Ray floret

“ If he could succeed in winning Field's confidence it might well be that he could bring him to see that there were good and sufficient grounds for the post commander's action—that for Field's own good, in fact, it was a most desirable move. The soul of loyalty and square dealing himself, Ray had never for a moment dreamed that anything other than a foolish escapade had occurred—a ride by moonlight, perhaps, demanded of her devotee by a thoughtless, thoroughbred coquette, whose influence over the young fellow was beginning to mar his usefulness, if not indeed his future prospects. ”

“ She seemed so strongly attached to him already that it became quite natural to Ray to call her mother. “But she would listen to none of them.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” said Lady Maude, drawing a deep breath of relief. “Then her affections are still her own?”
“On that point I am not informed. Perhaps,” said Ray, glancing at Ranty with a wicked look in his dark eyes, “Mr. Lawless can throw a little light on the subject. He and Erminie are very confidential friends!”
Poor Ranty reddened to the very roots of his hair under the imputation, and the look that Lord and Lady De Courcy gave him. ”

“ Isn't that Red Fox?"
And now Ray was gazing straight at Field's half hidden face. Field, the soul of frankness hitherto, the lad who was never known to flinch from the eyes of any man, but to answer such challenge with his own,—brave, fearless, sometimes even defiant. Now he kept the big binocular fixed on the distant hostile array, but his face was white, his hand unsteady and his answer, when it came, was in a voice that Ray heard in mingled pain and wonderment. Could it be that the lad was unnerved by the sight? ”

“ Ray saw the value of the seed and of the reproductive organs in classification, and Tournefort, although he erred in classifying his “classes” by the coloured part of the flower or corolla, followed nature accurately in his description, and reasoned upon the facts he had discovered.
This botanist, who lived in the days of great luxury, and when war was almost constant, pursued his useful and simple career, and by his collections alone, assisted in laying the foundations of botany as a science. ”

“ Then Ray came from behind the plant and stood face to face with the Princess and Yan Lu.
“Won’t you please tell me your name?” asked Ray, and the little Princess replied:
“Why, my friend, I have told it to you twice. My name is Peek-a-Boo.”
“Are you carried in that chair all the time?” asked Ray, and Peek-a-Boo replied:
“Most of the time; you see my feet are so small that I cannot walk very well, they are smaller even than Yan Lu’s.”
“What a pity,” cried Ray; “I hope they will grow bigger.”
“O no, little boy; they are all bandaged up so that they cannot grow!”
37 “It must hurt,” replied Ray. ”

“ The carryall drove on, and she saw him returning and scanning the bushes.
She was caught, fairly and squarely. One instant she hesitated, then, blushing rose-red, emerged from the undergrowth.
And now came another capture, for with a “Chip, my darling,” Ray sprang forward, and although she turned away, the next moment she was clasped in his arms.
In vain she struggled. In vain she writhed and twisted. In vain she pushed him away and then covered her blushing face.
Love, fierce and eager, could not be thus opposed. ”

“ Oh, Ray didn't seem to have any special objection to Foster unless it was that he neglected his business to lay siege to her. Foster's a gentleman, has no bad habits, and is the very man nine women out of ten would rejoice in for a husband, and ninety-nine out of ten, if that were a mathematical possibility, would delight in as a son-in-law. He isn't brilliant—buttons would have supplied the lack had he been in the cavalry. I dare say he'll be ass enough to go in for a commission now and sell out his ranch for a song. ”

“ It would be refreshing to hear a Ray in the nineteenth century. Two of his funeral discourses are mentioned with particular approbation; one, on the death of Dr. Arrowsmith, master of his college; the other, on that of one of his most intimate and beloved colleagues, Mr. John Nid, likewise a Senior Fellow of Trinity, who had a great share in Ray’s first botanical publication, the “Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium,” printed in 1660 (a catalogue of plants growing around Cambridge) . ”

