“It may as well be.” Peter Cairns looked away, his mind evidently engaged in choosing the words for his next utterance. “My name isn’t Peter Cairns,” he said deliberately. “It’s Peter Carden. Alec Carden was my father. I ran away from him and his harsh tyranny. I changed my name to Cairns. The old Scotch name of our family was Cairrens. It became Carden in James the First’s time.”
“What?” Force of surprise brought out Leslie’s habitual monosyllable. She wondered if she were awake or dreaming. Had her father, a lord of finance, once been a hot-headed rebellious boy who had changed his name and run away from Carden Hedge?
“Yes, what?” her father repeated half ironically. “My father left Carden Hedge to John, along with all he had. He disinherited me. When I went I took with me a bundle of bonds from the safe. They were mine; left me by my mother. I went to New York and made good. All this by the way of explaining about the garage site. You paid John Saxe sixty thousand dollars for a site that belonged to the Carden Estate. Not a foot of it belonged to the Saxe Estate. I had it surveyed and proved the Carden right to it. Saxe refunded the money. He was innocent in the matter.”
Leslie’s downcast reception of this last crushing surprise touched her father. “Buck up, Cairns II.,” he said in the hearty, affectionate tone which Leslie had been dreading, yet longing, to hear. “I know I handed you a hummer. Now there’s not much more to say, except that I bought Carden Hedge over two years ago of John. I’ve let him live there off and on, simply to have someone look after the property a little. I thought once of living there myself. I changed my mind. It’s a pretty country up here. I liked it when I was a boy, and do still. I must be on my way tomorrow. How long would you like to stay in Hamilton?” He questioned with the old deference he had formerly observed to her wishes.
“I’d rather go back to New York with you.” Leslie fought to keep her voice steady. “I can’t. I want to stay on here a little and try to find a way to do something for the dormitory, or the college or the students—anything I can do to make up for—” She paused, regained composure, went on. “I’m to blame for keeping you out of happiness. I cheated myself, too. How could you care to live at the Hedge after what I did at Hamilton? I have learned the big lesson this time. I’d go back to college and begin all over again in spite of what might be said, if I could, Peter. I’d do it for you.”
Peter Cairns saw a white-winged evanescent grace called happiness flit before his eyes. It had whisked away the day he had learned of Leslie’s expulsion from college. “Perhaps we’ll yet live at the Hedge, Leslie,” he said. “We can do that much, if we can’t go back in other ways. Now I’ll make a bargain with you. If you can find any good and original reason for keeping your flivver I’ll give the whole business to you as it stands. It must be original, though. That’s the chief requirement. And it must be something that will benefit Hamilton College students, faculty, dormitory—in fact the whole aggregation. Go to it. You perfect the plan. I’ll finance it for you. Nothing but the best will be accepted by me in the idea line. I’m going to try to prove that my girl has as good a brain as there is going.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
A GREAT DAY FOR THE CAMPUS
Julia Peyton could have forgiven Doris Monroe for disagreeing with her. To be told by Doris that she was an object of dislike to the lovely sophomore was not to be borne. She held frequent indignant consultations with her roommate, Clara Carter, on the double subject of the ingratitude of Doris and the snippiness of Marjorie Dean. Julia had not forgiven Marjorie for her “interference” at the Rustic Romp.
Thus far she had not voiced the gossip on the campus that the foolish-faced farmer at the hop had been Leslie Cairns. She was a little afraid that such a bit of gossip on her part might bring down upon her Marjorie’s displeasure. She knew in her heart that she was the only one of the four girls who would be likely to spread the story. Later on, when the Romp had been forgotten she would tell her friends about that horrid Miss Cairns and how she had stealthily slipped into the social side of Hamilton under cover.