Bassett was pleased with Dan's choice of a stenographer. He turned over to Rose the reading of the rural newspapers and sundry other routine matters. There was no doubt of Miss Farrell's broad knowledge of the world, or of her fidelity to duty. Harwood took early opportunity to subdue somewhat the pungency of the essences with which she perfumed herself, and she gave up gum-chewing meekly at his behest. She assumed at once toward him that maternal attitude which is peculiar to office girls endowed with psychological insight. He sought to improve the character of fiction she kept at hand for leisure moments, and was surprised by the aptness of her comments on the books she borrowed on his advice from the Public Library. She was twenty-four, tall and trim, with friendly blue-gray eyes and a wit that had been sharpened by adversity.
It cannot be denied that Mrs. Bassett and Marian found Harwood a convenient reed upon which to lean. Nor was Blackford above dragging his father's secretary (as the family called him) forth into the bazaars of Washington Street to assist in the purchase of a baseball suit or in satisfying other cravings of his youthful heart. Mrs. Bassett, scorning the doctors of Fraserville, had now found a nerve specialist at the capital who understood her troubles perfectly.
Marian, at Miss Waring's school, was supposed to be preparing for college, though Miss Waring had no illusions on the subject. Marian made Mrs. Owen her excuse for many absences from school: what was the use of having a wealthy great-aunt living all alone in a comfortable house in Delaware Street if one didn't avail one's self of the rights and privileges conferred by such relationship? When a note from Miss Waring to Mrs. Bassett at Fraserville conveyed the disquieting news of her daughter's unsatisfactory progress, Mrs. Bassett went to town and dealt severely with Marian. Mrs. Owen was grimly silent when appealed to; it had never been her idea that Marian should be prepared for college; but now that the girl's mother had pledged herself to the undertaking Mrs. Owen remained a passive spectator of the struggle. Mrs. Owen was not so dull but that she surmised what had inspired this zeal for a collegiate training for Marian; and her heart warmed toward the dark young person at Wellesley, such being the contrariety of her kindly soul. To Miss Waring, a particular friend of hers and one of her admirations, Mrs. Owen said:—
"I want you to do the best you can for Marian, now that her mother's bitten with this idea of sending her to college. She's smart enough, I guess?"
"Too much smartness is Marian's trouble," replied Miss Waring. "There's nothing in the gymnasium she can't do; she's become the best French scholar we ever had, but that's about all. She's worked hard at French because she thinks it gives her a grand air. I can't imagine any other reason. She's adorable and—impossible!"
"Do the best you can for her; I want her to go to college if she can."
Miss Waring had the reputation of being strict, yet Marian slipped the cords of routine and discipline with ease. She had passed triumphantly from the kitchen "fudge" and homemade butterscotch period of a girl's existence into the realm of marrons glacés. Nothing bored her so much as the afternoon airings of the school under the eye of a teacher; and these she turned into larks when she shared in them. Twice in one winter she had hopped upon a passing street car and rolled away in triumph from her meek and horrified companions and their outraged duenna. She encouraged by means the subtlest, the attentions of a strange young gentleman who followed the school's peregrinations afar off. She carried on a brief correspondence with this cavalier, a fence corner in Pennsylvania Street serving as post-office.
Luck favored her astonishingly in her efforts to escape the rigors of school discipline. Just when she was forbidden to leave Miss Waring's to spend nights and Sundays at Mrs. Owen's, her mother came to town and opportunely (for Marian) fell ill, at the Whitcomb. Mrs. Bassett was cruising languidly toward the sombre coasts of Neurasthenia, and though she was under the supervision of a trained nurse, Marian made her mother's illness an excuse for moving down to the hotel to take care of her. Her father, in and out of the city caring for his multiplying interests, objected mildly but acquiesced, which was simpler and more comfortable than opposing her.
Having escaped from school and established herself at the Whitcomb, Marian summoned Harwood to the hotel on the flimsiest pretexts, many of them most ingeniously plausible. For example, she avowed her intention of carrying on her studies at the hotel during her enforced retirement from Miss Waring's, and her father's secretary, being a college man, could assist her with her Latin as well as not. Dan set tasks for her for a week, until she wearied of the pretense. She insisted that it was too stupid for her to go unattended to the hotel restaurant for her meals, and it was no fun eating in her mother's room with that lady in bed and the trained nurse at hand; so Harwood must join her for luncheon and dinner at the Whitcomb. Mrs. Owen was out of town, Bassett was most uncertain in his goings and comings, and Mrs. Bassett was beyond Harwood's reach, so he obeyed, not without chafing of spirit, these commands of Marian. He was conscious that people pointed her out in the restaurant as Morton Bassett's daughter, and he did not like the responsibility of this unauthorized chaperonage.
Mrs. Bassett was going to a sanatorium as soon as she was able to move; but for three weeks Marian was on Harwood's hands. Her bland airs of proprietorship amused him when they did not annoy him, and when he ventured to remonstrate with her for her unnecessary abandonment of school to take care of her mother, her pretty moue had mitigated his impatience. She knew the value of her prettiness. Dan was a young man and Marian was not without romantic longings. Just what passed between her and her mother Harwood could not know, but the hand that ruled indulgently in health had certainly not gained strength in sickness.