied he; "the Apache never reached Las Cruces. He managed to unbind himself, and slipped from our hands by the way. The clothes-line has come back safe; but the savage is, long ere this, well on his road to the Mescalero Reservation."
"Well," said Miss Paulina, judicially, "I can't say that I'm sorry. The creature had a rough time bumping about that low, dark cellar; and your blow on his head was a tough one. And when one considers the slip-shodness of things at Las Cruces, and the possible insecurity of their jail, _we_, on the whole, are the safer for his escape; and _he_ will, of course, feel more at home now in the Reservation, and will probably remain there for a while, after the fright we gave him."
Thus reassured, the Harvard man accepted Miss Hemmenshaw's invitation to stay to supper. And presently the convalescing invalid came down to express her thanks for his devoir of the morning. Reclining on the parlor lounge, in a cream-white tea gown, she looked so lovely that a man might well have dared a whole tribe of savages in her defence. By and by they had a quiet game of chess. It goes without saying that the lady won. There _might_ be men hard-hearted enough to beat Louise Hemmenshaw at chess. The Harvard man was not _of_ them.
So slipped away this happy afternoon; and, at sunset Sholto appeared with the tea equipage, and the young people covertly made merry over a chafing-dish mess achieved by the Cooking School pupil; and under cover of rarebit, water-biscuit, and cups of Russian tea, the Harvard man made hay for himself in this bit of sunshine, and grew in favor with both aunt and niece.
With Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw, true to her aristocratic birth and breeding, pedigree far out-weighed filthy lucre. To be well born was, in her estimation, to be truly acceptable to gods and men.