“What I really wanted to know, Judge, was about a charter. I want to start a company. So I says to myself, Judge Tom, he can just about start me right. He’ll 193get my company going–what say?” Answering the Judge’s question about the nature of the company, the Captain explained: “You see, I had the agency for the Waverly bicycle here a while back, and I got one of their wheels and was fooling with it like a fellow will on a wet day–what say?” He smiled up at the Judge a self-deprecatory smile, as if to ask him not to mind his foolishness but to listen to his story. “And when I got the blame thing apart, she wouldn’t go together–eh? So I had to kind of give up the agency, and I took a churn that was filling a long-felt want just then. Churns is always my specialty and I forgot all about the bicycle–just like a fellow will–eh? But here a while back I wanted to rig up a gearing for the churn and so I took down the wreck of the old wheel, and dubbing around I worked out a ball-bearing sprocket joint–say, man, she runs just like a feather. And now what I want is a patent for the sprocket and a charter for the company to put it on the market. Henry Fenn’s going to the capital for me to fix up the charter; and then whoopee–the old man’s coming along, eh? When I get that thing on the market, you watch out for me–what say?”
The eyes of Margaret Fenn danced around the Captain’s sprocket. So the Judge, thinking to get rid of the Captain and oblige the Fenns with one stroke, sent the Captain away with twenty-five dollars to pay Henry Fenn for getting the patent for the sprocket and securing the charter for the company.
As the Captain left the office of the Judge he greeted Mrs. Van Dorn with an elaborate bow.
And now enter Laura Van Dorn. And she is beautiful, too–with candid, wide-open gray eyes. Maturity has hardly reached her, but through the beauty of line and color, character is showing itself in every feature; Satterthwaite and Nesbit, force and sentiment are struggling upon her features for mastery. The January air has flushed her face and her frank, honest eyes glow happily. But when one belongs to the ancient, though scarcely Honorable Primrose Hunt, and rides forever to the hounds down the path of dalliance, one’s wife of four years is rather stale sport. One does not pry up her eyelashes; they have been pried; 194nor does one hold dialogues with her under the words of conventional speech. The rules of the Hunt require one to look up at one’s wife–chiefly to find out what she is after and to wonder how long she will inflict herself. And when one is hearing afar the cry of the pack, no true sportsman is diverted from the chase by ruddy, wifely cheeks, and beaming, wifely eyes, and an eager, wifely heart. So when Laura his wife came into the office of the young Judge she found his heart out with the Primrose Hunt and only his handsome figure and his judicial mind accessible to her. “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “have you heard about the Adamses?” The young Judge looked up, smiled, adjusted his judicial mind, and answered without emotion: “Rather foolish, don’t you think?”
“Well, perhaps it’s foolish, but you know it’s splendid as well as I. Giving up everything they had on earth to soften the horror in South Harvey–I’m so proud of them!”
“Well,” he replied, still keeping his chair, and letting his wife find a chair for herself, “you might work up a little pride for your husband while you’re at it. I gave two thousand. They only gave fifteen hundred.”
“Well–you’re a dear, too.” She touched him with a caressing hand. “But you could afford it. It means for you only the profits on one real estate deal or one case of Joe Calvin’s in the Federal Court, where you can still divide the fees. But, Tom–the Adamses have given themselves–all they have–themselves. It’s a very inspiring thing; I feel that it must affect men in this town to see that splendid faith.”
“Laura,” he answered testily, “why do you still keep up that foolish enthusiasm for perfectly unreasonable things? There was no sense in the Adamses giving that way. It was a foolish thing to do, when the old man is practically on the town. His paper is a joke. Sooner or later we will all have to make up this gift a dollar at a time and take care of him.”
He turned to his law book. “Besides, if you come to that–it’s money that talks and if you want to get excited, get excited over my two thousand. It will do more good than their fifteen hundred–at least five hundred dollars more. And that’s all there is to it.”
195Her face twitched with pain. Then from some depths of her soul she hailed him impulsively: