e
clay which was washed into it, and now and then a clear green when the
rains held off, but it was rarely blue except on certain sapphire days in
the fall, when a northwest wind swept all clouds from the sky.

And this was not a singing river. It was too near the sea, and too full
of boats, and there was no reason why it should say, "_Come and see--come
and see--the world_," when the world was at its feet!

And so the great Hudson had no song for Richard. Yet now and then, as he
walked down to it in the warm darkness, his ears seemed to catch a faint
echo of the harmonies which had filled his soul on the day that Anne
Warfield had dried her hair on the bank of the old river at Bower's, and
had walked with him in the wood.

Except at such moments, however, it must be confessed that he thought
little of Anne Warfield. It hurt to think of her. And he was too much of
a surgeon to want to turn the knife in the wound.

Marie-Louise, developing a keen interest in his affairs as they grew
better acquainted, questioned him about Evelyn.

"Dad says you are going to marry her."

"Yes."

"Is she pretty?"

"Rather more than that."

"Why don't you bring her out?"

"Nobody asked me, sir, she said."

She flashed a smile at him.

"I like your nursery-rhyme way of talking. You are the humanest thing
that we have ever had in this house. Mother is a harp of a thousand
strings, and Dad is a dynamo. But you are flesh and blood."

"Thank you."

"I wish you'd ask your Evelyn out here, and her friends. For tea and
tennis some Saturday afternoon. I want to see you together."

But after she had seen them together, she said, shrewdly, "You are not in
love with her."

"I am going to marry her, child. Isn't that proof enough?"

"It isn't any proof at all. The big man is the one who really cares."

"The big man? Pip?"

"Is that what you call him? He looks at her like a dog waiting for a
bone. And he brightens when she speaks to him. And her eyes are always on
you and yours are never on her."

"Marie-Louise, you are an uncanny creature. Like your little silver cat.
She watches mice and you watch me. I have a feeling that you are going to
pounce on me."

"Some day I shall pounce," she poked her finger at him, "and shake you as
my little cat shakes a mouse, and you'll wake up."

"Am I asleep, Marie-Louise?"

"Yes. You haven't heard Pan pipe." She was leaning on the sun-dial and
looking up at the grinning god. "Men who liv