THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Page [160]

“NOW WE’RE IN FOR IT!” SAID NAN UNCOMFORTABLY

THE PROOF OF THE
PUDDING

BY
MEREDITH NICHOLSON

With Illustrations

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1916

COPYRIGHT, 1915 AND 1916, BY THE RED BOOK CORPORATION
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published May 1916

By Meredith Nicholson

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING. Illustrated.

THE POET. Illustrated.

OTHERWISE PHYLLIS. With frontispiece in color.

THE PROVINCIAL AMERICAN AND OTHER PAPERS.

A HOOSIER CHRONICLE. With illustrations.

THE SIEGE OF THE SEVEN SUITORS. With illustrations.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston and New York

TO
CARLETON B. McCULLOCH

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

From drawings by C. H. Taffs

THE PROOF OF THE
PUDDING

CHAPTER I
A YOUNG LADY OF MOODS

It was three o’clock, but the luncheon the Kinneys were giving at the Country Club had survived the passing of less leisurely patrons and now dominated the house. The negro waiters, having served all the food and drink prescribed, perched on the railing of the veranda outside the dining-room, ready to offer further liquids if they should be demanded. Such demands had not been infrequent during the two hours that had intervened since the party sat down, as a row of empty champagne bottles in the club pantry testified. The negroes watched with discreet grins the antics of a girl of twenty-two who seemed to be the center of interest. She had been entertaining the company with a variety of impersonations of local characters, rising and moving about for the better display of her powers of mimicry. Hand-clapping and cries of “Go on!” followed each of these performances.

She concluded an imitation of the head waiter—a pompous individual who had viewed this impiety with mixed emotions—and sank exhausted into her chair amid boisterous laughter. The flush in her cheeks was not wholly attributable to the heat of the June day, and the eagerness with which she gulped a glass of champagne one of the men handed her suggested a familiar acquaintance with that beverage.

“Now, Nan, give us Daddy Farley. Do old Uncle Tim cussing the doctor—put it all in—that’s a good little Nan!”

“Go to it, Nan; we’ve got to have it!” cried Mrs. Kinney.

“I think it will kill me to hear it again,” protested Billy Copeland, who was refilling the girl’s glass; “but I’d be glad to die laughing. It’s the funniest stunt you ever did.”

The girl’s arms hung limp, and she sat, a crumpled, dejected figure, glancing about frowningly with dull eyes.

“I’m all in; there’s nothing doing,” she replied tamely.

“Oh, come along, Nan. We’ll go for a spin in the country right afterwards,” said Mrs. Kinney—who had just confided to a guest from Pittsburg, for whom the party was given, that Nan’s imitation of Daddy Farley abusing his doctor was the killingest thing ever, and that she just must hear it.

Their importunities were renewed to the accompaniment of much thumping of the table, and suddenly the girl sprang to her feet. She seemed immediately transformed as she began a minute representation of the gait and speech of an old man.

“You ignorant blackguard! you common, low piece of swine-meat! How dare you come day after day to torture me with your filthy nostrums! You’ve poured enough dope into me to float a battleship and given me pills enough to sink it, and here I am limpin’ around like a spavined horse, and no more chance o’gettin’ out o’ here again than I have of goin’ to heaven! What’s that! You got the cheek to offer to give up the case! Just like you to want to turn me over to some other pirate and keep me movin’ till the undertaker comes along and hangs out the crape! There’s been a dozen o’ you flutterin’ in here like hungry sparrows lookin’ for worms. You don’t see anything in my old carcass but worm-food! Hi, you! What you up to now? Oh, Lord, don’t leave me! Come back here; come back here, I say! Oh, my damned legs! How long you say I’d better take that poison you sent up here yesterday? Well, all right”—meekly—“I guess I’ll try it. Where’s that nurse gone? You better tell her again about the treatment. She forgets it half the time; tell her to double the dose. If I’ve got to die, I want to die full o’ poison to make it easier for the embalmer. I guess you’re all right, doc; but you’re slow, mighty damned slow. Hi, Nan, you grinnin’ little fool, who told you to come in here? Oh, Lord! Oh, my poor legs! Oh, for God’s sake, doctor, do something for me—do something for me!”

She tottered toward her chair, imaginably the bed from which the old man had risen, and glanced at her audience indifferently, as they broke into hilarious applause. The vulgarity of the exhibition was mitigated somewhat by her amazing success in sinking herself in another personality. They all knew that the man she was imitating was her foster-father and benefactor; that he had rescued her from obscure, hopeless poverty, educated her and given her his name; and that but for his benevolence they never would have known or heard of her; but this clearly was not a company that was fastidious in such matters. The exhibition of her cleverness had been highly diverting. They waved their napkins and demanded more.

She continued to survey them coldly, standing by her chair and absently biting her lip. Then she turned with an air of disdain and moved among the tables to the nearest door with languid deliberation. They watched her dully, mystified. This possibly was a prelude to some further contribution to the hour’s entertainment, and they craned their necks to follow her, expecting that at any moment she would turn back.

The screen door banged harshly upon her exit. She crossed the veranda, ran down the steps toward the canal that lay a little below the clubhouse, and hurried away as though anxious to escape pursuit or questioning. She came presently to the river, pressed through a tangle of briars and threw herself down on the bank under a majestic sycamore.

A woodpecker drummed upon a dead limb of the tree, and a kingfisher looked down at her wonderingly. She lay perfectly quiet with her face buried in the grass. Hers was not a happy frame of mind. Torn with contrition, she yielded herself to the luxury of self-scorn. She had no intention of returning immediately to the clubhouse, and she was infinitely relieved that none of her late companions had followed her. She wished that she might never see them again. Then her mood changed and she sat up, flung aside her hat, dipped her handkerchief in the river and held it to her burning face.

“You little fool, you silly little fool!” she said, addressing her reflection in the water. She spoke as though quoting, which was indeed exactly what she was doing. It was just such endearing terms that her foster-father applied to her in his frequent fits of anger.

Then she stretched herself at ease with her hands clasped under her head and stared at the sky. Beneath the cloud of loosened black hair that her various exertions had shaken free, her violet eyes were fine and expressive. Her face was slender, with dimples near the corners of her mouth: a sensitive face, still fresh and girlish. Her fairness was that of her type—a type markedly Irish. The wet handkerchief that had brought away a faint blotch of scarlet from her rather full lips had left them still red with the sufficient color of youthful health. Lying relaxed for half an hour, watching the lazily drifting white clouds, she became tranquillized. Her eyes lost their restlessness as she gazed dreamily at the heavens.

The soft splash of oars caused her to lift her head guardedly and glance out upon the river. A young man was deftly urging a cedar skiff toward a huge elm that had been uprooted by a spring storm and lay with half its trunk submerged. He jumped out and tied the skiff to a convenient limb and then, standing on the trunk, adjusted a rod and line and began amusing himself by dropping a brilliant fly here and there on the rippling surface. It was inconceivable that any one should imagine that fish were to be wooed and won in this part of the stream; even Nan knew better than that. But failures apparently did not diminish the pleasure the fisherman found in his occupation.

He was small and compactly made and wore white flannel trousers, canvas shoes, and a pink shirt with a four-in-hand to match. He moved about freely on the log to give variety to his experiments; he was indeed much nimbler with his feet than with his hands, for his whipping of the stream lacked the sophistication of skilled fly-casting. He lighted a cigarette without abating his efforts, and commented audibly upon his stupidity when a too-vigorous twist of the wrist sent the fly into a sapling, from which he extricated it with the greatest difficulty.

He was not of her world, Nan reflected, peering at him through the fringing willows. She knew most of the young gentlemen who attended dances or played tennis and golf at the Country Club, and he was not of their species. Once in making a long cast his foot slipped, and he capered wildly while regaining his balance, fell astraddle of the log, and one shoe shipped water. He glanced about to make sure this misfortune had not been observed, shook the water out of his shoe and lighted a fresh cigarette.

She admired the dexterity with which he held the rod under his arm, manipulated the “makings” and had the little cylinder burning in a jiffy and hanging to his lip—a fashion of carrying a cigarette not affected by the young gentlemen she knew. It was just a little rakish; but he was, she surmised, a rather rakish young man. A gray cap tilted over one ear exaggerated his youthful appearance; his countenance was still round and boyish, though she judged him to be older than herself.

The patience and industry with which he plied the rod were admirable: though there was not the slightest probability that a fish would snap at the fly, he continued his futile casting with the utmost zeal and good humor. His sinewy arms were white—which, being interpreted, meant that their exposure to the sun had not been as constant as might be expected of one who was lord of his own time and devoted to athletics. She was wondering whether he intended to continue his exercise indefinitely, when his efforts to extricate the fly from a tangle of water-grass freed it unexpectedly, and the line described a semicircle and caught a limb of the sycamore under which she was lying.

His vigorous tugs only tightened it the more, and she began speculating as to whether she should rise and loosen it or await his own solution of the difficulty. If it became necessary for him to leave the fallen tree to effect a rescue, he must find her hiding-place; and her dignity, she argued, would suffer if she allowed him to discover that she had been watching him. He now began moving toward the bank with the becoming air of determination that had attended his practice with the rod. She rose quickly, jumped up and caught the bough that held the fly, and tore it loose with a handful of leaves.

“Lordy!” he exclaimed, staring hard. “Did you buy a ticket for this show, or did you stroll in on a rain-check?”

“Oh, I was here first; but it isn’t my river!” she replied easily. “They don’t seem to be biting very well,” she added consolingly.

“Biting? Well, I should say not! There hasn’t been a minnow in this river since the Indians left. I’m just practicing.”

“You’ve done a lot of it,” said Nan, looking about for her hat and picking it up as an earnest of her immediate departure.

He dropped his rod and walked toward her guardedly and with an assumed carelessness, his hands in his pockets.

“That’s one good thing about fly-fishing,” he observed detainingly; “you don’t need to bother about the fish so long as there’s plenty of water.”

He noted the handkerchief that she had spread on a bush to dry, and eyed her with appreciation as she thrust the pins through her hat.

“Country Club?” he asked casually.

She nodded affirmatively, glancing toward the red roof of the clubhouse, and brushed the bits of bark and earth from her skirt. If he meant to annoy her with further conversation, it might be just as well to make it clear that the club afforded an easily accessible refuge.

“Excuse me, but you’re Miss Farley,—yes? It’s kind o’ funny,” he continued, still lounging toward her, “but I remember you away back when we were both kids—my name being Amidon—Jeremiah A., late of good old Perry County on La Belle Rivière—and I’ve seen you lots o’ times downtown. I’m connected in a minor capacity with the well-known house of Copeland-Farley Company, drugs, wholesale only—naturally sort o’ take an interest in the family.”

It was still wholly possible for her to walk away without replying; and yet his slangy speech amused her, and his manner was deferential. She remembered the Amidons from her childhood at Belleville, on the Ohio, and she even vaguely remembered the boy this young man must have been. Within three yards of her he paused, as though to reassure her that he was not disposed to presume upon an acquaintance that rested flimsily upon knowledge that might have awakened unwelcome memories; and seeing that she hesitated, he remarked:—

“A good deal has happened since you sat in front of me in the public school down there. I guess a good deal has happened to both of us.”

This was too intimate for immediate acceptance; but she would at least show him that whatever changes might have taken place in their affairs, she was not a snob.

“You are Jerry; the other Amidon boy was Obadiah. I remember him because the name always seemed so funny.”

“You’re playing safe! Obey died when he was ten—poor little kid! Scarlet fever. That was right after the flood you floated away on.”

She murmured her regret at the death of his brother. It was, however, still a delicate question just how much weight should be given to these slight ties of their common youth.

The disagreeable connotations of his introduction—the southward-looking vista that led back to the poverty and squalor to which she was born—were rather rosily obscured by the atmosphere of assured blitheness he exhaled. He seemed to imply that both had put Belleville behind them and that there was nothing surprising in this meeting under happier conditions. He was a clean-cut, well-knit, resolute young fellow. His brownish hair was combed back from his forehead with an onion-skin smoothness; indeed, he imparted a general impression of smoothness. His gray eyes expressed a juvenile innocence; his occasional smile was a slow, reluctant grin that disclosed white, even teeth. A self-confident young fellow, a trifle fresh, and yet with an unobtrusive freshness that was not displeasing, Nan thought, as she continued to observe and appraise him.

“I broke away from the home-plate when I was sixteen,” he went on, “about four years after you pulled out; and I’ve been engaged in commercial pursuits in this very town ever since. Arrived in a freight-car,” he amplified cheerfully, as though she were entitled to all the facts. “Got a job with the aforesaid well-known jobbing house. Began by sweeping out, and now I swing a sample-case down the lower Wabash. Oh, not vulgarly rich! but I manage to get my laundry out every Saturday night.”

“You travel for the house, do you?” she asked with a frown of perplexity.

“That’s calling it by a large name; but I can’t deny that your words give me pleasure. They’re just trying me out; it’s up to me to make good. I’ve seen you in the office now and then; but you never knew me.”

“If I ever saw you, I didn’t know you, of course,” she said with unaffected sincerity; “if I had, I should have spoken to you.”

“Oh, I never worried about that! But of course it would be all right if you didn’t want to remember me. I was an ugly little one-gallus kid with a frowsy head and freckled face. I shouldn’t expect you to remember me for my youthful beauty; but you saved me from starvation once; I sat on your fence and watched you eat a large red apple, and traded you my only agate—it was an imitation—for the core.”

She laughed, declaring that she could never have been so grasping, and he decided that she was a good fellow. Her manner of ignoring the social chasm that yawned between members of the fashionable Country Club and the Little Ripple Club farther down the river, to which young men who invaded the lower Wabash with sample-cases were acceptable, was wholly in her favor. Her parents had been much poorer than his own: his father had been a teamster; hers had been a common day laborer and a poor stick at that. And recurring to the maternal line, her mother had without shame added to the uncertain family income by taking in washing. His mother, on the other hand, had canned her own fruit and been active in the affairs of the First M.E. Church, serving on committees with the wives of men who owned stores and were therefore of Belleville’s aristocracy; she had even been invited to the parsonage to supper.

If Nan Corrigan’s parents had not perished in an Ohio River flood, and if Timothy Farley, serving on a flood sufferers’ relief committee, had not rescued her from a shanty that was about to topple over by the angry waters, Nan Farley would not be standing there in expensive raiment talking to Jerry Amidon. These facts were not to be ignored and she was conscious of no wish to ignore them.

“I’ve been fortunate, of course,” she said, as though condensing an answer to many questions.

“I guess there’s a good deal in luck,” he replied easily. “If one of our best tie-hoppers hadn’t got killed in a trolley smash-up, I might never have got a chance to try the road. I’d probably have been doing Old Masters with the marking-pot around the shipping-room to the end of time.”

His way of putting things amused her, and her smile heightened his admiration of her dimples.

“I suppose you’re going fishing when you learn how to manage the fly?” she asked, willing to prolong the talk now that they had disposed of the past.

“You never spoke truer words! It’s this way,” he continued confidentially: “When I see a fellow doing something I don’t know how to do, my heart-action isn’t good till I learn the trick. It used to make me sick to have to watch ’em marking boxes at the store, and I began getting down at six A.M. to practice, so when a chance came along I’d be ready to handle the brush. And camping once over Sunday a few miles down this romantic stretch of sandbars, I saw a chap hook a bass with a hand-made fly instead of a worm, and I’ve been waiting until returning prosperity gave me the price of a box of those toys to try it myself. And here you’ve caught me in the act. But don’t give me away to the sports up there.” He indicated the clubhouse with a jerk of the head. “It might injure my credit on the street.”

“Oh, I’ll not give you away!” she replied in his own key. “But did the man you saw catch the fish that time ever enter more fully into your life? I should think he ought to have known how highly you approved of him.”

“Well, I got acquainted with him after that, and he’s taken quite a shine to me, if I may say it which shouldn’t. The name being Eaton—John Cecil—lawyer by trade.”

Her face expressed surprise; then she laughed merrily.

“He’s never taken a shine to me; I think he disapproves of me. If he doesn’t”—she frowned—“he ought to!”

“Oh, nothing like that!” he declared with his peculiar slangy intonation. “He isn’t half as frosty as he looks; he’s the greatest ever; says he believes he could have made something out of me if he’d caught me sooner. He works at it occasionally, anyway; trying to purify my grammar—a hard job; says my slang is picturesque and useful for commercial purposes, but little adapted to the politer demands of the drawing-room. You know how Cecil talks? He’s a grand talker—sort o’ guys you, and you can’t get mad.”

“I’ve noticed that,” said Nan, with a rueful smile. “You ought to be proud that he takes an interest in you. I suppose it’s your sense of humor; he’s strong for that.”

This compliment, ventured cautiously, clearly pleased Amidon. He stooped, picked up a pebble and sent it skimming over the water.

“He says a sense of humor is essential to one who gropes for the philosophy of life—his very words. I don’t know what it means, but he says if I’m good and quit opening all my remarks with ‘Listen,’ he’ll elucidate some day.”

Her curiosity was aroused. The social conjunction of John Cecil Eaton and Jeremiah A. Amidon was bewildering.

“He’s not in the habit of wasting time on people he doesn’t like—me, for example,” she remarked, lifting her handkerchief from the bush and shaking it out. “I suppose you met him in a business way?”

“Not much! Politics! I room in his ward, and we met in the Fourth Ward Democratic Club. He tried to smash the Machine in the primary last spring, and I helped clean him up—some job, I can tell you! But he’s a good loser, and he says it’s his duty to win me over to the Cause of Righteousness. Cecil’s a thinker, all right. He says thought isn’t regarded as highly nowadays as it used to be; says my feet are well trained now, and I ought to begin using my head. He always wears that solemn front, and you never know when to laugh. Just toys with his funny whiskers and never blinks. Says he tries his jokes on me before he springs ’em at the University Club. I just let him string me; in fact, I’ve got to; he says I need his chastening hand. Gave me a copy of the Bible, Christmas, and told me to learn the Ten Commandments; said they were going out of fashion pretty fast, and he thought I could build up a reputation for being eccentric by living up to ’em. Says if Moses had made eleven, he couldn’t have improved on the job any. Queer way of talking religion, but Cecil’s different, any way you look at him.”

These revelations as to John Cecil Eaton’s admiration for the Ten Commandments, coming from Amidon, were surprising, but not so puzzling as the evident fact that Eaton found Copeland-Farley’s young commercial traveler worth cultivating. Amidon was quick to see that he rose in Nan’s estimation by reason of Eaton’s friendly interest.

“Well, I never get on with him,” she confessed, willing to sacrifice herself that Amidon might plume himself the more upon Eaton’s partiality.

“Lord, I don’t understand him!” Amidon protested. “If I was smart enough to do that, I wouldn’t be working for eighteen per. I guess he just gets lonesome sometimes and looks me up to have somebody to talk to—not that anybody wouldn’t be tickled to hear him, but he says he finds in me a certain raciness and tang of the Hoosier soil—whatever that means. He took me over to the Art Institute last Sunday and gave me a lecture on the pictures, and me not understanding any more than if he’d been talking Chinese. Introduced me to a Frenchman fresh from Paris and told him my ideals were distinctly post-impressionistic. Then we bumped into a college professor, and he made me talk so the guy could note the mellow flavor of my idiom. Can you beat that? Cecil says the hostility of the social classes to each other is preposterous. Got me to take him to a dance the freight-handlers were throwing. It was funny, but they all warmed to him like flies to a leaky sugar-barrel. Wore his evening clothes, white vest and all, and he was the only guy there in an ironed shirt! I thought they’d sure kill him; but not on your life!”

The John Cecil Eaton thus limned was not the austere person Nan knew. Her Eaton was a sedate gentleman who made cryptic remarks to her at parties and was known to be exceedingly conservative in social matters. Amidon, she surmised, was far too keen to subject himself unwillingly to Eaton’s caustic humor, nor was Eaton a man to trouble himself with any one unless he received an adequate return.

“I must be going back,” she said, glancing at her watch. Her casual manner of consulting the pretty trinket on her wrist charmed him. He was pleased with himself that he had been able to carry through an interview with so superior a person.

He had never been more at ease in his most brilliant conversations with the prettiest stenographer in the drug house, whose sole aim in life seemed to be to “call him down” for his freshness. Lunch-counter girls, shop-girls, attractive motion-picture cashiers, were an alluring target for his wit, and the more cruelly they snubbed him the more intensely he admired them. But the stimulus of these adventures was not comparable to the exaltation he experienced from this encounter with Nan Farley. If she had pretended not to remember him he would have hated her cordially; as it was, he liked her immensely. Though she lacked the pert “come-back” of girls behind desks and counters, he felt, nevertheless, that she would give a good account of herself in like positions if exposed to the bold raillery of commercial travelers. He was humble before her kindness. She turned away, hesitated an instant, then took a step toward him and put out her hand. There was something of appeal in the look she gave him as their hands touched—the vaguest hint of an appeal. Her eyes narrowed for an instant with the intentness of her gaze as she searched his face for—sympathy, understanding, confidence. Then she withdrew her hand quickly, aware that his admiration was expressing itself with disconcerting frankness in his friendly gray eyes.

“It’s been nice to see you again,” she said softly. “Good luck!”

“Good luck to you, Miss Farley; I hope to meet you again sometime.”

“Thank you; I hope so too.”

She nodded brightly and moved off along the path toward the clubhouse. He felt absently for his book of cigarette-papers as he reviewed what she had said and what he had said.

He did not resume his whipping of the river, but restored his rod to its case and turned slowly downstream, not neglecting to lift his eyes to the clubhouse as he drifted by.

CHAPTER II
THE AFFAIRS OF MRS. COPELAND

In a quiet corner of the club veranda Fanny Copeland and John Cecil Eaton had been conscious of the noisy gayety of Mrs. Kinney’s party, and they observed Nan Farley’s hurried exit and disappearance.

“Nan doesn’t seem to be responding to encores,” Eaton remarked. “She’s gone off to sulk—bored, probably; prefers to be alone, poor kid! It’s outrageous the way those people use her.”

“They have to be amused,” replied Mrs. Copeland, “and I’ve heard that Nan can be very funny.”

“There are all kinds of fun,” Eaton assented dryly. “She’s been taking off Uncle Tim again. I don’t see that he’s getting anything for his money—that is, assuming that she gets his money.”

“If she doesn’t,” said Mrs. Copeland quickly, “she won’t be the only person that’s disappointed.”

Eaton lifted his eyes toward a stretch of woodland beyond the river and regarded it fixedly. Then his gaze reverted to her.

“You think Billy wants to get back the money he paid Farley for the drug business?” he asked, in a colorless, indifferent tone that was habitual.

John Cecil Eaton was nearing the end of his thirties—tall, lean, with a closely trimmed black beard. He was dressed for the links, and his waiting caddy was guarding his bag in the distance and incidentally experimenting at clock golf. Eaton’s long fingers were clasped round his head in such manner as to set his cap awry. One was conscious of the deliberate gaze of his eyes; his drawling voice and dry humor suggested a man of leisurely habits. He specialized in patent law—that is to say, having a small but certain income, he was able to discriminate in his choice of cases, and he accepted only those that particularly interested him. He had been educated as a mechanical engineer, and the law was an afterthought. His years at Exeter and the Tech, prolonged by his law course at Harvard, had quickened his speech and modified its Hoosier flavor. He passed for an Eastern man with strangers. He was the fourth of his name in the community, and it was a name, distinguished in war and peace, that was well sprinkled through the pages of Indiana history. Though the Eatons had rendered public service in conspicuous instances they had never been money-makers, and when John heard of the high prices attained by Washington Street property in the early years of the twentieth century he reflected that if his father and grandfather had been a little more sanguine as to the city’s future he might have been the richest man in town.

Eaton’s interests were not all confined to his profession. He read prodigiously in many fields; he observed politics closely and was president of a club that debated economic and social questions; he was the best fly-fisherman in the State. His occasional efforts to improve the tone of local politics greatly amused his friends, who could not see why a man who might have been pardoned for looking enviously upon a seat in the United States Senate should subject himself to the indignity of a defeat for the city council. To the men he lunched with daily at the University Club his interest in municipal affairs was only another of his eccentricities. He had never married, but was still carried hopefully on the list of eligibles. By general consent he was the best dinner man in town—a guest who could be relied upon to keep the talk going and make a favorable impression on pilgrims from abroad.

Mrs. Copeland’s ironic smile at his last remark had lingered. Their eyes met glancingly; then the gaze of both fell upon the distant treetops. Theirs was an old friendship that rendered unnecessary the filling in of gaps. Eaton was thinking less concretely of her reference to Billy Copeland’s designs upon the Farley money than of the abstract fact that a divorced woman might sit upon a club veranda and hear her former spouse’s voice raised in joyous exclamation within, and even revert without visible emotion to the possibility of his remarrying.

