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She told herself that she was not responsive to men . . . not even to Percy Bresnahan. She told herself that a woman of thirty who heeded a boy of twenty-five was ridiculous. And on Friday, when she had convinced herself that the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks's shop, bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband's trousers. Hicks was in the back room.
And in an instant it flashed on Lansing that this lady had been the person chosen to lay the Prince's offer at Miss Hicks's feet. The discovery piqued him; and instead of making straight for his own room he went up to Mrs. Hicks's drawing-room. The room was empty, but traces of elaborate tea pervaded it, and an immense bouquet of stiff roses lay on the centre table.
Hicks's, but taking his meals with Ruth, so that he could be within call of MacFarlane when needed some of this same sunshine, I say, may have been responsible for the temporary drying up of Ruth's tears and the establishing of various ways of communication between two hearts that had for some days been floundering in the deeps.
Staniford seemed to forbid the interference of the crew, and alternately soothed and baffled his tedious adversary, who could still be heard accusing him of slinging criticism, and challenging him to combat. He leaned with his back to the rail, and now looked quietly into Hicks's crazy face, when the latter paused in front of him, and now looked down with a worried, wearied air.
Were not Ruth and her father picnicking in a hired villa, with half their household goods in a box-car at Morfordsburg? and was not Jack still living in his two rooms at Mrs. Hicks's? The only change suggested by the lovers was in the date of the wedding, Miss Felicia having insisted that it should not take place until November, "FOUR WHOLE WEEKS AWAY." But the old lady would not budge.
I should not have known him to be a white man, for he had a native attire; and was as black, from exposure to the sun, as any of the Arabs. I gave him directions, and did not ask him any questions; but it was said, afterwards, that he was one of Hicks's officers. Later, I heard that he went down in the steamer with Colonel Stewart." "You did not hear his name?" Gregory asked, anxiously.
At other moments they were seldom seen in the glacial atmosphere of courts, preferring to royal palaces those of the other, and more modern type, in one of which the Hickses were now lodged. The encounter with these ambulant Highnesses had been fatal Lansing now perceived it to Mrs. Hicks's principles.
Still they were not the only Pakehas in the land. In quite a different direction, in the harbour which Captain Cook had dubbed Hicks's Bay, lived two inoffensive Whites who had not even heard of "Lizard's" death. What of that? They were Whites, and therefore of the same tribe as the Pakehas concerned! So the village in which they lived was stormed, one White killed at once, the other captured.
She was a proud and patriotic citizen, all evening. She examined the city hall, next morning. She had remembered it only as a bleak inconspicuousness. She found it a liver-colored frame coop half a block from Main Street. The front was an unrelieved wall of clapboards and dirty windows. It had an unobstructed view of a vacant lot and Nat Hicks's tailor shop.
Glad of any laughter, Carol joined the frolic, and surprised them by crying, "Dave, I do think you're the dearest thing since you got your hair cut!" That was an excellent sally. Everybody applauded. Kennicott looked proud. She decided that sometime she really must go out of her way to pass Hicks's shop and see this freak.
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