Whiteoak Heritage. Mazo de la Roche

looked into each other’s eyes. He had taken a chair by the patch of sunlight on the wall. His head and shoulders were illuminated as though by a spotlight. Pheasant thought: He looks like a really red Red Indian, in this light.

      “I wish I had a little girl,” said Renny. “All those boys of mine …”

      Maurice thought: If that isn’t like old Renny — calling them his boys, already! He’d be paternal toward his grandmother if she’d let him.

      “You’re too young to be my father,” said Pheasant.

      “I’m just two years younger than Maurice.”

      “You seem a lot younger.”

      “Do I?”

      “Yes. I think it’s because … I don’t know —”

      “Tell me.”

      “I can’t.”

      “Yes, you can…. Whisper it.”

      She bent her face to his ear, smiling.

      “Don’t mind me,” said Maurice. But he felt a moment’s perverse jealousy. How easily Renny had got round the kid!

      Pheasant whispered — “Because I think you feel about things more like I do.”

      Renny threw an arm about her and pressed her against his shoulder. He whispered in return: “I’ll bet I do. I think Mrs. Clinch is a killjoy. I think Maurice is a duffer, I think I’m a fine fellow and you’re the most clever and interesting child I know.”

      Pheasant gave a gay little laugh. They laughed into each other’s eyes. It was funny, she thought, that Maurice gave her the feeling of being almost grown-up, while Renny made her feel very young and rather reckless.

      Maurice puffed at his pipe and regarded the two somewhat sombrely. He wanted his friend to himself, yet did not quite know how to get rid of the child.

      “Have you finished your tea?” he asked.

      “Oh yes.”

      “What about those lessons?”

      “They are done.”

      She felt the wish in his tone and slid from Renny’s knee.

      Renny asked — “Did that father of yours bring you a present?”

      She shook her head.

      “Not even a German helmet or something made out of an empty shell?”

      “No — I don’t think so.”

      “Do you know, I should never have dared show my face at Jalna without a present for every single one of them, from my grandmother down to the baby!”

      “Did they like their presents?”

      “Yes. And I’ve brought a present for you.”

      “Don’t tease her,” said Maurice.

      “I’m not. Look here!” He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a small silver fruit knife in a chamois case and gave it to her.

      “Open it.”

      “Oh, how pretty! Did you bring it all the way from France for me?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’ve never seen anything so lovely.” She put both arms about him and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you — thank you…. Look, Maurice!”

      When she had gone with her books, Maurice said:

      “You are a good fellow!”

      “Well,” said Renny, “the knife was a little extra present for Meg but I thought she could do very well without it.”

      “It’s a good thing she doesn’t know…. I saw her face when I suddenly appeared at the station.”

      “Well, it was a bit of a shock to her. But she was strung up at the time. I shan’t be surprised if she forgives and forgets — after the years you’ve been away.”

      “I shall.”

      Renny gave his friend a look of intense irritation. “Then for God’s sake,” he ejaculated, “forget her! There are other women in the world.”

      “Not for me. Other women simply don’t count…. She might be reconciled to me if it weren’t for Pheasant.”

      “Send her away to school.”

      “I can’t afford it. Besides there are the holidays. No — there’s nothing to be done about it. I must just settle down and make the best of things.” He rose heavily and poured out a fresh drink for each of them. After a pause he asked:

      “How have they been managing things at Jalna?”

      “Pretty badly from what I can make out. My uncles have always been extravagant. My grandmother has her nose into everything and she has the ideas of fifty years ago. Meg and Eden have been looking after the farmlands. Good Lord, they have the apple house stored with hundreds of bushels of rotting apples — holding them back for high prices! They have sold good horses for too little money. They sold my father’s grand old stallion last winter. Each one has a different tale to tell about that…. Well, you can’t be aggressive the moment things come into your own control but there must be a change. I shall buy a new stallion and one or two promising colts and see what I can make from show horses and hunters. Piers is going to be a help to me. I can see that.”

      “There was a fellow,” said Maurice, “who came to see me this morning. He might be of some use to you. He wants work and he seems to know a lot about horses and farming. He says that his sister is just as capable as he is.”

      “Where do they live?”

      “In that white house behind the church. It stood vacant for years, you remember. Then a Mrs. Stroud bought it. She divided it, so she could let half of it.”

      “Oh yes, Meg told me that in a letter.”

      “Well, this fellow — Dayborn his name is — lives in the other half. He has a widowed sister and her child with him. They’re English. They’re quite young. He looks about twenty-six. I gather they’re hard-up and Mrs. Stroud is very good to them.”

      “Is she another widow?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’d like to see them. Could we go there now?”

      “All right.”

      “If you think it’s safe for us. Two widows! God knows what may happen to us.”

      “I’ll look after you,” said Maurice.

      He would have preferred to stay where they were and talk over their whiskey and soda but he knew what Renny was. If he got an idea in his head … They emptied their glasses and set out across the fields, Maurice accommodating his slower step to Renny’s urgent stride.

      Renny had many qualities in common with his Irish grandmother and one of them was to let no scheme of his languish for lack of swift attention. Now, in his mind, he saw this young Dayborn as the very man he needed to help him in the work of putting his estate in order. And there was the sister! A girl like that might be a lot of help in schooling ladies’ mounts. He felt full of goodwill toward them. This meeting was to be propitious.

      They walked along a path that ran by the side of a field where the delicate spears of fall wheat were an emerald green and the earth took on a warm mulberry tint from the glow in the west. The path mounted gradually to a distant rise of ground, and reaching this they looked back on the house which stood half-hidden. Maurice’s grandfather had built it ninety years before. He had planted sturdy young conifers about it, as though it were not snug enough in its hollow. They, in the long decades, had grown towering peaks, had clasped bough to bough, twined root about root, till there was a prickly wall that not only kept out the cold winter winds but arbitrarily