“Tell you what I’ll do,” said Cheerio, gently. “I’ll read the story to you both. What do you say? An hour or two every evening while the light lasts. Wh-when we’re through with this one, w-we’ll tackle others. There’s three sequels to this, and we’ll read them all. Then we’ll go at the Count of Monte Cristo. Th-that’s a remarkable yarn!”
“Three sequels! My aunt’s old hat!” yelled the delighted Sandy, tossing his ragged head gear into the air. “Gee whillikins!”
But Cheerio was looking at Hilda, intently, appealingly. Her face had lighted, and a strange shyness seemed to come over it, reluctantly, sweetly. The long lashes quivered. She looked into the beaming face bent eagerly toward her own, and for the first time since they had met, right through her tears that still persisted strangely enough in dropping, she smiled at Cheerio.
IX
“And they saw by the red flashes of the lightning against the violet fog at six paces behind the governor, a man clothed in black and masked by a visor of polished steel, soldered to a helmet of the same nature, which altogether enveloped him. …
“ ‘Come, monsieur,’ said Saint Mars sharply to the prisoner—‘Monsieur, come on.’
“ ‘Say, “Monseigneur,” ’ cried Athos from his corner, with a voice so terrible that the governor trembled from head to foot. Athos insisted upon respect being paid to fallen majesty. The prisoner turned around.
“ ‘Who spoke?’ said Saint Mars.
“ ‘It was I,’ said D’Artagnan.
“ ‘Call me neither “monsieur” nor “monseigneur,” ’ said the prisoner—‘Call me “Accursed.” ’
“He passed on, and the iron door creaked after him.”
“Ten o’clock!”
“Oh-h!”
“It’s not—not quite ten. Your watch’s slow.”
“Ten minutes after,” declared Cheerio, hiding a smile as he glanced at his watch in the slightly waning light.
A murmur of protest from Hilda, and a growl from Sandy, ready to argue the point. It seemed as if they always reached the most thrilling part of the narrative when “ten o’clock” the limit hour set for the end of the reading would come and Cheerio would, with seeming reluctance, close the enthralling book.
The readings had been substituted for the daily riding trips. The adventures of The Three Musketeers were proving of even more enthralling interest to Sandy than the fossilized bones of the early inhabitants of the North American continent. No dime novel of the most lurid sort had had the power to fascinate or appeal to the imagination of the young McPhersons as this masterpiece of the elder Dumas. They were literally transplanted in thought into the France of the Grande Monarche.
Hilda indeed so lost herself each night in the chronicle that she forgot her grudge against the reader, and sat on one side of him almost as closely, peering over his arm at the page, as Sandy on the other side. Of course, the steps were not wide and barely accommodated the three and Hilda’s place was next to the wall. Cheerio sat between the two.
After the readings there would follow an excited discussion of the story that was almost as interesting as the tale itself. It was astonishing how much this Englishman knew about France in the time of Louis XIV. Sandy would pepper him with questions, and sometimes sought to entrap him into returning to the tale.
“What was Aramis doing at that time? I betchu he had a finger in it all the time. Was he a regular priest?
“If I’d a been D’Artagnan you bet I’d ’ve stood up for the Man in the Iron Mask. I betchu he’d ’ve made a better king than Louis. Couldn’t you read just as far as where they take the mask off? Did they ever take it off? Say, if you set your watch by Chum Lee’s clock, he’s eight minutes and—”
“The clock’s all right, old man. Tomorrow’ll be here soon. It’s getting pretty dark now anyway.”
“Oh, that don’t mean it’s late, and I c’d get a lantern if you like. Days are shorter now in Alberta. Before long we won’t have any night light at all, ’cept the star and moon kind.”
Hilda was as concerned in the fortunes of the Musketeers as her brother, but she was obliged to curb her curiosity. With the ending of the reading, her diffidence and restraint would gradually creep back upon her. She was not going to let this man know how throbbingly interested she was. She did not wish him to know how limited had been her reading up to this time. That was a family skeleton that was none of his business, and she could have given Sandy a hard shaking when he disclosed to Cheerio the type of literature that he and Hilda had been “raised on.” Cheerio, with intense seriousness, assured them that their father was “dead right.” That sort of reading, as P. D. had declared, was “truck.”
“Well, it’s all there is anyway,” defended Sandy.
“Not by a jugful, old man. There’s no limit to the amount of books in this good old world of ours—fine stuff, like this, Sandy. Some day you’ll look upon them as friends—living friends.”
“Gee! I wisht I knew where I could get ’em then.”
“Why you can get all the books you want in the public library and in the b-book stores.”
“That’s easy enough to say,” burst from Hilda, “but Dad never gives us time when we go to Calgary to get anywhere near a library, and he’d have a fit if we were to buy books. He says that he’ll choose all that we need to read, and he doesn’t believe in stories or fiction and books like that. He says it’s all made-up stuff and what we want to read—to study, he says—is Truth.”
“Hmph!” from Sandy. “Yes, Mister Darwin and Mister Huxley and a lot of for’n stuff. He’s got a heap of French and German books, but a lot of good they do us, since we
