Wild Wings: A Romance of Youth

by Margaret Piper Chalmers

She had quarrelled with her grandfather and he would not let her come back home. She was with Emma just now but she couldn't stay. Fred was behaving very nastily and he might tell Emma any day that she, Madeline, had to go. They were all against her. Everything was against a girl anyway. They never had a chance as a man did. She wished she had been killed when she had been thrown out of the car that night. It would have been much better for her than being as miserable as she was now. She often wished she was dead. But what she had written to Ted Holiday for was because she thought perhaps he could help her to find a job in the college town. She had to earn some money right away. She would do anything. She didn't care what and would be very grateful to Ted if he would or could help her to find work.

That was all. There was not a single personal note in the whole thing, no reference to their flirtation of the early summer except the one allusion to the accident, no attempt to revive such frail ties as had existed between them, no reproaches to Ted for having broken these off so summarily. It was simply and exclusively a plea for help from one human being to another.

Ted thrust the letter soberly in his pocket and went off for a shower. But the thing went with him. He wished Madeline hadn't written, wished she hadn't besought his aid, wished most of all she hadn't been such a devilish good sport in it all. If she had whined, cast things up against him as she might have done, thrown herself in any way upon him, he could perhaps have ignored her and her plea. But she had done nothing of the sort. She was deucedly game now just as she had been the night of the smash. And by a queer trick of his mind her very gameness made Ted Holiday feel more quiet and responsible, a frame of mind he heartily resented. Hanged if he could see why it was his funeral! If that old Hottentot of a grandfather of hers chose to turn her out without a cent it wasn't his fault. For that matter he wasn't to blame for what Madeline herself had done. He didn't suppose the old man would have cut so rough without plenty of cause. Why did she have to bob up now and make him feel so darned rotten?

Unfortunately, even the briefest of episodes have a way of not erasing themselves as conveniently as most of us would like to have them. The thing was there and Ted Holiday had to look at it whether it made him feel "darned rotten" or not. He did not want to help the girl, did not even want to renew their acquaintance by even so much as a letter. The whole thing was an infernal nuisance. But infernal nuisance or not, he had to deal with it, could not funk it. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever shirked obligations he himself had incurred. He was a Holiday and no Holiday ever let a woman ask for help, and not give It. By the time he was back from the shower Ted knew precisely where he stood. Perhaps he had known all along.

The next day he bestirred himself, went to Berry the florist who he happened to know was in need of a clerk, got the burly Irishman's consent to give the girl a job at excellent wages, right away, the sooner the better. Ted opened his mouth to ask for an advance of salary but thought better of it before the words came out. Madeline might not like to have anybody know she was up against it like that. He would have to see to that part of it himself somehow.

"You're a good customer, Mr. Holiday," the genial florist was saying.
"I'm tickled to be obligin' ye and mesilf at the same time. Anything in
the flower line, to-day, Mr. Holiday? Some roses now or violets? Got some
Jim dandies just in. Beauties, I'm tellin' you. Want to see 'em?"

Ted hesitated. His exchecquer was low, very low. The first of the month was also far away—too far, considering all things. His bill at Berry's already passed the bounds of wisdom and the possibility of being paid in full out of the next month's allowance without horribly crippling the debtor. It was exceedingly annoying to have to forfeit that ten dollars to Uncle Phil every month for that darned automobile business which it seemed as if he never would get free of one way or another. He certainly ought not to buy any more flowers this month.

Still, there was the hop to-night. Elsie was going with him. He had run a race with three other applicants for the privilege of escorting her and being victor it behooved him to prove he appreciated his gains. He didn't want Elsie to think he was a tight-wad, or worse still suspect him of being broke. He fell, let Berry open the show case, debated seriously the respective merits of roses and violets, having reluctantly relinquished orchids as a little too ruinous even for a ruined young man.

"If they are for Miss Hathaway," murmured a pretty, sympathetic clerk in his ear, "Mr. Delany sent roses this morning and she likes violets best. I've heard her say so."

That settled it. Ted Holiday wasn't going to be beaten by a poor fish like Ned Delany. The violets were bought and duly charged along with those other too numerous items on Ted Holiday's account. Going home Ted wrote a cheerful, friendly letter to Madeline Taylor reporting his success in getting her a job and enclosing a check for twenty live dollars, "just to tide you over," he had put in lightly, forbearing to mention that the gift made his bank balance even lighter, so light in fact that it approached complete invisibility. He added that he was sorry things were in a mess for her but they would clear up soon, bound to, you know. And nix on the wish-I-were-dead-stuff! It was really a jolly old world as she would say herself when her luck turned. He remained hers sincerely and so forth.