“What do you mean, sir?”
“Why, that I’d like to run the ruffian to cover myself! Alone and unaided!” Mr. Peter Parker looked round the pleasant circle, fervent young ferocity overlaying an inward smile. “It sounds to me like the utterance of a singularly abandoned criminal.”
“I’ll wager a thousand dollars,” Mr. Carey stated handsomely, “that it’s ‘Black Orlo’! He’s the ring-leader.”
“‘Black Orlo’!” Cousin Mary-Lou repeated. “Sounds like bombs and midnight murders, doesn’t it? Why do you keep such a creature about, Cousin ’Gene?”
“I don’t want to, Mary-Lou—the Lord knows I don’t want to, but he’s the leader, as I say, and if we fire him, the whole crew of foreigners’ll walk out with him, so Manders tells me. But as soon as we get things—well, running a little smoother—” the genial old face clouded over with unhappy thoughts of Ben Birdsall— “I’m going to clean house, at the Altonia! Yes, sir, by gad, I’m going to clean house, and sweep out the scum!”
Peter Parker wrote to his mother that night of his charming first impressions; the Careys and their friends like people out of a delightful book; the Carey girl would melt in your mouth, and there was a young widow who filled the eye most pleasantly. How would she like to have him marry a handsome young widow and settle down to be a country gentleman on a plantation? He rather felt himself slipping. The mill wasn’t bad at all; of course, it hadn’t the characteristics of a rest cure or a summer resort, but what would she? And there were certain aspects of it—he grinned over the paper—which he found very fascinating and meant to pursue further. Meanwhile, he was soaking up impressions and having an awfully good time and he was no end glad she’d prodded him into coming, and he was her loving son.
He spent delightful days prowling about, amiable figure in his spotless white with his bright blue tie, driving with Nancy Carey, playing cribbage with his senior partner, riding with Cousin Mary-Lou Tenafee over her gracious acres, dining with the people he had met on his first evening at the Carey’s house, wandering aimlessly through the Altonia, stopping always to talk to Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver and Henry Clay Bean, and making a languid but persistent pursuit of Glen Darrow.
“Look here, young woman,” he admonished her, “do you realize that you are at large but by my clemency?” And then, before the doctor’s daughter could give voice to her indifference as to exposure and her continued and accentuated scorn of him, he held up a benign hand. “Do not tremble, maiden. Your dark treachery is safe with me.” It was the manner of a feudal lord withholding punishment from a criminal vassal, and it infuriated Glen Darrow. “I may, of course, decide later to make an example of you, for what my parent would call the principle of the thing, but I can assure you, for your comfort, that your present exemplary conduct is steadily softening my rage. The respect and admiration which you find it impossible to conceal, the pretty timidity of your approach, your shy advances—” He ceased, and shook his head sadly. “Now, I ask you, Gloriana-Virginia, do you consider it well bred for her to quit the apartment in such a truculent manner, banging the door behind her?”
“Oh, suh,” Gloriana-Virginia pleaded, “Glen, she’s so moughty sweet and mannerly, most whiles! I kaint see why she acts so ornery to yo’all!”
“Do you think it is possible, Glory,” he inquired gravely, “that she doesn’t like me?”