Being loved by Copeland, a divorced man rated “fast,” had all the more piquancy for Nan as affording a relief from the life of the staid, colorless household in which she had been reared. There were those who, without being snobs, looked down just a little upon a girl who was merely an adopted child to whom her foster-parents gave only a shadowy background. The Farleys were substantial and respectable, but they were not an “old family.” She was conscious of this, and the knowledge had made her the least bit rebellious and the more ready to surrender to the blandishments of the Kinneys, who were even more under the ban.
As she undressed and crept wearily into bed, she pondered these things, and the thought of them did not increase her happiness.
CHAPTER IV
NAN AND BILLY’S WIFE
Farley improved as the summer gained headway. He became astonishingly better, and his doctor prescribed an automobile in the hope that a daily airing would exercise a beneficent effect upon his temper. Farley detested automobiles and had told Nan frequently that they were used only by fools and bankrupts. A neighbor who failed in business that spring had been one of the first men in town to fall a victim to the motor craze, and Farley had noted with grim delight that three automobiles were named among the bankrupt’s assets.
When the idea of investing in a machine took hold of him, he went into the subject with his characteristic thoroughness. He had Nan buy all the magazines and cut from them the automobile advertisements and he sent for his friends to pump them as to their knowledge of various cars. Then he commissioned a mechanical engineer to buy him a machine that could climb any hill in the State, and that was free of the frailties and imperfections of which his friends complained.
Farley manifested a childlike joy in his new plaything; he declared that he would have a negro chauffeur. It would be like old steamboat times, he said, to go “sailin’ around with a nigger to cuss.”
Nan or the nurse went out with him daily—preferably Nan, who was immensely relieved to find that they were now on better terms than for several years. Life hadn’t been a gay promenade since she ceased to share the festivities of the Kinneys and their friends. Copeland she had dismissed finally, and the rest of them wearied of calling her on the telephone only to be told that it was impossible for her to make engagements. It may have been that Farley realized that she was trying to meet his wishes; at any rate, she had no cause to complain of his kindness.
“This would have tickled mamma,” he would say, as they rolled through the country in the machine. “She was always afraid of horses; these things don’t seem half as risky when you get used to ’em. If I keep on feelin’ better, we’ll take some long trips this fall. There’s a lot o’ places I’d like to see again. I’d like to go down and take another look at the Ohio.”
He spoke much of his wife, and at least once every week drove to the cemetery, and watched Nan place flowers on her foster-mother’s grave.
After one of these visits he ordered the chauffeur to drive north. He had read in the papers of the sale of a farm at what he said was a record price for land in that neighborhood, and he wanted to take a look at the property. After they had inspected the farm and were running toward home, Nan suggested that they stop at the Country Club for a cool drink.