Times and standards had changed. This was no longer the sober capital it had been, where every one went to church, and particular merit might be acquired by attending prayer-meeting. It was a very different place from what it had been in days well within Eaton’s recollection, before the bobtail mule cars yielded to the trolley, or the automobile drove out the sober-going phaëtons and station-wagons that had satisfied the native longing for grandeur. The roster of the Country Club bore testimony of the passing of the old order. The membership committee no longer concerned itself with the ancestry or reputation for sobriety of applicants, or their place of worship, or whether their grandfathers had come to town before the burning of the Morrison Opera House, or even the later conflagration that consumed the Academy of Music. You might speak of late arrivals like the Kinneys with all the scorn you pleased, but they had been recognized by everybody but a few ultra-conservatives; and if Bob Kinney was something of a sport or his wife’s New York clothes were a trifle daring for the local taste, such criticisms did not weigh heavily as against the handsome villa in which these same Kinneys had established themselves in the new residential area on the river bluff. Curiosity is a stern foe of snobbishness; and when Mrs. Kinney seemed so “sweet” and had given a thousand dollars to the new Girls’ Club, besides endowing a children’s room in the Presbyterian Hospital, many very proper and dignified matrons felt fully justified in crossing the Rubicon (otherwise White River) for an inspection of Mrs. Kinney’s new house. Eaton had accepted such things in a philosophic spirit, just as he accepted Kinney’s retainer to safeguard the patents on the devices that made Kinney’s cement the best on the market and the only brand that would take the finish and tint of tile or marble.

“It seems to be understood that they’re waiting for Farley to die so they can be married comfortably,” Eaton remarked. “But Farley’s a tough old hickory knot. He’s capable of hanging on just to spite them.”

“He was always very kind to me. I saw a good deal of him and his wife after I came here. He was proud of the business and anxious that Billy should carry it on and keep developing it.”

“I always liked the steamboating period of Farley’s life,” said Eaton, ignoring this frank reference to her former husband, in which he thought he detected a trace of wistfulness; “and he’s told me a good deal about it at times. It was much more picturesque than his wholesale-drugging. He never quite got over his river days—he’s always been the second mate, bullying the roustabouts.”

“He never forgot how to swear,” Mrs. Copeland laughed. “He does it adorably.”

“There was never anything like him when he’s well heated,” Eaton continued. “He never means anything—it’s just his natural way of talking. His customers rather liked it on the whole—expected him to commit them to the fiery pit every time they came to town and dropped in to see him. When he got stung in a trade—which wasn’t often—he’d go into his room and lock the door and curse himself for an hour or two and then go out and raise somebody’s wages. A character—a real person, old Uncle Tim!”

The thought of the retired merchant seemed to give Eaton pleasure; a smile played furtively about his lips.

“Then it must have been his wife who used to lure him to church every Sunday morning.”

“Not a bit of it! It was the old man himself. He had a superstitious feeling that business would go badly if he cut church. He never swore on Sundays, but made up for it Monday mornings. He’s always been a generous backer of foreign missionaries on the theory that by Christianizing the heathen we’re widening the market for American commerce. We’ve had worse men than Farley. I suppose he never told a lie or did an underhanded thing through all the years he was in business. And all he has to leave behind him is his half million or more—and Nan.”

“And Nan,” Mrs. Copeland repeated with a shrug of her shoulders. “I suppose Mr. Farley knows what’s up. He’s too shrewd not to know. Clever as Nan is, she could hardly pull the wool over his eyes.”

“She’s much too clever not to know she can’t fool him; but he’s immensely fond of her, just as his wife was. And we’ve got to admit that Nan is a very charming person—a little devilish, but keen and amusing. She’s too good for that crowd she’s running with—no doubt of that! If Uncle Tim thought she meant to marry Billy, he would take pains to see that she didn’t.”

“You mean he wouldn’t leave her the money?” she asked in a lower tone. “I suppose he’d have to.”

Eaton shook his head.

“He’s under no obligation to give it all to Nan. If he thought there was any chance of her marrying Billy—”

“She’s been led to believe that it would all be hers. The Farleys educated her and brought her up in a way to encourage the belief. It would be cruel to disappoint her; he wouldn’t have any right to cut her off,” Mrs. Copeland concluded with feeling.

“It might be less cruel to cut her off than to let her have it all and go on the way she’s started. She came about ten years too late upon the scene. It’s only within a few years that a party like we’ve listened to in there would have been possible in this town. If Nan had reached her twentieth year a decade ago, she’d have been the demurest of little girls, and there would have been no question of her marrying a man who had divorced his wife merely to be free to appropriate her.”

“A VERY CHARMING PERSON—A LITTLE DEVILISH,
BUT KEEN AND AMUSING”

Mrs. Copeland opened and closed her eyes quickly several times. No other man of her acquaintance would have dared to speak of her personal affairs in this blunt fashion. Eaton had referred to the divorce that had severed her ties with Copeland quite as though she were not an interested party to that transaction. He now went a step further, and the color deepened in her face as he said:—

“I don’t understand why you didn’t resist his suit. I’ve never said this to you before, and it’s too late to be proffering advice, but you oughtn’t to have let it go as you did. Billy’s whole conduct was perfectly contemptible.”

“There was no sense in making a fight if he wanted to quit. The law couldn’t widen the breach; it was there anyhow, from the first moment I knew what was in his mind.”

“He acted like a scoundrel,” persisted Eaton in his cool, even tones; “it was base, rotten, damnable!”

“If you mean”—she hesitated and frowned—“if you mean that he let the impression get abroad that I was at fault—that it was I who had become interested elsewhere—it’s only just to say that I never thought Billy did that. I don’t believe now that he did it.”

He was aware that he had ventured far toward the red lamps of danger. This matter of her personal honor was too delicate for veranda discussion; in fact, it was not a matter that he had any right to refer to even remotely at any time or place.

“Of course, unpleasant things were said,” she added. “I suppose they’re always bound to be. Manning was his friend, not mine.”

Eaton received this impassively, which was his way of receiving most things.

“By keeping out of the way, that gentleman proved that he couldn’t have been any friend of yours. If he’d been a gentleman or even a man—”

She broke in upon him quietly, bending toward him with tense eagerness.

“He offered to: I have never told that to any one, but I don’t want you to be unfair even to him. My mistake was that I meekly followed Billy when he began running with the new crowd. I knew I was boring him, and I thought if I took up with the Kinneys and the people they were training with, he might get tired of them after a while and we could go on as we had begun. But I hadn’t reckoned with Nan. I allowed myself to be put in competition with a girl of twenty—which is a foolish thing for a woman of thirty-five to do.”

She carried lightly the thirty-five years to which she confessed, but sometimes, in unguarded moments, a startled, pained look stole into her brown eyes, as though at the remembrance of a blow that might repeat itself. There was a patch of white in her hair just at one side of her forehead. Its effect was to contribute to her natural air of distinction. She was of medium height and her trim figure retained its girlish lines. Her face and hands were tanned brown, and the color was becoming. She wore to-day a blue skirt and a plain blouse, with a soft collar opened at the throat. She had walked to the clubhouse from her home, a mile distant, and her meeting with Eaton had been purely incidental. After her divorce she had established herself as a dairy farmer on twenty acres of land that she had inherited from her father, a banker in one of the smaller county seats, who had been specially interested in dairying and had encouraged her interest in the diversion he made profitable. To please him she had taken a course in dairying at the State Agricultural School and knew the business in all its practical aspects. Copeland had first seen her at a winter resort in Florida where she had gone with her father in his last illness, and their common ties with Indiana had made it easily possible for him to cultivate her better acquaintance later at home. Billy Copeland was an attractive young fellow with good prospects; his social experience was much ampler than hers, and the marriage seemed to her friends an advantageous one. When after ten years she found herself free, she rose from the ruins of her domestic happiness determined to live her life in the way that pleased her best. She shrank from adjusting herself to a new groove in town; the plight of the divorced woman was still, in this community, not wholly comfortable. There was little consolation in the sympathy of friends—though she had many; and even the general attitude, that Copeland’s conduct was utterly indefensible, did not help greatly. She realized perfectly that in following Copeland’s lead unprotestingly when he caught step with the quicker social pace set by the Kinneys,—a name that stood as a synonym for noiser functions and heavier libations than the community had tolerated,—she had estranged many who were affronted by the violence with which the town was becoming kinneyized.

Two years had passed and her broken wings again beat the air with something of their early rhythm. The pathos of her isolation was more apparent to her old friends in town than to herself. Whether she had dropped out of the Kinney crowd, or whether it was more properly an ejectment, there was all the more reason why women who had regarded the intrusions of that set with horror should manifest their confidence in her. If she had been poor, a divorcée lodged in a boarding-house and in need of practical aid, she might have suffered from neglect; but having an assured small income which her investment in the dairy farm in no wise jeopardized, it was rather the thing to look in on her occasionally. Young girls in particular thought her handsome and interesting-looking, and risked their mothers’ displeasure by going to see her. And there were women who sought her out merely to emphasize their disapproval of Copeland and the scandal of his divorce, which they felt to be an affront to the community’s dignity in a man whose father had been of the old order of decent, law-abiding, home-keeping, church-going citizens. They admired the courage and dignity with which she met misfortune and addressed herself uncomplainingly to the business of fashioning a new life.

“I’ve been keeping you from your game,” she said, rising abruptly; “and I must be getting home.”

They walked down the veranda toward the entrance and reached the door at a moment when Copeland, who had been keeping company with a tall glass in the rathskeller below, waiting impatiently for Nan’s return, lounged out.

He stopped short with a slightly challenging air. Eaton bowed and tugged at the visor of his cap. Copeland lifted his straw hat and muttered a good-afternoon that was intended for one or both as they chose to take it. Mrs. Copeland glanced at him without making any sign; she did not speak to Eaton again, but as they parted near the first tee and she started across the links toward the highway, she nodded quickly and smiled a forlorn little smile that haunted him for some time afterward.

Half an hour later, standing erect after successfully negotiating a difficult putt, he said, under his breath:—

“By George! She’s still in love with him!”

He glanced around to make sure no one had overheard him, and crossed to the next tee with a look of deep perplexity on his face.

Nan, having returned to the clubhouse, sauntered down the veranda toward Copeland, wearing a demure air she had practiced for his benefit. Her indifference to his annoyance at her long absence added to his vexation.

“Well, what have you been up to?” he demanded irritably. “The others skipped long ago.”

“Oh, I was tired and went down to the river to rest. I’m going home now.”

“You can’t go home; Grace expects us to stop at her house; they’ll all be there in half an hour.”

“Sorry, but I must skip. You run along like a good boy, and I’ll hop on the trolley. I must be home by five, and I’ll just about make it.”

“That’s not treating Grace right, to say nothing of me!” he expostulated. “I’m getting sick of all this dodging and ducking. I’m coming up to the house to-morrow and have it out with Farley.”

“You’re a nice boy, Billy, but you’re not going to do anything foolish,” she replied.

He found the kindness of this—even its note of fondness—unsatisfying. He read into it a skepticism that was not flattering.

“We’ve been fooling long enough about this; we’ve got to announce our engagement and be done with it.”

“But, Billy, we’re not engaged! We’re just the best of friends. Why should we stir up a big fuss by getting engaged?”

“What’s got into you, anyhow!” he exclaimed, eyeing her angrily. “This talk about not being engaged doesn’t go! I’m getting tired of all this nonsense—being kicked about and held off when I’ve staked everything I’ve got on you.”

“You mean,” she said steadily, “that you divorced your wife, thinking I would marry you; and now you’re angry because I’m not in a hurry about it, and don’t want to trouble papa, who has been kinder to me than anybody else ever was—”

“For God’s sake, don’t cry here! We’ve been talked about enough; I don’t understand what’s got into you to-day.”

“I just mean to be sensible, that’s all. We’ve had some mighty fine times, and you’ve been nice to me; but there’s no hurry about getting married—”

“No hurry!” He stared at her, unable in his impotent rage to deal with the situation as he thought it deserved. “Look here, Nan, I can stand a lot of this Irish temperament of yours, but you’re playing it a little too far.”

“My Irish temperament!” she repeated poutingly. “Well, I guess the Irish is there all right; I don’t know about the temperamental part of it. A good many people call it something very different.”

“When am I going to see you again?” he demanded roughly.

“How should I know! You see me now and you don’t like me. You’d better go downtown and do some work, Billy; that’s what I should prescribe for you. And you’ve got to cut out the drink; it’s getting too big a hold on you. I’m going to quit, too.”

Standing near the entrance, they had been obliged to acknowledge the greetings of a number of new arrivals. It was manifestly no place for a prolonged serious discussion of their future. Mrs. Harrington, whose husband’s bank, the Phœnix National, was the soundest in the State, climbed the steps from her motor without seeing Nan and her companion. Until Farley retired, the Copeland-Farley account was carried by the Phœnix; when Billy Copeland took the helm he transferred it to the Western, as likely to grant a more generous credit.

Copeland flushed angrily at the slight; Nan bit her lip.

“I’m off!” she said. “Be a good boy. I’ll see you again in a day or two. And for Heaven’s sake, don’t call me on the telephone; papa has an extension in his room, you know, and hears everything. Tell Grace I’m sorry—”

“Let me run you into town; I can set you down somewhere near home. The trolleys are hot and dusty. Besides, I want to talk to you; I’ve got a lot to say to you.”

“Not to-day, Billy. Good-bye!”

Eaton found Nan waiting for him at the fourth green.

“I was praying for a mascot, and here you are,” he remarked affably. “I can’t fail to turn in a good card. Glad to see you’ve taken up walking; there’s nothing like it—particularly on a humid afternoon.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I hope to catch the four-thirty for town. What are my chances?”

“Excellent, if you don’t waste more than ten minutes on me. You’ve never given me more than five up to date. How is Mr. Farley?”

“He’s been very comfortable for a week; really quite like himself. You’d better come and see him.”

“I meant to drop in often all winter, but was afraid of boring him.”

“You’re one of the few that couldn’t do that. He likes to talk to you. You don’t bother him with questions about his health—a sure way of pleasing him.”

“A rare man, Farley. Wiser than serpents, and stimulating. I’ve learned a good deal from him.”

They reached his ball, that had accommodatingly effected a good lie, and after viewing it with approval he glanced at Nan and remarked:—

“You’d better urge me to come to see you, too. It’s just occurred to me that it might be well for us to know each other better. I may flatter myself; but—”

“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard to-day! Please come soon.”

“Thank you, Nan; I shall certainly do that.”

“I met a friend of yours a while ago,” she said, “who pronounced you the greatest living man.”

“Ah! A gentleman, of course; I identify him at once; he’s the only person alive I fool to that extent—Jeremiah A. Amidon! I can’t imagine why he hasn’t mentioned his acquaintance with you. I shall chide him for this.”

He viewed her in his quizzical fashion through the thick-lensed spectacles he used for golfing. In his ordinary occupations these gave place to eyeglasses that twinkled with a sharp, hard brightness, as though bent upon obscuring the kindness that lay behind them.

“I hadn’t seen him lately—not since I was a child. We used to be neighbors when we were children, and he was a very, very naughty boy.”

“I dare say he was,” Eaton remarked, with his air of thinking of something else. “I suppose you didn’t find him at all backward in bringing himself to your notice. Shyness isn’t his dominant trait.”

“On the other hand, he was rather diffident and wholly polite. I thought his manners did you credit—for he said you had been coaching him.”

“He must be chidden; his use of my name in that connection is utterly unwarranted. He was one of Mrs. Kinney’s party, I suppose,—very interesting. I’m glad they have taken him up!”

He was watching, with the quick eagerness that made him so disconcerting a companion, the passing of a motor toward the clubhouse, but she understood perfectly that this utterance had been with ironic intent. She laughed softly.

“How funny you are! I wish I weren’t afraid of you.”

“I’ve made a careful study of the phobias, and there is nothing in the best authorities to justify a fear of me. I’m as tame as buttered toast.”

“Well, it’s clear Mr. Amidon isn’t afraid of you!”

“I’m relieved—infinitely; I’m in mortal terror of him. He’s fixed standards of conduct for me that make me nervous. I’m afraid the young scoundrel will catch me with my visor down some day; then smash goes his poor idol. I’m glad you spoke of him; if he wasn’t at your luncheon—a guess you scorned to notice—I suppose you met by chance, the usual way.”

“It was just like that,” she laughed. “Very much so!”

“H’m! I warn you against accepting the attentions of just any young man who strolls up the river. A girl of your years must be discreet. Your early knowledge of Mr. Amidon in the loved spots your infancy knew won’t save you. You’d better refer all such matters to me. Pleasant as this is, you’re going to miss your car if you don’t rustle. And Harrington’s bawling his head off trying to fore me away. Good-bye!”

With a neat stroke he landed his ball on the green and ran after it to raise the blockade. When Nan had halted the car and climbed into the vestibule, she waved her hand, a salute which he returned gallantly with a sweep of his cap.

CHAPTER III
MR. FARLEY BECOMES EXPLICIT

The Farleys had lived for twenty years in an old-fashioned square brick house surrounded by maples. The lower floor comprised a parlor, sitting-room, and dining-room, with a library on the side. The library had been Farley’s den, where he smoked his pipe and read his newspapers. The bookcases that lined the walls had rarely been opened; they contained the “Waverley Novels,” Dickens’s “Works” complete, and a wide range of miscellaneous fiction, including “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” most of Mark Twain, Tourgée’s novel of Reconstruction, “A Fool’s Errand,” Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona,” and a number of Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney’s stories for girls—these latter reminiscent of Nan’s girlhood. The brown volumes of “Messages and Papers of the Presidents” were massed on the bottom shelves invincibly with half a dozen “Reports” of the State Geological Survey. The doors of the black-walnut bookcases were warped so that the contents were accessible only after patient tugging. Half the books were upside-down—and had been since the last house-cleaning. The room presented an inhospitable front to literature, and the other arts fared no better elsewhere in the house. A steel engraving of the Parthenon on the dining-room wall confronted a crude print of the Jane E. Newcomb, an Ohio River packet on which Farley had been second mate—and an efficient one—in ’69-’70.

Mrs. Farley had established in her household the Southwestern custom of abating the heat by keeping the outer shutters closed through the middle of the day, and the negro servants who still continued in charge had not changed her system in this or in any other important particular. Nan had not lacked instruction in the domestic arts; in her school vacations she had been thoroughly drilled by Mrs. Farley. Cleanliness in its traditional relationship to godliness had been deeply impressed upon her; and she had been taught to sew, knit, and crochet. She knew how to cook after the plain fashion to which Mrs. Farley’s tastes and experience limited her; she had belonged to an embroidery class formed to give occupation to one of Mrs. Farley’s friends who had fallen upon evil times; and Nan had been the aptest of pupils.

But Nan had never been equal to the task of initiating changes in the Farley household, with its regular order of sweepings, scrubbings, and dustings; its special days for baking, its inexorable rotation in meats and vegetables for the table. And if she had needed justification she would have given as her excuse Farley’s long acceptance of his wife’s domestic routine, and the fear of displeasing him by altering it. The colored cook’s husband did the heavier indoor cleaning and maintained the yard; and the dining-room and the upper floor were cared for by a colored woman. Hardly any one employed a black second girl, and Nan would have changed the color scheme in this particular and substituted a neatly capped and aproned white girl of the type that opened the door of her friends’ houses, but the present incumbent was a niece of the cook and not to be eliminated without rending the entire domestic fabric.

Nan reached home a few minutes after five. She ran upstairs and found Farley in his room, bending over a table by the window playing solitaire. The trained nurse who had been in the house for a year appeared at the door and withdrew. Nan crossed the room and laid a hand on Farley’s shoulder. He had nearly finished the game, and she remained quietly watching his tremulous hands shifting the cards until he leaned back with a little grunt of satisfaction at the end. He put up his hand to hers and drew her round so that he could look at her.

“Still wearing that fool hat! Take it off and sit down here and talk to me.”

His small, round head was thickly covered with stiff white hair, though his square-cut beard had whitened unevenly and still showed traces of brown. While he lay in the chair with a pathetic inertness, his eyes moved about restlessly, and his bleached, gnarled fingers were never wholly quiet.

“Let’s see what you’ve been up to to-day?” he asked.

“Mamie Pembroke’s; she was having a luncheon for her cousin.”

“Just girls, I suppose?” he asked indifferently. “You must have had a lot to eat to be gone all this time.”

“Well, we went for a motor run afterward and stopped at the Country Club on the way back.”

“More to eat, I suppose. My God! everybody seems able to eat but me! I told that fool doctor awhile ago I was goin’ to shoot him if he didn’t cut off this gruel he’s feedin’ me. You can lay in corn’ beef and cabbage for to-morrow; I’m goin’ to eat a barrel of it, too. If I can get hold of some real food for a week, I’ll get out of this. I understand they’ve got Bill Harrington playin’ golf. My God! he’s two years older than I am and sits on his job every day. If I’d never knuckled under to the doctors, I’d be a well man!” The wind rustling the maple by the nearest window attracted his attention. “Open that blind, and let the air in. Things have come to a nice pass when a man with my constitution can be shut up in a dark room without air enough to keep him alive.”

It was necessary to lift the wire screen before the shutters could be opened, and he watched her intently as she obeyed him quickly and quietly.

“Been to luncheon, have you?” he remarked as she sat down. “Well, eatin’ your meals outside doesn’t save me any money. Those damned niggers cook just as much as if they had a regiment in the house. What did they give you to eat at the Pembrokes’—the usual bird-food rubbish?”

Before his illness he had scrupulously reserved his profanity for business uses; and it was only when his pain grew intolerable or the slow action of his doctor’s remedies roused him to fury that he had recourse to strong language. He allowed her to change the position of his footstool, which had slipped away from him, and grunted his appreciation as he stretched his long, bony figure more comfortably.

“Well, go on and tell me what you had to eat.”

It seemed best to meet this demand in a spirit of lightness. Having lied once, it might be well to vary her recital by resorting to the truth, and she counted off on her fingers, with the mockery that he had always seemed to like, the items of food that had really constituted Mrs. Kinney’s luncheon.

“Grape-fruit, broiled chicken, asparagus, potatoes baked in their jackets and sprinkled with red pepper, the way you like them; romaine salad, ice-cream and cake—just plain sponge cake—coffee. Nothing so very sumptuous about that, papa.”

It had always been “papa” and “mamma” since her adoption. When she came home from a boarding-school near Philadelphia where she had spent two years, her attempts to change the provincial “poppa” and “momma” to the French pronunciation had been promptly thwarted. Farley hated anything that seemed “high-falutin’”; and having grown used to being called “poppa,” his heart was as flint against the impious substitution.

“Of course there were no cocktails or champagne. Not at the Pembrokes’! If all the women around here were like Mrs. Pembroke, we wouldn’t have nice little girls like you swillin’ liquor; nor these sap-headed boys that trot with you girls stewin’ their worthless little brains in gin. What do you think these cigarette-smokin’ swine are goin’ to do! Do you hear of ’em doin’ any work? Is there one of ’em that’s worth a dollar a week? My God! between you girls runnin’ around half-naked and these worthless young cubs plantin’ their weak, wobbly little chins against cocktails all night, things have come to a nice pass. Well, why don’t you go on and tell me who was at your party? Here I am, lyin’ here waitin’ for the pallbearers to carry me out, and never hearin’ a thing, and you sit there deaf and dumb! Who was at that party?”

“Well, poppa, there were just seven girls, counting me: Mary Waterman, Minnie Briskett, Marian Doane, and Libby Davis, and Mamie and her guest—a cousin from Louisville. Of course, there was nothing to drink but claret cup, with sprigs of mint in the glasses.”

“OH, I HAD ONE GLASS; NOBODY HAD MORE, I THINK; THERE WAS SOME
KIND OF MINERAL WATER BESIDES. IT WAS ALL VERY SIMPLE”

“So the Pembrokes are comin’ to it, are they? They’ve got to have something that looks like liquor—well, they’ll be passin’ the cocktails before long. Claret cup dressed up like juleps; and how much did you get of it?”

“Oh, I had one glass; nobody had more, I think; there was some kind of mineral water besides. It was all very simple.”

“Just a simple little luncheon, was it? Well, I suppose it’s not too simple to get into the newspapers. Nobody can put an extra plate on the table now without the papers have to print it.”

He had never quizzed her like this, and his reference to the newspaper alarmed her. His usual custom was to ask her what she had been doing and whom she had seen and then change the subject in the midst of her answer. If he had laid a trap for her she had gone too far to retreat; and while she had lied to him before, she had managed it more discreetly. She had escaped detection so long that she believed herself immune from discovery.

He began tugging at a newspaper that had been hidden under his wrapper, and her heart throbbed violently as he opened it and thrust it toward her. It was the afternoon paper, folded back to the personal and society items.

“Just read that aloud to me, will you? I may have been mistaken. Maybe I didn’t get it straight. Go ahead, now, and read it—read it slow.”

She knew without looking what it was; the reading was exacted merely to add to her discomfiture. The newspaper was delivered punctually at four o’clock every afternoon, so that before she left the Country Club he had known just where she had been and the names of her companions. She read in a low, monotonous tone:—

“‘Mrs. Robert Smiley Kinney entertained at luncheon at the Country Club to-day for Mrs. Ridgeley P. Farwell, of Pittsburg, who is her house guest. The decorations were in pink. Those who enjoyed Mrs. Kinney’s hospitality were Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Towlesley, Miss Nancy Farley, Miss Edith Saxby, Mr. George K. Pickard, and Mr. William B. Copeland.’”

