Not that he felt always kindly toward Sunny. She aroused his ire more often than she did his approval. She was altogether too free and unconventional, in the opinion of Jerry, and in a clumsy way he tried to teach her certain rules of deportment for a young woman living in the U. S. A. Sunny, however, was so innocent and so evidently earnest in her efforts to please him, that he invariably felt ashamed and accused himself of being a pig and a brute. Jerry was, indeed, like the unfortunate boatman, drifting toward the rocks, and seeing only the golden hair of the Lorelei.
Sunny had settled down so neatly and completely in his studio that it would have been hard to know how she was ever to be dislodged. Her satisfaction and delight and surprise at every object upon the place was a source of immense satisfaction and entertainment to Jerry. It should be mentioned here, that an unbelievable change could have been observed also in Hatton. The man was discovered to be human. His face cracked up in smiles that were real, and clucks that bore a remote resemblance to human laughter issued at intervals from the direction of the kitchen, whither he very often hastily departed, his hand over mouth, after some remark or action of Sunny that appeared to smite his funny bone.
The buttons on the wall were a never failing source of enchantment to Sunny. To go into her own room in the dark, brush her hand along the wall, touch an ivory button, and see the room spring into light charmed her beyond words. So, too, the black buttons that, pressed, caused bells to ring in the lower part of the house. But the speaking tube amazed and at first almost terrified her. Jerry sprang the works on her first. While in her room, a sudden screech coming from the wall, she looked panically about her, and then started back as a voice issued forth from that tube, hailing her by name. Spirits! Here in this so solid and material America! It was only after Jerry, getting no response to his calls of "Sunny! Hi! Sunny! Come on down! Come on down! Sunny! I want you!" ran up the stairs, knocked at her door and stood laughing at her in the doorway, that the colour came back to her cheeks. He was so delighted with the experiments, that he led her to the telephone and initiated her into that mystery. To watch Sunny's face, as with parted lips, and eyes darkened by excitement, she listened to the voice of Jinx, Monty or Bobs, and then suddenly broke loose and chattered sweet things back, was in the opinion of Jerry worth the price of a dozen telephones. However, he cut short her interviews with the delighted fellows at the other end, as he did not wish to have them impose on her good nature and take up too much of the girl's time.
The victrola and the player-piano worked day and night in Sunny's behalf, and it was not long before she could trill back some of the songs. Upon one occasion they pulled up the rugs, and Sunny had her first lesson in dancing. Jerry told her she took to dancing "like a duck does to water." He honestly believed he was doing a benevolent and worthy act in surrounding the young girl with his arms and moving across the floor with her to the music of the victrola. He would not for worlds have admitted to himself that as his arms encircled Sunny, Jerry felt just about as near to heaven as he ever hoped to get, though premonitions that all was not normal with him came hazily to his mind as he dimly realised that that tingling sensation that contact with Sunny created was symptomatic of the chaos within. However, dancing with Sunny, once she had acquired the step, which she, a professional dancer in Japan, sensed immediately, was sheer joy, and all would have been well, had not his friends arrived just when they were not wanted, and, of course, Sunny, the little fool, had instantly wanted to try her new accomplishment upon her admiring and too willing friends. The consequence was Jerry's evening was completely spoiled, and what he meant just as an innocent diversion was turned into a "riotous occasion" by a "bunch of roughnecks," who took advantage of a little innocent girl's eagerness to learn to dance, and handled her "a damn sight too familiarly" to suit the paternal—he considered it paternal—taste of Jerry.
Jerry, as Sunny passed in the arms of the light-footed Jinx, whose dancing was really an accomplishment, registered several vows. One was he proposed to give Sunny herself a good calling down. The other he purposed curtailing some of the visits of the gang, and putting a stop once and for all to the flow of gifts that were in his opinion rotten taste on the part of Jinx, a joke coming from Monty, plainly suffering a bad case of puppy love, and as for Bobs, no one knew better than Jerry did that he could ill afford to enter into a flower competition with Jinx. That Rolls Royce, when not bearing the enchanted Sunny through the parks and even on little expeditions into the byways and highways of the Great White Road, which runs through Westchester county, was parked not before Jinx's club, or the garage, but, with amazing impudence before the door of that duplex studio. Jerry intended to have a heart-to-heart talk with old Jinx on that score.
Even at home, Sunny had wrought havoc. Before she had been three days upon the place, Hatton, the stony faced and spare of tongue, had confided to her the whole history of his life, and explained how his missus had driven him to drink.
"It's 'ard on a man, miss. 'E tries to do 'is best in life, but it's 'ard, miss, when there's a woman 'as believes the worst, and brings out the worst in a man, miss, and man is only yuman, only yuman, miss, and all yuman beings 'as their failings, as no doubt you know, miss."
Sunny did know. She told Hatton that she was full of failings. She didn't think him a bad man at all because once in a long time he drank a little bit. Lots of men did that. There was the Count of Matsuyama. He had made many gifts to the Shiba temple, but he loved sake very much, and often in the tea-gardens the girls were kept up very late, because the Count of Matsuyama never returned home till he had drunk all the sake on the place, and that took many hours.
Gratuitously, and filled with a sudden noble purpose, Hatton gave Sunny his solemn promise never again to touch the inebriating cup. She clapped her hands with delight at this, and cried.
"Ho! How you are nicer man now. Mebbe you wife she come bag agin unto you. How thad will be happy for you."