"Just riding through the mountains on his vacation."
"What does your mother think of him?"
"She likes him very much."
"Well, I won't make any objection, then."
Viola stared--then blushed furiously. "What do you mean?"
"Why, didn't you bring him up here to see how I liked him?"
She pounded him with her little brown fist while tears of mortification filled her eyes. "Now, you stop that! You're teasing me. Why, I've only known him three days."
He laughed silently, shaking his head. "Well, these things move quickly sometimes--and how was I to know but you'd known him in the East--you seemed so chummy-like--"
"You've spoiled everything," she wailed, deeply disturbed and painfully self-conscious. "You're mean to me."
He became instantly contrite. "There, now, don't you mind my joking. Of course I was fooling. It's all safe between us, anyway."
But the mischief was done. She forgave him, but never again would she be the same to him, to her mother, or to the imperturbable young man smoking his pipe beneath the firs. He was young--that was only too plain to her now; not so young as Clinton, but not the middle-aged person she had been fancying him to be.
As they were about to start on their homeward trail, Serviss sought opportunity to say: "Mr. Lambert, I met this man Clarke at your house last night, and I want to say that I don't think his influence on your family is particularly wholesome. He's morbid and given to fads."
Lambert replied: "I know what you mean, professor, and I believe you're right. I don't believe in him myself, and I don't take any stock in any of his notions, but my wife does. She thinks he's of the Covenant, somehow. I wish you'd talk with her and try to have her let up on Viola. I don't think they're doin' right by her. If she was my own girl I'd stop it--I would so." Then he added, in a curious tone, this vague defence: "As for Viola, she would be all right if they would leave her alone. She's gifted in a way I don't understand; but if she isn't twisted by Clarke's foolishness she's going to make some man a good wife. She's a good girl, and, as I say, if she was my own child I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count--but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted with work now."