Chapter XIV - Page 2

everything, and Miss Mullett gently correcting him.

Their travels took them around the house and finally to the gate in the hedge, over the arch of which Miss Mullett was coaxing climbing roses. When they turned back Eve and the Doctor walked ahead.

"Eve told me once such a quaint thing about that gate," said Miss Mullett. "It seems that when she was a little girl and used to play in the garden over there, she imagined all sorts of queer things, as children will. And one of them was that some day a beautiful prince would come through the gate in the hedge and fall on his knee and ask her to marry him. Such a quaint idea for a child to have, wasn't it?"

"Yes," answered Wade thoughtfully. There was silence for a moment, and then he glanced down and met Miss Mullett's gaze. He laughed ruefully.

"Do you think I look much like a prince?" he asked.

"Do looks matter," she said, gently, "if you are the prince?"

"Perhaps not, but--I'm afraid I'm not."

Thereupon Miss Mullett did a most unmaidenly thing. She found Wade's hand and pressed it with her cool, slim fingers.

"If I were a prince," she replied, "I'd be afraid of nothing."

There was just time to return the pressure of her hand and give a grateful look into the kindly face, and then they were back with the others on the porch.

That dinner was an immense success from every standpoint, Mrs. Prout cooked like cordon bleu, Zephania, all starch and frills and excitement, served like a--but no, she didn't; she served in a manner quite her own, bringing on the oysters with a whispered aside to Wade that she had "most forgot the ice," introducing the chicken with a triumphant laugh, and standing off to observe the effect it made before returning to the kitchen for the new potatoes, late asparagus, and string-beans, so tiny that Mrs. Prout declared it was a sin and a shame to pick them. There was a salad of lettuce and tomatoes, and the Doctor, with grave mien, prepared the dressing, tasting it at every stage and uttering congratulatory "Ha's!" And there were plenty of strawberries and much cake--Zephania's very best maple-layer--and ice-cream from Manchester, a trifle soft, but, as Eve maintained, all the better when you put it over the berries. And--breathe it softly lest Eden Village hear--there was champagne! Eve and Miss Mullett treated it with vast respect, but the Doctor met it metaphorically with open arms, as one welcomes an old friend, and, under its gentle influence, tossed aside twenty years and made decorous, but desperate, love to Miss Mullett. And then, to continue the pleasant formality of the occasion, the ladies withdrew to the parlor, and Wade and the Doctor smoked two very stout and very black cigars and sipped two tiny glasses of brandy.

In the parlor Miss Mullett