She refolded the paper and placed it on the table beside him. Instead of the violent lashing for which she had steeled herself, he spoke her name very kindly and gently, with even a lingering caress.

“I lied to you papa,” she faltered; “but I didn’t mean to see him again. I—”

“Let’s be square about this,” he said, bending forward and clasping his fingers over his knees. “You promised me a year ago that you’d not meet or see Copeland; I didn’t ask you to drop Mrs. Kinney, for I don’t think she’s a particularly bad woman; she’s only a fool, and we’ve got to be charitable in dealin’ with fools. You can’t ever tell when you’re not one yourself; that means me as well as you, Nan. Now, about that worthless whelp, Copeland! I want the whole truth—no more little lies or big ones. You know that piece of carrion wouldn’t dare come to this house, and yet you sneak away and meet him and leave me to find it out by accident! Now, I want the God’s truth; just what does all this mean?”

His quiet tone was weighted with the dignity, the simple righteousness, that lay in him. She could have met more courageously a violent tirade than his subdued demand. She was conscious that he had controlled himself with difficulty; throughout the interview his wrath had flashed like heat-lightning on far horizons, but he had kept himself well in hand. He was outraged, but he was hurt, troubled, perplexed by her conduct. The adoption of Nan had marked a high altitude in the married life of the Farleys, and they had lavished upon her the pent love of their childlessness. The very manner in which she had been flung upon their protection made her advent in their household something of an adventure, broadening their narrowing vistas and bringing a welcome cheer to their monotonous existence. They had felt it to be a duty, but one that would repay them a thousand-fold in happiness.

Farley patiently awaited her explanation—an explanation she dared not make. She must satisfy him, if at all, by evasions and further lies.

“Mrs. Kinney made a point of my coming; she was always very nice to me, and I haven’t been seeing her,—honestly I haven’t,—and I was afraid she’d be offended if I refused to go. And I didn’t know Mr. Copeland would be there. The luncheon was in the big dining-room, where everybody could see us. I didn’t see any more of him than of anybody else. In fact, I got tired and ran away—down to the river and was there by myself for an hour before I came home on the trolley. When I got back to the clubhouse, they had all gone motoring and I didn’t see them again.”

“Left you there, did they? Well, Copeland waited for you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she admitted quickly. “But I saw him only a minute on the veranda and told him I was coming home. He understands perfectly that you don’t want me to see him.”

“H’m! I should hope he did! All that crowd understand it, don’t they? They’ve been puttin’ you in his way, haven’t they,—tryin’ to fix up something between you and that loafer! Look here, Nan, I’m not dead yet! I’m goin’ to live a long time, and if these fool doctors have been tellin’ you I’m done for, they’ve lied. And if Copeland thinks my money’s goin’ to drop into his lap, he’s waitin’ under the wrong tree. Never a cent! What you got to say to that?”

“I don’t think he ever thought of it; it’s only because you don’t like him that you imagine he wants to marry me. I tell you now that I have never had any idea of marrying him. And as for your money—it isn’t my fault that you brought me here! You don’t have to give me a cent; I don’t want it; I won’t take it! I was only a poor, ignorant little nobody, anyhow, and you’ve been disappointed in me from the start. I’ve never pleased you, no matter how hard I’ve tried. But I’ve done the best I could, and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. I never told you an untruth before,” she ran on glibly; “and I wouldn’t to-day if I hadn’t guessed that you knew where I’d been and were trying to trick me into lying. You don’t love me any more, papa; I know that; and I’m going away—”

Her histrionic talents, employed so successfully in imitating him in his fury, for the pleasure of Mrs. Kinney’s guests, were diverted now to self-martyrization to the accompaniment of tears. She had been closer to him than to his wife: what Mrs. Farley denied in the way of indulgences he had usually yielded. He had liked her liveliness, her keen wit, the amusing cajoleries with which she played upon him. The remote Irish in his blood had been responsive to the fresher strain in her.

“For God’s sake, stop bawlin’!” he growled. “So you admit you lied, do you? Thought I had laid a trap for you, eh?”

It was difficult for him to realize that she was twenty-two and quite old enough to be held accountable for her sins. Her appeal to tears had always found him weak, but her declaration that she had suspected a trap when he began to quiz her was a trifle too daring to pass unchallenged. He repeated his demand that she sit up and stop crying.

“We may as well go through with this, Nan. I want to know what kind of an arrangement you have with Copeland. Are you in love with that fellow?”

“No!”

“Have you promised to marry him?”

“No!”

“Then why are you goin’ places where you expect to see him?”

“I’ve explained that, papa,” she replied with more assurance, finding that he did not debate her answers. “I didn’t like to refuse Mrs. Kinney when I’d been refusing so many of her invitations. She asked me a while ago to come to her house to spend a week; and a little before that she wanted me to go on a trip with them, but you were sick and I knew you didn’t like her, anyhow, so I refused. You’ve got the wrong idea about her, papa,” she continued ingratiatingly. “She’s really very nice. The fact that she hasn’t been here long is against her with some of the older women, but that’s just snobbishness. I always thought you hated the snobbishness of some of these people who have lived here always and are snippy to anybody else.”

He was conscious that she was eluding him, and he gripped his hands with a sudden resolution not to be thwarted.

“I don’t care a damn about the Kinneys; I’m talkin’ about you and Copeland,” he rasped impatiently.

“Very well, papa; I’ve told you all there is to know about that—”

“I don’t care what you say ‘about that,’” he mocked; “that worthless scoundrel seems to have an evil fascination for you. I don’t understand it; a decent young girl like you and a whiskey-soaked, loafin’, gamblin’ degenerate, who shook his wife—a fine woman—to be free to trail after you! That slimy wharf-rat has the fool idea that I took advantage of him when I sold him my interest in the store—and just to show you what a fool he is I’ll tell you that I sold him my interest at a tenth less than I could have got from three other people—did it, so help me God, out of sheer good feelin’, because he’s the son of a father who’d given me a hand up, and I thought because he was a fool I wouldn’t be just fair with him—I’d be generous! I did that for Sam Copeland’s sake.

“That was four years ago, and I hadn’t much idea then that he’d make good. He’s already cashed in everything Sam left him but the store. And I’ve still got his notes for twenty-five thousand dollars—twenty-five thousand, mind you!—that he’d like damned well to cancel by marryin’ you. A man nearly forty years old, who gambles and soaks himself in cocktails and runs after a feather-head like you while the business his father and I made the best in the State goes plumb to hell! Now, you listen to what I’m sayin’: if you want to marry him, you do it,—you go ahead and do it now, for if you wait for me to die, you’ll find he won’t be so anxious; there ain’t goin’ to be anything to marry you for!”

His voice that had been firm and strong at the beginning of this long speech sank to a hoarse whisper, but he cleared his throat and uttered his last words with sharp distinctness.

“I never meant to; I never had any idea of marrying him,” she said. “And I’ve never thought of the money. You can do what you like with it.”

“Well, a man can’t take his money with him to the graveyard, but he can tie a pretty long string to it; and it’s my duty to protect you as long as I can. I’d hoped you’d be married and settled before I went. Your mamma and I used to talk of that; you’d got a pretty tight grip on us; it couldn’t have been stronger if you’d been our own; and I don’t want anything to spoil this, Nan. I want you to be a good woman—not one of these high-flyin’, drinkin’ kind, that heads for the divorce court, but decent and steady. Now, I guess that’s about all.”

She stood beside him for a moment, smoothing his hair. Then she knelt, as though from an accession of feeling, and took his hands.

“I’m so sorry, papa! I never mean to hurt you; but I know I do; I know I must have troubled mamma, too, a very great deal. And you’ve both been so good to me! And I want to show you I appreciate it. And please don’t talk of the money any more or of my marrying anybody. I don’t want the money; I’m not going to marry: I want us to live on just as we have been. You’ve been cooped up too long, but you’re so much better now you’ll soon be able to travel.”

“No; there’s no more travel for me; I’ll be glad to hang on as I am. There’s nothing in this change idea. About a year more’s all I count on, and then you can throw me on the scrap-heap.”

She protested that there were many more comfortable years ahead of him; the doctors had said so. At the mention of doctors his anger flared again, but for an instant only. It was a question whether he had been mollified by her assurances or whether the peace that now reigned was attributable to his satisfaction with the plans he had devised to protect her from fortune-hunters.

She hated scenes and trouble of any kind, and peace or even a truce was worth having at any price. She had grown so accustomed to the bright, smooth surfaces of life as to be impatient of the rough, unburnished edges. It was not wholly Nan’s fault that she had reached womanhood selfish and willful. In their ignorance and anxiety to do as well by her as their neighbors did by their daughters, there had been no bounds to the Farleys’ indulgence.

“I’m going to have dinner up here with you,” she said cheerfully, after an interval. “I’m tired of eating alone downstairs with Miss Rankin; her white cap gets on my nerves.”

She satisfied herself that this plan pleased him, and ran downstairs whistling—then was up again in her room, where he heard her quick step, the opening and closing of drawers.

She faced him across the small table in the plainest of white frocks, with her hair arranged in a simple fashion he had once commended. She told stories—anecdotes she had gathered while dressing, from the back pages of “Life.” He was himself a capital story-teller, though at the age when a man repeats, and she listened to tales of his steamboating days that she had heard for years and could have told better herself.

Soon a thunder-shower cooled the air, and made necessary the closing of windows, with a resulting domestic intimacy. The atmosphere was redolent of forgiveness on his part, of a wish to please on hers.

At nine o’clock, when she had finished reading some chapters from “Life on the Mississippi,”—a book that he kept in his room,—and Miss Rankin appeared to put him to bed, he begged half an hour more. He hadn’t felt so well for a year, he declared.

“Look here, Nan,” he remarked, when the nurse had retired after a grudging acquiescence, “I don’t want you to feel I’m hard on you. I guess I talk pretty rough sometimes, but I don’t mean to. But I worry about you—what’s goin’ to happen to you after I’m gone. I wish I’d gone first, so mamma could have looked after you. You know we set a lot by you. If I’m hard on you, I don’t mean—”

She flung herself down beside him and clasped his face in her hands.

“You dear old fraud!—there can’t be any trouble between you and me, and as for your leaving me—why, that’s a long, long time ahead. And you can’t tell! I might go first—I have all kinds of queer symptoms—honestly, I do! And the doctor made me stop dancing last winter because my heart was going jigglety. Please let’s be good friends and cheerful as we always have been, and I’ll never, never tell you any fibs any more!”

She saw that her nearness, the touch of her hands, her supple young body pressed against his worn knees, were freeing the remotest springs of affection in his tired heart.

Nan wanted to be good—“good” in the sense of the word that had expressed the simple piety of her foster-mother. She had the conscience of her temperament and from childhood had often been miserable over the smallest infractions of discipline. Her last words with Copeland on the club veranda had not left her happy. It had been in her mind for some time that she must break with Billy. She had never been able to convince herself that she loved him. She had liked his admiration, and had over-valued it as coming from a man much older than herself; one who, moreover, stood to her as a protagonist of the gay world. No one but Billy Copeland gave suppers for visiting actors and actresses or chartered a fleet of canoes for a thousand-dollar picnic up the river. It was because he was different and amusing and made love to her with an ardor her nature craved that she had so readily lent herself to the efforts of the Kinneys to throw them together.

Being loved by Copeland, a divorced man rated “fast,” had all the more piquancy for Nan as affording a relief from the life of the staid, colorless household in which she had been reared. There were those who, without being snobs, looked down just a little upon a girl who was merely an adopted child to whom her foster-parents gave only a shadowy background. The Farleys were substantial and respectable, but they were not an “old family.” She was conscious of this, and the knowledge had made her the least bit rebellious and the more ready to surrender to the blandishments of the Kinneys, who were even more under the ban.

As she undressed and crept wearily into bed, she pondered these things, and the thought of them did not increase her happiness.

CHAPTER IV
NAN AND BILLY’S WIFE

Farley improved as the summer gained headway. He became astonishingly better, and his doctor prescribed an automobile in the hope that a daily airing would exercise a beneficent effect upon his temper. Farley detested automobiles and had told Nan frequently that they were used only by fools and bankrupts. A neighbor who failed in business that spring had been one of the first men in town to fall a victim to the motor craze, and Farley had noted with grim delight that three automobiles were named among the bankrupt’s assets.

When the idea of investing in a machine took hold of him, he went into the subject with his characteristic thoroughness. He had Nan buy all the magazines and cut from them the automobile advertisements and he sent for his friends to pump them as to their knowledge of various cars. Then he commissioned a mechanical engineer to buy him a machine that could climb any hill in the State, and that was free of the frailties and imperfections of which his friends complained.

Farley manifested a childlike joy in his new plaything; he declared that he would have a negro chauffeur. It would be like old steamboat times, he said, to go “sailin’ around with a nigger to cuss.”

Nan or the nurse went out with him daily—preferably Nan, who was immensely relieved to find that they were now on better terms than for several years. Life hadn’t been a gay promenade since she ceased to share the festivities of the Kinneys and their friends. Copeland she had dismissed finally, and the rest of them wearied of calling her on the telephone only to be told that it was impossible for her to make engagements. It may have been that Farley realized that she was trying to meet his wishes; at any rate, she had no cause to complain of his kindness.

“This would have tickled mamma,” he would say, as they rolled through the country in the machine. “She was always afraid of horses; these things don’t seem half as risky when you get used to ’em. If I keep on feelin’ better, we’ll take some long trips this fall. There’s a lot o’ places I’d like to see again. I’d like to go down and take another look at the Ohio.”

He spoke much of his wife, and at least once every week drove to the cemetery, and watched Nan place flowers on her foster-mother’s grave.

After one of these visits he ordered the chauffeur to drive north. He had read in the papers of the sale of a farm at what he said was a record price for land in that neighborhood, and he wanted to take a look at the property. After they had inspected the farm and were running toward home, Nan suggested that they stop at the Country Club for a cool drink.

“Let’s drive to Mrs. Copeland’s place,” he remarked casually. “I’ve always meant to look at her farm.”

He watched her sharply, as though expecting her to object. Possibly he had some purpose in this; or the suggestion might be due to malevolence; but she dismissed any such idea. He was always curious about people, and there was, to be sure, no reason why he should not call on Mrs. Copeland.

“Certainly; I shall be very glad to go, papa,” she answered.

“Nan,” he said, laying his hand on her wrist, “there was never any trouble between you and that woman about Copeland, was there? If it’s goin’ to make you uncomfortable to stop at her house, why, we won’t do it.”

“Of course not, papa. I hope she understood that I couldn’t help the gossip. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Well, it was nasty, anyhow,” he remarked. “And as you’ve got rid of Copeland, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to let her know it. I guess it won’t be long before that worthless scamp goes to the dump. I’ve got a pretty good line on him and the store. If I was ten years younger, I’d go down there and kick him out and put the house on its feet again.”

He had frequently told her that Copeland-Farley was doing badly, but she supposed this to be only the wail of a retired pilot who thinks his old ship is doomed to disaster without his hand at the wheel. No communications had passed between her and Billy since the day of Grace Kinney’s party. She persuaded herself that she could face Billy Copeland’s former wife with a good conscience.

“That hound,” began Farley after an interval of silence, “had the brass to try to put her in the wrong—didn’t dare go into court with it, but let it be whispered on the outside to save his own face! There was a man somewhere used to visit here, a friend of his. I guess nobody took any stock in that scandal.”

“Of course, nobody would believe it of her,” said Nan. “I hardly—”

She had begun to say that it was incredible that Billy would have done such a thing, but she caught herself in time.

“What?” demanded Farley sharply. “Well, I guess nobody but the lowest cur would have done it.”

Mrs. Copeland’s brown bungalow was set upon the highest point on her farm, and from her veranda and windows she could view every part of it. The veranda was made to be lived upon; there was a table with books and periodicals; a work-basket lay in a swing seat as though some one had just put it down; there were wall-pockets filled with fresh flowers. Along the veranda rail nasturtiums bloomed luxuriantly.

As Nan waited for an answer to her ring, the lower floor of the house lay plainly in view through the screen door: a large raftered living-room with a broad fireplace and a dining-room beyond. Here at least were comfort and peace. Perhaps Billy Copeland’s wife hadn’t fared so ill after all!

The maid said Mrs. Copeland was out on the farm, and an observation from the veranda discovered her in the barn lot.

Nan had counted on Farley’s presence to ease the shock of the meeting, and she did not wholly relish being sent off alone to meet a woman who might be pardoned for wishing to avoid her. Farley said he would wait in the car, and Nan left him contentedly studying the house and its encompassing landscape.

When Mrs. Copeland saw Nan approaching, she started across the lot to meet her. A handsome collie trotted beside her. She had not yet identified her visitor, and was flinging back an injunction to a workman as she moved toward the gate. She wore a dark skirt, blue waist, and heavy shoes, and a boy’s round felt hat. A pair of shabby tan driving-gloves covered her hands.

“Good-afternoon!” said Nan. “Papa and I were passing, and he thought he’d like to see your place. If you’re busy, please don’t bother.”

“Oh, I’m glad so see you, Miss Farley; I was just coming to the house. My pump works badly and we are planning some changes. I’m glad Mr. Farley is able to be out again.”

She set the pace with a quick, eager step. Several times she turned smilingly toward Nan; the girl saw no trace of hostility. To all appearances Fanny Copeland was a happy, contented woman. The tempests might vent their spite on her, but she would still hold her head high. Nan, little given to humility, experienced suddenly a disturbing sense of her inferiority to this woman whose husband she had allowed to make love to her.

“Yes, I get a great deal of fun out of the farm,” Mrs. Copeland was saying. “I don’t have any time to be lonesome; when there’s nothing else to do, I can fuss around the garden. And now that I’ve taken up poultry there’s more to do than ever!”

“I believe I’d get on better with chickens than with cows,” said Nan. “They wouldn’t scare me so much.”

“Oh, cows are adorable! Aren’t these in this pasture beauties!”

A calf thrust its head through the bars of the fence, and Fanny patted its nose. Nan asked if they all had names and Mrs. Copeland declared that naming the calves was the hardest part of her work.

“I think it’s a mistake for a girl to grow up without knowing how to earn her own living, and I don’t know a thing!” said Nan impulsively.

NAN EXPERIENCED SUDDENLY A DISTURBING SENSE
OF HER INFERIORITY TO THIS WOMAN

Fanny looked at her quickly. If it was in her mind that the obvious and expected thing for Nan to do was to marry Billy Copeland, she made no sign. Nan was amazed to find that she was anxious to appear to advantage before this woman who had every reason for disliking and distrusting her, and she was conscious that she had never seemed so stupid. Her modish gown, her dainty slippers with their silver buckles, contrasted oddly with Fanny’s simple workaday apparel. She was self-conscious, uncomfortable. And yet Fanny was wholly at ease, talking light-heartedly as though no shadow had ever darkened her life.

They reached the house and found that Farley had braved the steps and established himself on the veranda. The maid had brought him a glass of milk which he was sipping contentedly while he ran his eye over a farm paper.

“Mrs. Copeland, what will you take for your place?” he demanded. “If I’d moved into the country when I quit business, the doctors wouldn’t be doggin’ me to death.”

“But Miss Farley tells me you are almost well again! It’s fine that you’ve taken up motoring—a new world to conquer every morning.”

“I got tired o’ bein’ hitched to the bedpost; that’s all. But I want to talk farm. It’s a great thing for a woman to run a place like this and I want you to tell me all about it.”

He examined and cross-examined her as to the joys and sorrows of dairying. She replied good-naturedly to most of his questions and parried the others.

“Of course, I’m not going to tell you how much I lose a year! Please keep it a dark secret, but I’m not losing anything; and besides, I’m having a mighty good time.”

“Well,” he warned her, “don’t let it put you in a hole. The place may be a leetle too fancy. You don’t want to make your butter too good; your customers won’t appreciate it.”

“You preach what you never practiced,” laughed Nan. “Your rule at the store was to give full measure.”

“Well, I guess I held trade when I got it,” he admitted.

“I’ve been adding another department to the farm,” said Mrs. Copeland. “I started it early in the summer in the old farmhouse back there that was on the place when father bought it. Real homemade canned fruit, pickles, and so on. I’ve set up four girls who’d found life a hard business, and they’re doing the work with a farmer’s wife to boss them. It’s my business to sell their products. I’ve interested some of the farmers’ daughters, and they come over and help the regulars on busy days. We’re having a lot of fun out of it.”

Farley was immensely interested. Nan had not in a long time heard him talk so much or so amiably; he praised and continued to praise Mrs. Copeland’s enterprise and success; for he had satisfied himself fully that she was successful. He clearly liked her; her quiet humor, her grace and prettiness. In his blunt way he told her she was getting handsomer all the time. She knew how to talk to men of his type and met him on his own ground.

He began telling stories and referred to Old Sam Copeland half a dozen times, quite unconscious that the sometime daughter-in-law of Old Sam was sitting before him. Nan grew nervous, but Mrs. Copeland met the situation with perfect composure.

Finally, when they were about to leave, Eaton appeared. He had walked over from the Country Club merely, he protested, to refresh himself at Mrs. Copeland’s buttermilk fountains. He addressed himself cordially to Farley, whose liking for him was manifest in a brightening of the old man’s eyes. It was plain that Eaton and Mrs. Copeland were on the friendliest terms; they called each other by their first names without mincing or sidling.

Nan suspected that Eaton had come by arrangement and that in all likelihood he meant to stay for dinner; but already the lawyer was saying, as he saw Farley taking out his watch:—

“I’m going to beg a lift into town from you plutocrats. I thought I could stay me with flagons of buttermilk and catch the interurban that gallops by at five fifty; but I made a miscalculation and have already missed the car.”

“I can send you in,” said Mrs. Copeland, “if it isn’t perfectly convenient for Mr. Farley.”

“Of course Eaton will go with us,” said Farley cordially. “It’s time to move, Nan.”

While Eaton helped him down the steps, Mrs. Copeland detained Nan for glimpses of the landscape from various points on the veranda.

“It was nice of you to stop; I think we ought to know each other better,” said Fanny.

“Thank you!” said Nan, surprised and pleased. “It won’t be my fault if we don’t!”

As they crossed the veranda their hands touched idly, and Mrs. Copeland caught Nan’s fingers and held them till they reached the steps. This trifling girlish act exercised a curious, bewildering effect upon Nan. She might have argued from it that Mrs. Copeland didn’t know—didn’t know that she was touching the hand of the woman who was accused of stealing her husband’s affections.

“I don’t see many people,” Mrs. Copeland was saying; “and sometimes I get lonesome. You must bring your father out again, very soon. He can ride to the barn in his machine and see my whole plant.”

“He would like that; he’s one of your warmest admirers, you know.”

“We always did seem to understand each other,” she laughed; “probably because I always talk back to him.”

“I’M NOT LOSING ANYTHING; AND BESIDES, I’M
HAVING A MIGHTY GOOD TIME”

“He’s much gentler than he looks or talks; and he means to be kind and just,” replied Nan, knowing in her heart that she had frequently questioned both his kindness and his justice. “I hope you will stop and see us, very soon. Papa’s getting too much of my company; it would cheer him a lot to see you.”

“I never make calls, you know,” said Mrs. Copeland, smiling, “but I’m going to accept your invitation.”

Bitterness and resentment, traces of which Nan had sought in this cheery, alert little woman, were not apparent. Her kindness and sweetness and tolerance, as of the fields themselves, impressed Nan deeply.

In saying good-bye Nan impulsively put out both hands.

“I wish we could be good friends!” she exclaimed.

Her face flushed scarlet the moment she had spoken, but Fanny’s manner betrayed no agitation.

“Let’s consider that we’re already old friends,” she responded, smiling into the girl’s eyes.

CHAPTER V
A COLLECTOR OF FACTS

When Jerry came in “off the road” Saturday, he found a note from Eaton asking him to call at his office that evening. To comply with this request, Jerry was obliged to forego the delights of a dance at the Little Ripple Club to which he had looked forward with the liveliest anticipations all the week. But Eaton was not, in Amidon’s estimation, a person to whom one telephoned regrets with impunity, and at eight o’clock he knocked at Eaton’s door on the fifteenth floor of the White River Trust Building and was admitted by the lawyer in person.

Eaton’s office always exerted a curious spell on Jerry’s imagination. This was attributable in some measure to the presence of cabinets filled with models of patentable and unpatentable devices—queer contrivances with each its story of some inventor’s success or failure. The most perfect order was everywhere apparent. Books from the ample library were never strewn about in the manner of most law offices, and Eaton’s flat-top desk in the last room of the suite was usually clear; or if papers were permitted to lie upon it, they were piled evenly and weighted with a smooth stone that was never visible unless in use. The file-cases (of the newest and most approved type) contained not only letters, legal papers, and receipts, but, known to no one but the girl who cared for them, newspaper clippings and typewritten memoranda on a thousand and one subjects that bore no apparent relation to the practice of law.

