Margaret Cameron

“ Good for Howard! I'll tell Bobbie that. Bobbie was furious—indeed, we all but came to blows—because I simply would not have a carriage to-night. Having had one experience in driving from New York to Bay Ridge, I knew I'd have to start before dark, with my dinner in a basket and a map of Brooklyn in my hand, or else risk missing the ceremony, and I much preferred to come this way—especially as I expected to meet the Taylors here. By the way, Bobbie's sick to-night. That's the reason I'm alone. ”

“ It's Easter week, Ned, and the proper time for weddings. There's one on nearly every bush to-night."
"Hm! So I've learned."
"I dare say you might locate a few more in this neighborhood—if you'd ask," she soberly reflected, a laughing devil in her eye. "Or you might even discover a belated wedding guest whom you could follow to the door, and so save your pride."
"Only one wedding will ever interest me very much now," he said, "and that will be yours. Polly, who's 'Bobbie'?" ”

“ That's all I had to do with it."
"Well, Polly Lancaster?" said McEwen, in her ear.
"Oh," said she, calmly turning toward him, "are you quite sure of me this time? You must have asked somebody."
"I didn't," he said. "You always find out if you wait a little and use your gray matter."
"If you don't die first," added Miss Lancaster. "Was it a pretty wedding?"
"Hang the wedding!" ”

“ I think that would interest Polly."
"Do you? Why?"
"Oh—just because. Few people are so well remembered through time and absence." She gave him a glimpse of laughing eyes.
"All right; I'll write to her and tell her so. What's her address?" He felt for his note-book.
"I—I don't think I can give you her address—offhand, this way. I'll send it."
"Will you, please? Thanks." Then it occurred to him that, as had always been the case, he was allowing Polly Lancaster to obliterate Frances King in his consciousness, which was hardly civil, under the circumstances. ”

“ No, really," replying to a gesture, "I couldn't trust myself to talk about Bobbie. It would be all in superlatives."
McEwen was beginning to have an uncomfortable conviction that his companion was perfectly aware of his embarrassment, and that he was being skilfully baited, and he resolved that if this were true he would beat her at her own game, discover her identity by hook or by crook, and never admit that he had been puzzled. But to accomplish this he must walk warily. ”

“ Mr. Denslow, whose house it was, arrived duly, and to him McEwen presented his card, his explanation, and his apologies, after which he hurried up-stairs. At the door of the ladies' cloak-room he was met by a smiling maid, who asked:
"Arre you Mr. McEw'n?"
"I am, yes. Is there a lady—"
"No, sor; she's gon'."
"Gone!"
"Yis, sor. But she lift this fer ye, son She said ye'd be racin' up here directly 'twas over,"
McEwen opened the note, merely a half-sheet of paper, folded, and read:
"Dear Ned,—I've gone to Howard's wedding. The man at the door will tell you the way—if you'll ask him." ”

“ Twice again he cautiously felt his way toward girls whom he and Forbes had known, and each time, just as she seemed within grasping distance, his companion swung away from him, and out of the haze surrounding her came that tantalizing, familiar call from the past, whether accent or inflection or smile he could not yet determine. He was desperately casting about for memory of another girl who could possibly have grown into this woman, rejecting this one as too literal and that one as too insipid, when the lady asked, somewhat uneasily:
"Aren't we going a long way? ”

“ Home I have none, except in the broad sense. Perhaps one has to live some time in foreign countries to realize that 'home,' in the last analysis, really means almost anywhere within the boundaries of one's own country. ”

“ That's the train Howard told me to take from this platform. It's all right."
"Brooklyn Bridge always was a mystic maze to mc," she said, preceding him into the car. "I have never crossed it without asking directions of every uniform in sight. Men never do that, do they? But then," slyly, "there are so many things we women don't know, that it doesn't mortify us particularly to acknowledge our ignorance of one more." At this McEwen turned a penetrating glance upon her, but she smiled back at him with such frank amusement that he decided it must have been a random shot. ”

“ To be sure, they haven't made much outward and visible impression upon you, but people say I'm changed. You don't find me so?" She looked at him with a doubtful half-smile, and he felt that perhaps he had entangled himself in this web quite needlessly. Apparently she had not expected him to recognize her. However, nothing remained to him now but to persevere in the course he had chosen, so he stoutly declared:
"Not a bit. You look just as you always did. ”

“ Do you know where we should get off?"
"We go to Sixty-fifth Street, the end of the road," he told her. "It will be a case of 'all out' there, so we can't miss it. Then we take a trolley-car for a few blocks, and walk a block. Don't worry. I'll get you there all right." ”