"Alicia," said I, "ever since I discovered that there's no mistake about that lawyer's letter--that Hynds House is unaccountably, but undoubtedly mine and I've got to live in it if I want to keep it--it has been borne in upon me that you are just about the worst file-clerk on earth. You're a navy-blue failure in a business office. Business isn't your _motif_. Now, will you resign the job you fill execrably, and accept one you can fill beyond all praise--come South with me, share half-and-half whatever comes, and help make that old house a happy home for us both?"
"Don't joke." Her lips went white. "Please, please, Sophy dear, don't joke like that! I--well, I just couldn't bear it."
"I never joke," I said indignantly. "You little goose, did you imagine for one minute that I contemplated leaving you here by yourself, any more than I contemplate going down there by myself, if I can help it? Stop to think for a moment, Alicia. You have been like a little sister to me, ever since you were born. And--I'm alone, except for you--and not in my first youth--and not beautiful--and not gifted."
At that she hurled herself off my bed and cried upon my shoulder, with her slim arms around my neck. Those young arms were beginning to make me feel wistful. If things had been different--if I had been lovely like the Scarletts, instead of looking like the Smiths--there might have been--
Well, I don't look like the Scarletts; so there wasn't. The best I could do was to drop a kiss on Alicia's forehead, where the bright young hair begins to break into curls.
And that is how, neither of us having the faintest notion of what was in store for us, Alicia Gaines and I turned our backs upon New York and set our faces toward Hynds House.
We had wired Judge Gatchell when to expect us, but the venerable negro hackman who was on the lookout for us explained that the judge had a "misery in the laigs" which confined him to his room, and that he advised us to go to the hotel for a while.
We couldn't, for wasn't our own house waiting for us? A minute later we had bundled into the ancient hack and were bumping and splashing through unpaved streets, getting wet, gray glimpses of old houses in old gardens, and every now and then a pink crape-myrtle blushing in the pouring rain. Hyndsville was, it seemed, one of those sprawling, easy-going old Carolina towns that liked plenty of elbow-room and wasn't particular about architectural order. Hynds House itself was on the extreme edge of things.