Facts were Eaton’s passion; with facts, one might, he believed, conquer the world; indeed, he was capable of demonstrating that all the battles in history were lost or won by the facts carried into the contest by the respective commanders. He had so often disturbed the office of the Commissioner of Patents with his facts that the public servants in charge of that department were little disposed to risk a brush with him on points that involved facts, facts that seemed, in his use of them, to glitter like the lenses of his eyeglasses.

He seated himself in his office chair—a leathern affair with a high back—and bade Amidon shed his coat and be comfortable.

“Smoke?” he suggested, opening a drawer containing cigars and cigarettes. Jerry hated ready-made cigarettes, but he was afraid to produce the “makings” before Eaton, who had once complained that the odor of the tobacco he affected was suggestive of burning jimson weed. Eaton produced a glass ash-tray, and filled a pipe with the deliberation he brought to every act.

“Business is bad, I suppose, as usual,” he remarked leadingly.

“Rotten! The shark that runs the credits has cut off one or two of my easiest marks; but I managed to end last month with a ten-per-cent advance over last year’s business, and that helps some.”

“You have spoken well, Amidon. I suppose you were received with joyous acclaim by the boss, and urged to accept a raise in wages?”

“Stop kidding me! I’m sensitive about my wages. They still pretend they’re just trying me out—not sure I’ll make good and that sort of piffle!”

“That sort of piffle” was a phrase he had taken over bodily from Eaton’s familiar discourse. So sensitive was he to Eaton’s influence that he imitated, with fair success, the unruffled ease that was second nature to the lawyer. He was also practicing Eaton’s trick of blinking before uttering a sentence, and then letting it slip with a casual, indifferent air. Eaton had used this in the cross-examination of witnesses to good purpose. Amidon had exercised it so constantly in commercial and social conversation that he had to be on guard lest Eaton, whose discernment seemed to him to partake of the supernatural, should catch him at it and detect its spuriousness.

“Won a case somewhat in your line the other day; defended a trade-mark of the Pomona Velvet Complexion Cream, warranted to remove whole constellations of freckles in one night. Seductive label, showing a lovely maiden unfreckling herself before a mirror; bottle of Pomona in her hand. Basely and clumsily imitated by a concern in Kansas that’s been feloniously uttering a Romona Complexion Cream. The only original Pomona girl held the bottle in her right hand; label on Romona nostrum showed it clenched in her left.”

“Hard luck!” said Amidon, deeply interested. “We’ve been pushing that Kansas beautifier—a larger discount for the jobber than the Pomona. Reckon we’ll have to chuck it now. I suppose the judge didn’t know Pomona removes the cuticle—hasn’t the real soothing effect of the Romona.”

“I’ll mention that to the district attorney and he can pass it on to the government inspectors. I’m annoyed by your revelation. Shock to my conscience—defending a company that poisons the young and beautiful of the republic.”

“Now that you know what a swindle you defended, I suppose you’ll turn back your fee—if you’ve got it?”

“Retainer of a thousand dollars,” Eaton replied easily; “it would be immoral to return it, thus increasing the dividends of such an unscrupulous corporation. However, I’ll consider giving half of it to the Children’s Aid Society.”

It was pleasant in any circumstances to sit in Eaton’s presence, to enjoy his confidence; and yet nothing so far disclosed justified Jerry’s relinquishment of the Little Ripple Club dance.

“Which of our noble streams did you follow this trip—the Pan-haunted Wabash or the mighty Ohio, sacred to the muses nine?”

Allusions of this sort, to which Eaton was prone, were Jerry’s despair. He felt that it would be worth subjecting one’s self to the discomforts of a college education to be able to talk like this, easily and naturally. But he was aware that Eaton was driving at something; and while it was the lawyer’s way to lead conversations into blind alleys, he always arrived somewhere and fitted a key into the lock that had been his aim from the start.

“I shook hands with the trade along the Ohio this trip. I can tell you it’s lonesome at night in those river burgs; the folks just sit and wait for the spring flood—and even it fails sometimes. They turn the reel once daily in the movies, and the whole town’s asleep at nine-thirty.”

“A virtuous and home-loving people, but crime occasionally disturbs the peace. Murders should always occur along navigable streams, so the victim can be sent cruising at once toward New Orleans and the still-vexed Bermoothes.”

Amidon thought he caught a gleam; but experience had taught him the unwisdom of anticipating the unfolding of Eaton’s purposes.

“Oh, there’s always a lot of crooks loafing along the river; they keep their skins filled with whiskey and they fish and shoot muskrats and do a little murdering on the side.”

“Interesting type,” said Eaton musingly. “If you were at Belleville this week, you must have heard of a murder down there—man found stabbed to death in a house-boat.”

Jerry grinned, pleased with his own perspicacity in having surmised the object of the interview. Murder was not, Amidon would have said, within the range of Mr. John Cecil Eaton’s interests; and yet this was not the first time that the lawyer’s inquiries had touched affairs that seemed wholly foreign to his proper orbit.

“I was there the day after they found the body. They had already arrested the wrong man and turned him loose—as usual. They always do that; and they’ll probably pick up some tramp who was visiting old college friends in New York when the murder was committed and indict him so the prosecuting attorney can show he’s on the job.”

“You shouldn’t speak in that manner of sworn officers of the law,” Eaton admonished. “Better that forty innocent men should be hanged than that one guilty man escape.”

Jerry fidgeted nervously as Eaton’s glasses were turned for a full minute upon the ceiling.

“A Cincinnati paper printed an item yesterday about that murder case, mentioning the arrest of a suspect at Henderson on the Kentucky shore.” Eaton hesitated. “The suspect’s name was Corrigan. You have known Corrigans, perhaps?”

There was a faint tinkle in the remote recesses of Jerry’s consciousness as the shot, so carelessly fired, reached the target.

“The name’s common enough; I’ve known a number of Corrigans.”

“But,” the lawyer continued, “there have been instances of Corrigans ceasing to be Corrigans and becoming something else.”

“You mean,” Amidon replied, meeting Eaton’s eyes as they were bent suddenly upon him, “that a Corrigan might become a Farley. Am I right?”

“Quite right. I was just wondering whether you had picked up anything about this particular case down along the river. I have no interest in it whatever—only the idlest curiosity. I happened to recall that Miss Farley had been a Corrigan; I have a note of that somewhere.”

He swung his chair round and surveyed the file-cases back of him. His gaze fell upon a drawer marked F, as though he were reading the contents through the label—a feat which Amidon thought not beyond Eaton’s powers.

Jerry resented the idea that Nan Farley might still be affected by the lawless deeds of any of her kinsfolk; he became increasingly uncomfortable the more he reflected that the lawyer, with all his indifference, would not be discussing this subject unless he had some reason for doing so.

“It was stated that this particular Corrigan had wealthy connections—that always sounds well in such news items, as though rich relations were a mitigating circumstance likely to arouse public sympathy. Mere snobbishness, Amidon; and snobbishness is always detestable. If that particular Corrigan hopes to obtain help from a sister now known as Farley, it occurred to me that I ought to possess myself of the fact. You understand that what we’re saying to each other is entirely sub rosa. We’ve never happened to speak of Miss Farley; but having been connected with the Copeland-Farley Company before Farley retired, you probably have heard of her. A very interesting girl—slightly spoiled by prosperity, but really refreshingly original. Do you mind telling me whether you have any reason for believing that the particular Corrigan arrested down there as a suspect, and with those wealthy connections so discreetly suggested in the newspaper, is related in any way to Nan Farley?”

“Well, there was a Corrigan boy, considerably older than I am—probably about thirty now, and not much to brag of. I’ve asked about him now and then when I dropped off at Belleville, and I never heard any good of him—just about the kind of scamp that would mix up in a cutting scrape and get pinched.”

“And who, having been pinched,—what we may call a pinchee, one who has been pinched,—might perhaps remember that he had a prosperous sister somewhere and appeal to her for help? Such things have happened; it would be very annoying for a young woman who had emerged—risen—climbed away from her state of Corriganism, so to speak, to have her relationship with such a person printed in the newspapers of her own city. I merely wish to be prepared for any emergency that may arise. Not, of course, that this is any of my business; but it’s remarkable how other people’s affairs become in a way our own. Somebody has remarked that life is altogether a matter of our reciprocal obligations. There’s much truth in that, Amidon.”

Jerry did not wholly grasp this, but he confirmed it with a nod. Now that Nan Farley had been mentioned, he hoped Eaton would drop life’s reciprocal obligations and talk of her; and he began describing his meeting with her, in such manner as to present his quondam schoolmate in the most favorable light.

Eaton listened to this recital with as much interest as he ever exhibited in anything that was said to him. He smiled at the young fellow’s frank acknowledgment that it was in a spirit of the most servile imitation that he had gone forth with his fly-box. The ways in which Amidon aped him amused Eaton. He addressed him as “Amidon,” or as “my dear Amidon,” or “my dear fellow,” and talked to him exactly as he talked to his cronies at the University Club; for while he was looked upon as an aristocrat,—the last of an old family that dated back to the beginnings of the town,—at heart he was the soundest of democrats. Jerry’s meeting with Nan on the river bank seemed to him the most delightful of confrontations, and he sought by characteristic means to extract every detail of it.

“Well, sir, after she had been so nice and turned to go, she swung round and came back—actually came back to shake hands! I call that pretty fine; and me just a little scrub that was only a bunch of freckles and as tough a little mutt as ever lived when she used to know me. Why, if she’d said she never heard of me, she’d have put it over and I couldn’t have said a word!”

“She mentioned the meeting to me a little later,” observed Eaton carelessly.

“Like thunder she did!” exploded Jerry. “So you knew all about it and let me go ahead just to kid me! Well, I like that!”

“Merely to get as much light on the subject as possible. We stumble too much in darkness; the truth helps a good deal, Amidon. Miss Farley spoke of you in terms that would not have displeased you. I assure you that she had enjoyed the interview; her description of it was flattering to your tact, your intuitive sense of social values. But it was all very sketchy—you’ve filled in important omissions. For instance, the giving of her hand, as an afterthought, was not mentioned; but I visualize it perfectly from your narrative. We may read into that act good-fellowship, graciousness, and all that sort of thing. She’s a graceful person, and I can quite see her extending a perfectly gloved hand—”

“Wrong for once; she hadn’t on any gloves! But she had a handkerchief. It was drying on a bush.”

“Ah! That is very important. Tears, perhaps? Her presence alone on the shore rather calls for an explanation. If she had gone down there by herself to cry, it is imaginable that life hadn’t been wholly to her taste earlier in the afternoon.”

“She didn’t look as though she had ever cried a tear in her life, and why should she?”

“The Irish,” replied Eaton reflectively, “are a temperamental race. I had knowledge of her—remote but sufficient—before she sought the cool, umbrageous shore. Her companions were the gayest, and they doubtless bored her until a mood of introspection seized her—sorrow, regret, a resolve to do quite differently. Very likely you were a humble instrument of Providence to win her back to a good opinion of herself. So she seemed quite jolly and radiant? Conceivably your appearance caused her to think of her blessings—of her far flight from those scenes your presence summoned from the past.”

“Well, she’s a fine girl all right,” Amidon commented to cover his embarrassment at being unable to follow Eaton in his excursion into the realm of psychology. “You wouldn’t have thought that girl, born in a shack with as good-for-nothing folks as anybody ever had, would grow up to be about the finest living girl! I guess you’d hunt pretty hard before you’d find a girl to touch her.”

“I’ve thought of that myself, though not in quite your felicitous phrases.”

“Don’t rub it in!” Amidon protested. “I guess the less I think about a girl like that the better for me. And I guess there’s plenty of fellows got their eye on her. I’ve heard some talk at the store about her and the boss.”

“She doesn’t lack admirers, of course. When you say ‘boss,’ you refer, I assume, to Mr. Copeland?”

Eaton looked up from the polishing of his glasses—a rite performed with scrupulous care. The vague stare of his near-sighted eyes, unprotected by his glasses, added to a disinterestedness expressed otherwise by his careless tone.

“Well,” Amidon began, defensively, “Copeland is the boss, all right,—that is, when he’s on the job at all. He’s some sport, but when he calls me into his pen and goes over my orders, he knows whether I’m on the right side of the average. Only he doesn’t do that with any of the boys more than once in two months. He doesn’t quite get the habit; just seems to think of it occasionally.”

“Capacity without application! Unfortunate, but not incurable. To be sure, an old business like Copeland-Farley is hard to kill. Billy Copeland’s father had the constructive genius, and Farley had the driving power. It’s up to Billy not to let the house die on his hands. Trouble is, the iron diminishes in the blood of a new generation: too easy a time of it, soft-handed, loss of moral force, and that sort of thing.”

“I guess Copeland travels a pretty lively clip, all right,” ventured Amidon, not without a tinge of pride in his boss. “He and Kinney are pace-setters; they’ve got plenty of gasoline in the buggy and like to burn it. The boss may be a sport, but he’s a good fellow, anyhow. I guess if he wants to marry Miss Farley he’s got a right to.”

He uttered this tamely, doubtful as to how his guide and mentor might receive it, but anxious to evoke an expression.

“A trifle weak, but well-meaning,” remarked Eaton, as though he had been searching some time for a phrase that expressed his true appraisement of Copeland. “It’s deplorable that fellows like that—who really have some capacity, but who are weak-sinewed morally—can’t be protected from their own folly; saved, perhaps. Our religion, Amidon, is deficient in its practical application. A hand on your boss’s shoulder at the right moment, a word of friendly admonition, might—er—save him from a too-wasteful expenditure of gasoline. If I had the gift of literary expression, I should like to write a treatise on man’s duty to man. It’s odd, Amidon,” he went on, refilling his pipe, “that we must sit by—chaps like you and me—and see our brothers skidding into the ditch and never feel any responsibility about them. Doubtless you and I are known to many of our friends as weak mortals, in dire need of help,—or, perhaps, only a word of warning that the bridges are down ahead of us would suffice,—and yet how rarely do we feel that hand on the shoulder? We should be annoyed, displeased, hot clean through, if anybody—even an old and valued friend—should beg us to slow down. It’s queer, Amidon, how reluctant we are to extend the saving hand. Timidity, fear of offending and that sort of thing holds us back. It becomes necessary to perform our Christian duty in the dark, by the most indirect and hidden methods.”

Amidon frowned, not sure that he understood; and he hated himself when he did not understand Eaton. Not to grasp his friend’s ideas convicted him of stupidity and ignorance. Religion in Amidon’s experience meant going to church and being bored. He remembered that the last time he had visited a church he had gone to hear a girl acquaintance sing a solo. She sang very badly, indeed, and he had been depressed by the knowledge that she was spending for music lessons wages earned as a clerk at the soap and perfumery counter in a department store. Eaton’s occasional monologues on what, for a better name, he called his friend’s religion, struck him as fantastic; he was never sure that Eaton wasn’t kidding him; and the suspicion that you are being kidded by a man at whose feet you sit in adoration is not agreeable. But Eaton had become intelligible again.

“I’ve sometimes wondered whether Copeland shouldn’t be saved—a good subject for experiment, at least. To demonstrate that we have the courage of our convictions we must take a hard nut to crack. Queer thing, that religious effort, as we now see it, is directed solely to the poor and needy—the down-and-outers. Take a man of the day laborer type, the sort that casually beats his wife for recreation: gets clear down in the gutter, and the Salvation Army tackles his case—sets him up again; good work! Great institution—the Army. But you take the men who belong to clubs and eat course dinners; they don’t beat their wives—only say unpleasant things to them when the bills run too high; when such fellows get restless, absorb too much drink, neglect business, begin seeing their bankers in the back room—where’s your man, society, agency, to put the necessary hand on that particular shoulder? What we do, Amidon, when we see such a chap turning up Monday morning with a hang-over from Saturday night, is to remark, ‘Too bad about Tom’—or ‘Dick’ or ‘Harry’—and then go to the club and order a cocktail. That’s how we meet our reciprocal obligations!”

There seemed nothing that Amidon could add to this; but plainly it was “Billy” Copeland, who was in Eaton’s mind, and no imaginary Tom, Dick, or Harry; so he ventured to remark:—

“Well, I guess the boss hasn’t let go yet; he’ll pull up. He’s the best man on the street to work for—when you can feel you are working for him.”

“Pleasanter to work for a boss than the boss’s creditors, of course. And minor stockholders sometimes get anxious and cause trouble.”

These utterances were like important memoranda jotted down on the margin of a page whose text is of little value in itself. Amidon stared blankly.

“Well, I don’t know about that; I guess the house has always made money. We do more business than any other drug house in the State.”

“An excellent business, of course. And we’d imagine that a man falling heir to it would take pride in holding on to it. But if he doesn’t, somebody else will take the job. I’ve seen the signs change on a good many business houses in my day. Your boss has taken several little flyers on the outside since his father died; he’s rather fascinated with the idea of being vice-president of new concerns: minor trust companies, doubtful manufacturing schemes, and that sort of thing. All this is entirely in confidence; I’m using you as an incentive to thought. Kindly consider that my reflections are all inter nos. That murder business got us started—but of course, it hasn’t anything to do with your boss. It had occurred to me, though, that both you and I may have certain reciprocal obligations in some of these matters we have touched on. One never can tell where the opportunity to serve—to lay that friendly hand on a particular shoulder—may present itself!”

During a rather long silence Amidon pondered this, wholly mystified as to just what he or John Cecil Eaton had to do with the affairs of William B. Copeland, a gentleman whose shoulder did not, on the instant, seem to present itself as a likely object for the laying on of hands. But Eaton was saying:—

“Coming to the matter of outside investments, there’s Kinney’s ivory cement. The Kinney Manufacturing Company’s a client of mine, and it wouldn’t be proper for me to express an opinion even to you, Amidon, on the stability of its patents.”

“Well,” said Amidon, “everybody thinks Kinney’s making all the money there is; he’d have to, to put as much jam on his bread as he’s spreading. I meet his road men now and then, and they sob because they can’t fill orders. They’re not looking for new business; they’re shaking hands with the customers they’ve already got and telling ’em to sit at the freight house until the factory catches up with orders. And before he hit that cement, Kinney was bookkeeper in a brickyard!”

“Have a care, Amidon! You must be careful of your facts even in social conversation. Mr. Kinney had a small interest in a brickyard, which is very different. By the way, your opportunities for cultivating Mr. Copeland’s acquaintance are rather restricted? Except on those rare occasions when he summons you to make sure your orders cover your expense account, you don’t see much of him?”

“Oh, he used to give me a jolly occasionally before I went on the road—ask me why our ball team was glued to the tail of the league and things like that. Once he asked me to look up a good chauffeur for him—and I got him a chap who’d been a professional racer. I guess that made a hit with him.”

“An assumption not wholly unwarranted. I hope he finds the chauffeur satisfactory?”

“I guess he does; he must like him, for he bails him out about once a week when he gets pinched for speeding.”

“Rather unfortunate that you’re not an inside man, so you could observe the boss more closely; not, of course, to the extent of exercising an espionage—but it might be possible—er—”

“Well, I can have an inside job if I want it. My being on the road was just a try-out, and I’m not so keen about hopping ties with the sample-cases. If I’m going to tackle the reading you’ve laid out for me, I’ll have to change my job. The head stock-man’s quitting to go into heavy chemicals on his own hook; I guess I could get his place.”

“Don’t refuse it without full consideration. My attitude toward you thus far has been wholly critical; I’ve refrained from compliments; but it would interest me to—er—see what you can do with your brains. I suggest that you learn everything there is about the business outside and in: become indispensable, be tolerant of stupidity, forbearing amid jealousy, and indifferent to contumely; zealous, watchful, polite, without, let us say, sissiness. Manners, my dear boy, are appraised far too low in our commercial life.”

The grin occasioned by these injunctions died on Amidon’s face as he realized that the lawyer was in earnest; but he was very much at sea. Eaton was a busy man, as his generous office space and the variety of his paraphernalia testified; just why he had sought an interview, for the sole reason, apparently, of extracting a little information and giving a little advice, caused Amidon to wonder. He was still wondering when Eaton rose and glanced at the tiniest of watches, which he carried like a coin in his trousers pocket and always looked at as though surprised to find he had it.

“Time for me to be off; arguing a case in Pittsburg Monday.”

He opened a bag that lay beside him on the floor, pulled a packet from a drawer and dropped it in, and told Jerry he might, if he had nothing better to do, accompany him to the station.

CHAPTER VI
AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT

Nan stood at her window watching a man turn out of the walk that led from the front door to the street. Her eyes followed him until the hedge hid him from sight, and then she sat huddled in the window-seat, breathing hard from her run upstairs. She went to her desk and glanced at a page of the pass-book of a trust company that showed the withdrawal on June 29 of one thousand dollars from her savings account. There remained a balance of sixteen hundred, and she verified the subtraction before thrusting the book into the bottom of a drawer under a mass of invitations she meant at some time to file in a book she kept as a record of her social activities.

She knew that she had made a mistake, and she was considering the chances of discovery with a wildly beating heart. The man she had just closed the door upon had paid two calls on successive days. He had represented himself as the attorney for her brother, held on a charge of murder at Belleville. He had plausibly persuaded her that it was only fair for her to help her brother in his distress; that he was the victim of unfortunate circumstances, but that an investment of one thousand dollars for his defense would save her the humiliation of having one of her own flesh and blood convicted of a murder for which he was in no wise responsible. It had been intimated in discreet terms that her relationship to the prisoner could be hidden; it would even be denied if necessary.

She knew now that she should not have yielded; that in all fairness to her foster-father she should have reported this demand to him. In secretly giving money that represented Christmas and birthday gifts through half a dozen years, for the defense of a man she had not heard of since the beginning of her life with the Farleys, she justified herself with the thought that it was kinder to her foster-father, in his invalid condition, to keep the matter from him. She experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling the moment the money passed from her hands in the ten one-hundred-dollar bills the man had specified.

Farley had been seeing much of his lawyer since the row over the Kinney luncheon. While his wrath at her duplicity seemed to pass, she assumed that he had not forgotten his threat to disinherit her if she married Copeland.

She was unwontedly attentive, spending much time reading to him or playing cards. She knew that he liked having young people about, and she asked to his room some of the girls and young men who called on her. She exercised all her arts, which were many, to keep him cheerful, and if he realized that the change had been abrupt, and that it dated from his outburst against Copeland, he made no sign. She mustn’t stay in too much, he said; he didn’t want to be a burden to her.

Eaton had called shortly after his talk with her on the golf links, but on a night when Farley was receiving the attentions of his masseur. He had spent the evening and had been at pains to make himself agreeable. Now that Copeland had been thrust into the background, it occurred to her that Eaton was worth cultivating. We all maintain more or less consciously a mental list of people on whom we feel that we may rely in difficulties; it had occurred to Nan that in a pinch Eaton would be a friend worth having.

While it was wholly unlikely that Farley would ever learn of her transaction with the stranger, it was nevertheless a possibility that would hang over her as long as he lived. She sought comfort in the reflection that the amount was small, and that Farley had never stinted her; moreover, that it was her own money, subject to her personal check; but there was little consolation to be had from such reasoning. She must talk to some one, and before dinner she telephoned Eaton and asked him to come up.

Farley had spent two hours with his lawyer that day, and from the fact that two of his old friends had arrived hurriedly in answer to telephonic summons, she judged that he had been making a new will and that these men had been called to witness it.

He ate his prescribed supper, grumbling at its slightness, and watched her consume her ampler meal with his usual expressions of envy at her appetite.

“If I could eat like that, I’d be well in a week; it’s all rubbish, this infernal diet!”

“But we tried disobeying the doctor the other night when the nurse was out, and you didn’t sleep a wink. You’ll have to be good until the doctor discharges you!”

“Don’t be silly!” he snapped. “They know mighty well they can’t cure me; they’re just hangin’ on to me as long as they can for what they get out of it. But I may fool ’em yet! My grandfather lived to be ninety and died then from bein’ kicked by a horse; and my own father got up to seventy-eight, and that gives me eight years more,” he ended defiantly.

“But you worked harder than they did, papa; you never used to come home to dinner until seven.”

“Of course I didn’t!” he flared. “These young fellows that think four hours make a day’s work are fools; you won’t see them gettin’ very far in the world, spendin’ their time flyin’ around in automobiles and playin’ golf all day!”

“Well, of course, some of the young men don’t amount to much,” she admitted conciliatingly; “but there are others who work like nailers. I suppose Mr. Eaton works as hard as any man in town; and he doesn’t need to.”

“Doesn’t need to?” Farley caught her up. “Every honest man works; a man who doesn’t work’s a loafer and very likely a blackguard. John Eaton works because he has the brains to work with! He’s a rare man, John Eaton. There ain’t many men like John, brought up as he was, with everything easy; but he’s bucklin’ down to hard work just the same, like the man he is. You say he’s comin’ up? Well, we’ll let him do the talkin’. Maybe he can get a laugh out o’ me; he says some mighty funny things—and they’re mostly true.”

He began feeling about for the evening paper that he had dropped at his side when his tray was brought in.