“ Ray and I looked at each other with a wild surmise. "Tom lives in Queens!" he said.
I scrambled down off the piano and the platform, but Ray was quicker. He darted into the crowd, using his elbows in short, efficient jabs. By the time I got to the door he was nowhere in sight.
The lobby was full of large powdery women in flowered dresses, one of them still shrieking. They slowed me down, and so did tripping over one of those big cylindrical jardinieres full of sand and snipes. I reached the street just in time to see Ray closing the door of a cab. ”

“ From that hour Roy was as one who has some awful fear upon him; he started at the slightest sound. None save himself knew how bitter were his feelings, how acute his anguish. And always from his soul this cry went up: “What have I done to deserve this terrible affliction?” His whole life was blasted. All his bright dreams, all his ambitions, were roughly brought to an end, and from a man, young, strong, resolute, he had become more pitiably helpless than a little child—all by the evil-doing of a reckless, useless man-animal to whom he had been rescuer and friend. ”

“ They passed tall pine trees and dodged in among green bushes. Ray never knew before that he could run so fast, but at last he was out of breath and had to stop.
The mice ran right past him and were soon out of sight. Ray looked around and found that he was at the edge of the woods quite near home. He stretched on the warm grass to rest a minute, and while he was looking up at the blue sky the rose-jar baby flew over his head and straight down the garden path to the house. After resting awhile Ray arose and followed, singing softly to himself:—
“Ring-a-ring-around! ”

“ Ray’s face also lingered in her heart. Now and then she caught herself humming some darky song, and never once did the moon 279 smile into this quiet vale that her thoughts did not speed away to that wildwood lake, with its rippled path of silver, the dark bordering forest, and how she wielded a paddle while her young lover picked his banjo.
No word or hint of all this bygone life and romance ever fell from her lips. It was a page in her memory that must never be turned,–an idyl to be forgotten,–and yet forget it she could not, in spite of will or wishes. ”

“ But when the morrow came was it to be wondered at that Miss Ray had developed a high fever? Was it not characteristic that before noon, from the official head down, from Dr. Wells to Dottie Fellows, the most diminutive of the party, there lived not a woman of their number who was not eager in tender of services and in desire to be at the sufferer's bedside? Was it not manlike that Stuyvesant, who had shunned the sisterhood for days, now sought the very women he had scorned, and begged for tidings of the girl he loved? ”

“ A small opera-glass stood on the sill, and, calmly adjusting it as he peered, Frank had picked it up and levelled it towards the front and centre of the line just back of where the colonel commanding sat in saddle. A lively scuffle and commotion had suddenly begun among the groups of spectators. Miss Ray's reclining-chair was so placed that by merely raising her head she could look out over the field. Mrs. Brent ran to where the colonel's field-glasses hung in their leathern case and joined the doctor at the gallery rail. ”

“ Ray’s first attempt at this labor seemed like nut-gathering at home, only more romantic, and when they were well into the vast spruce growth bordering one side of the Beaver Brook valley, he became so interested in hunting for the brown knobs, loosening them, and picking them up that he would have soon lost all points of the compass, except for Old Cy.
There is also a spice of danger seasoning this pursuit. A wildcat might at any moment be seen watching from the crotch of a tree, or a bear might suddenly emerge from the thicket. ”

“ Ray having wrought himself up to the belief that Miss Lawless was a heartless flirt, worthy of no higher feeling than contempt, he, in order to resist the dark witchery of her magnetic eyes, wrapped himself up in his very coldest mantle of pride, and addressed just as little of his conversation to her as he possibly could, without being positively rude. Pet, as proud in her own way as himself, noticed this at once, and her cheeks flushed, and her eyes flashed, for a moment, with anger and pride. ”

“ Ray looked grimly on and inspected the evolutions; then there was long process of question and answer and asseveration, and, when the youth departed, little Jane had announced with authority that Ray should throw away his crutch and stand on two feet of his own again.
"What a gay fellow he is!" said Ray, drawing a breath of relief. "They're all alike, dancing on graves. To be an old Téméraire decked out in signal-flags after thunderous work well done, and settling down, is one thing. ”

