"What mischief are you in now?" I demanded angrily. "I thought I warned you, Gillespie; I thought I even appealed to your chivalry."
"My dear fellow, everything has changed. If a nun in distress appeals to me for help, I am Johnny-on-the-spot for Mother Church."
"That was not the Sister, it was Miss Holbrook. I saw her distinctly; I heard--"
"By Jove, this is gallant of you, Donovan! You are a marvelous fellow!"
"I have a right to ask--I demand to know what it was you gave the girl."
"Matinée tickets--the American girl without matinée tickets is a lonely pleiad bumping through the void."
"You are a contemptible ass. Your conduct is scoundrelly. If you want to see Miss Holbrook, why don't you go to the house and call on her like a gentleman? And as for her--"
"She is not answerable to you. She's the finest girl in the world, and if you intimate--"
"I intimate nothing. But what I saw and heard interested me a good deal, Gillespie."
"What you heard by stealth, creeping about here at night, prying into other people's affairs!"
"I have pledged myself to care for Miss Pat."
"It's noble of you, Donovan!" and he stepped away from me, grinning. "Miss Pat suggests nothing to me but 'button, button, who's got the button?' She's a bloomin' aristocrat, while I'm the wealth-cursed child of democracy."
It was plain that he saw nothing out of the way in thus conniving with Helen Holbrook against her aunt, and that he had not been struck by the enormity of the girl's conduct in taking money from him. He drew in his canoe as I debated with myself what to do with him.
"You've got to leave the lake," I said. "You've got to go."
He sprang into the canoe, driving it far out of my reach; his paddle splashed, and he was gone.
"Is that you, sir?" called Ijima behind me. "I thought I heard some one talking."
As a bell in a chime Sets its twin-note a-ringing, As one poet's rhyme Wakes another to singing, So once she has smiled All your thoughts are beguiled, And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing.
Each grace is a jewel Would ransom the town; Her speech has no cruel, Her praise is renown; 'Tis in her as though Beauty, Resigning to Duty The scepter, had still kept the purple and crown. --_Robert Underwood Johnson_.