“Just find the market page and read through the local stock-list. I noticed they’ve put a new figure on White River Trust; I used to be a director in that company. What’s that? Two hundred eighty-five? Let me see, that’s fifteen dollars more than it was last January when I bought fifty shares at two-seventy. She’ll go three hundred in five years. It’s the safest buy in town.”

His long conference with his lawyer had left him tired and irritable. His doctor had repeatedly counseled Nan and the nurse to keep him quiet. As they seemed to be on perfectly safe ground, she began reading the financial comment preceding the general stock and bond list, and finding that he was interested, she followed it with the letter of a firm of brokers that buoyantly prophesied a strong upward movement in the immediate future. She thought he was listening attentively when he began murmuring half to himself:—

“Two-eighty-five; she’s bound to go to three hundred. Hey? What’s that rubbish you’re readin’? Wall Street letter? What do I care what a lot of infernal gamblers say about a better tone in the market! Those fellows down there don’t produce anything; it’s the boys out here that grow the corn and feed the pigs that put value in the paper those fellows down there gamble in! Put that paper down; I want to talk a little business. How much money you got?”

The question was like a blow in the face. Her wits danced nimbly in her effort to find an answer, to decide just how to meet the issue.

“Do you mean the housekeeping money?” she asked faintly.

Since Mrs. Farley’s death she had paid the household bills from a sum deposited to her credit the first of every month. Beyond asking occasionally how the bills were running, Farley had never questioned her as to her expenditures. There was a special allowance and a generous one for her clothing, and when she asked for additions to the household money to renew linen or pay for repairs, it was always readily forthcoming.

“No, no!” he ejaculated impatiently. “I don’t mean the house money. How much you got in the trust company—the savings you’ve been gettin’ three per cent on? You must have over two thousand dollars there. I been meanin’ to ask you about that; you’ve got too much to keep at three per cent, and we ought to put it into securities of some kind. Run along and get your pass-book. If you haven’t got enough to buy ten shares of White River Trust stock, I’ll bring it up a little so you can have an even number.”

He was absorbed in mental calculations and did not notice the reluctance with which she rose and walked toward her room. The trust company required that books be presented when withdrawals were made, and she remembered the appearance of the teller’s notation. Farley had never looked at her pass-book since the day she brought it home and proudly displayed it. It was the unkindest fate that had turned his mind upon it at this juncture, and she canvassed all possible explanations: necessary expenditures in excess of her household and personal accounts; unusual repairs which she might pretend she had not wanted to trouble him with in his illness; or benevolences—the latter, she fancied, more likely to appease than the others in view of his own generosity to causes that appealed to him. She decided that a frank confession followed by an appeal to sentiment was the likeliest means of staying his anger.

She waited twisting her hands nervously, while he examined the book.

“What’s this? What’s this mean, Nan? You took out a thousand dollars in one lump—to-day! My God, what does this mean? What kind of investments you makin’, Nan? Yesterday you had with interest—lemme see—twenty-six hundred dollars, and now you’ve cut it down to sixteen hundred! What you spendin’ that money for, girl?”

“Well, papa,” she began with the best air of frankness she could summon, “something very strange and sad has happened. I meant to tell you all about it just as soon as you were stronger, but I’m glad to tell you now, for I know you will understand and sympathize—as you’ve always done whenever I’ve had my little troubles—”

He seemed to be taking this in good part until “troubles” caused him to sniff.

“Troubles! What troubles you ever had? I guess there ain’t a girl in town that’s had less trouble than you have!”

“Of course, I didn’t mean it that way, papa; I mean only the little things, little mistakes and slips I’ve made that you and mamma have always been kind about. No girl was ever treated as kindly as you have treated me. And I mean always to be perfectly frank with you; and I’m going to be now.”

“Well,” he said impatiently.

She felt that her contemplated explanation had been well chosen, but she must be adroit, risking no word that might spoil the effect of her disclosure.

She knelt beside him and began in a tone that was eloquent of humility, yet with a confidence that she hoped would not be lost upon him.

“You see, papa, when you brought me home with you, and you and mamma began caring for me, I was just a poor little waif, ready for an orphan asylum. My father and mother would never have been able to do anything for me if they had lived; and if it hadn’t been for you and mamma, I’d never have known any of the things I’ve learned through you. I might have been a dining-room girl right now in some cheap hotel if you hadn’t opened your doors and your hearts to me. And that has made me appreciate my blessings—all the comforts and luxuries you have given me. And it has made me feel, more than you may imagine, for people not so lucky as I am—the under dog that gets kicked by everybody. And even when people are wicked and do evil things, I think we ought to think kindly of them and help them when we can. I know you and mamma always practiced that. And I’ve tried to; I really have!”

She lifted her eyes and there were tears in them, that seemed to be born of a deep compassion, a yearning toward all the poor and erring among mankind. Farley was not unmoved by this demonstration; he shifted his legs uneasily under the light pressure of her arms. Her spell upon him had never been more complete; she felt that she might risk much in the mood to which she had brought him.

“And you know, papa, I have thought a great deal about my brother—who drifted away with the flood. I haven’t seen him since father and mother died. Tom is much older than I am, and the poor boy never had any chance. I hadn’t even heard of him since you brought me away until the other day. And he’s in trouble, very deep, serious trouble, papa; he’s been arrested—I’m sure not for anything he really did; but being poor and without friends it was perfectly natural for him to ask me to help him. I think you will agree to that. And he sent his lawyer to ask me for money to use in defending him. I meant to tell you all about it when you were well; I felt sure I was doing right and that you’d be glad to have me help him; and it’s all so horrible—”

She felt his form grow rigid, felt his hands roughly push her away, as he blurted hoarsely:—

“Blackmail! My God, it’s blackmail—or else you’re lyin’ to me!”

She rose and faced him tearfully.

“It’s the truth!” she declared. “He’s my brother—the only one of my family that’s left. You wouldn’t have me refuse to help—”

“Help him! Turn a thousand dollars of your savings over to a worthless whelp that’s got into jail! How do you know he’s your brother?—a man that waits all these years before he shows himself and then plumps down on you for a thousand dollars! I tell you it’s blackmail, blackmail! And you hide all this from me just as though I hadn’t any right to know what kind o’ trouble you get mixed up in! Ain’t you got sense enough to know you’re touchin’ bottom when you give up money that way? What’s he threatened you with? You tell me everything there is to know about this, and I’ll find out mighty quick whether a contemptible scoundrel can come to my house and carry away a thousand dollars!”

Farley glared at her unpityingly while she told her story, which seemed preposterously weak when reduced to plain terms. She sobbingly admitted her fear of newspaper notoriety, her wish to shield him from the shame of her connection with a man awaiting trial for murder. There was no mercy in his eyes; he was outraged that she had again deceived him.

“Afraid o’ havin’ your name in the papers, were you? Just as though blackmailers didn’t always use that club on the fools they rob! And how many times do you think a man like that will come back, now he knows you’re easy—now you’ve gone into business with him?”

The maid knocked at the door and announced Eaton, but Farley gave no heed.

“Payin’ blackmail! You’ve got yourself into a nice mess! And after all I’ve done to protect you and make a decent woman of you, you’re scared to death of havin’ some of your relations go to jail—just as though you hadn’t turned your back on the whole set when we brought you here and gave you our name. That ought to have made you respectable, if it didn’t! Afraid of newspapers, afraid of jackleg lawyers! It’s the rottenest case of blackmail I ever heard! And here I’ve been proud to think that we’d pulled you out of the river mud and made a high-minded woman of you, that could stand up with any girl anywhere!”

She waited listening to his deep breaths, watching his tremulous hands; and then without attempting to answer his indictment, she said meekly:—

“Of course, it was a mistake, papa. I ought to have told you about it; but it’s my trouble—you must remember that! The shame of the exposure would be something I’d have to bear alone; that was the way I looked at it; and I didn’t want you to have the worry of it when you were just beginning to get well.”

His thoughts had wandered away from her, playing about her offense in its practical and legal aspects. When she ventured to remind him of Eaton’s presence in the house, he made no reply. The silence became intolerable and she stole from the room.

CHAPTER VII
WELCOME CALLERS

Nan decided to explain to Eaton that Farley’s illness had taken a turn for the worse and that he had been abusing her as a relief from his suffering. She was surprised to find two men in the parlor, the second of whom she did not at once recognize as Jerry.

“I’ve taken the liberty,” Eaton began, “of bringing Mr. Amidon along. Thought you wouldn’t mind, particularly as I couldn’t have come myself without him. He dropped in just as I was leaving and seemed greatly depressed; I hadn’t the heart to leave him. Depression is his normal state—no serenity, no hope, no vision!”

Amidon grinned during this explanation, realizing that its lack of veracity was, in the circumstances, peculiarly Eatonesque and attributable to his friend’s wish to relieve Nan of embarrassment. They had been uncomfortable from the moment the maid admitted them and they became conscious of the discord above. Words and phrases of Farley’s furious arraignment had reached them and there was no escaping the conclusion that she had been the object of the castigation. Jerry, acting on his own impulses, would have grabbed his hat and bolted. It was only the demeanor of his idol, placidly staring at the wall, that held him back. The call had been suggested by Eaton as a gay social adventure, but it was disconcerting to find a girl whose good fortune had seemed so enviable with tears in her eyes, nervously fingering a moist handkerchief, and Jerry’s wits were severely taxed by his efforts to meet a situation without precedent in his experience. Once he had called on a girl whose father came home drunk and manifested an ambition to destroy the furniture and use the pieces in the chastisement of his daughter, and Amidon had enjoyed a brief, decisive engagement with the inebriated parent and had then put him to bed. But there was nothing in that incident that bore in the slightest degree upon the difficulties of people who lived in the best street in town, where, he had always assumed, the prosperous householders dwelt in peace and harmony with their fortunate families.

“I’m glad to see you, both of you,” she said, with all the assurance she could muster. “Papa’s been having a bad time; you must have heard him talking. He’s very angry. I wish you’d go up, Mr. Eaton, and see if you can’t talk him into a better humor.”

“If you think it’s all right—” Eaton began dubiously; but he was amused at Nan’s cheerful willingness to turn her angry foster-parent over to him for pacification. It was like Nan!

“Oh, he’d been looking forward to seeing you,” she answered quite honestly. “These spells don’t last long; the very sight of you will cheer him.”

She did not, however, offer to accompany him to Farley’s room, but discreetly left him to test the atmosphere for himself.

“Well,” Jerry remarked, when he was alone with Nan, “Pittsburg put it over on New York to-day. Three to nothing!”

He gave the score with a jubilant turn to the “nothing,” as though Pittsburg’s success called for universal rejoicing.

Nan, intent upon catching some hint of the nature of Eaton’s reception, merely murmured her mild pleasure in this news. She was satisfied, from the calm that reigned above, that Eaton had begun well, and that under the spell of his presence Farley would soon be restored to tranquillity.

“Sorry Mr. Farley is having a bad time,” Jerry went on, thinking the invalid’s outbreak required at least a passing reference. “You know down at the store the boys still talk about him. Somebody’s always telling how he used to do things, and the funny things he used to say. When I first struck the plant, he used to scare me to death, sticking his nose in the shipping-room without notice and catching the boys larking. Once I had gone to the mat with a plumber that was looking for a gas-leak, and the boss came in and got us both by the collar and threw us down the stairs like a pair of old shoes. I thought I was a goner for sure when he sent for me to come to the office that night and asked me who started the trouble. I told him the plumber said whenever he found gas-leaks in jobbing houses he always reckoned somebody was getting ready to collect the insurance. Uncle Tim—that’s what the boys call him—asked me if I’d hit him hard, and I told him I guess he’d have considerable business with the dentist, all right. Just for that he raised my wages a dollar a week! Say, can you beat it!”

He snapped his fingers and shook his head impatiently.

“Isn’t that rank—just after Cecil lectured me all the way up here about cutting out slang! I promised him solemnly before we started that I wouldn’t say say; and here I’ve already done it! How do you learn to talk like white folks, anyhow? I suppose you got to be born to it; it must be like swimming or rowing a boat, that you learn once and always catch the stroke right.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” replied Nan consolingly. “I use a good deal of slang myself; and at school my English teacher said it wasn’t such a sin if we used it as though we were quoting—we girls held up two fingers—so!”

“That sounds reasonable, all right; I must tell my noble knight about that. It seems sometimes as though I just couldn’t get a ball over the plate—there I go again! And Cecil warned me specially against talking like a bleacher hoodlum when we got here.”

“Oh, that’s not worth bothering about. I’m so glad to see you that I could cry for joy. If you hadn’t come when you did, I don’t know what might have happened.”

He had been trying to direct the talk into other channels, and her remark puzzled him. That this wholly charming, delightful Nan could have given her benefactor cause for the objurgations he had heard poured out upon her was unbelievable. Still, it was rather pleasant than otherwise to find that she was human, capable of tears, and it was not less than flattering that she should invite his sympathy.

“Well,” he began cautiously, “I guess we all have our troubles. Life ain’t such an easy game. You think you’re sailing along all right, and suddenly something goes wrong and you’ve got to climb out and study astronomy through the bottom of the machine. Why,” he continued expansively, finding that he had her attention, “when I first went on the road I used to get hot when I struck some mutt who pulled lower prices on me or said he was over-stocked. But you don’t sell any goods by getting mad. I picked up one of these ‘Keep Smiling’ cards somewhere, and when I got blue I used to take a sneaking look at it and put on a grin and tell the stony-hearted merchant the funniest story I could think of and prove that our figures f.o.b. Peanutville were cheaper, when you figured in the freight, than Chicago or Cincinnati prices. I’ve made a study of freight tariffs; I can tell you the freight on white elephants all the way from Siam to Keokuk and back to Bangkok. I’ve heard the old boys down at the store talk about Farley till I know all his curves. Farley’s all right; there’s nothing the matter with Uncle Tim; only—you don’t want to shift gears on him too quick. You’ve got to do it gentle-like.”

Nan smiled forlornly, but Amidon was glad that he could evoke any sort of smile from her.

“It was all my fault,” she said. And then with a frankness that surprised her she added: “I had deceived him about something and he caught me at it. He gave me a big blowing-up, and I deserved it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that; but, of course, playing the game straight was always a big card with him. I guess Cecil will smooth him down.”

She was surprised to find herself talking to him so freely; his eagerness to take her mind away from the unpleasant episode with Farley gave her a comforting sense of his native kindliness. Her heart warmed with liking for him as she reappraised his good looks, his well-scrubbed appearance of a boy turned out for his first party by a doting mother; his general air of wholesomeness and good humor. He had known hard knocks, she did not question, but the bruises were well hidden. With all his slanginess and volubility there was a certain high-mindedness about him to which, in her hunger for sympathy, she gave fullest value.

He was afraid of her further confidences; afraid that she would disclose something she would regret later, and this he foresaw might embarrass their subsequent relations. She had been humiliated by Farley’s abuse, and it was not fair, he argued, to take advantage of her present state of mind by allowing her to tell more of the trouble. But he was not able at once to change the current of her thoughts.

“You know,” she said, sitting up straight and folding her hands on her knees, “I’ve been thinking a lot of things since I saw you out there by the river—about old times, and wondering whether it was good or bad luck that took me away from Belleville and brought me up here. I’d have been better off if I’d stayed there. I’d probably have been washing dishes in the Belleville hotel if the Farleys hadn’t picked me up, a dirty little beggar, and tried to make something decent out of me! I’m saying that to you because you know all about me. You’ve made your own way, and you’re a lot happier than I am, and you’re not under obligations to anybody; and here I am trying to climb a ladder my feet weren’t made for!”

“Cut all that out!” he expostulated. “Just because Uncle Tim’s been a little fretful, you needn’t think everything’s gone to the bow-wows. And as for staying in Belleville, why, the thought of it gives me shivers! There ain’t any use talking about that.”

Her face expressed relief at the vigor with which he sprang to her defense, and he plunged ahead.

“Say, speaking of dining-room girls, there was a girl at that Belleville hotel that was some girl for sure. She was fruit to the passing eye, and a mutt carrying samples for a confectionery house called her Gladys one day, her real name being Sarah, and asked her how she’d like going to the movies with him after she got the dishes washed; and she landed one order of poached cold-storage eggs on his bosom the neatest you ever saw. Some men never learn how to size up character, and any fool could ’a’ told that that girl wasn’t open to a jolly from a sweet-goods peddler who’d never passed that way before. Sarah’s mother owns the hotel, and Sarah only helps in the dining-room Saturday nights to let the regular crockery-smasher off to punch the ivories for the Methodist choir practice. I was sitting next that chap and he thought he’d show me what a winner he was. I’m not justifying Sarah’s conduct, and about a half-portion of the golden side of that order caught me on the ear. I merely mention it to show you that you had better not think much of the life of the dining-room girl, which ain’t all the handbills make out.”

“I hope,” remarked Nan, “that she didn’t break the plate!”

“No more,” he came back promptly, “than you could break a ten-dollar bill at a charity fair. That’s another thing I learned from Cecil. He got me to take a stroll with him through a charity bazaar last winter—just to protect him from the snares of the huntress, he said. He started in with ten tens and had to borrow five I was hiding from my creditors before we got back to the door. And all we carried out of the place was a pink party-bag Cecil handed a tramp we found freezing to death outside and hoping a little charity would ooze through the windows.”

“I was at the fancy-work counter at the fair,” said Nan, “and I remember that Mr. Eaton bought something. I didn’t see you, though.”

“I noticed that you didn’t; I was plumb scared you might! There I go again! Plumb scared! Oh, Cecil, if you had heard me then!”

He was wondering just how he happened to be sitting in a parlor on a fashionable street, talking to the only girl he had ever known whose name figured in the society columns, quite as jauntily as he talked with any of the stenographers or salesgirls he knew. He was confident that parlor conversation among the favored of heaven was not of the sort he had, in his own phrase, been “handing out.” This thought gave him pause. He shook his cuffs from under the sleeves of his blue serge coat with a gesture he had caught from Eaton, and felt nervously of the knot of his four-in-hand.

Nan was asking herself whether the fact that a young fellow of Amidon’s deficiencies could interest and amuse her wasn’t pretty substantial proof that he was the kind of young man the gods had designed for her companions. A year ago she would have resented his appearance in the house; to-night she had a feeling that his right to be there was as sound as her own. A different fling of the dice, and it might have been he whom the Farleys rescued from poverty and obscurity.

In spite of his absurdities, she was conscious of definite manly qualities in him. Several times she caught him scrutinizing her sharply, as though something about her puzzled him and gave him concern. His manners were very good—thanks, perhaps, to his adored Eaton; and she liked his clean, fresh look and good humor. After her talk with Eaton on the golf links, she had wondered whether the lawyer wasn’t making a butt of him; but she dismissed this now as unjust to Eaton, and as appraising Amidon’s intelligence at too low a figure. During this reverie he waited patiently for her to speak, imagining that her mind was still upon her troubles, and when the silence became prolonged he rallied for a fresh attack.

“If you’d rather read,” he remarked, “we’ll hang up the silence sign the way they have it in the library reading-room and I’ll say prayers till Cecil comes down.”

“Oh, pardon me!” she laughed contritely. “You see I am treating you as an old friend. Why don’t you go on and talk. You’ve had ever so many interesting adventures, and I need to be amused. Please don’t think I’m always like this; I hope you’ll see me some time when I’m not in the dumps.”

“I should be afraid to,” he retorted boldly; and then feeling that Eaton would have spurned such banality, ejaculated: “Oh, rot! Let me scratch that out and say something decent. Just for instance,”—and his face sobered,—“I think you’re nice! You were perfectly grand to me that day down on the river. I told Cecil about that, and I could see it made a hit with him; it set me up with him—that a girl like you would be polite to a scrub like me.”

“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “I’m not proud of myself: I’m a failure, a pretty sad fizzle, at that.”

She ignored his rapid phrases of protest and asked him how much time he spent in town.

“Well, I’m likely to spend a good deal, from now on. The boss has been shaking things up again, and he called me in by telephone yesterday and changed my job. That’s the way with him; he won’t show up sometimes for six weeks, and then he gets down early some morning and scares everybody to death.

“I thought I was settled on the road for the rest of my life, and now he’s made a job for me to help the credit man—who doesn’t want me—and take country customers out to lunch. A new job made just for my benefit. And all because of a necktie Cecil gave me. The boss saw me sporting it one day and asked me where I got it. I had to make a show-down, and he thought I was kidding him. You see Cecil’s about the last man he’d ever think of giving me presents. If I’d laid that necktie on any other living human being, it wouldn’t have cut a bit of ice; but when I said, as fresh as paint, ‘John Cecil Eaton picked that up in New York for me,’ he laughed right out loud. ‘What’s the joke?’ I asked him; and he says, ‘Oh, Eaton never gave me any haberdashery, and I’ve known him all my life.’ And like the silly young zebra I am, I came back with, ‘Well, maybe that’s the reason!’ You’d have thought he’d fire me for that; but it seemed to sort o’ make us better acquainted. He’s the prince, all right!”

She had been trying, more or less honestly, to put Copeland out of her mind. Her knowledge of him as a business man had been the haziest; one never thought of Billy Copeland as a person preoccupied with business. She was startled when Amidon asked abruptly:—

“Of course, you know the boss?”

It was possible that Amidon had heard the gossip that connected her name with his employer’s, and she answered carelessly:—

“Oh, yes; I know Mr. Copeland.”

“I guess everybody knows William B.,” said Amidon. “He’s got the pep—unadulterated cayenne; he isn’t one of these corpses that are holding the town back. He’s a live wire, all right.”

Then, realizing that he had ventured upon thin ice in mentioning Copeland, he came back to shore at once.

“Cecil said that this being my first call, about thirty minutes would do for me, so I guess it’s time for me to skid. He must be handing out a pretty good line of talk on the upper deck.”

She begged him not to leave her alone, saying that Farley lived by rules fixed by his doctor and that the nurse was likely to interrupt the call at any minute. As he stood uncertain whether to go or wait for Eaton, they heard the lawyer saying good-bye, and in a moment he came down.

Nan looked at him quickly, but was able to read nothing in his impassive face.

“I hope you two have been getting better acquainted,” Eaton remarked. “Mr. Farley and I have had a splendid talk; I never found him more amusing. One of the most interesting men I ever knew! What have you been talking about? The silence down here has been ominously painful!”

“Mr. Amidon has been telling me of the egg-throwing habits of the waitresses in my native town. Life here in the city is nothing to what it is down on the river. He’s almost made me homesick!”

“My dear Amidon,” said Eaton severely, “have you been telling that story—in a private house? I thought when I brought you here you’d be on your good behavior. I’m sorry, Nan; I apologize for him. Of course, he mustn’t come back; I’ll see to it that he doesn’t.”

“Don’t be cruel!” laughed Nan. “We got on beautifully!”

They heard Farley’s groans and mutterings as the nurse put him to bed, and it seemed necessary to refer to him again before the men left.

“You won’t mind, Nan,” said Eaton, “if I say that Mr. Farley told me the cause of your little difficulty; I know the whole story. I think he probably won’t mention it to you again. I asked him not to. Just go on as though nothing had happened. It was unfortunate, of course; but I’ve persuaded him that your conduct is pardonable—really quite admirable from your standpoint. If anything further arises in regard to it, I wish you’d communicate with me, immediately.”

Ignoring her murmurs of gratitude, he turned to Jerry.

“Amidon, at this point we shake hands and move rapidly up the street. And, Nan, you needn’t be troubled because Mr. Amidon heard the last echoes of your difficulty. He’s perfectly safe,—discreet, wise,—though you’d never guess it. You may safely assume that he heard nothing. We must have some golf, you and I. My game’s coming up!”

She went with them to the street door, where Amidon, in executing a final bow, nearly fell backward down the steps.

CHAPTER VIII
MRS. COPELAND’S GOOD FORTUNE

Now that they had the car, Farley insisted that Nan should go to market. His wife, like all the thrifty housewives of the capital, had always gone to market, and he thought the discipline would be good for Nan. He liked to accompany her and watch the crowd while she was doing her errands.

One Saturday, as Nan returned to the machine, with the chauffeur following with the basket, she found Fanny Copeland seated in the car beside Farley.

“Look here, Nan; I’ve picked up a surprise for you! We’re goin’ to take Mrs. Copeland home to lunch.”

“I don’t know whether you are or not,” said Mrs. Copeland. “This is my busiest day and I’ve got to catch the twelve-o’clock interurban for the farm.”

“Don’t worry about that; we’ll send you home all right,” said Farley.

“Then I’m not going to have anything to say about it at all!” laughed Mrs. Copeland. “All right; if my cows die of thirst, I’ll send you the bill.”

“You do that, and it will be paid,” Farley assented cheerfully.

“But I’ve got to stop at the bank a moment—”

“I suppose,” said Nan, “you want to get rid of the money I just paid at your stand for two yellow-legged chickens—you can see the legs sticking out of the basket.”

Mrs. Copeland had failed to act upon Nan’s invitation to call upon her—a delinquency to which she referred now.

“I really meant to come, but I’ve been unusually busy. I carry on just enough general farming to be a nuisance; and dairying requires eternal vigilance.”

