I smiled to find myself adjusting my scarf and
straightening my collar as I beheld my neighbors for
the first time.
As I sat thus on the wall I heard the sound of angry
voices back of me on the Glenarm side, and a crash of
underbrush marked a flight and pursuit. I crouched
down on the wall and waited. In a moment a man
plunged through the wood and stumbled over a low-hanging
vine and fell, not ten yards from where I lay.
To my great surprise it was Morgan, my acquaintance
of the morning. He rose, cursed his ill luck and, hugging
the wall close, ran toward the lake. Instantly the
pursuer broke into view. It was Bates, evidently much
excited and with an ugly cut across his forehead. He
carried a heavy club, and, after listening for a moment
for sounds of the enemy, he hurried after the caretaker.
It was not my row, though I must say it quickened
my curiosity. I straightened myself out, threw my legs
over the school side of the wall and lighted a cigar,
feeling cheered by the opportunity the stone barricade
offered for observing the world.
As I looked off toward the little church I found two
other actors appearing on the scene. A girl stood in a
little opening of the wood, talking to a man. Her hands
were thrust into the pockets of her covert coat; she wore
a red tam-o'-shanter, that made a bright bit of color in
the wood. They were not more than twenty feet away,
but a wild growth of young maples lay between us,
screening the wall. Their profiles were toward me, and
the tones of the girl's voice reached me clearly, as she
addressed her companion. He wore a clergyman's high
waistcoat, and I assumed that he was the chaplain whom
Bates had mentioned. I am not by nature an eavesdropper,
but the girl was clearly making a plea of some
kind, and the chaplain's stalwart figure awoke in me an
antagonism that held me to the wall.
"If he comes here I shall go away, so you may as well
understand it and tell him. I shan't see him under any
circumstances, and I'm not going to Florida or California
or anywhere else in a private car, no matter who
chaperones it."
"Certainly not, unless you want to-certainly not,"
said the chaplain. "You understand that I'm only giving
you his message. He thought it best-"
"Not to write to me or to Sister Theresa!" interrupted
the girl contemptuously. "What a clever man
he is!"
"And how unclever I am!" said the clergyman, laughing.
"Well, I thank you for giving me the opportunity
to present his message."
She smiled, nodded and turned swiftly toward the
school. The chaplain looked after her for a few moments,
then walked away soberly toward the lake. He
was a young fellow, clean-shaven and dark, and with a
pair of shoulders that gave me a twinge of envy. I could
not guess how great a factor that vigorous figure was to
be in my own affairs. As I swung down from the wall
and walked toward Glenarm House, my thoughts were
not with the athletic chaplain, but with the girl, whose
youth was, I reflected, marked by her short skirt, the unconcern
with which her hands were thrust into the
pockets of her coat, and the irresponsible tilt of the tam-o'-shanter.
There is something jaunty, a suggestion of
spirit and independence in a tam-o'-shanter, particularly
a red one. If the red tam-o'-shanter expressed, so to
speak, the key-note of St. Agatha's, the proximity of the
school was not so bad a thing after all.