The Long Shadow by B M Bower Read Free Book Online

opposite side from him.
    Miss Bridger may have been surprised, and she may or may not have been pleased; Billy could only guess at her emotions-granting she felt any. But she smiled down at him and permitted the arms to receive her, and she also permitted-though with some hesitation-Billy to lead her straight away from the wagon and its occupants and from the gyrating Pilgrim to the deep delights of the grove.
    "Mr. Walland is a good rider, don't you think?" murmured Miss Bridger, gazing over her shoulder.
    "He's a bird," said Billy evenly, and was polite enough not to mention what kind of bird. He was wondering what on earth had brought those two together and why, after that night, Miss Bridger should be friendly with the Pilgrim; but of these things he said nothing, though he did find a good deal to say upon pleasanter subjects.
    So far as any one knew, Charming Billy Boyle, while he had done many things, had never before walked boldly into a picnic crowd carrying a blue parasol as if it were a rifle and keeping step as best he might over the humps and hollows of the grove with a young woman. Many there were who turned and looked again-and these were the men who knew him best. As for Billy, his whole attitude was one of determination; he was not particularly lover-like-had he wanted to be, he would not have known how. He was resolved to make the most of his opportunities, because they were likely to be few and because he had an instinct that he should know the girl better-he had even dreamed foolishly, once or twice, of some day marrying her. But to clinch all, he had no notion of letting the Pilgrim offend her by his presence.
    So he somehow got her wedged between two fat women at one of the tables, and stood behind and passed things impartially and ate ham sandwiches and other indigestibles during the intervals. He had the satisfaction of seeing the Pilgrim come within ten feet of them, hover there scowling for a minute or two and then retreat. "He ain't forgot the licking I gave him," thought Billy vaingloriously, and hid a smile in the delectable softness of a wedge of cake with some kind of creamy filling.
    "Imade that cake," announced Miss Bridger over her shoulder when she saw what he was eating. "Do you like it as well as-chicken stew?"
    Whereupon Billy murmured incoherently and wished the two fat women ten miles away. He had not dared-he would never have dared-refer to that night, or mention chicken stew or prune pies or even dried apricots in her presence; but with her own hand she had brushed aside the veil of constraint that had hung between them.
    "I wish I'd thought to bring a prune pie," he told her daringly, in his eagerness half strangling over a crumb of cake.
    "Nobody wants prune pie at a picnic," declared one of the fat women sententiously. "You might as well bring fried bacon and done with it."
    "Picnics," added the other and fatter woman, "iss for getting somet'ings t' eat yuh don'd haff every day at home." To point the moral she reached for a plate of fluted and iced molasses cakes.
    "Ilove prune pies," asserted Miss Bridger, and laughed at the snorts which came from either side.
    Billy felt himself four inches taller just then. "Give me stewed prairie-chicken," he stooped to murmur in her ear-or, to be exact, in the blue bow on her hat.
    "Ach, you folks didn'd ought to come to a picnic!" grunted the fatter woman in disgust.
    The two who had the secret between them laughed confidentially, and Miss Bridger even turned her head away around so that their eyes could meet and emphasize the joke.
    Billy looked down at the big, blue bow and at the soft, blue ruffly stuff on her shoulders-stuff that was just thin enough so that one caught elusive suggestions of the soft, pinky flesh beneath-and wondered vaguely why he had never noticed the beating in his throat before-and what would happen if he reached around and tilted back her chin and-"Thunder! I guess I've sure got 'em, all right!" he brought himself up