likely,” the doctor twinkled; “you mostly deserve it, Miss Royall.” “He’s worse when he calls me names,” Diana lamented, and bowed her head again to Caleb as old Henk started deliberately upon his way. The hood of the vehicle shut off her view, and she did not know that Trench stood bareheaded in the rain to watch the receding carriage, until the drenched green boughs locking over the road closed his last glimpse of it in a mist-wreathed perspective, beautiful with wind-beaten showers of dogwood bloom. The two inside the buggy were rather silent for a[53] while. Diana was watching the light rainfall. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and the atmosphere became wonderfully translucent. Great branches were strewn by the way, and a tall pine, cleft from tip to root, showed the course of a thunderbolt. The stream was so swollen that old Henk forded with cautious feet, and the water lapped above the carriage step. [53] “Drowned out most of the young crops,” Dr. Cheyney remarked laconically. “What sort of a man is Caleb Trench?” Diana asked irrelevantly. Dr. Cheyney looked around at her with quizzical eyes. “A shopkeeper,” he replied. “I reckon that’s about as far as you got before to-day, wasn’t it?” She colored. “I suppose it was,” she admitted, and then added, “Not quite, doctor; I saw that he was odd.” The old man smiled. “Di,” he said, “when you were no higher than my knee you’d have been more truthful. You know, as well as I do, that the man is above the average; he’s keeping shop and reading law down at Judge Hollis’ office, and he’s trying to teach the backwoodsmen honest politics. Taken out a pretty large contract, eh?” Diana looked down at her fine strong hands lying crossed in her lap; her face was deeply thoughtful. “I suppose he’s bent on rising in politics,” she said, with a touch of scorn in her voice; “the typical self-made man.” [54]“You didn’t happen to know that he was a gentleman,” Dr. Cheyney remarked dryly. [54] She met his eye and smiled unwillingly. “I did,” she said; “I saw it—to-night.” “Oh, you did, did you?” The old man slapped Henk with the reins. “Well, what else did you see?”
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