“ Ray sat on a little white sofa near a window and a dear little man came and sat beside him.
“I am the Sugar-bowl Fairy,” said the little man, “would you like to take a walk through the house?”
“Thank you,” replied Ray, “what do you do all day in the sugar-bowl?”
“We play and have a good time,” answered the little man, “except when the great giant comes, then we are all afraid and run to hide.”
“Who is this great giant?” asked Ray.
“I will tell you a true story about my brother and sister and then you will know all about the great giant,” said the Sugar-bowl Fairy. ”

“ He got up as far as the piano stool when, as far as I could make out, his pants split up the back and he climbed down again, glaring and clutching himself.
"Now it's over in the middle," said Ray imperturbably. "It might be poltergeists, I won't say it isn't. But I've got a hunch there's another answer, actually."
I said something dubious. A hotel-manager-looking kind of a man had just come in and was looking wildly around. Punchy Carrol went up to him, staring him respectfully right in the eye, talking a quiet six to his dozen. After a moment he gave up and listened. ”

“ As soon as Ray had pulled himself out of his slough of despond, and began to struggle forward on such footing as he found firm, he felt the rise of the social instinct in him. He went about and delivered his letters; he appeared at one of Mrs. Chapley’s Thursdays, and began to be passed from one afternoon tea to another. He met the Mayquaits at Mrs. Chapley’s, those Gitchigumee people she had asked him about, and at their house he met a lady so securely his senior that she could let him see at once she had taken a great fancy to him. ”

“ But I am glad to say there were but a few of this class; and even they, before a great while, were forced to respect Ray. They found he was as good a scholar as he was bell ringer and sweeper. They found he could row a boat, or bat a ball, as well as he could recite. They found him manly and gentlemanly at all times. It suddenly dawned upon their minds that any necessary and useful employment is respectable. It was Ray who taught them that truth. He dignified the most menial work he was called to perform. He did it by putting Christian principle into his work. ”

“ Still trembling, and with a face perfectly colorless, Erminie obeyed; and while Ranty was giving his frontispiece a vigorous scrubbing, Erminie was more gently bathing that of Ray. When the dusky paint was off, the deadly pallor of his face seemed in such striking contrast, that she barely repressed a cry of passionate grief. Cold, and still, and white he lay, like one already dead. ”

“ She's her father's daughter and wrapped up in the army. She's always said she'd marry only a soldier. But Maidie's getting wisdom with years, I fancy. Young Foster will be a rich man in spite of himself, for he'll have his mother's fortune, and he's heels over head in love with her."
"But I understood," interposed the general, with a quick glance at Stuyvesant, who had risen as though to get another cigar, "that Ray didn't exactly approve of him." ”

“ I have power, though you mayn’t think so, and could turn you into a cracked jug, or a mustard-pot, just as easy as not.”
“I wish to mercy you would, then, old Goody Two-Shoes! Lor’! what a showy appearance you’d make, Ray, as a mustard-pot!” said Pet, bursting into a fit of laughter.
“Why, my dear madam, I hadn’t the slightest idea of ‘poking fun’ at you, as you elegantly expressed it,” said Ray, looking deeply persecuted and patient; “and as to being turned into a cracked jug, or a mustard-pot, I think would rather retain my present shape if it’s all the same to you.” ”

“ Suddenly the darkness lifted and Roy gazed about him in search of Delgezie, but nowhere could he be seen. A ridge of rocks loomed out of the gloom and caused Roy to consult the compass anew. “You’re a bit of a liar, my friend,” he murmured, slipping the offending instrument into his mitten in token of his disgust, for he knew by the character of the rocks that he had come directly south and not south-west as he had intended—the compass had proved incorrect, as compasses frequently do in the Far North. ”

“ For, if Ray knows what worship is, he would show you Beltran enshrined in his heart, this brother a dozen years his elder, who had hailed his birth with stormy tears of joy, who had carried him for years when he was yet too weak to walk, who in his own full growth would seem to have absorbed the younger's share, were it not that, tiny as Ray may be, his every nerve is steel, made steel, though, by the other, and so trained and suppled and put at his service. ”