l
peered a sharp, suspicious little muzzle. Then, like a flash of tawny
light, the fox broke sanctuary and shot for the thicket.

CHAPTER XV

MRS. POLY GIFFORD PAYS A CALL

The brown ivied house in the village was big and square and faced the
sleepy street. Its front was gay with pink oleanders in green tubs and
the yard spotted with annual encampments of geraniums and marigolds. A
one-storied wing contained a small door with a doctor's brass plate on
the clapboarding beside it. Doctor Southall was one of Mrs. Merryweather
Mason's paying guests--for she would have deemed the word boarder a
gratuitous insult, no less to them than to her. Another was the major,
who for a decade had occupied the big old-fashioned corner-room on the
second floor, companioned by a monstrous gray cat and waited on by an
ancient negro named Jereboam, who had been a slave of his father's.

The doctor was a sallow taciturn man with a saturnine face, eyebrows
like frosted thistles, a mouth as if made with one quick knife-slash and
a head nearly bald, set on a neck that would not have disqualified a
yearling ox. His broad shoulders were slightly stooped, and his mouth
wore habitually an expression half resentful, half sardonic, conveying
a cynical opinion of the motives of the race in general and of the
special depravity of that particular countryside. Altogether he exhaled
an air in contrast to which the major's old-school blend of charm and
courtesy seemed an almost ribald frivolity.

On this particular morning neither the major nor the doctor was in
evidence, the former having gone out early, and the latter being at the
moment in his office, as the brassy buzz of a telephone from time to
time announced. Two of the green wicker rocking-chairs on the porch,
however, were in agitant commotion. Mrs. Mason was receiving a caller in
the person of Mrs. Napoleon Gifford.

The latter had a middle-aged affection for baby-blue and a devouring
penchant for the ages and antecedents of others, at times irksome to
those to whom her "Let me see. You went to school with my first
husband's sister, didn't you?" or "Your daughter Jane must have been
married the year the old Israel Stamper place was burned," were
unwelcome reminders of the pace of time. To-day, of course, the topic
was the new arrival at Damory Court.

"After all these _years_!" the visitor was saying in her customary
italics. (The broad "a" which lent a dulcet softness to the speec