Bunny had to study for his fall examinations, and that looked like a problem, for what was Vee going to do? But fate provided a solution—Dad telegraphed to Harvard University, which sent up a young instructor to do tutoring, and he was the solution. He was tall, and had the loveliest fair blue eyes, and a softly curling golden moustache, and soft golden fuzz all over him like a baby; he wore gold nose-glasses, and had a quiet voice and oh, so much culture—one of those master minds which can tutor you in anything if you give them a week’s start!
Coming as he did from an old Philadelphia family, and having been trained in the haughtiest centre of intellectual snobbery, you might have thought he would look down upon an ex-mule-driver and his son, to say nothing of an actress who had been raised in a patent medicine vender’s wagon, and had never read a whole book in her life. But as a matter of fact, young Mr. Appleton Laurence just simply collapsed in the presence of the situation he found at this Ontario camp; it was the most romantic and thrilling thing that a young instructor had encountered since Harvard began. As for the patent medicine vender’s daughter, he could not take his eyes off her, and when she came near, the tutoring business was scattered as by a hurricane.
Vee of course had put her sparkling black eyes to work at once; all those stunts which Tommy Paley had taught her she now tried out on a new victim, and Bunny, as audience, was in position to study them objectively. Vee would wait till Mr. Laurence had set Bunny his morning’s work, and then she and the tutor would go for a walk in the woods, and Bunny would sit with one-half his mind on his books, while the other half wondered what was happening, and what he had reason to expect from one who had had so many lovers.
She did not leave him long in doubt. “Bunny-rabbit,” she said, “you aren’t going to be worried about my Appie, are you?”—for the hurricane that struck the tutoring business had swept all dignity away, and Mr. Appleton Laurence was “Appie,” except when he was “Applesauce.”
“I won’t worry unless you tell me to,” Bunny answered.
“That’s a dear! You must understand, I’m an actress, that’s the way I earn my living, and I simply have to know all about love, and how can I learn if I don’t practice?”
“Well, that’s all right, dear—”
“Some of the men they give you in Hollywood are such dubs, it makes you sick, you would as soon be in the arms of a clothing dummy. So I have to tell them how to act, and I have to know how a real gentleman behaves—you know what I mean, the highbrows and snobs. Oh, Bunny, it’s the cutest thing you ever saw, he falls down on his knees, and the tears come into his eyes, and you know, he can recite all the poets by heart; I never saw anything like it; you’d think he was an old Shakespearean actor. And it’s really a great opportunity for me, to cultivate my taste and get refined.”
“Well, yes, dear, but isn’t it a little hard on him?”
“Oh, rubbish, it won’t hurt him, he’ll go off and put it into sonnets—he’s doing it already, and maybe he’ll get to be famous, and it’d be great publicity! Don’t you bother about him, Bunny, and don’t bother about me; there’s nobody in the world for me but my Bunny-rabbit—all the rest is just a joke.” And she put her arms about him. “I know what it is to be jealous, dear, and I wouldn’t cause you that unhappiness for anything in the world. If you really mind, you can send old Applesauce packing, and I won’t be cross.”