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" 'Somebody come to see ME? she says, anxious-like. " 'No, says I, 'and I'm glad of it fer this one 'at's come wants to git married, and o' course I wouldn't harber in my house no young feller 'at was a-layin' round fer a chance to steal away the "Nest-egg," says I, laughin'.
She was in filmy white from slipper to throat, and over her slender shoulders there drifted a gossamer banner of scarf, fluttering in the soft trade-wind. Harber was very close to see this, and still she hadn't observed him. "Don't let me startle you, please!" he said, as he stepped from the shadow of the trumpet-flower bush that had hitherto concealed him.
"I don't know," she said doubtfully. "Maybe you can tell me. You see, I've promised some dances. What's the usage here? Dare I run away from them?" "Oh, it might prove a three-day scandal if you did," said Harber. "But I know a bench off to the right, where it isn't likely you'll be found by any questing partner, and you needn't confess to having had a companion. Will you come and talk to me?"
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot The power of suction to resist, And claret-bottles harber not Such dimples as would hold your fist, When publishers no longer steal, And pay for what they stole before, When the first locomotive's wheel Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore;
Harber might be rated at, perhaps, some forty thousand pounds, not counting his interest in the schooner. One of Janet Spencer's argosies, then, its cargo laden, is ready to set sail for the hills of home. In short, Harber is now in one of the island ports of call, waiting for the steamer from Fiji. In six weeks he will be in Tawnleytown if all goes well. It isn't, and yet it is, the same Harber.
"Ah," she said strangely, "I know! You can't fail I won't let you fail"! Harber caught her suddenly in his arms and kissed her as if it were to be his last token of her. "I'm going then!" he whispered. "I'm going!" "When?" "There's no time to be lost!" he said, thinking fast. "If I had known that you were willing, that you would wait if ... Janet, I'm going to-morrow!"
Everything goes to the girl. Nobody else. I know you're straight. Take 'em to her?" "Yes," said Harber. "Good," said Barton. "All right, then! Been expecting this. All ready for it. Name address papers all there. She'll have no trouble getting money. Thanks, Harber." And after a pause, he added: "Better take it now save trouble, you know."
Afterwards there were questions, and a report by Miss Harber, a middle-aged lady with glasses who was the secretary. Honora looked around her. The membership of the Society, judging by those present, was surely of a sufficiently heterogeneous character to satisfy even the catholic tastes of her hostess.
There was a sort of passionate fineness about her that caught and answered some instinct in Harber ... and I'm afraid they talked more warmly than the length of their acquaintance justified, that they made one another half-promises, not definite, perhaps, but implied; promises that.... "I must go in," she said at last, reluctantly. He knew that she must, and he made no attempt to gainsay her.
Her arms tightened about him convulsively. "Promise me promise me!" she demanded tensely, "that you'll never, never forget me that you'll come back to me!" Harber laughed in her face. "Janet," he said solemnly, "I'll never forget you. I'll come back to you. I'll come back 'though 'twere ten thousand mile!"
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