“That’s because you’ve got a standard,” said Farley, with his blunt praise. “You’ve got the best dairy in Indiana. The state inspectors have put it strong.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Copeland lightly, “they gave me a better report than I deserve just for being a poor, lone woman!”

Farley’s admiration for Mrs. Copeland was perfectly transparent. It was Fanny’s efficiency, her general competence, Nan reflected, quite as much as her good looks and cheerfulness, that attracted her foster-father. Several times lately he had quoted what Bill Harrington, the banker, had said of her—that she was the best business man in town. And there was also Farley’s contempt for Copeland, which clearly accentuated his liking for Billy’s former wife.

At the bank door Farley remembered that he had a check to cash and asked Nan to attend to it for him. As Mrs. Copeland and Nan mounted the bank steps together, they ran into Billy Copeland emerging in deep preoccupation. The juxtaposition of the two women plainly startled him. He took off his hat, mumbled something, and stood staring after them. Then his gaze fell upon Farley, bending forward in the touring-car and watching him with his small, sharp eyes. He instantly put on his hat and crossed the walk.

“Good-morning, Mr. Farley,” he said cordially, offering his hand. “I’m glad to see you out again.”

“Oh, I’m not dead yet,” growled Farley. “I’ve decided to hang on till spring anyhow.”

His tone did not encourage conversation. His face was twisted into a disagreeable smile that Copeland remembered of old, and there was a hard, ironic glitter in the gray eyes. Farley had witnessed the meeting on the bank steps with relish, and was glad of this opportunity to prolong his enjoyment of his former associate’s discomfiture.

“I’m sure you’ll see many more springs, Mr. Farley. That’s a good machine you’ve got there. The fact that you’ve taken up motoring has given a real boost to the auto business. The agents are saying that if you’ve got in line there’s no reason for anybody to hold back.”

The old man grunted.

“I had to have air; I knew all the time that was what I needed; these damned doctors only keep people in bed so they can bulldoze ’em easier.”

Copeland was attempting to be friendly, but Farley was in no humor to meet his advances.

“That last payment on the sale of my stock is due September first. I won’t renew it,” he said sharply.

“I hadn’t asked for an extension,” Copeland replied coldly.

“All right, then; that will be the end of that.”

Farley’s tone implied that there might be other matters between them that this final payment would still leave open.

Copeland’s ready promise that the twenty-five thousand would be paid irritated Farley, who saw one excuse for his animosity vanishing. He leaned forward and pointed his finger at Copeland, who was backing away, anxious to be gone before his former wife reappeared.

“You’re ruinin’ the house! You’re lettin’ it go to hell—the business your father and I made the best jobbin’ house in this State! You’re a drunkard and a gambler, but, damn your fool soul, there’s one thing you can’t do—you can’t marry that little girl o’ mine! If you’ve got that up your sleeve, be sure there’s no money goes with her for you to squander! Remember that!”

It was the busiest hour of the day and the street was thronged. Pedestrians turned and stared curiously. Copeland raged inwardly at his stupidity in giving Farley a chance to abuse him publicly.

“You’re very unjust to me,” he said hotly. “I’ve known Nan ever since she was a child and never had any but a friendly feeling for her. I haven’t seen her for weeks. Now that I know how you feel toward me, I have no intention of seeing her.”

“I guess you won’t see her!” Farley snorted. “Not unless you mean to make her pay for it!”

Mrs. Copeland and Nan appeared at the bank entrance at this moment and witnessed the end of the colloquy. Copeland lifted his hat to Farley and walked rapidly away without glancing at them.

Farley became cheerful immediately, as he usually did after an explosion. This opportunity for laying the lash across Billy Copeland’s shoulders had afforded him a welcome diversion; and the fact that Copeland had seen his former wife in Nan’s company tickled his sardonic humor. He made no reference to Copeland, but began speaking of a new office building farther down the street. It was apparent that neither Nan nor Fanny shared his joy in the encounter and they attacked the architecture of the new building to hide their discomfort.

Nan appeared the more self-conscious. She was thinking of Billy. He had turned away from the machine with a crestfallen air which told her quite plainly that Farley had been giving him a piece of his mind. And Nan resented this; Farley had no right to abuse Billy on her account.

When they reached the house she took Fanny upstairs. If the glimpse of Copeland on the bank steps had troubled Mrs. Copeland she made no sign. Her deft touches with the comb and brush, as she glanced in the mirror, her despairing comments upon the state of her complexion, which, she averred, the summer suns had ruined; her enthusiasm over Nan’s silk waist, which was just the thing she had sought without avail in all the shops in town,—all served to stamp her as wholly human.

“But clothes! I hardly have time to think of them; they’re an enormous bother. And I wear the shoes of a peasant woman when I come to town, for I have to cut across the fields when I leave the interurban and I can’t do that in pumps! You see—”

The shoes really were very neat ones, though a trifle heavy for indoors. Nan instantly brought her shiniest pumps, dropped upon the floor and substituted them for Fanny’s walking-shoes. It flashed through her mind that Fanny Copeland inspired just such acts.

“You have the slim foot of the aristocrat,” observed Fanny. And then with a wistful smile she leaned toward the girl and asked, “Do you mind if I call you Nan?”

Nan was touched by the tone and manner of her request. Of course there was no objection!

“I always knew I should like you,” said Fanny. “Of course, I haven’t seen much of you lately, but I hear of you from a very ardent admirer: John Eaton talks of you eloquently, and to interest John Eaton is a real achievement! I’m afraid I bore him to death!”

“I can’t believe it; he never lets himself be bored; but like everybody else, I’m never quite sure I understand him.”

“Oh, I tell him that’s one of his poses—baffling people. He surrounds himself with mystery, but pretends that he doesn’t. If he were a gossip he’d be horrible, for he knows everything about everybody—and knows it first!”

“He’s the kindest of mortals,” Nan observed. “He’s always doing nice things for people, but he has to do them in his own peculiar way.”

“Oh, John has the spirit of the true philanthropist; his right hand never knows, you know—”

“He’s a puzzle to the people he’s kindest to, sometimes, I imagine,” said Nan.

She laughed as she thought of Amidon, and Fanny appealed for illumination as to what amused her.

“Oh, I was thinking of his protégé—a young man named Amidon. He and I were kids together, back in my prehistoric days. He never had any advantages—if you can say that of a boy who’s born with a keen wit and a sense of humor. He does something at the Copeland-Farley store—went in as errand boy before papa left. They had him on the road for a while, but he’s in the office now. Mr. Eaton has taken a great shine to him and Jerry imitates him killingly. That fine abstracted air of Mr. Eaton’s he’s got nearly perfect; and he does the mysterious pretty well, too. But he’s most delicious when he forgets to Eatonize himself and is just natural. He’s quite short—which makes him all the funnier—and he wears tall, white-wing collars à la Eaton.”

“Tell me more!” said Fanny. “How old is the paragon?”

“About twenty-five, I should say, figuring with my own age as a basis. He looked like a big boy to me in my river days. Mr. Eaton has undertaken his social and mental rehabilitation and the effects are amazing. They came to the house together to call, and I’ve rarely been more entertained than by Jerry while his good angel was upstairs talking to papa. He’s trying to avoid any show of emotion just like his noble example, but once in a while he forgets himself and grins deliciously. After a round of high-brow talk, he drops into reminiscence and tells the most killing stories of the odd characters he’s met in his travels with the sample-case. It can’t be possible that Mr. Eaton hasn’t introduced him to you?”

“He hasn’t, and I’m going to complain about it bitterly,” said Mrs. Copeland, amused by Nan’s enthusiasm.

“You should, for Jerry is a nice boy, and very wise and kind.”

“The only one of his benefactions he ever confided to me was the case of a girl—the daughter of an old friend who had fallen on evil times. He wanted to send her to college, and I became the visible instrument, so he needn’t appear in the matter himself. The girl graduated last year and, like a fraud, I had to go down to Vassar and pose as her good angel. She’s a great success and is to teach somewhere, I think. But—I shouldn’t be telling you this!”

“Oh, it’s quite safe! I value his friendship too much to do anything to displease him.”

“Well, things like that ought to be told,” remarked Fanny reflectively; “particularly when some people think John Eaton cold and selfish.”

Luncheon interrupted these confidences. Farley had not been to the dining-room for several months and he made much of the occasion.

“This is a celebration for me, too,” said Fanny. “I’ve just had a piece of good fortune. Nobody knows of it yet; you’re the first people I’ve told! You know I haven’t many friends to confide in. An aunt of mine has just died and left me some money. In fact, there’s a great deal of it; I’m richer than I ever expected to be.”

“Good! Good!” Farley ejaculated, interested and pleased.

“It’s fine,” said Nan; “and it’s nice of you to tell us about it.”

Nan was afraid that Farley would demand the amount of the legacy, but evidently Fanny knew he would be curious as to all the details, and she went on to explain that it was her mother’s sister, the last of the family, who had died recently in Ohio and left her all her property.

“I have visited her every year or two since I was a child and knew her very well, but I never had any idea she meant to do this. It will take some time to settle it up, but there’s as much as two hundred thousand dollars in sight—maybe fifty more. She was a dear old woman; I’m so ashamed of myself that I wasn’t kinder to her, but she was difficult to handle—hadn’t left home for years, though she used to write to me two or three times a year. So there! That’s why I’m running into the bank these days, to ask Mr. Harrington about investments.”

“If you take his advice,” said Farley emphatically, “you’ll never lose any of that money!”

“Then what’s to become of the farm?” asked Nan.

“Oh, I shall run it just the same. I’d rather lose that legacy than give it up. An unattached woman like me must have something to amuse herself with.”

“That’s a lot o’ money; a whole lot o’ money,” said Farley; “and I’m mighty glad you’ve got it.”

Nan saw a gleam in his eye and a covert smile playing about his lips. He chuckled softly.

“Two hundred; two hundred fifty; that’s a whole lot o’ money; and you don’t want to let any of these sharks around here get it away from you; they’ll be after you all right. But I guess you’ll know how to handle ’em,” he added with satisfaction.

When Fanny was ready to go he called for his car and he and Nan drove home with her.

That night, after the nurse had put him to bed, Nan heard an unusual sound from his room. She crossed the hall and stood in the doorway a moment. He was muttering to himself and chuckling.

“Picked up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just like findin’ it! Turned her out; got rid of her! Well, that’s a hell of a joke on you, Billy Copeland!”

CHAPTER IX
A NARROW ESCAPE

On a rainy evening in mid-September, a salesman for an Eastern chemical firm invited Amidon to join him in a game of billiards at the Whitcomb House. As Russell Kirby was one of the stars of the traveling fraternity, Jerry was greatly honored by this attention. Moreover, when he hung up his coat in the billiard room and rolled up the sleeves of his silk shirt, the traveler’s arms proved to be thoroughly tanned—and this impressed Jerry as indicating that Kirby indulged in the aristocratic game of golf and did not allow the cares of business to interfere with his lawful amusements. Kirby played very good billiards, and did not twist his cigar into the corner of his mouth when he made his shots, as most of Jerry’s friends did.

“The lid’s on a little looser in your town than it was last winter,” remarked the envied one, sipping a ricky. “I suppose by following our noses we could strike a pretty stiff game without going out into the wet.”

“Oh, there’s always more or less poker around here,” replied Jerry, unwilling to appear ignorant of the moral conditions of his own city.

He chalked his cue and watched Kirby achieve a difficult shot. Billiards afforded Jerry a fine exercise for his philosophic temper, steady hand, and calculating eye. He had developed a high degree of proficiency with the cue in the Criterion Billiard Parlors. It was a grief to him that in trying to live up to Eaton he had felt called upon to desert the Criterion, where the admiration of lesser lights had been dear to his soul.

“Big Rodney Sykes is here,” Kirby remarked carelessly. “They chased him out of Chicago that last time they had a moral upheaval.”

Jerry was chagrined that he knew nothing of Big Rodney Sykes, presumably a gambler of established reputation. To be a high-salaried traveler, with a flexible expense account, was to be in touch with the inner life of all great cities. Jerry’s envy deepened; it availed nothing that he could beat this sophisticated being at billiards.

“Rather tough about that boss of yours,” Kirby continued. “It’s fellows of his size that Big Rodney goes after. A gentleman’s game and no stopping payment of checks the next morning.”

“Oh, the boss is no squab; I guess he’s sat in with as keen sharps as Sykes and got out with carfare home,” replied Jerry.

“Of course; but on a hot night like this many a good man feels the need of a little relaxation. It just happened”—he prolonged the deliberation of his aim to intensify Jerry’s curiosity—“happened I saw Copeland wandering toward Sykes’s room as I was coming down.”

“I guess the boss knows a thing or two,” replied Jerry easily, in a tone that implied unlimited confidence in Copeland.

He was consumed with indignation that Kirby should be able to tell him anything about Copeland. It had been done, too, with a neatness of insinuation that was galling.

“Well, I guess,” persisted Kirby, “you miss old Uncle Tim at the store. I used to have many a jolly row with Uncle Tim; he was one man it never paid to fool with; but he was all right—just about as clean-cut and straight a man as I ever fought discounts with. Uncle Tim was a merchant,” he ended impressively as he bent over the table.

In calling Farley a merchant with this air of finality he implied very clearly that William B. Copeland was something quite different, and Jerry resented this imputation as a slur upon his house. Much as he admired Kirby’s clothes and metropolitan ways, he hated him cordially for thus speaking of Copeland, who was one of Kirby’s important customers. Mere defeat was no adequate punishment for Kirby; Jerry proceeded to make a “run” that attracted the admiring attention of players at neighboring tables and precluded further discussion of Copeland.

At midnight Kirby said he had had all the billiards he wanted and invited Jerry to his room.

“I always like to tell people about their own town and I’ll show you where they’re piling up the chips,” he remarked.

His room was opposite the elevator on the seventh floor, and having unlocked his door he piloted Jerry round a corner and indicated three rooms which he said were given over to gambling.

“If you give the right number of taps that first door will open,” said Kirby, “but as an old friend I warn you to keep out.”

As they were turning away a telephone tinkled faintly in one of the rooms and they heard voices raised excitedly, accompanied by the bang of over-turned furniture.

“They’ve got a tip the cops are coming or there’s a fight,” said Kirby. “Here’s where we fade!”

He led the way quickly back to his room, dragged Jerry in, and shut the door.

While the sounds of hasty flight continued, the elevator discharged half a dozen men and they heard the hotel manager protesting to the police that it was an outrage; that the rooms they were raiding had been taken by strangers, and that if there was anything wrong he wasn’t responsible.

A few minutes later the return of the prisoners to the elevator announced the success of the raid. Several of them were protesting loudly against riding to the police station in a patrol wagon; others were taking the whole matter as a joke. Above the confusion Copeland’s voice rose drunkenly in denunciation of his arrest.

Kirby, anxious not to be identified even remotely with the sinners who had been caught in their transgressions, had taken off his coat and was lighting a cigar.

“Try one of these, Amidon. We’d better sit tight until the cops get out of the building. Nice town this! Gambling in respectable hotels. No doubt all those fellows are leading citizens, including—”

At this instant the electric lights were extinguished. The darkness continued and Jerry opened the door and stuck his head out. Half the prisoners had been sent down and the remainder were waiting for the elevator to return. They growled dismally and somebody said it was a good chance to give the cops the slip.

One of the policemen struck a match and held it up to light the entrance to the car. Jerry’s eyes ran quickly over the group facing the shaft, but he recognized none of the men. As the match died out a prolonged, weary sigh near at hand caused him to start. Some one was leaning against the wall close beside him. He reached out, caught the man by the arm, drew him into the room and softly closed the door.

Kirby demanded to know what Amidon had done, and during the whispered explanation the globes began to brighten. Jerry jumped for the switch and snapped off the lights. He climbed on a chair and surveyed the hall through the transom. The last officer was stepping into the elevator, and some one demanded to know what had become of Billy Copeland.

“Oh, he went down in the first load,” replied another voice.

Then the door clanged and the hall was quiet.

“Turn on the lights,” commanded Kirby.

Copeland sat on the bed, staring at them foolishly.

“Wherenell am I?” he asked blinking. “Thiss jail or somebody’s parlor?”

“Your nerve, young man,” Kirby remarked to Jerry, “leaves nothing to be desired. I suppose it didn’t occur to you that this is my room?”

“Oh, that will be all right. If the cops ain’t back here in ten minutes, they’ll probably think he’s skipped; and they won’t waste time looking for him; they know they can pick him up to-morrow, easy enough.”

“Zhat you, Kirby, good old boy; right off Broadway! Kind of you, ’m sure. Good boy, Amidon; wouldn’t let your boss get hauled off in patrol wagon. Raise wages for that; ’preciate it; mos’ grateful!”

“All right; but please stop talking,” Jerry admonished. “We’ll all get pinched if the cops find out you’re here.”

“Los’ five thous; five thou-sand dollars; hons’ to God I did!”

Copeland’s face was aflame from drink and the heat, and unable to comprehend what had happened to him he tumbled over on the bed. Kirby eyed him contemptuously and turned upon Amidon angrily.

“This is a nice mess of cats! Would you mind telling me what you’re going to do with our fallen brother? Please remember that reputation’s my only asset, and if I get arrested my house might not pass it off as a little joke!”

“Oh, cheer up and be a good sport! I know the boys at the desk downstairs and I’m going to tell ’em you’ve cleared out to make way for an old comrade of the Army of the Potomac. I’ll have you moved, and then I’ll put the boss to bed.”

“Anything to please you,” said Kirby ironically, as Copeland began to snore. “Your boss is lying on my coat and I hope you’ll have the decency to pay for pressing it!”...

At ten the next morning Amidon called at the Whitcomb and found Copeland half dressed. He had telephoned to his house for toilet articles and clean linen and presented the fresh and chastened appearance with which he always emerged from his sprees.

“I thought I’d drop in,” said Jerry, seating himself in the window.

“Been to the store?” asked Copeland from before the mirror where he was sticking a gold safety pin through the ends of a silk collar.

“Yes; I took a look in.”

“Any genial policeman lying in wait for me?”

“Nothing doing! Everything’s all fixed.”

“Fixed? How fixed?”

“Oh, I know the way around the pump at the police court, and I had a bum lawyer who hangs out there make the right sign to the judge. You owe me forty-seven dollars—that includes ten for the lawyer.”

“Cheap at the price,” remarked Copeland. He had taken a check book from the table and was frowningly inspecting the last stub.

“I didn’t come to collect,” said Jerry. “Any old time will do.”

“How did the rest of the boys come out?” asked Copeland, throwing the book down impatiently.

“Oh, the big sneeze from Chicago got a heavy soaking. The judge took it out on him for the rest of you. Wouldn’t do, of course, to send prominent business men to the work-house. All fined under assumed names.”

“Rather expensive evening for me. Much obliged to you just the same for saving me a ride in the wagon.”

“Oh, that was easy,” said Jerry. “By the way, I guess we’d better slip my lawyer friend another ten. He dug this up for you—no questions, no fuss; all on the dead quiet.”

He drew from his trousers pocket a crumpled bit of paper and handed it to Copeland.

Jerry was not without his sense of the dramatic. He rolled a cigarette and watched Copeland out of the corner of his eye.

“See here, Jerry,” said Copeland quickly, “I don’t know about this. If I gave that check, and I know I did, I’ve got to stand by it. It’s not square—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t burst out crying about that!” remarked Jerry easily. “Five thousand is some money, and the Chicago shark was glad enough to have the check disappear from the police safe. You were stewed when you wrote the check; and besides, it was a crooked game. Forget it; that’s all!” He stretched himself and yawned. “Can I do anything for you?”

“It seems to me,” said Copeland, “that you’ve done about enough for me for one day,—kept me out of jail and then saved me five thousand dollars!”

“We do what we can,” replied Jerry. “Keep us posted and when in doubt make the high sign. You’d better keep mum about the check. The deputy prosecutor’s a friend of mine and I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

“It makes me feel a little better about that check to know that it wasn’t good when I gave it,” remarked Copeland dryly. “I’ve only got about a hundred in bank according to my stubs.”

“I was just thinking,” said Jerry, playing with the curtain cord, “as I came down from the police court, that five thousand per night swells the overhead considerable. This isn’t a kick; I just mention it.”

Copeland paused in the act of drawing on his coat to bestow a searching glance upon his employee. He shook himself into the coat and rested his hand on the brass bedpost.

“What’s the odds?” he asked harshly. “I’m undoubtedly going to hell and a thousand or two, here and there—”

“Why are you going?” asked Jerry, tying a loop in the curtain cord.

Copeland was not prepared for this; he didn’t at once correlate Amidon’s question with his own remark that had inspired it.

“Oh, the devil!” he ejaculated impatiently; and then he smiled ruefully as he realized that there was a certain appositeness in his rejoinder.

The relations of employer and employee had been modified by the incidents of the night and morning. Copeland imagined that he was something of a hero to his employees, and that Jerry probably viewed the night’s escapade as one of the privileges enjoyed by the more favored social class. Possibly in his own way Amidon was guilty of reprehensible dissipations and therefore disposed to be tolerant of other men’s shortcomings. At any rate, the young fellow had got him out of a bad scrape, and he meant to do something for him to show his gratitude.

“Well, a man’s got to let loose occasionally,” he said, as he began collecting his toilet articles.

“I suppose he has,” Amidon admitted without enthusiasm.

“I guess I ought to cut out these midnight parties and get down to business,” said Copeland, as though recent history called for some such declaration of his intentions.

“Well, it’s up to you,” Jerry replied. “You can let ’er slide if you want to.”

“You mean that the house is sliding already?” Copeland asked.

“It’s almost worse than a slide, if you want to know. But I didn’t come here to talk about that. There’s plenty of others can tell you more about the business than I can.”

“But they don’t,” said Copeland, frowning; “I suppose—I suppose maybe they’re afraid to.”

“I guess that’s right, too,” Jerry affirmed.

“Well, you’re in a position to learn what’s going on. I want to push you ahead. I hope you understand that.”

“Oh, you treat me all right,” said Jerry, but in a tone that Copeland didn’t find cheering.

“I mean to treat everybody right at the store,” declared Copeland virtuously. “If any of the boys have a kick I want them to come straight to me with it.”

Jerry laid his hand on the door ready for flight and regarded Copeland soberly.

“The only kick’s on you, if you can bear to hear it. Everybody around the place knows you’re not on the job; every drayman in the district knows you’re out with a paintbrush every night, and the solid men around town are saying it’s only a matter of time till you go broke. And the men down at the store are sore about it; it means that one of these mornings there’ll be a new shift and they’re likely to be out of a job. Some of them have been there a long time, and they don’t like to see the old business breaking down. And some of them, I guess, sort o’ like you and hate to see you slipping over the edge.”

During this speech Copeland stood with his cigarette-case half opened in his hand, looking hard at the top button on Amidon’s coat.

“Well,” he said, thrusting a cigarette into his mouth and tilting it upwards with his lips while he felt for a match, “go on and hand me the rest of it.”

“I guess that’s about all from me,” replied Jerry, “except if you want to bounce me right now, go ahead, only—let’s don’t have any hard feeling.”

Copeland made no reply, and Jerry went out and closed the door. Then in a moment he opened it, saw Copeland staring out across the roofs in deep preoccupation, and remarked, deferentially:—

“I’ll carry your bag down, sir. Shall I order a taxi?”

“Never mind,” said Copeland, with affected carelessness; “I’ll attend to it. I’m going to the store.”

CHAPTER X
THE AMBITIONS OF MR. AMIDON

No other branch of commerce is as fascinating as the wholesale drug business. A drug stock embraces ten thousand small items, and the remote fastnesses of the earth are raked to supply its necessities. The warehouses are redolent of countless scents that pique a healthy curiosity; poppy and mandragora and all the drowsy sirups of the world are enlisted in its catalogue. How superior to the handling of the grosser commodities of the wholesale grocery line! How infinitely more delightful than distributing clanging hardware or scattering broadcast the unresponsive units of the dry-goods trade!

Such, at least, were Jerry Amidon’s opinions. Jerry knew his way around the store—literally. He could find the asafœtida without sniffing his way to it. He had acquired a working knowledge of the pharmacopœia, and under Eaton’s guidance he purchased a Latin grammar and a dictionary, over which he labored diligently in the midnight hours. His curiosity was insatiable; he wanted to know things!

“Assistant to the President” was the title bestowed upon him by his fellow employees. By imperceptible degrees he had grown into a confidential relationship with Copeland that puzzled the whole establishment. The latest shifts had been unusually productive of friction, and Amidon had found his new position under the credit man wholly uncomfortable. Having asserted his authority, Copeland gave no heed to the results. The credit man was an old employee, very jealous of his prerogatives, and he had told Jerry in blunt terms that he had nothing for him to do. The auditor thereupon pounced upon him and set him to work checking invoices.

Jerry wrote a good hand and proved apt, and as a result of this contact with the office he absorbed a vast amount of information pertaining to the business to which, strictly speaking, he was not entitled. Copeland, seeing him perched on a stool in the counting-room, asked him what he was doing there, and when Jerry replied that he was just helping out for a day or two, Copeland remarked ironically that he guessed he’d better stay there; that he’d been thinking for some time that fresh blood was needed in that department.

No one else entered Copeland’s office with so much assurance. If Jerry hadn’t been so amiable, so willing to help any one who called for his assistance, he would have been cordially hated; but Jerry was a likable fellow. He prided himself on keeping cheerful on blue Mondays when everybody else about the place was in the doldrums.

The auditor sent him to the bank frequently, and he experienced a pleasurable sensation in walking briskly across the lobby of the Western National. He knew many of the clerks he saw immured in the cages; some of them were members of the Little Ripple Club, and he made a point of finding out just what they did, and incidentally the amount of their salaries, which seemed disgracefully inadequate; he was doing quite as well himself. He liked to linger in the bank lobby and talk to people. He had hit on the happy expedient of speaking to men whether he knew them or not; he argued that in time they would ask who he was, which was a surer way of impressing himself upon them than through formal introductions.

Ambition stirred in the bosom of Jeremiah A. Amidon. He lavished his admiration upon the “big” men of the “street”—in the main they were hard workers, and he was pretty well persuaded of the virtue and reward of industry.

Nearly all the leading manufacturers and merchants were stockholders in banks. The fact that Copeland enjoyed no such distinction troubled Jerry. He studied the stock-list, hoping to see something some day that he could buy.

The local stock exchange consisted of three gentlemen calling themselves brokers. Whenever they met by chance on the steps of the Western National or in a trolley going home, the exchange was in session. The “list” must be kept active, and when there were no transfers the brokers could trade a few shares with one another to establish a price. These agitations of the local bourse would be duly reported on the market page of the newspapers—all but the number of shares changing hands! “A better tone prevailing”; “brisk demand for tractions”; “lively trading in industrials” would soberly greet the eye of students of local financial conditions.

Foreman, one of the brokers, who had been haunting the store for several days looking for Copeland, accosted Jerry in the bank one afternoon.

“Your boss doesn’t sit on his job much,” Foreman remarked. “I’m getting tired chasing him.”

“He’s off motoring with Kinney—they’re looking for a place to start another cement mill. Why don’t you call for me when you honor the house?”

“Oh, my business with Copeland is too trifling to trouble you about,” the broker remarked ironically. “You haven’t any money, have you?”

Jerry bent his ear to catch the jingle of coin inside the cages.

“Oh, if you want to borrow, Copeland-Farley ain’t a pawnshop.”

“I guess C-F doesn’t lend much; it’s the biggest borrower on the street,” said Foreman.

“Every big jobber is a heavy borrower. It’s a part of the game,” Jerry replied. Foreman’s anxiety to find Copeland had piqued his curiosity. “Of course, if your business with the boss can wait—”

“It’s a trifling matter, that will probably annoy him when I mention it. I’ve got twenty shares of Copeland-Farley for sale. I thought he might want to pick ’em up.”

“Must be a mistake,” replied Jerry indifferently; “there’s never any of our stock for sale.”

“No; I suppose you’ve got most of it yourself downstairs in the safety vault!”

“Come through and pour the dope!” said Jerry, grinning cheerfully.

“Well, I’ve got ’em all right. An old party named Reynolds up at Fort Wayne had twenty shares and his executors wrote me that Copeland ought to have a chance to buy ’em. I’ve worn myself out trying to find your boss. I don’t know who’d buy if he didn’t. The things you hear about your house are a little bit scary: trade falling off; head of the company drinking, gambling, monkeying with outside things, like Kinney cement—”

“Well, well!” Jerry chirruped; “you’re just chuck full of sad tidings.”

“Of course, you know it all; but maybe you don’t know that Corbin & Eichberg are cutting into your business. There will be an involuntary consolidation one of these days and Copeland-Farley will be painted off the sign.”

“You’re the best little booster I’ve heard sing this week! What’ll you take for the stock?”

“Par.”

“Sold! Bring your papers here to-morrow at two and I’ll give you the money.”

Jerry had heard some one say that it was what you can do without money that proves your mettle in business. He had one thousand dollars, that represented the savings of his lifetime. The second thousand necessary to complete the purchase he borrowed of Eaton—who made the advance not without much questioning.

“Very careless on Copeland’s part, but to be expected of a man who takes only a fitful interest in his business. You have about one thousand dollars! All right; I’ll lend you what you need to buy the stock. But keep this to yourself; don’t turn in the old certificate for a new one—not at present. Wait and see what happens. Copeland needs discipline, and he will probably get it. Kinney and Copeland seeing much of each other?”

“Well, they’re off on a business trip together.”

“I mean social affairs. They haven’t been driving peaceful citizens away from the Country Club by their cork-popping quite so much, have they? I thought not; that’s good. The general reform wave may hit them yet.”

“On the dead, I think Copeland’s trying to cut out the early morning parties,” said Jerry earnestly. “He’s taken a brace.”

“If he doesn’t want to die in the poorhouse at the early age of fifty, he’d better!” Eaton brushed an imaginary speck off his cuff as he asked, “How much did your boss give you of the five thousand you got back for him out of that poker game?”

Amidon fidgeted and colored deeply.

“Just another of these fairy stories!”

“Your attempt to feign ignorance is laudable, Amidon. But my information is exact. Rather neat, particularly lifting him right out of the patrol wagon, so to speak. And recovering the check; creditable to your tact—highly so!”

Jerry grinned.

“Oh, it was dead easy! You see, after helping the gang lick you in the primaries last May, they couldn’t go back on me.”

“If you turned your influence to nobler use, this would be a very different world! Let us go back to that Corrigan matter—you remember?” asked Eaton, filling his pipe. “You probably noticed that the gentleman who was arrested for murder down there was duly convicted. His lawyer didn’t do him much good. No wonder! I never saw a case more miserably handled—stupid beyond words.”

“You wasn’t down there!” exclaimed Jerry, sitting up straight.

“Were, not was, Amidon! I should think you’d know I’d been in the wilderness from my emaciated appearance. Believe I did say I was going to Pittsburg, but I took the wrong train. Met some nice chaps while I was down there,—one or two friends of yours, road agents, pirates, commercial travelers, drummers,—I beg your pardon!”

Jerry was moved to despair. He would never be able to surround himself with the mystery or practice the secrecy that he found so fascinating in Eaton. He had not imagined that the lawyer would bother himself further about Corrigan. He had read of the conviction without emotion, but it would never have occurred to him that a man so busy as Eaton or so devoted to the comforts of life would spend three days in Belleville merely to watch the trial of a man in whom he had only the remotest interest.

“They soaked him for manslaughter. I guess he got off easy!”

“He did, indeed,” replied Eaton. “When did you see Nan last?”

“I’ve been there once since you took me, and the old man sent down word he wanted to see me. He was feeling good and lit into me about the store. Wanted to know about everything. Some of the fellows Copeland has kicked out have been up crying on Farley’s doorstep and he asked me how the boss came to let them go. He sent Nan out of the room so he could cuss better. He’s sure some cusser!”

“Amidon!” Eaton beat his knuckles on the desk sharply, “remember you are speaking English!”

“You’d better give me up,” moaned Jerry, crestfallen.

“You are doing well. With patience and care you will improve the quality of your diction. No reference to the Corrigan matter, I suppose,—either by Farley or Nan?”

“Not a word. It was the night I read about the end of the trial, but nothing was said about it.”

“She needn’t have worried,” Eaton remarked. “She was a very foolish little girl to have drawn her money out of the bank to hand over to a crooked lawyer.”

“I suppose you coaxed the money back—”

“Certainly not! It might have been amusing to gather Harlowe in for blackmail; but you can see that it would have involved no end of newspaper notoriety; most disagreeable. I had the best opportunities for observing that fellow in his conduct of the case; in fact, I had a letter to the judge and he asked me to sit with him on the bench. There’s little in the life or public services of Jason E. Harlowe that I don’t know.” He lifted his eyes to the solid wall of file-boxes. “H-66 is filled with data. Jason E. Harlowe,” he repeated musingly. “If I should die to-night, kindly direct my executor to observe that box particularly.”

“I’ve heard of him; he ran for the legislature last year and got licked.”

“By two hundred and sixteen votes,” added Eaton.

“What’s your guess about that thousand bucks? Corrigan must have put Harlowe up to it.”

“He did not,” replied Eaton, peering for a moment into the bowl of his pipe. “It was Mr. Harlowe’s idea—strictly so. And I’m ready for him in case he shows his hand again. Farley has some relations down that way, a couple of cousins at Lawrenceburg. Do you follow me? Harlowe may have something bigger up his sleeve. He ranges the whole Indiana shore of the Ohio; business mostly criminal. The more I’ve thought of that thousand-dollar episode, the less I’ve liked it. I take a good deal of interest in Nan, you know. She’s a little brash and needs a helping hand occasionally. Not that I’m called upon to stand in loco parentis, but there’s something mighty appealing in her. For fear you may misunderstand me, I assure you that I am not in love with her, or in danger of being; but her position is difficult and made the more so by her impulsive, warm-hearted nature. And it has told against her a little that the Farleys were never quite admitted to the inner circle here. This is a peculiar town, you know, Amidon, and there’s a good deal of caste feeling—deplorable but true! You and I are sturdy democrats and above such prejudices, but there are a few people amongst us who never forget what you may call their position. Unfortunate, but it’s here and to be reckoned with.”

“Well, I guess Nan’s as good as any of them,” said Amidon doggedly.

“She is! But it’s the elemental strain in her that makes her interesting. She’s of the race that believes in fairies; we have to take that into account.”

Amidon nodded soberly. He had seen nothing in Nan to support this proposition that she believed in fairies, but the idea pleased him.

Eaton’s way of speaking of women was another thing that impressed Jerry. It was always with profound respect, and this was unfamiliar enough in Jerry’s previous existence; but combined with this reverential attitude was a chivalrous anxiety to serve or protect them. The girls Jerry had known, or the ones he particularly admired, were those endowed with a special genius for taking care of themselves.

“Nan,” Eaton was saying, “needs plenty of air. She has suffered from claustrophobia in her life with the Farleys. Oh, yes; claustrophobia—”

He paused to explain the meaning of the word, which Jerry scribbled on an envelope that he might remember it and use it somewhere when opportunity offered.

“I’m glad Farley talked to you. You will find that he will ask to see you again, but be careful what you say to him about the store. He’ll be anxious to worm information out of you, but he’s the sort to distrust you if you seemed anxious to talk against the house or the head of it, much as he may dislike him.”

“I guess that’s right,” said Jerry. “He asked about the customers on the route I worked last year and seemed to know them all—even to the number of children in the family.”

“You’ve been back once since we called together? Anybody else around—any signs that Nan is receiving social attentions?”

“I didn’t see any. She’d been reading ‘Huck Finn’ to the old gent when I dropped in.”

“Isolated life; not wholesome. A girl like that needs to have people about her.”

“Well,” Jerry ejaculated, “she doesn’t need a scrub like me! I felt ashamed of myself for going; and had to walk around the block about seven times before I got my nerve up to go in. It’s awful, going into a house like that, and waiting for the coon to go off to see whether the folks want to see you or not.”

“The trepidation you indicate is creditable to you, Amidon. Your social instincts are crude but sound. Should you say, as a student of mankind and an observer of life, that Nan is pining away with a broken heart?”

“Well, hardly; she was a lot cheerfuler than she was that first time, when you went with me.”

“Thanks for the compliment! Of course, you get on better without me. ’Twas always thus! Well, that first time was hardly a fair example of my effect upon womankind. The air was surcharged with electricity; Nan had made a trifling error of judgment and had been brought promptly to book. I’ve always rather admired people who follow their impulses; it’s my disposition to examine my own under the microscope. Don’t check yourself too much: I find your spontaneity refreshing, particularly now that your verbs and nouns are more nearly in agreement. You say Copeland and Kinney are off motoring, to look at a new factory?” He lifted his eyes to one of the file-boxes absently. “I wish they’d wait till we get rid of that suit over Kinney’s patents before they spread out. The case ought to be decided soon and there are times—”

He rose quickly, walked to the shelves and drew down a volume in which he instantly became absorbed. Then he went back to his desk and refilled his pipe deliberately.

“I think,” he remarked, “that we shall win the case; but you never can tell. By the way, what is your impartial judgment of the merits of Corbin & Eichberg—rather wide-awake fellows, aren’t they?”

As Jerry began to express scorn by a contemptuous curl of the lip and an outward gesture of his stiffened palm, Eaton reprimanded him sharply.

“Speak judicially; no bluster; none of this whang about their handling inferior goods. The fact is they are almost offensively prosperous and carry more traveling men after ten years’ business than Copeland-Farley with thirty years behind them.”

“Well,” Jerry replied meekly, “I guess they are cutting in a little; Eichberg had made a lot of money before he went into drugs and they’ve got more capital than C-F.”

“That increases the danger of the competition. Eichberg is a pretty solid citizen. For example, he’s a director in the Western National.”

“I guess that won’t help him sell any drugs,” said Amidon, who resented this indirect praise of Corbin & Eichberg.

“Not directly; no.” And Eaton dropped the subject with a finality Jerry felt bound to accept.

Foreman had intimated that in due course Copeland-Farley would be absorbed by Corbin & Eichberg; possibly the same calamity was foreshadowed in Eaton’s speculations.

Before he returned to his boarding-house Jerry strolled into the jobbing district and stood for some time on the sidewalk opposite Copeland-Farley’s store. His twenty shares of stock gave him an exalted sense of proprietorship. He was making progress; he was a stockholder in a corporation. But it was a corporation that was undoubtedly going to the bad.

It was quite true that Corbin & Eichberg were making heavy inroads upon Copeland-Farley trade. They were broadening the field of their operations and developing territory beyond the farthest limits to which Copeland-Farley had extended local drug jobbing. It was not a debatable matter that if Copeland persisted in his evil courses the business would go by the board.

Copeland hadn’t been brought up to work; that was his trouble, Jerry philosophized. And yet Copeland was doing better. As Jerry thought of him his attitude became paternal. He grinned as he became conscious of his dreams of attempting—he, Jeremiah Amidon—to pull Billy Copeland back from the pit for which he seemed destined, and save the house of Copeland-Farley from ruin.

He crossed the street, found the private watchman sitting in the open door half asleep, roused him, and gave him a cigar he had purchased for the purpose.

Then he walked away whistling cheerfully and beating the walk with his stick.

CHAPTER XI
CANOEING

Life began to move more briskly for Nan. She was not aware that certain invitations that reached her were due to a few words carefully spoken in safe quarters by Eaton.

One of the first large functions of the dawning season was a tea given by Mrs. Harrington for a visitor. Mrs. Harrington not only asked Nan to assist, but she extended the invitation personally in the Farley parlor, much to Nan’s astonishment.

One or two young gentlemen who had paid Nan attentions when she first came home from school looked her up again. John Cecil Eaton was highly regarded by the younger men he met at the University Club, and was not without influence. A reference to Nan as an unusual person; some saying of hers, quoted carelessly at the round table, was instrumental in directing attention anew to her as a girl worth knowing. If any one said, “How’s her affair with Copeland going?” Eaton would retort, icily, that it wasn’t going; that there never had been anything in it but shameless gossip.

Jerry now reserved his Thursday evenings for Nan: not for any particular reason except that Eaton had taken him to the Farleys on a Thursday and from sentimental considerations he consecrated the day to repetitions of the visit. Nan was immensely kind to him; it was incredible that a girl so separated from him by immeasurable distances should be so cordial, so responsive to his overtures of friendship. Once she sent him a note—the frankest, friendliest imaginable note—to say that on a particular Thursday evening she could not see him. His disappointment was as nothing when weighed against his joy that she recognized his claim upon that particular evening and took the trouble to explain that the nurse would be out and that she would be too busy with Farley to see him. He replied with flowers—which brought him another note.

He had laid before her all his plans for self-improvement and her encouragement was even more stimulating than Eaton’s. She fell at times into a maternal attitude toward him, scolding and lecturing him, and he was meek under her criticism.

Nan felt more at home with him than with any other young man who called on her. With some of these, whose mothers and sisters had been treating her coldly, she felt herself to be playing a part—trying to assume a dignity that was not naturally hers in order that they might give a good account of her at home. With Jerry she could be herself without dissimulation. When it came to mothers, he remembered her mother perfectly and she remembered his. In a sense she and Jerry were allies, engaged in accommodating themselves to a somewhat questioning if not hostile atmosphere. In all her acquaintance he was the one person who could make the necessary allowances for her, who was able to give her full credit for her good intentions.

On his seventh call he summoned courage to ask her to join him on a Saturday afternoon excursion on the river.

“The foliage is unusually beautiful this year,” he suggested with his air of quoting, “and it’ll be too cold for canoeing pretty soon.”

“I’m afraid—” Nan began.

“I knew you’d say that; but you’re as safe in my boat as in your own rocking-chair.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” laughed Nan. “I was going to say that I was afraid you wouldn’t enjoy the foliage so much if I were along.”

He saw that she was laughing at him. Nan and Eaton were the only persons whose mirth he suffered without resentment.

“I’ll have to ask papa about it; or maybe you’ll ask him.”

“I’ve already asked him.”

“When did you ask him?”

“About ten minutes ago, just before I came downstairs. I told him two good stories and then shot it in quick. He said he thought it would do you good!”

“I like your nerve! Why didn’t you ask me first?”

“Because it was much more proper for me to open negotiations with the man higher up. I hope you appreciate my delicacy,” he added, in Eaton’s familiar, half-mocking tone, which he had caught perfectly.

“You’re so thoughtful I suppose you’ve also arranged for a chaperone?”

“The canoe,” he replied, “is more comfortable for two.”

“Two have been in it rather often, I suppose.”

“Yes; but that was last summer. I’ve seen everything different this season. I practiced casting on a day in June and met with an experience that has changed the whole current of my life.”

“I hope it changed your luck with the rod! You got snagged on everything that would hold a hook, but I must say that you bore your troubles in a sweet spirit.”

“I learned that early in the game. Even if you refused my invitation I’d try to bear up under it.”

“I think I’ll decline, then, just to see how you take it.”

“Well, it’s only polite to say it would be a blow. I have a pocketful of strychnine and it might be unpleasant to have me die on the doorstep.”

“I could stand that probably better than the neighbors could. You’d better try a poison that’s warranted not to kill on the premises.”

Jerry tortured himself with speculations as to whether he should hire a taxi to transport them to the Little Ripple Club, but finally decided against it as an unwarranted extravagance, calculated to arouse suspicion in the mind of Farley. However, when he reached the house at two o’clock on Saturday, Nan announced that the nurse was taking her place as Farley’s companion for his regular drive and that they would carry them to the club. This arrangement caused his breast to swell.

“That will give my credit a big boost; you’ll see a lot of the boys drop dead when we roll up with Uncle Tim.”

Farley alighted to inspect the clubhouse and the fleet of canoes that bobbed at the landing. It was a great day for Jerry.

“There’s something nice about a river,” said Nan, as Jerry sent his maroon-colored craft far out into the stream. “Ever since I came away I’ve missed the old river at Belleville.”

This was one of the things he liked about Nan. She referred often to her childhood, and it even seemed that she spoke of it with a certain wistfulness.

“The last girl I had out here,” Jerry said as he plied his blade, “was Katie McCarthy, who works in the County Treasurer’s office—mighty responsible job. I used to know Katie when she stenogged at four per for a punk lawyer, but I knew she was better than that, so I pulled a few wires and got her into the court-house. Katie could be cashier in a bank—she’s that smart! No; not much to look at. I studied Katie’s case a good deal, and she’d never make any headway in offices where they’d rather have a yellow-haired girl who overdresses the part and is always slipping out for a retouch with the chamois. It’s hard to find a job for girls like Katie; their only chance is some place where they’ve got to have a girl with brains. These perfumed office darlings, that’s just got to go to vaudeville every Monday night so they can talk about it the rest of the week, never get anywhere.”

“My heart warms to Katie. I wonder,” murmured Nan lazily, as Jerry neatly negotiated a shallow passage between two sandbars, “if I had to do it—I wonder how much I could earn a week.”

“Oh, I guess you’d make good all right. You’ve got brains and I’ve never caught you touching up your complexion.”

“Which isn’t any sign I don’t,” she laughed. “I’ve all the necessary articles right here in my sweater pocket.”

“Well, somebody has to use the talcum; we handle it in carload lots. It’s one of the Copeland-Farley specialties I used to brag about easiest when I bore the weighty sample-case down the line. It was a good stunt to ask the druggist to introduce me to some of the girls that’s always loafing round the soda-counter in country-town drug stores, and I’d hand ’em out a box and ask ’em to try it on right there. It cheered up the druggist and the girls would help me pull a bigger order than I’d get on my own hook. A party like that on a sleepy afternoon in a pill-shop would lift the sky-line considerable.”

“Well, if you saw me in a drug store wrestling with a chocolate sundae and had your sample-case open and were trying to coax an order out of a druggist, just how would you approach me?”

“I wouldn’t!” he responded readily. “I’d get your number on the quiet and walk past your house when your mother was sitting on the porch all alone, darning socks, and I’d beg her pardon and say that, having heard that her daughter was the most beautiful girl in town, Copeland-Farley had sent me all the way from the capital to ask her please to accept, with the house’s compliments, a gross of our Faultless Talcum. If mother didn’t ask me to supper, it would be a sign that I hadn’t put it over.”

“But if father appeared with a shotgun—”

“I’d tell him it was the closed season for drummers, and invite him down to the hotel for a game of billiards.”

“You think you always have the answer, don’t you?” she taunted.

“I don’t think it; I’ve got to know it!”

“Well, I haven’t seen you miss fire yet. My trouble is,” she deliberated, touching the water lightly with her hand, “that I don’t have the answer most of the time.”

“I’ve noticed it sometimes,” replied Jerry, looking at her quickly.

It was unseasonably warm, and he drove the canoe on to a sandy shore in the shade of the bank. He had confessed to himself that at times, even in their juvenile badgering, Nan baffled him. From the beginning of their acquaintance he had noted abrupt changes of mood that puzzled him. Occasionally, in the midst of the aimless banter in which they engaged, she would cease to respond and a far-away look would come into her violet eyes. One of these moods was upon her now.

“Do you remember the shanty-boat people down along the river? I used to think it would be fun to live like that. I still feel that way sometimes.”

“Oh,” he answered indulgently, “I guess everybody has a spell of that now and then, when you just want to sort of loaf along, and fish a little when you’re hungry, and trust to luck for a handout at some back door when you’re too lazy to bait the hook. That feeling gets hold of me lots of times; but I shake it off pretty soon. You don’t get anywhere loafing; the people that get along have got to hustle. Cecil says we can’t just mark time in this world. We either go ahead or slide back.”

“Well, I’m a slider—if you can slide without ever getting up very far!”

“Look here,” he said, drawing in the paddle and fixing his eyes upon her intently, “you said something like that the first night Cecil took me up to see you, and you’ve got a touch of it again; but it’s the wrong talk. I’m going to hand it to you straight, because I guess I’ve got more nerve than anybody else you know: you haven’t got a kick coming, and you want to cut all that talk. Uncle Tim gets cross sometimes, but you don’t want to worry about that too much. He used to be meaner than fleas at the store sometimes, but the boys never worried about it. He’s all sound inside, and if he riles you the best thing to do is to forget it. You can’t please him all the time, but you can most of the time, and it’s up to you to do it. Now, tell me to jump in the river if you want to, but it was in my system and I had to get it out.”

“Oh, I know I ought to be grateful; but I’m wrong some way.”

“You’re all right,” he declared. “Your trouble is you don’t have enough to do. You ought to get interested in something—something that would keep you busy and whistling all the time.”

“I don’t have enough to do; I know that,” she assented.

“Well, you ought to go in good and strong for something; that’s the only ticket. Let’s get out and climb the bank and walk awhile.”

She had lost her bearings on the river, but when they had clambered to the top of the bank she found that they were near the Kinneys’. The road was a much-frequented highway, and she was sorry now that they had left the canoe; but Jerry, leading the way along a rough path that clung close to the river, continued to philosophize, wholly unconscious of the neighborhood’s associations for Nan.

Where the margin between the river and the road widened they sat on a log while Jerry amplified his views of life, with discreet applications to Nan’s case as he understood it. He was a cheery and hopeful soul, and in the light of her knowledge of him she marveled at his clear understanding of things. He confided to her that he meant to get on; he wanted to be somebody. She was wholly sympathetic and told him that he had already done a great deal; he had done a lot better than she had; and it counted for more because no one had helped him.

As they passed the Kinneys’ on their way back to the canoe, a roadster whizzed out of the gate and turned toward town. They both recognized Copeland. As he passed, his eyes fell upon them carelessly; then he glanced back and slowed down.

“Now we’re in for it!” said Nan uncomfortably.

“I guess I’m the one that’s in for it,” returned Jerry ruefully.

Copeland left his car at the roadside and walked rapidly toward them. He nodded affably to Jerry and extended his hand eagerly to Nan.

“This is great good luck! Grace is at home; why didn’t you come in?”

“Oh, Mr. Amidon is showing me the river; we just left the canoe to come up for a view from the bank.”

“Why not come back to Kinneys’; I want to see you; and this is a fine chance to have a talk.”

Jerry walked away and began throwing pebbles into the river.

“I can’t do that. And I can’t talk to you here. Papa drove me out and he’s likely to come back this way.”

“You seem to be pretty chummy with that clerk of mine,” Copeland remarked.

“I am; it began about sixteen years ago,” she answered, with a laugh. “We rose from the same ash-dump.”

He frowned, not comprehending. She was about to turn away when he began speaking rapidly:—

“You’ve got to hear me, Nan! I haven’t bothered you for a long time; you’ve treated me pretty shabbily after all there’s been between us; but you can square all that now. I’m in the deepest kind of trouble. Farley deliberately planned to ruin me and he’s about done it! I’ve paid him off, but I had to pledge half my stock in the store with the Western National to raise the money, and now my notes are due there and they’re going to pinch me. Eichberg is a director in the bank and he means to buy in that stock—you can see the game. Corbin & Eichberg are scheming to wipe me out and combine the two houses. And Farley’s put them up to it!”

His face twisted nervously as he talked. He was thinner than when she saw him last, but he bore no marks of hard living. His story was plausible; Farley had told her a month ago that he had got his money out of Copeland, but it hadn’t occurred to her that the loan might have been paid with money borrowed elsewhere.

“Of course, you won’t lose the business, Billy. It wouldn’t be square to treat you that way.”

“Square! I tell you it was all framed up, and I’ve reason to know that Farley stands in with them. It’s a fine revenge he’s taking on me for daring to love you!”

She shook her head and drew further away from him.

“Now, Billy, none of that! That’s all over.”

“No; it isn’t over! You know it isn’t, Nan! I’ve missed you; it cut me deep when you dropped me. You let Farley tell you I was all bad and going to the dogs and you didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself. I tell you I’ve suffered hell’s torments since I saw you last. But now I want you to tell me you do care. Please, dear—”

His voice broke plaintively. She shook her head.

“Of course we were good friends, Billy; but you knew we had to quit. It was wrong all the time—you knew that as well as I do.”

“I don’t see what was wrong about it! It can’t be wrong for a man to love a woman as I love you! If you hadn’t cared, it would be a different story, but you did, Nan! And you’re not the girl I know you to be if you’ve changed in these few weeks. I’ve got a big fight on and I want you to stand by me. Kinney’s in all kinds of trouble with the cement business. If he goes down, I’m ruined. But even at that you can help me make a new start. It will mean everything to have your love and help.”

He saw that his appeal had touched her. She was silent a moment.

“This won’t do, Billy; I can’t stand here talking to you; but I’m sorry for your troubles. I can’t believe you’re right about papa trying to injure you; he’s too fond of the old business for that. But we were good pals—you and I. I’ll try to think of some way to help.”

He caught her hands roughly.

“I need you; you know I love you! Farley’s told you I want to marry you for his money; but you can’t tell anything about him. Very likely he’ll cut you out, anyhow; he’s likely to do that very thing.”

She lifted her head and defiance shone for an instant in her eyes.

“I’ll let you hear from me within a week; I must have time— But keep up your spirits, Billy!”

The distant honking of a motor caused her to turn away quickly. Amidon had settled himself halfway down the bank and she called to him and began the descent....

If Jerry had expressed his feelings he would have said that Copeland’s appearance had given him a hard jar. It was annoying, just when you have reached the highest aim of your life, to have your feet knocked from under you. To have your boss spoil your afternoon with the prettiest girl in town was not only disagreeable, but it roused countless apprehensions.

For the afternoon was spoiled. Nan’s efforts to act as though nothing had happened were badly simulated, and finding that she lapsed frequently into long reveries, Jerry paddled doggedly back to the clubhouse.

CHAPTER XII
LAST WILLS AND TESTAMENTS

From the beginning of his infirmities Farley’s experiments in will-writing had taxed the patience of Thurston, his lawyer. Within two years he had made a dozen wills, and he kept them for comparison in a secret drawer of Mrs. Farley’s old sewing-table in his room. He penciled cryptic marks on the various envelopes for ease of identification, and he was influenced often by the most trivial circumstances in his revisions. If Nan irritated him, he cut down her legacy; when things went happily, he increased it. He was importuned to make bequests to great numbers of institutions, by men and women he knew well, and his attitude toward these changed frequently. There was hardly a phase of the laws of descent that Thurston had not explained to him.

A few days after her river excursion, the colored man-of-all-work handed Nan an envelope that had dropped from Farley’s dressing-gown as it hung on a clothes-line in the backyard for its periodical sunning. The envelope was unsealed. In the upper left-hand corner was the name and address of Thurston and in the center were four small crosses in pencil. Nan thrust it into a bureau drawer, intending to restore it to the dressing-gown pocket when she could do so without attracting Farley’s attention.

Her eyes fell upon it that night as she was preparing for bed. She laid it on her dressing-table and studied the queer little crosses as she brushed her hair.

Copeland had complained of Farley’s hardness, and if Billy had told the truth about the plight to which he had been reduced by Farley’s refusal to renew the last notes for the purchase money, the complaint was just. She crouched on a low stool before the table and gazed into the reflection of her eyes.

She played idly with the envelope, resisting an impulse to open it for a glance at the paper that crinkled in her fingers. She had been very “good” lately, and to pry into affairs that Farley had sedulously kept from her was repugnant to her better nature.... Farley’s abuse of her on the day of the luncheon, and his rage over her payment of the thousand dollars for the defense of her brother came back to her vividly. He had threatened to make it impossible for Billy to profit by marrying her.... She had a right to know what provision Farley meant to make for her. If in the end he intended to throw her upon her own resources or to provide for her in ways that curtailed her liberty, there was every reason why she should prepare to meet the situation.

The paper slipped from the envelope and she pressed it open.

I, Timothy Farley, being of sound mind,—

She had never seen a will before, and the unfamiliar phraseology fascinated her.

... in trust for my daughter, Nancy Corrigan Farley, for a period of twenty years from my decease, or until the death of said Nancy Corrigan Farley, should said death occur prior to the expiration of said twenty years, the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The income from said sum shall be paid to the said Nancy Corrigan Farley on the first day of each calendar month....

Two hundred thousand dollars he gave outright to the Boys’ Club Association; fifty thousand to the Children’s Hospital; and ten thousand each to five other charitable organizations....

One hundred thousand dollars in trust! An income of five or six thousand—less than half the cost of maintaining the Farley establishment, exclusive of her personal allowance for clothes! And this was Farley’s idea of providing for her. She had always heard that the act of adoption conferred all the rights inherent in a child of the blood; it was inconceivable that Farley would deal in so miserly a fashion with his own daughter.

The will was dated June 17, a week after the row over Copeland. She had heard that Farley’s property approximated a million, and on that basis she was to pay dearly for that day at the Country Club!

The trusteeship,—in itself an insult, an advertisement of Farley’s lack of confidence in her,—was to continue for what might be all the years of her life, restricting her freedom, fastening hateful bonds upon her. In case she married and died leaving children, the trusteeship was continued until they attained their majority. A paltry hundred thousand, and Farley’s lean hand clutched even that!

Two hundred thousand for the Boys’ Club—just twice what he gave her—and without restrictions! The Farleys’ love for her was now reduced to exact figures. Her foster-father meant to humiliate her in the eyes of the world by a niggardly bequest. And he had been protesting his love for her and permitting her to sacrifice herself for him!

The revelations of the will reinforced Copeland’s arraignment of Farley as a harsh and vindictive man, who drove hard bargains and delighted in vengeance.

She lay awake for hours, torturing herself into the belief that she was the most abused of beings. Then her better nature asserted itself. She reviewed the generosity and kindness of her foster-parents, who had given her a place in the world to which she felt, humbly, that she was not entitled. A hundred thousand dollars was more money than she had any right to expect; and the trusteeship was only a part of Farley’s kindness—a device for safeguarding and protecting her.

Then she flew to the other extreme. He had brought her up as his own child, encouraging a belief that she would inherit his whole fortune, and now he was cutting her off with something like a tenth and contemptuously bidding her beg for alms at the door of a trust company!

She stared into the dark until the light crept through her blinds. Then she slept until the nurse called her at eight.

“Mr. Farley’s waiting for you to have breakfast with him; how soon can you be ready?”

“Isn’t he so well?” Nan asked quickly.

“Nothing unusual; but he seemed tired after his ride yesterday and had a bad night.”

Nan, sitting up in bed, thrust her hand under her pillow and touched the will guiltily.

“I suppose,” she said, as the nurse crossed to the windows and threw up the shades, “that he may have a relapse at any time. The doctor prepared me for that. Please order breakfast sent up and tell papa I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

In her broodings of the night she had dramatized herself as confronting him in all manner of situations, but she was reluctant to face him now. She jumped out of bed, fortified herself for the day with a cold shower, and presented herself to him in a flowered kimono as the maid was laying the cloth on the stand by his bed.

“Well, Nan,” he said wearily, “I hope you had a better night than I did.”

“Oh, I don’t need much sleep,” she answered. “Edison says we all sleep too much, anyhow.”

“That’s a fool idea. The doctor’s got to give me the dope again if I have another such night. I guess there wasn’t anything I didn’t think of. Lyin’ awake is about as near hell as I care to go.”

The querulousness manifest in the worst period of his illness had returned. He grumbled at the nurse’s arrangement of his pillows and asked for a tray in bed, saying he didn’t feel equal to sitting at the table.

“You sit there where I can look at you, Nan.”

She was aglow from her bath and showed no trace of her sleepless night. It was pathetically evident that her presence brought him pleasure and relief. He had been very happy of late, accepting fully her assurance that everything was over between her and Copeland. Her recent social activities and the fact that some of the “nice people” were showing a renewed interest in her added to his satisfaction. He bade her talk as he nibbled his toast and sipped his milk.

“I read the newspaper an hour ago clear through the births and deaths and didn’t see anything very cheerful. You been followin’ that Reid will case up at Cleveland? I guess you don’t read the papers much. You never did; but you ought to keep posted. Well, that’s a mighty interestin’ case. I guess the lawyers are goin’ to get all the money. I knew old Reid, and he was as sane a man as ever lived. There ain’t much use in a man tryin’ to make a will when they’re sure to tear it to pieces.”

Nan looked at him quickly. It was possible that he had missed the will and was speaking of wills in general as a prelude to pouncing upon her with a question as to whether she had seen it. But he was not in a belligerent humor. He went on to explain the legal points involved in the Reid case.

“If a lot o’ rascally lawyers get hold o’ my property, I won’t just turn over in my grave; I’ll keep revolvin’! Reid tried to fix things so his children wouldn’t squander his money. His daughters married fools and he wanted to try and protect ’em. And just for that they’ve had the will set aside on the ground that Reid was crazy.”

Nan acquiesced in his view of this as an outrage. And she really believed that it was, as Farley spoke of it.

“I sometimes wonder whether it ain’t better just to let things go,” he continued. “I been over this will business with Thurston a thousand times, and I’m never sure he knows what he’s talkin’ about. Wills made by the best lawyers in the country seem to break down; there ain’t nothin’ sure about it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that, papa. Mr. Thurston ought to know about those things if anybody does.”

Ordinarily he would have combated this, as he combated most emphatic statements; but his willingness to let it pass unchallenged convinced her that there had been a sharp change for the worse in his condition.

It was the way of her contradictory nature to be moved to pity for him in his weakness, and a wave of tenderness swept her. After all, if he wished to cut her off with a hundred thousand dollars and give the rest to charity he had a right to do it.

She took the tray from the bed, smoothed the covers and passed her cool hand over his hot forehead.

“Please, papa,” she said, “don’t bother about business to-day. Miss Rankin says it’s only a cold, but she’ll have to report it to the doctor. I’m going to telephone him to drop in this morning.”

He demurred, but not with his usual venomous tirade against the whole breed of doctors.

“All right, Nan,” he said, clinging to her hand. “And I wish you’d tell Thurston to come in this afternoon. I want to talk to him about some matters.”

“Well, we’ll see the doctor first, papa. We can have Mr. Thurston in any time.”

She knelt impulsively beside the bed.

“I want you to know, papa, about wills and things like that, that I don’t want you to bother about me. I hope we’re going to live on together for long, long years. And anything you mean to do for me is all right.”

She hardly knew herself as she said this. It was an involuntary utterance; something she could not have imagined herself saying a few hours earlier as she lay in bed hating him for his meanness.

“Well, dear, I want to do the right thing by you. It’s worried me a lot, tryin’ to decide the best way. I don’t want to leave any trouble behind me for you to settle. And I don’t want to do anything that’ll make you think hard o’ me. I want to be sure you never come to want: that’s what’s worried me. I want you to be happy and comfortable, little girl.”

“I know you do, papa,” she replied. “But don’t bother about those things now.”

The nurse came in to take his temperature. Nan went to her room for the will and, feigning to be straightening some of the things in his closet, she thrust the paper into the dressing-gown pocket.

An hour later the Kinney’s chauffeur left a note from Grace:—

Come out this afternoon at any hour you can. Telephone me where to meet you downtown and I’ll bring you out in the car. I needn’t explain why, but after Saturday you’ll understand.

The doctor found nothing alarming in Farley’s condition, but ordered him to remain in bed for a few days. He said he must have sleep and prescribed an opiate.

At three o’clock Nan left the house.

CHAPTER XIII
A KINNEY LARK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

“It’s certainly good to see you again!” Mrs. Kinney exclaimed as Nan met her by arrangement at a confectioner’s. “How much time are you going to give me?”

“Oh, I haven’t any,” laughed Nan. “I’ve run away. Papa isn’t so well to-day and couldn’t take his drive as usual, so I’m truanting—and very naughty. I must be back in the house before five.”

“Well, when I got your message I telephoned Billy to come to the house and he’ll be there as soon as we are. He’s been in the depths for weeks. You know you had got a mighty strong hold on dear old Billy, and when you dropped him it hurt. And we’ve all missed you!”

The Kinneys and their friends had missed her; they had missed her dash, her antics—the Nan she had resolved to be no more. But it was pleasant to be in Mrs. Kinney’s company again. She was a simple, friendly soul who liked clothes and a good time; her capacity for enjoying anything serious was wholly negligible.

“I knew, of course, that Billy was back of your invitation. I saw him Saturday—quite accidentally, and he was bluer than indigo.”

“He spent Sunday with us and told us all about meeting you. He was perfectly furious because you were out skylarking with one of his clerks! But he got to laughing about it,—told us some funny stories about your new suitor,—Jerry, is that the name?”

“Mr. Jeremiah Amidon, please,” laughed Nan. “It was killing that Billy should find me out canoeing with him. Jerry and I were kids together, and he’s grown to be a great consolation to me.”

“He must be a consolation to Billy, too; he says the youngster’s trying to reform him!” Grace suddenly clasped Nan’s hand. “You ought to take charge of Billy! He’s awfully in love with you, Nan. He’s going to urge you to marry him—at once. That’s why—”

“No! No! I’ll never do it,” cried Nan despairingly.

It was another of her mistakes, this yielding to Copeland’s demand for an interview that could have but one purpose. She was thoroughly angry at herself, half angry at Mrs. Kinney for acting as Copeland’s intermediary.

Copeland was pacing the veranda smoking a cigarette when they reached the house.

“It’s mighty nice of you to come, Nan,” he said.

“I’ve heard, Billy, that the haughty John Eaton’s rather attentive to the late Mrs. Copeland,” said Grace, when they had gathered about the tea-table. “She was among those present at a little dinner he gave at the University Club the other night in honor of that English novelist who’s visiting here.”

“You’re bitter because he left you out,” said Copeland indifferently.

“Oh, my bitterness won’t hurt Fanny. I suppose you’ve heard that she’s come into a nice bunch of money—something like a quarter of a million!”

Copeland’s surprise was evident.

“That sounds like a fairy story; but I hope it’s true.”

“I know it’s true,” said Nan quietly. “Mrs. Copeland told me herself.”

Mrs. Kinney had risen to leave them and Copeland had crossed the room to open the door for her. They were arrested by Nan’s surprising confirmation of this report that Mrs. Copeland had come into an unexpected inheritance. Nan vouchsafed nothing more; and at a glance from Copeland Grace left them.

“I didn’t know you and Fanny were seeing each other these days,” he remarked as he sat down beside her. “Something new, isn’t it?”

“Well, papa always admired her and he took me out to see her a little while ago, and then that day you saw her with us at the bank he insisted on taking her home for luncheon. She told us then about the money.”

Copeland smiled grimly.

“Of course, you know what it means—Farley’s sudden affection for Fanny?”

“Oh, he used to see a good deal of her, didn’t he, when you were first married?”

“Mrs. Farley and Fanny exchanged a few calls and we were there for dinner once, while you were still away at school. But this is different; he’s throwing you with her for a purpose, as you ought to see. It does credit to the old man’s cunning. He thinks that if you become good friends with Fanny, he can be sure you’ve dropped me.”

“Rubbish! Papa has always liked her; he likes the kind of woman who can run a farm and make money out of it; he thinks she’s a good example for me!”

“Don’t let him fool you about that!” he said petulantly. “He’s an old Shylock and he’s about taken the last ounce out of me. Paying him that last twenty-five thousand has put me in a bad hole. And it’s pure vengeance. If he wasn’t afraid you were going to marry me, he would never have driven me so hard. He thinks if he can ruin me financially you’ll quit me for good. It was understood when I bought him out that he’d be easy about the payments. There’s a frame-up between him and Corbin & Eichberg to force me out of business. And he’s been calling some of the old employees up to see him, and encouraging Amidon to trot up there so he can worm things out of him. I don’t think he gets anything out of Jerry,” he added, taking warning of a resentful gleam in Nan’s eyes. “I think the boy’s loyal to me; in fact”—he grinned ruefully—“he’s full of an ambition to make a man of me! But you must see that it’s all a game to draw you away from me. Farley’s not the sort of man to waste time on a youngster like Amidon for nothing, and this throwing you in Fanny’s way is about as smooth a piece of work as I ever knew him to do.”

“You’re exaggerating, Billy; and as far as Jerry is concerned, papa likes him; he always takes an interest in poor boys. And the fact that Jerry came from down there on the river where he had his own early struggles probably makes him a little more sympathetic with him.”

“The old gentleman’s sympathies,” said Copeland, bending forward and meeting her gaze with a significant look, “are likely to cost you a whole lot of money, Nan.”

“Just how do you make that out, Billy?”

“All the hospitals and charitable concerns in town have been working on Farley to do something for them in his will, and I heard yesterday that he’s promised to do something big for the Boys’ Club people. You’ve probably seen Trumbull at the house a good deal—he’s the kind of fellow who’d make an impression on Farley. I got this from Kinney. He gave them some money last year and they put him on the board of directors. They’re all counting on something handsome from the old man. I assume he hasn’t told you anything about it; it wouldn’t be like him to! He means to die and let you find out just what his affection for you comes down to in dollars.”

“Well, he has a right to do what he likes with his money,” Nan replied slowly, repeating the phrase with which she had sought to console herself since the will fell into her hands. “I suppose he thinks he’s done enough for me.”

The phrases of the will danced before her eyes: Copeland’s intimations squared with the facts as she knew them to be; she had seen tangible proof of their accuracy.

“We have to admit that he’s been kind to you, but he hasn’t any right to bring you up as his daughter and then cut you off. You stand in law as his own child, and if he should die without making a will, you’d inherit everything.”

“Well, the law hasn’t made me his own child,” said Nan bitterly.

Seeing her resentment, and feeling that he was gaining ground, he proceeded cautiously.

“I suppose he’s likely to have a sudden call one of these days?”

“Yes; or he may live several years, so the doctor told me. But I don’t want to think of that. And I don’t like to think of what he may do or not do for me,” she added earnestly.

“Of course you don’t!” he assented. “But he hasn’t any right to stand between you and your happiness. If he had the right feeling about you, he’d want to see you married and settled before he dies. I suppose he’s never told you what he meant to do for you?”

“No. But he’s told me what he wouldn’t do if I married you; he laid that down in the plainest English!”

“I don’t doubt it; but no man has a right to do any such thing. Just why he hates me so I don’t understand. It oughtn’t to be a crime to love you, Nan.”

His hand touched hers, then clasped it tightly.

“I don’t see why we should be talking of these things at all,” he went on. “I love you; and I believe that deep down in your heart you love me. You’re not going to say you don’t, Nan?”

“You know I’ve always liked you a lot, Billy,” she answered evasively.

“Before Farley got the idea that I wanted to marry you for his money and abused me and made you unhappy, you cared; you can’t deny that. And I don’t believe his hatred of me really made any difference.”

It was the wiser course not to abuse Farley. He felt that he was winning her to a yielding mood, and his hopes rose.

She withdrew her hand suddenly and bent her eyes upon him with disconcerting intentness.

“Please tell me, Billy, the real truth about your trouble with Fanny?”

The abruptness of her question startled him. The color deepened in his face and he blinked under her searching gaze. She had never before spoken of his trouble with his former wife.

“That,” he said rallying quickly, “is all over and done. It hasn’t anything to do with you and me.”

“Yes, Billy; I think it has! If you’re really serious in wanting to marry me, I think I ought to know about that.”

“I don’t see how you could doubt my seriousness; you’ve been the one serious thing in my whole life!”

“But Fanny—” she persisted, gently touching his hands that were loosely clasped on his knee.

“Oh, the trouble was that we were never suited to each other. She’s quiet, domestic—a country-town girl, and never fitted into things here. She wanted to sit at home every evening and sew and expected me to wait around for her to drop a spool so I could get excitement out of scrambling for it. And she didn’t like my friends, or doing the things I like. Her idea of having a gay time was to go to the state fair once a year and look at live stock! I think she hated me toward the end.”

“But that other story about her—about another man; she doesn’t look like that sort of woman, Billy.”

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

“That wasn’t in the case at all. The divorce was given for incompatibility. Whatever else there may have been didn’t figure. I made it as easy for her as possible, of course. And I’ve no doubt she was as glad to quit as I was!”

“But you didn’t think—you didn’t honestly believe—”

“Well, I thought she was interested in Manning; and we had some trouble about that. He used to come here a good deal. He was an old friend of mine and his business brought him to town pretty often for a couple of years. He’s a fellow of quiet tastes—just her sort—and I hoped when I got out of the way she’d marry him. I want you to be satisfied about everything, Nan. I tell you everything’s over between Fanny and me.”

She rose and took a turn across the room, paused at the window, glanced out upon the lawn and the strip of woodland beyond. He became impatient as the minutes passed. Then she faced him suddenly.

“It’s no use, Billy,” she said.

He was eagerly protesting when Mrs. Kinney appeared at the door.

“What are you two looking so glum about? You need cheering up and I’ve got a fine surprise for you!”

“I must go,” said Nan, relieved at the interruption.

“Not much, you’re not! Bob has just telephoned that the Burleys of Chicago are in town and they’re coming out for dinner. And I’ve telephoned the Liggetts and the Martins and George Pickard and Edith Saxby and the Andrews. It will be like old times to have the old crowd together once more!”

“Of course, Nan will stay! She’s been making me miserable lately and that will help her square herself,” said Copeland.

“I must go, really,” Nan reiterated, suspecting that the party had been arranged in advance.

“Please don’t!” cried Copeland. “You can telephone home that you’ve been delayed—you can arrange it someway.”

“When I went downtown on an errand! I don’t see it!”

“Dinner’s at six; the Burleys have to go into town early,” said Mrs. Kinney.

“Oh, let her go!” exclaimed Copeland. “Our Nan isn’t the good sport she used to be, and she doesn’t love any of us any more. She’s gone back on all her old friends.”

“Oh, no, she hasn’t. I never knew her to take a dare! I don’t believe she’s going to do it now.”

Nan surveyed them defiantly and looked at her watch.

She felt that she had finally dismissed Billy, and her last word to him had left her elated. It might be worth while to wait, at any hazard, to ease his discomfiture, and to show the Kinneys and their friends that she had not cut them; and, moreover, she was unwilling to have them know how greatly her old freedom was curtailed. The time had passed quickly and she could not reach home before seven even if she left immediately. Miss Rankin had covered up her absences before and might do so again.

“Let me telephone and I’ll see how things are going.”

The nurse’s report was reassuring. Farley, who had rested badly for several nights, was sleeping. He might not waken for an hour—perhaps not for several hours. Miss Rankin volunteered to explain Nan’s absence if he should call for her.

“All right, Grace, you may a lay a plate for me!” she announced cheerfully. “But I must be on my way right after dinner. You understand that!”

“It’s great to see you on the good old cocktail route again, Nan!” declared Pickard. “We heard you’d taken the veil!”

The cocktails were passed before they went to the table; there were quarts for everybody, Grace assured them. The men had already fortified themselves downtown against any lack of an appetizer at the house. Mocking exclamations of surprise and alarm followed Nan’s rejection of her glass.

“That’s not fair, Nan!” they chorused, gathering about her. “You used to swallow six without blinking an eye.”

“She’s joined the crape-hangers for sure! I didn’t think it of our Nan!” mourned Pickard.