Overwhelmed with this sudden turn in his affairs, the boy began blindly picking up the scratch papers strewn about which they had spoiled. Carelessly he ripped them in strips until he came to the asinine lines of Caleb’s in 1871.
“You won’t need these any more, will you,” he asked, “now that we’ve written them better?”
The tanner rescued the sheet from the boy’s hand, however. Carefully folding it, he laid it away in the worn, brown wallet and locked it up in the old green safe.
CHAPTER XII
FIRST COMPLICATIONS
I
“The Elms” school for girls consisted of a trio of high-pillared Colonial buildings on the main street of Mount Hadley, Massachusetts. They stood behind lofty arches of towering trees that were old when Washington passed through to inspect Ticonderoga.
Mount Hadley had an atmosphere possessed by many scholastic, hilltop New England towns,—wide-verandahed, leisurely, sharply colored, exclusive. From its diminutive brownstone Memorial library to its chaste white churches, it expressed simplicity, asceticism, grace and dignified charm. The nasturtium-flavored individuality of the town stood in clearly defined contrast to the clash and clatter of muddy-guttered, smoky-scented, foreign-populated paper cities farther down the Connecticut. A ninety-minute suburban trolley service connected it with Springfield, Massachusetts.
Madelaine Theddon was entering her second year at “The Elms” when, upon emerging from the college store-and-postoffice early one September evening, she saw a motor-car draw to the near-by curb and a man leap out. He blocked her way with easy self-confidence. She recognized Gordon Ruggles.
Physically, Gordon seemed to have attained maturity in a year. He had gained in height at an expense of girth. His auto togs made him look still taller and older. But his twisted front tooth was as prominent and his eyelid flopped as badly as ever.