Three Men And a Maid

*** an excerpt from CHAPTER I: THE TROUBLING OF THE WATERS "AFTER your experience of the pomp and glitter of life in the outer world, I wonder that you should be content to come back to Hudston," said Philip Warren. "After your experience of the humdrum life of Hudston, I am equally surprised that you should be content to remain in it," retorted Marjorie Neyland. "But you are a woman, to whom, being a woman, fashion and society are breath and heart's blood. You are, to say the least, out of place here, and in an inn." "And you, if you were half the man you look, would refuse to pass the great days of youth poring over musty volumes, at a vicarage." "I do nothing of the sort. One has unoccupied hours, of course, which certain of my acquaintances employ more robustly, but there is no man in Hudston who pursues sport with greater zest than myself. Do you believe I should be master of the Ure Valley Otter Hounds if I were the mere book- worm you think me?" "I see," said Marjorie, pretending to be much impressed. "How stupid of me!" "But why 'stupid'? That word surely does not apply, since you have not lived long enough in Hudston." "Sorry," she cried, dropping her eyes. "I made the mistake of imagining that advice suitable for the goose might be reasonably good for the gander." Philip Warren laughed. He caught his pretty companion by the hand to help her over a stile which he had vaulted lightly. "A fair hit, Marjorie," he admitted. "But don't let us quarrel. That is a rustic form of flirtation, an unpardonable thing." He did not notice the quick smile which lit the girl's face. It was on the tip of her tongue to offer some comment, but she forbore, and pressed up the path which rose steeply in front in silence for a few moments. Though she had not known Philip Warren many days, and his character was somewhat of a sealed book to her, a book rarely illuminated and couched in a script at once scholarly and elegant, she had an intuitively accurate glimpse of its nature. He was not as other men. His very appearance held in it a complex suggestion of the study and the veldt. In ten years' time, if unmarried, this stalwart youth might be either a recluse, engaged in collecting first editions, or a leader of some desperate enterprise of commerce or empire in a land as yet unknown. Marjorie sighed, and not because of the stress of the hill. In fact, the thought occurred to her that Philip Warren ought to choose a career before he chose a wife. When she spoke again, she broached a less personal topic."You have not yet told me why we are going to Fennell's Tower," she said, glancing at a squat, graystone tower which crowned the low hill a hundred yards away.