“She ought to be appreciated. She is going to be. You see a theatre will be of benefit to all the campus folks. It will be a source of amusement and pleasure to all. The money resulting from the plays should go to help the dormitory along. It will train girls who have histrionic ability for the stage. It will encourage students to play-writing. There will be prizes offered, so many each year for the best in plays, perhaps for exceptionally fine acting. My father will endow it. I shall put a part of my money into the endowment provided my idea is accepted by the Travelers. My name is not to be mentioned in it. My father doesn’t wish his to be, either.”
“None of the Travelers could or would refuse such an offer, Miss Cairns. Remember it is first of all for Leila. She has worked so hard to give the campus good plays. Not to mention all the splendid things she’s done for Hamilton as a Traveler.” Marjorie sang Leila’s praises with a high heart. “Yet none of us would wish yours or your father’s name to be withheld. It would be our grateful pleasure to tell others of your splendid gift.”
“You make it seem the thing for us to do—I don’t know. Let me come again and talk with you about it. My father and I are partners now,” she threw him a fond comradely glance. He and Miss Susanna had listened and let youth talk out its own matters of interest.
It was an hour later when Peter Cairns and Leslie left the Arms, happy in the long step that had been taken that day toward the partnership of which they had talked and dreamed in bygone years in New York.
“Miss Susanna has changed more than any other person I ever knew,” were the financier’s first words to Leslie as they drove away from Hamilton Arms. “She was a sweet woman until after she had so much trouble with my father and that rascally board. I was only a little boy then. I never saw her again after I left Carden Hedge until a few years ago when I came up here to see John. She looked like a fierce, sullen little creature of the wild, ready to snarl at a word. Now she is charming. She looks as though she had found what we have—happiness.”
“Blame it on Bean,” Leslie said with a shadow of her old satiric smile. “She can change anything. She even put over the great transformation on me.”
Back at the Arms Jerry, who had successfully put dozens of plump dahlia tubers into the soft brown earth under Jonas’s somewhat critical eye, was now racing across the lawn to the tulip tree.
“I saw the company from afar. Who were they?” she called out when within a few feet of the rustic benches where Miss Susanna and Marjorie had reseated themselves. “No one I ever saw before. I couldn’t label either one of them.”
“You have seen them both before, Jeremiah,” Marjorie calmly assured. “The young lady was Leslie Cairns. The man was—our gasoline bogie.”
“What-t? Has one hob-goblin wed another. Don’t tell me the grand Hob-goblin is married!” Jerry looked ridiculous consternation.