V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

"Oh!" replied Kern, trying not to look surprised. "Well, then, all right, sir, Mr. V.V. Just whatever--"

"I'll give him one chance to take you back himself. I'll assume, for his sake, that there's a misunderstanding.... If he refuses, so much the worse for him. I shall know where to go next."

"Oh!--You mean John Farley?"

It was a shrewd guess. John Farley, sometime of the sick, and ever a good friend of the Dabney House, was known to hold past-due "paper," of the hard-driving Heth superintendent.

But Mr. V.V., continuing to speak as if something pained him inside, only said, "I was not thinking of Farley...."

The young man stood silent, full of an indignation which he could not trust himself to voice. Yet already he was beginning to put down that tendency to a too harsh judgment which, as he himself admitted, was his besetting sin ... Perhaps there was some misunderstanding: this contemptible business hardly seemed thinkable, even of MacQueen. At the worst, it was MacQueen personally and nobody else. No argument was needed to show that the owners would not for a moment tolerate such methods in their Works. Merely let them know what sort of thing their superintendent was up to, that was all. O'Neill should see ... Mr. Heth, to be sure, he did not happen to know personally....

"Well, then. That's all settled," Kern was saying, eagerly, "and I '11 go back to MacQueen or not go back, just whichever you want me, and don't less think about him any more. Oh, Mr. V.V.--"

"He can consider himself lucky if he doesn't lose his job for this day's work."

"Mr. V.V., what d'you think?" cried Kern; and having caused him to turn by this opening, she fixed him with grave eyes, and hurried on: "Well, there was a man here named Avery, and he was ridin' his automobile slow down a dark road and his lamps went out. And there was two men walkin' down the road, and he ran over one of them. So he turns back to see if the man was hurted, and the road bein' so dark he runs over him again. So he turns back again, scared he had killed him, and then the other man that had hopped into the ditch, he sings out to his friend, 'Get up, you damn fool, he's comin' back!'"

Having quite failed to follow Kern's cheer-up narrative, Mr. V.V.'s stare remained blank, engrossed; but presently he was caught, first by the silence, then by his little friend's wide and intensely expectant gaze, just beginning to fade into childlike disappointment. He promptly burst into a laugh. It began as a dutiful laugh, but Kern's expression soon gave it a touch of genuineness.