When he returned from the bank the next afternoon, Cherry rapped ostentatiously at his door."Mother wishes me to ask you," she began with a certain prim formality, which nevertheless did not preclude dimples, "if you would give us the pleasure of your company at our Church Festival to-night? There will be a concert and a collation.You could accompany us there if you cared.Our friends and Tappington's would be so glad to see you, and Dr.Stout would be delighted to make your acquaintance.""Certainly!" said Herbert, delighted and yet astounded."Then," he added in a lower voice, "your mother no longer believes me so dreadfullyculpable?"
"Oh no," said Cherry in a hurried whisper, glancing up and down the passage; "I've been talking to her about it, and she is satisfied that it is all a jealous trick and slander of these neighbors.Why, I told her that they had even said that I was that mysterious woman; that I came that way to you because she had forbidden my seeing you openly.""What!You dared say that?"
"Yes don't you see? Suppose they said they HAD seen me coming in last night--THAT answers it," she said triumphantly.
"Oh, it does?" he said vacantly.
"Perfectly.So you see she's convinced that she ought to put you on the same footing as Tappington, before everybody; and then there won't be any trouble.You'll come, won't you? It won't be so VERY good.And then, I've told mother that as there have been so many street-fights, and so much talk about the Vigilance Committee lately, I ought to have somebody for an escort when I am coming home.And if you're known, you see, as one of US, there'll be no harm in your meeting me.""Thank you," he said, extending his hand gratefully.
Her fingers rested a moment in his."Where did you put it?" she said demurely.
"It?Oh! IT'S all safe," he said quickly, but somewhat vaguely.
"But I don't call the upper drawer of your bureau safe," she returned poutingly, "where EVERYBODY can go.So you'll find it NOW inside the harmonium, on the keyboard.""Oh, thank you."
"It's quite natural to have left it there ACCIDENTALLY--isn't it?" she said imploringly, assisted by all her dimples.Alas! she had forgotten that he was still holding her hand.Consequently, she had not time to snatch it away and vanish, with a stifled little cry, before it had been pressed two or three times to his lips.A little ashamed of his own boldness, Herbert remained for a few moments in the doorway listening, and looking uneasily down the dark passage.Presently a slight sound came over the fanlight of Cherry's room.Could he believe his ears? The saint-like Cherry-- no doubt tutored, for example's sake, by the perfect Tappington--was softly whistling.
In this simple fashion the first pages of this little idyl were quietly turned. The book might have been closed or laid aside even then. But it so chanced that Cherry was an unconscious prophet; and presently it actually became a prudential necessity for her to have a masculine escort when she walked out.For a growing state of lawlessness and crime culminated one day the deep tocsin of the Vigilance Committee, and at its stroke fifty thousand peaceful men, reverting to the first principles of social safety, sprang to arms, assembled at their quarters, or patrolled the streets.In another hour the city of San Francisco was in the hands of a mob--the most peaceful, orderly, well organized, and temperate the world had ever known, and yet in conception as lawless, autocratic, and imperious as the conditions it opposed.
