"Sullen Manor," announced Laura, assuming the megaphonic utterance of the sight-seeing car's expounder. "But doesn't it beautifully belie its name and its owner's doldrumish use of it? Why, it is as pretty and cheerful as a pigeon-cote snuggling under sifting cherry blossoms! How much ground is there around the place, John?"
"Twenty acres," replied Blythe, smiling a little gravely. "I suppose I know every foot of the twenty acres, too, though I left here—it is where I was born, you know—when I was seven years old. My father lost the place, you see, through bad investments and what not, when I was at that age. We moved to New Orleans, and a year later both my father and mother were swept off by yellow fever. I only remember them in a shadowy way. Oddly enough, I remember this old place much better than I do my parents; its corners, clumps of trees, and that sort of thing. I had a chance to get the place back a couple of years ago, and I seized it. A good deal of the gear that was here when I was a tyke is still here, stowed in the attic; for the place has not been often occupied since we left it. I've refurnished it in a sort of a way. I hope you'll not find it so bad, Laura; but I'm prepared right now to wilt under your superior, and, I might say, your inveterate knowledge of interior decoration."
Blythe looked a bit self-disdainful over what had been rather a long speech for him, particularly when he observed that Louise had been waiting to ask him something.
"You will not think me inquisitive, Mr. Blythe?" she prefaced. "But what you said about the—the carrying away of your people by yellow fever not only touched me but aroused my curiosity. You were only a child then, of course. What did you do then? Were you taken in hand by relatives? You are not annoyed because I ask?"
"Why should I be?" Blythe laughed. "Particularly when the reply is so simple. I have no relatives—had none then. When my people died I was on the streets. I believe I hold the record yet for the number of New Orleans Picayunes and Times-Democrats sold in a given time. Whatever else I became later, I certainly was a hustling newsboy. Then I came up here and I've been working ever since. My annals, you see, Miss Treharne, are distinctly dry."
"But your education?" Louise asked, her eyes alight with an interest which caused Laura to smile.
"Well," said Blythe, "there are plenty of people living in Princeton yet, I think, who will tell you, if ever you take the pains to inquire, that I was an exceptionally successful furnace-tender, tinker, chore-doer, and all-round roustabout. Oh, yes, I forget. I was a persuasive peddler of soap and starch before the Lord, too. Likewise, I acquired the knack of mending umbrellas. Not to overlook the fact that, odd times, I drove a village hack. At Princeton, in short, I was virtually everything and anything you can think of except a barber and a policeman. I shied at those two occupations."
"And you took your degree?" inquired Louise.
"Just squeezed through," replied Blythe.
"Don't you believe anything of the sort, Louise," put in Laura. "He was valedictorian of his class, and, worse than that, he played full-back with his eleven, and a sensational full-back too. I ought to know. I am old enough, woe is me, to have been a woman grown the year John Blythe contributed a good three-fifths to the Tigers' victory over Yale."