FOR CAROL At the appointed hour Hugh came. He had made the concession of blacking his shoes, and shaving, and the unkempt hair of the noon hour, though obviously still in need of the barber, had been brushed until its dark auburn waves lay thickly in place. John Ogden had secured a table for two in a retired corner and ordered a dinner, the first couple of courses of which seemed to cheer the gloom of his guest. “I suppose I ought to call you Major,” said the boy. “Not if it does violence to your feelings. I am plain John Ogden again, you know. I would like to forget the war.” “Same here,” returned Hugh, swallowing a mighty mouthful of red snapper. When the meat course was well under way, Ogden began his investigation again. “You haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said. “It seems as if you must have relatives in town. Why should you be living in a boarding-house? It’s too bad. I thought I remembered connections of your father’s.” [11] [11] “There were some odd cousins of his about when I was a kid,” said Hugh, “but they have disappeared. I wouldn’t live with ’em on a bet, anyway.” “Then there was some one else,” persisted the host. “Your father had a very wealthy aunt, I remember.” The filet was so extremely good that under its influence Hugh smiled at this reminiscence. “Oh, that old dame,” he remarked. “Yes, she’s still in the ring. You couldn’t kill her with an axe. She must be a hundred and fifty by this time; but she doesn’t live here, you know.” “I thought she did.” “No, old Sukey lives in Farrandale”—naming a rural city some hundred miles distant from the metropolis. John Ogden admired beauty in man, woman, or child, and the light of contemptuous amusement which now played over the face of his guest so relieved its habitual sullenness that the host allowed himself the pleasure of staring for a silent space. He was very conscious of the glances bent upon Hugh from other tables, but the boy himself was entirely engrossed in the best dinner he had enjoyed for many a moon. “There was some
Prev.
Back
Top