Bock stood by the wheel with his long, curly tongue running in and out over his teeth. I hesitated a moment, thinking just how to phrase my attack, when the elderly gentleman called out:
“Where’s the Professor?”
I was beginning to realize that Mifflin was indeed a public character.
“Heavens!” I said. “Do you know him, too?”
“Well, I should think so,” he said. “Didn’t he come to see me last spring about an appropriation for school libraries, and wouldn’t leave till I’d promised to do what he wanted! He stayed the night with us and we talked literature till four o’clock in the morning. Where is he now? Have you taken over Parnassus?”
“Just at present,” I said, “Mr. Mifflin is in the jail at Port Vigor.”
The ladies gave little cries of astonishment, and the gentleman himself (I had sized him up as a school commissioner or something of that sort) seemed not less surprised.
“In jail!” he said. “What on earth for? Has he sandbagged somebody for reading Nick Carter and Bertha M. Clay? That’s about the only crime he’d be likely to commit.”
“He’s supposed to have cozened me out of four hundred dollars,” I said, “and my brother has had him locked up. But as a matter of fact he wouldn’t swindle a hen out of a new-laid egg. I bought Parnassus of my own free will. I’m on my way to Port Vigor now to get him out. Then I’m going to ask him to marry me—if he will. It’s not leap year, either.”
He looked at me, his thin, lined face working with friendliness. He was a fine looking man—short, gray hair brushed away from a broad, brown forehead. I noticed his rich, dark suit and the spotless collar. This was a man of breeding, evidently.
“Well, Madam,” he said, “any friend of the Professor is a friend of ours.” (His wife and the girls chimed in with assent.) “If you would like a lift in our car to speed you on your errand, I’m sure Bob here would be glad to drive Parnassus into Port Vigor. Our tire will soon be mended.”
The young man assented heartily, but as I said before, I was bent on taking Parnassus back myself. I thought the sight of his own tabernacle would be the best balm for Mifflin’s annoying experience. So I refused the offer, and explained the situation a little more fully.
“Well,” he said, “then let me help in any way I can.” He took a card from his pocketbook and scribbled something on it. “When you get to Port Vigor,” he said, “show this at the jail and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. I happen to know the people there.”
So after a handshake all round I went on again, much cheered by this friendly little incident. It wasn’t till I was some way along the road that I thought of looking at the card he had given me. Then I realized why the man’s face had been familiar. The card read quite simply:
Raleigh Stone Stafford
The Executive Mansion,
Darlington.
It was the governor of the state!
XIV
I couldn’t help chuckling, as Parnassus came over the brow of the hill, and I saw the river in the distance once more. How different all this was from my girlhood visions of romance. That has been characteristic of my life all along—it has been full of homely, workaday happenings, and often rather comic in spite of my best resolves to be highbrow and serious. All the same I was something near to tears as I thought of the tragic wreck at Willdon and the grief laden hearts that must be mourning. I wondered whether the Governor was now returning from Willdon after ordering an inquiry.
On his card he had written: “Please release R. Mifflin at once and show this lady all courtesies.” So I didn’t anticipate any particular trouble. This made me all the more anxious to push on, and after crossing the ferry we halted in Woodbridge only long enough for supper. I drove past the bank where I had waited in the anteroom, and would have been glad of a chance to horsewhip that sneaking little cashier. I wondered how they had transported the Professor to Port Vigor, and thought ironically that it was only that Saturday morning when he had suggested taking the hoboes to the same jail. Still I do not doubt that his philosophic spirit had made the best of it all.
Woodbridge was as dead as any country town is on Sunday night. At the little hotel where I had supper there was no topic of conversation except the wreck. But the proprietor, when I paid my bill, happened to notice Parnassus in the yard.
“That’s the bus that pedlar sold you, ain’t it?” he asked with a leer.
“Yes,” I said, shortly.
“Goin’ back to prosecute him, I guess?” he suggested. “Say, that feller’s a devil, believe me. When the sheriff tried to put the cuffs on him he gave him a black eye and pretty near broke his jaw. Some scrapper fer a midget!”
My own brave little fighter, I thought, and flushed with pride.
The road back to Port Vigor seemed endless. I was a little nervous, remembering the tramps in Pratt’s quarry, but with Bock sitting beside me on the seat I thought it craven to be alarmed. We rumbled gently through the darkness, between aisles of inky pines where the strip of starlight ran like a ribbon overhead, then on the rolling dunes that overlook the water. There was a moon, too, but I was mortally tired and lonely and longed only to see my little Redbeard. Peg was weary, too, and plodded slowly. It must have been midnight before we saw the red and green lights of the railway
