CHAPTER XIV

TO BEAR MEN AND TO SAVE THEM

In going I turned and looked back at him to see that he was standing looking after me with a very great weariness in the manner of the drooping of his shoulders and the sadness of his face.

“Roberta,” I said to myself, “a woman who so reverences and regards a man as you do that Gouverneur Faulkner will find a way to help him so that he shall not suffer as he does in regard to not knowing with surety the reason of that Mr. Timms’ making a murder upon his brother.  What is it that you shall do?”

And to that question to myself I found an answer in only two short hours while partaking of the very famous custard pie at the table of that very lovely Madam Taylor.

All of those very gay and nice “babes and sucklings” which the Gouverneur Faulkner had mentioned, were with me at the table of Madam Taylor with very much laughter and merriment, also much conversation.  And in that conversation were very many jokes upon my Buzz because he had been transported to the Capitol by my Uncle, the General Robert, and given hard labor until almost the time to arrive for that nice supper, which he was eating with much hunger.  On account of lateness he had not been able to come to the house of lovely Sue to escort her with him to the home of Madam Taylor.  That Sue with pretended haughtiness was looking very high above the head of the humble Buzz.

“Well, it’s not my fault that Timms up and biffed his brother into eternity all for buzzing pretty Mary Brown, and I don’t see why I had to be rung in to sort out of a million sheets of trial evidence the lies he told about it, for poor old Governor Bill to moil over all night.  I say when a man wants to be hung as badly as that, he ought to get what he’s crying for, and not butt in on a perfectly innocent man’s afternoon fox trot,” was that Mr. Buzz Clendenning’s wailing to all of the company.  “Look the other way, Sue, so as not to turn this muffin cold until I get it buttered.”

“I told my washwoman, who is Mary’s sister, that Mary ought to be made to tell just what did happen and then it could all be arranged so that the poor man could be saved to her.  I think it is hard on Mary to lose both lovers,” said that very intelligent Mildred Summers.

“They live just over beyond our back gate.  Suppose we all go and put it up to the attractive Mary to speak up and keep Buzz from the danger of overwork a second time,” said that nice young Mr. Taylor with what I considered a great intelligence but which caused much laughter.

And at that suggestion which caused the much merriment, that daredevil within Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, again arose and commanded me to attention.

“Go, Robert Carruthers, and obtain that paper of statement from that Mary, so that your chief, that good Gouverneur Faulkner, does not work in the night which is for rest, and that your beloved Buzz may not again have to work in his afternoon which is for dancing.  Go and find that Mary as soon as this dinner is at an end.”