CHAPTER VI.
“AN ENEMY CAME AND SOWED TARES.”
Henry Randolph was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, when he had once made up his mind to a certain definite course. Most of his successes on Wall Street had been won by prompt and decided action; and within a week from the moment when he had decided that Pinkie’s intimacy with the “little shoemaker” must be broken off, he, she, and Miss Dare were on the high seas.
During the short interval before their departure, Louis never once saw Pinkie alone, by what he considered a series of unfortunate chances; which the young lady more acutely ascribed to the silent watchfulness of uncle, aunt, father, and brother. Freddy would have been heart and soul on the side of the lovers, if they had been sufficiently of one mind to possess anything that, by the utmost stretch of partisan spirit, could be called a side at all. As it was, he was ready at any moment to further any plan or project that Louis might devise; and Louis was too young and too much in love not to long and innocently to scheme for a repetition of that last interview, with its tears and tenderness.
But such schemes as his were by no means difficult to see through and quietly frustrate; nor in truth could any one of the relatives on either side have been justly blamed for wishing that their mutual inclination, innocent and beautiful as it was, should die a natural death.
Perhaps it was a laudable desire to foster his daughter’s good qualities, to enlist her pride on the right side, and appeal silently to her common sense by showing her Louis’ daily life, that brought Mr. Randolph from his hotel quite early one morning, with a proposition to spend the day in a visit to “Prices.”
“Of course we’ve all been there,” he said, “but I, for one, only know one or two shops and departments, here and there. What I wish to do is to understand the working of the whole institution; for I may see others while we are abroad, and, by knowing the peculiarities of this one, might bring home valuable hints.”
“Then you’d better go alone,” said Pinkie, who always smelt a scheme when her papa became explanatory; “you can’t study workings at a picnic.”
“But I particularly wish you to go,” said Mr. Randolph. “Co-operation has come to stay, Pinkie, and, as a woman who will inherit considerable wealth, it is your duty to know all about it. Besides, I have already invited your friend Miss Dare to accompany us. I stopped at her house on my way down, and promised that the carriage should call for her in an hour’s time.”
Miss Dare! Virgie! who was by no means averse to an occasional tête-à-tête with Louis, or in fact anything else masculine that came in her way. Pinkie concluded that she would go, and revenged herself by wearing her very prettiest “spring suit,” of pearl-gray and rose-color, in which she felt quite able to hold her own against any Dare that ever breathed.
“We’ll give the day to it, and dine there,” said Mr. Randolph with benevolent airiness. “Of course it will be rather primitive; but we can stand it well enough for one day. If they stick their knives in the butter, it won’t matter to us, so it isn’t our butter.”