"Superb, superb!" he rejoined with emphasis. "I would put that dog against the whole world of dogs." He found a sort of comfort in praising his rival and his rival's dog. It was a species of self-torture that deadened for the time the pain of his defeat.
Miss Beresford, who was so situated that she could not avoid hearing this conversation, glanced at her brother with a repressed resentment in her eyes. She felt that he was not doing himself justice; that he was, in fact, failing to assert himself as a true Beresford, a name that had never before tamely accepted and acknowledged defeat.
"Give me your score, Mr. Beresford, please," said Miss Crabb, coming forward with her book and pencil.
"Thirty-three," he promptly answered. His sister's face flushed with anger. She turned to him and said under her breath:
"She shall not do that--she shall not publish it!"
"Pshaw!" he almost whispered, "don't allow yourself to show any feeling. Don't make a scene. Can't you feel the delicacy of my situation? Be quiet, there's a good girl."
Miss Crabb had hurried away to where Reynolds was seated. She was intent upon getting the precise status of things.
"Oh, you are way ahead," she exclaimed, in her clear high tones. Then she seized the wreath of bay leaves twined by Mrs. Ransom and forthwith laid it upon his head.
"To the victor belongs the crown!" she added, laughing merrily. "See, Mrs. Ransom, I've put your handiwork to noble use!"
She was so innocently playful in her manner, that no one could deem her act a rude one. It seemed almost fitting, at least permissible, in view of the freedom of this little out-door convocation. But Reynolds lightly doffed the circlet.
"I am too earnest a democrat to wear a crown of any sort with due dignity," he laughingly said; "besides," he added, "my dog is the hero, not I."
"Truth, every word of it!" cried Moreton, balancing a glass of wine on the tips of his fingers. "Your tastes are most commendably plebeian and proper. If Miss Crabb will but let me describe your mountain hermitage she can fully appreciate your sturdy democracy.
"Don't do that, Moreton, if you love me; my cabin is my castle and my sanctuary," Reynolds answered in mock earnestness.
It was an unlucky turn in the thoughtless conversation, for it sent a current of uneasiness through the mind of Reynolds that made it very hard for him to keep up his spirits to the level of the occasion. The mere mention of those six years of mountain seclusion was enough to awaken a whole world of distressing memories. Things known only to himself came up to darken his mind. Miss Crabb's restless energy and journalistic enterprise would not, however, allow him long to grope among his carefully hidden secrets.