CHAPTER VII—MARGARET’S ESCORT.
Meanwhile Malcolm in a nearby hotel was preparing to play the role upon which he and Virginia had decided.
A grey wig and mustache changed his appearance so completely, that even one well acquainted with him would not, at first glance, have recognized him.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Peter Wallace,” he said to his beaming reflection. Then, donning his sombrero, he started out as he thought, “Now I know what I will look like twenty years hence. I do wish Virg was here. How she would laugh to see me in this disguise.”
Ten minutes later, when the train drew to a standstill, Mr. Peter Wallace watched each passenger alight with the aid of a colored porter.
At last he saw an unusually pretty young girl in a gold-brown suit and trim traveling hat who stood for a moment looking around helplessly.
Malcolm’s heart pounded queerly. He hadn’t supposed that their rebellious ward would be good-looking. In fact he hadn’t thought anything about it.
He went closer, almost believing that this maiden could not be the one he expected, but there was a small red ribbon bow on the lapel of her coat.
For a moment Malcolm almost forgot that he was a middle-aged rancher and was about to advance in his usual buoyant fashion, when a warning thought recalled to him: “You are Mr. Peter Wallace, not Malcolm Davis who is to greet this young girl.” And so, when Margaret’s almost frightened gaze, wandering over the heedless, hurrying throng, turned toward the approaching stranger, she saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, whose stride might have suggested that he was younger than his grey hair indicated.
“Are you Miss Selover?” he inquired in as matter-of-fact a tone as he could assume.
“I am,” the girl replied, rather frigidly, now that she was no longer frightened. “Are you Mr. Peter Wallace?”
Malcolm did not voice his reply, but she took it for granted, as he had at once reached for her satchels. She was secretly glad that her escort was middle-aged. Somehow that fact made her feel more at ease.
When they had crossed the city in the jolting, rattling omnibus, and the girl, at last, was comfortably seated in the luxurious chair car, Malcolm said, “I will leave you now, Miss Selover, but at noon I will come for you and we will lunch together.”
When he was gone Margaret watched the flying landscape without seeing it.
This man, she thought, was evidently a middle-aged rancher, and yet he spoke English as correctly as any of the boys she knew. She had not supposed such a thing possible.
How she wished that he were her guardian, instead of that illiterate Mr. Davis who had written such unkind letters to her, and who had unjustly deprived her of her rightful allowance. She just hated him and she always would.
Two hours later her reverie was interrupted by the decidedly pleasant voice of her escort who was telling her that he would accompany her to the diner.
Malcolm was thoroughly enjoying this strange new experience and yet there were moments when he wished that he might snatch off his disguise and tell the whole truth to the girl, who, now and then turned toward him such wistful brown eyes, but he would wait and let Virginia decide when to make the revelation.