It may have been that the fizzes were insidious or that Mr. Pike was
unduly persuasive, or that a combination of these two powerful
influences moved the elderly tutor to impulses of unusual generosity. At
any rate, he found himself possessed of an affection for the young man
from Bessemer, Pennsylvania. It was an affection both fatherly and
brotherly. When Mr. Pike asked him to perform just a small service for
him, he promised and then promised again and was still promising when
his host went with him to the carriage and said that he had not lived in
vain and that in years to come he would gather his grandchildren around
him and tell of the circumstances of his meeting with the greatest
scholar in southeastern Europe.
VIII
BY MESSENGER
On the morning after the strange happenings in the garden, Kalora sat by
one of the cross-barred windows overlooking a side street, and envied
the humble citizens and unimportant woman drifting happily across her
field of vision.
Never in all her life had she walked out alone. The sweet privilege of
courting adventure had been denied her. And yet she felt, on this
morning, an almost intimate acquaintance with the outside world, for had
she not talked with a valorous young man who could leap over high walls
and subdue giants and pay compliments? He had thrown a sudden glare of
romance across her lonesome pathway.
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