“Is it that girl, dearest? Has she been behaving badly to you? You mustn’t mind her sharp tongue, she’s only a—a Breckenridge!”
“Yes, she has been behaving outrageously. She’s made me feel as cheap as two cents. Just because I couldn’t think of any remarkably funny thing to do in this horrid old town—Oh! go on, and let me be. I’m not mad with you, Mamma, but I shan’t go on that ride and be perched on a seat with either of those wretched girls, nor any old woman either, for the whole afternoon. Do go—they’re waiting, and they’ll wish no Starks had ever been born. I guess they wish it already.”
Perforce, she had to go; but it wasn’t a happy drive for her. If her adored Monty was disgruntled over anything she felt the world a gloomy place. She did exert herself to be agreeable to the Judge, who sat beside her, yielding his place on the driver’s seat to Molly, whose manner was almost as “crisp” as Montmorency’s own. But she would rather have stayed behind to look after her son; and had she known what was to happen on that sunshiny afternoon she would have been even more sorry that she had not followed her inclination.
However, at that moment there was no cloud upon the day; and no sooner had the buckboard disappeared from sight than Montmorency Vavasour-Stark performed a sort of jig on the hotel verandah, threw up his cap, gave a loud Brentnor “yell” and dashed up the stairs to his room as fast as his short fat legs could move. Thence he soon reappeared, clad in his “athletics”—of which a broad-striped blue-and-white sweater attracted much attention.
He had now become “plain boy.” He had shed the “young gentleman” with vigor and completeness and was bent upon any sort of “lark” that would restore his usual good nature and complacency. He had observed whither disappeared the various bell-boys when off duty and meant “to stir up” one of them if nothing better offered.
Something better did offer, in the shape of Melvin Cook; calmly munching a slice of bread and butter in the stable-yard and as rejoiced as Monty himself to be quit for a time of women and girls and “manners” in general.
Montmorency hadn’t been attracted before to this “son of all the Cooks,” who was so fair of face and slender of build, but now he reflected that if he obtained permission to go into camp with the “Boys,” and the Judge, Melvin would, perforce, be his daily companion. As well begin now as ever then; so he accosted the bugler with the question:
“Say, can’t you get up something dandy for the rest of the day? We’ve shed those folks till dark, I guess, and I’m dying for anything doing. Eh?”
“I’ve hired a sail boat and am going out alone, except for Tommy here.”
Tommy was the most juvenile of all the bell-boys, a lad of not more than ten, who tried to appear quite as old as these others and who now strutted forward announcing: