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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/49188-0.txt b/49188-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d095b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/49188-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7974 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49188 *** + ++-------------------------------------------------+ +|Transcriber's note: | +| | +|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | +| | ++-------------------------------------------------+ + + + + +DAISY HERSELF + +By + +WILL E. INGERSOLL + +_Author of "The Road that led Home", "The Centenarian" etc._ + +[Illustration: Logo] + +TORONTO +THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY +LIMITED + + +Copyright, Canada, 1920 + +THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED +PUBLISHERS TORONTO + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER PAGE + I A Two Hundred Mile Dash 1 + + II The City Swallows Daisy 6 + + III The Maid and the Clerk 19 + + IV A "Steer" 29 + + V A Job 35 + + VI The Plebeian 50 + + VII A Human Horticulturist 62 + + VIII A Knight in the Kitchen 86 + + IX A Dance and an Invitation 96 + + X The Boxing Match and Afterward 116 + + XI The Face Behind the Mask 152 + + XII Sawn Off the Old Block 156 + + XIII A Plot that Miscarried 161 + + XIV The Golden Stair 175 + + XV The Lady of the House 187 + + XVI Taking a Rest 198 + + XVII A Raincloud 206 + + XVIII The Bleak Two 216 + + XIX The Choice of the Dray 221 + + XX John Nixon's Invitation 229 + + XXI In the Blizzard 236 + + XXII In the Drifted Sleigh 257 + + XXIII Daisy's Home Coming 261 + + XXIV A Western Wild Man 270 + + XXV Why? 275 + + XXVI A New Settler 281 + + XXVII The Sewing Machine Lovemaker 292 + +XXVIII The Coming of the Mother 307 + + XXIX The Bud 313 + + + + +DAISY HERSELF + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A TWO HUNDRED MILE DASH. + + +Daisy had run away from her home on the farm outside Toddburn village +with this young store clerk, Beatty, who now sat holding her hand in the +moonlight "flyer" of the M. & N. Beatty, who came originally from the +city, was a bad young rascal; and Daisy--who, neglected and exposed to +temptation since her earliest girlhood, had developed an innate +awareness of "fellows"--knew it. None of her several reasons for this +escapade had been the usual one--love. It suited her, however, to let +Beatty think that she had come prepared to follow him to the world's +end--a lengthy journey, upon which the railway ticket Beatty had bought +for her was only good for the first two hundred miles. + +Daisy was proceeding daringly, easily, without pause or regret, toward +whatever lay in store for her along the path she had taken. Her +locomotion was that of a thing which is both propelled and drawn. The +propulsive force was her hatred of the farm where she had drudged for +all the workable years of her seventeen under that plebeian taskmaster, +stolid, selfish John Nixon, her stepfather, and that unmaternal mother +whose forename, by some perpetuated sarcasm, was Lovina. The drawing +force was Daisy's own eager, vigorous, intrepid spirit of +adventure--green maidenhood's hunger for the sensational new. + +The car in which the two sat was not a "sleeper," but an ordinary +red-upholstered day coach. The two had boarded the train at Oak Lake, +the first station east of Toddburn (where neither of them were known by +the new station agent) at a little after midnight. They were due to +reach the city between six and seven o'clock in the morning. + +Even if the car had been a berth coach, and there had been opportunity +for retirement, Daisy could not have slept. The hour, the situation, the +novelty of the rushing, lamplit train (she had never been on a train +before), kept every faculty ablaze and awake in a pleasant intoxication +of excitement. Elbow on window-sill and chin in palm, the girl sat, +glancing now out at the flying moonlit telegraph posts, now about the +interior of the dingy branch-line passenger coach. All seemed fairylike +to her eyes habituated only to prairie fallow and lea. + +Young Beatty, holding her hand and thrilling in a delightful though less +spiritual than fleshly way, at the occasional glances with which Daisy +baited him, looked out of the corner of his eye at her and felt very +much pleased, indeed, with himself. First, she had a glorious color, the +like of which one could not buy for money, nor yet for love--a color +that resided comely and rich in her cheeks, even at feeling's lowest +tide, but which now, in the high tide of her adventure, overflowed down +in a bonny estuary toward the milk-warm curve of her chin. Then, there +were the features, each with its peculiar likability or lure--lips made +and eager for enjoyment, yet with something in their set and pose that +was constant and fine--a nose humorous and short, tiltable to every +gradation of coquetry--eyes with dancing irises, soft baffling shadows, +and brows that trended downward at the outer ends. Lastly, the +hair--brown, with a wave that made it comely in any coiffure; coiled +carelessly under a hasty pin or two at temple, crown, and white nape of +neck where a curl caressed--had a piquancy even in its disarray. Beatty +cuddled his head back against the red upholstery of the seat in +luxurious contemplation, and again expressively squeezed the fingers he +held. + +Beatty himself was a slim, white-handed youth whose abundant blond hair +and smooth "way" had made the world, for him, a kind of garden of the +Hesperides--the fault with this simile being that he was no Hercules, +except in his vanity. In this, his strength was as the strength of ten, +though not because his heart was pure. If you had taxed him with that +characteristic in which Beatty was eminently taxable--his attitude +toward girls--he would have regarded you indulgently a moment, and would +then have explained that it was not his fault if "Janes fell for him" +and "fooled with the band-wagon" to their own undoing. Surely it was a +"free country." + +In spite, however, of the fact that the country was a free one, the +special thing which had sent Beatty out of the city "for his health" was +the quest after him by a two-hundred-pound brother of a sister some +ninety pounds lighter. The brother, who carried a professional "haymaker +in either mitt" for even those of his own gender who could use their +fists with fair ability, was as sincere in his desire to interview +Beatty as Beatty was considerate in his desire to save the brother the +embarrassment of such an interview. A recently-received picture postcard +from a friend of Beatty's had, however, intimated that the family of +which the brother and sister in question were members had since "gone to +the coast," and that Beatty's home city had therefore become again for +Beatty a consistent metropolis of a free country, if he wished to return +to it. + +Beatty did wish to return to it; and, returning with round and pretty +Daisy Nixon as a travelling companion--made, Beatty felt assured, wholly +and dependently his by the manner of her home-leaving--he felt that the +several months of his exile had not been wasted. + +"The boys", so Beatty reflected complacently, as he leaned back on the +car-cushion, "will cert'n'ee set up an 'take notice w'en they see this +w'at I got here. They cert'n'ee will." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE CITY SWALLOWS DAISY. + + +The summer dawn came with a warm melting of the dark and a running out +over the sky-floor of spilled light from under the edge of the world. +Daisy, her nerves thrilling like the nerves of one drunken with wine, +leaned untired on the varnished window-sill; looking, with all her young +vitality gathered into shine of eyes and beat of heart, for her first +view of the city. + +The shadow of the express, as the early sun came up, coursed like a +hound along the barrow-pits of the right-of-way, and quivered, as it +were, in noiseless impact against the stolid cedar fence-posts that +stood still and were whipped by in the guise of staring bumpkins as the +smart, swift train hummed on its way. + +Daisy saw these effects at the edge of her travel-picture out of the +corner of her eye merely. Her attention was concentrated +forward--forward, to watch for the first white trimming of roof-tops on +the dewy green fabric of the prairie-rim. Hateful to her were the square +fields by the track, where phlegmatic men and teams moved up and down +the black fallow; hateful the whitewashed houses, the homely +poplar-clumps, the stacks of straw. Appurtenances, all, of the life +with which she had been surfeited (she thought): reminding her of cows +to be milked, of barnyard drudgery, of gawky, red-visaged, wholly +unpiquant boys, of men content to smoke and drawl away their rare hours +of ease. + +Hateful! The term is too mild to express the immense energy of the +girl's distaste for the life she had, with youth's dash, pushed behind +her in one reckless thrust. + +She was done with it. For good or for ill, she was done with it all, or +thought so, in these kinetic and dancing moments, as new leagues of her +unexplored earth uprolled along the endless ribbon of this two-railed +track of dreams. New leagues, yes--but, so far, no new scenery. The +stations she had passed, and continued to pass, were nothing but an +endless chain of Toddburns; the intervening reaches of farm land, no +more than linked replicas without number or variation, of the Nixon +farm. In spite of the "flyer" and its obvious achievement over distance, +Daisy Nixon at moments had the odd sensation that the track was +revolving beneath the car-wheels, treadmill-style, and the train merely +standing maddeningly still amid the old locale. + +But there--there! A quick hypodermic needle of joy pricked her throat, +and Daisy caught her breath as the strong keen drug of excitement +tingled out to all her nerve-ends. A white kite-tail of houses seemed to +drop down and flicker, half in the air, at the point where the uprolling +earth revolved against the broad-open casement of the morning sky. +Appearing for a moment as a fantasy, it soon settled into a lengthening +white saw-blade of joined buildings, low in the distance, dividing the +solid green world from the dreamy firmament of a June dawn. Straight +toward it rushed the cleaving bullet of the train. + +Her head out beneath the raised window-sash, her companion forgotten as +though he had never existed, Daisy wrapped herself in the joy of the +hour. The white house-line, advancing along the angle of its +perspective, broadened and took form and character, split into rays of +streets, discovered great chimneys with smoke-plumes, unveiled square +buildings in a caparison of glittering windows, began to live and move +and give forth human signs. The first workers were already in the +streets, for a goose-herd of city whistles was croaking out seven, vying +therein with the warning blast of the "flyer's" engine as, barely +slackening speed, it rushed along the cobweb of tracks, arrogant and +favored possessor, for the time being, of the right of way to the great +urban station in the heart of all. + +"Well, kid," said the voice of Beatty, "how d'ye like it?" + +"Fine, Freddie," Daisy replied, blithely. The comment was plain and +simple enough; but her eyes and cheeks told the rest, without need of +words. + +Beatty stuck on his hat, tilting it a little. + +"It ain't so bad, either," he conceded, grinning to himself, as he +picked up his smart leather suitcase and Daisy's battered telescope +grip, "not so bad, at that, kiddo." + +With a hollow, drumlike roar, the train drew to a halt beneath a dome of +glass and iron; and Daisy and her companion, inching along behind the +file of passengers, at length emerged upon a cement walk, walled in on +either side by the bulk of varnished railway coaches. Passing along +this, descending a stair with an iron balustrade, and proceeding through +a great, busy, and echoing rotunda with a ceiling almost as far away as +a sky, Daisy and her companion emerged upon a stretch of granolithic +pavement. + +Beyond the curb, a bevy of bus-drivers from city hotels crowed like a +flock of roosters--the surmounting voice in this bedlam being that of a +sandy-mustached old-timer, whose vehicle was labelled "Imperial Hotel." +By his hind-wheel he stood, moving nothing but the hinges of his jaws; +and to see his mouth open to its red limit was to be filled with +consternation. + +"Imm-Peary-ail Hoat'l!" he sang, his eyes looking nonchalantly up and +away, with something of the expression he used to wear when scouting the +sky for signs of rain, in the old farming days before he became poet +laureate of the city's pioneer hotel. + +"Why--look who's here, will you!" The exclamation was Beatty's, as he +stopped alongside the scratched old bus. "This is him, Mrs. Beatty--old +Jim-Jam Hogle. Can you take a passenger, J. J.?" + +Mr. Hogle, without ceasing his vocal offices for so much as the fraction +of a moment, let his eyes flicker down over Beatty with no sign of +recognition, returned his gaze again to its former direction above the +depot roof, and jerked his thumb casually toward the interior of his +craft. Beatty handed the girl in, climbed in after her, and set down the +suitcase and grip. No others entered; and presently Mr. Hogle, turning +from his post by the wheel-rim and glancing inscrutably in at Daisy as +he passed the glass panel behind where his two passengers sat, unsnapped +and threw in his iron hitching-weight, climbed to his high seat, and +rattled away. + +Daisy Nixon had never before seen such crowds nor such coachmanship. +With the horses trotting at a good speed, the old teamster wound in and +out by motor-trucks, autos, street-cars, horse-drays, and thronging +pedestrians, as smoothly, swiftly and carelessly as though he had the +whole street to himself. The traffic grew less dense as they passed out +of the vicinity of the depot, crossed a corner where the car-tracks met +at right angles, and, after bowling for a block or two down the city's +main thoroughfare, turned down a side street and drew up at the door of +a hoary frame hotel, its white-painted two-tier piazza weathered to a +dingy gray. + +Beatty and Daisy descended; and the old bus-driver, after first hitching +the team to the weight, followed with the grips. + +"You wait in the hall here, while I go an' dicker with the clerk, dear," +said Beatty, ostentatiously, "I'll be right back." + +Daisy, looking about her curiously, encountered suddenly the eye of Mr. +Hogle, standing up the hall, out of sight of the hotel office. The eye +had been trying for some moments to catch hers; and, now that it had +succeeded, Mr. Hogle raised a huge forefinger, stained indelibly with +harness-oil, and beckoned. Daisy went over briskly. + +"_Missis_ Beatty, hey?" said Mr. Hogle, toning his great voice to a low +interrogative rumble. + +Daisy nodded a careless affirmative. It was none of his business. She +felt able to take care of this point herself, when the time should +arrive. + +"Like hell you are," said the unmincing Mr. Hogle, "ner wun't be. Break +away from him as soon's as you can--that's if it ain't too late already. +I know _him_." + +Daisy dimpled; raising her chin challengingly, after a manner she had. +But she did not answer. + +"I guess you're all right yet," said Mr. Hogle, after a shrewd fatherly +glance, "an' I see you're one of them confident kind. Them's the ones +that gets ketched easiest. Now you'll mind what I told you--won't you, +Missie?" + +Daisy, regarding her adviser with dancing eyes, bobbed her chin up and +down in mock docility; and Mr. Hogle, shaking his head pessimistically, +went out to put away his team. + +"What was that old geezer saying?" said Beatty, coming out of the office +as the old man went outside. + +"I--I'm sure I don't know," said Daisy, gravely, "I think he was trying +to make love to me, Freddie." + +"Wants to get his can beat off, eh?" remarked Beatty, carelessly; "well, +what-oh-what does my little girlie want worst, right now?" + +"Breakfast," replied Daisy, plumply; ducking roguishly to avoid the +caress her questioner, imagining _that_ was the thing she "wanted +worst," sought to bestow. + +"A-all right," said Beatty, swallowing his pique; "we'll go and see if +they can scare us up some poached-two-on, right now. Then 'm going to +take my baby out an' show her the best time _she_ ever had, in all her +young life--eh?" + +"M'h'm," murmured Daisy, smiling to herself, as she followed her +companion into the dining-room. + +Breakfast that morning was a notable affair, a milestone in Daisy +Nixon's days. Not because there was anything novel or striking about the +garniture of the Imperial Hotel dining-room, which was a plain homely +place, differing little from the eating-room of the Jubilee House in +Toddburn--but because there hummed, and called, and clanged, and +whistled through the open windows the multitudinous sounds of this new +urban life into which she had, as it were, plunged headlong. Daisy +listened absently to Beatty's chatter, conceding him an occasional +dimple or smile; but otherwise almost forgot him until, as the meal +ended, he laid his hand, hot and moist, over hers, and said: + +"Well, how does my little-one feel about it now?" + +Daisy glanced down at his white-pored hand, with its cigarette-yellowed +finger-tips and outstanding blue veins. Then she looked up at him, and +leaned one pretty cheek coaxingly close. + +"You's baby feels ashamed in this old waist and skirt and hat," she +said, softly; "ain't you going to get her some nice things to be +married in?" + +Beatty's hand squeezed hers. + +"Your Freddie sure will do that for you," he said. "Let's go upstairs +now, and figure out what we'll need." + +Daisy suffered him to pull her out of her chair by the hand he held. +Still retaining it, he led her out of the dining-room, along the hall, +and up the stairway. At the top, she halted--fetching her companion, who +had kept right on going, to a standstill with a jerk. + +"Come on, come on," he said, making his tone matter-of-course, "the room +is No. 19." + +"What's the number of _my_ room?" said Daisy, regarding him pleasantly +but with a kind of odd under-gleam in her eyes. + +"Y--your room!" Even Beatty, the inured, was embarrassed by that +searching, direct look. "Why, I--I--darned if I remember the number." + +Daisy continued to look at him a moment; then the shine in her eyes was +succeeded by a twinkle, and this by a promising, coaxing side-glance. + +"Well, then, let's go into the women's sitting-room, Freddie--this +time." + +Beatty knew when to yield a point--so he flattered himself. + +"All right, Sweetest," he said, "you're the doctor--always." + +They passed into the "ladies' parlor," which was empty, except for a +few articles of faded furniture, among which a new red settee in one +corner glowed with a preternatural brilliance. Beatty sat on the red +settee and drew the girl down beside him. + +"Somebody got a kiss for her Freddie?" he said, his lips loosely apart +and wrinkles springing into view at the sides of his nostrils. + +"Oh, I--do' know," Daisy dropped her head a little; "let's just talk. +It's nice to sit together an' talk, when we love each other so, isn't +it?" + +Beatty's answer to this was to thrust his arm about her waist, push his +palm beneath her chin, and pull up her face toward his. The girl +resisted at first; then, with a motion of yielding, laid her head back +on his shoulder and raised her lips. Beatty kissed her, not reverently +but roughly; then kissed her again; then again and again: burying his +mouth into hers. A little hand came up and caressed his neck; then +slipped down within his coat and rested as it were, upon his +heart--moving softly, as though feeling for its beats. + +Then hand and girl and all tore suddenly and strongly away--and Daisy +Nixon was upon her feet, her cheeks glowing like fire, laughing as she +held up the leather purse she had taken from his pocket. + +"It was the only way!" she cried, breathlessly and sparklingly, as he +sat agape; "the only way to get out of you what you owe to me, for the +things I have let you think about me, Mr. Fred Beatty. You thought I +didn't know all about you--what you did to poor Pearlie Brodie, making +her the talk of Toddburn, with worse to come yet--a poor motherless +girl, who was given up by a decent fellow that would have married her, +if it hadn't been for you. You thought I didn't know. Yes: you thought I +'fell for you', as you'd call it. But I'll tell you what I did, an' you +can put it in your pipe an' smoke it, and I hope it'll do you good. I +needed you. I needed to get away from that place where I was wasting my +life, and I had no money--so I used you. I've met ginks like you before. +I could see through you from the first like a pane of glass--you poor, +miserable imitation of a man! + +"Now, I'm going to take this money and use it, to keep me till I get a +job somewhere. Then I'm going to pay it back. But not to you--don't you +ever think it. I'm going to send it to Pearlie Brodie. She'll need it +badly enough, in a few months from now. She'd never have got it from you +straight--never in this world--so she'll get it through me. Now, you get +out of here! I've wasted too much breath talking to you. And keep this +in your memory-box: _I don't know you_! So don't speak to me, if I ever +have the bad luck to meet you again!" + +The girl had barely finished speaking, when Beatty leaped at her, +grabbing for the purse which she held. But she stepped quickly +back--and, as he pressed in, gave him, with all the strength of her +virile young body, a push that sent him sprawling. + +"You give me that money," Beatty said, his face pasty and mean with +fury, as he climbed to his feet and stood, slowly dusting off his +clothes; "that's all I want out o' you. Hand it over, or I'll go down +and phone for a constable, and have you taken to the police station. + +"Yes--you will!" Daisy challenged. "I suppose you think no person around +Toddburn ever reads the city papers and notices what the law does to a +fellow that brings a girl sixteen years old to a hotel. Go down and +phone for the police, if you feel like it! I know who they'll take back +with them when they come, and it won't be me. And I'll tell you +something more, Mr. Smart Man: If you're not out of here in the next +three minutes or less, _I'll_ phone for the constable. It makes me sick +to look at you. I want to go and wash my mouth, too. It'll take a good +many washings to make it feel as clean as it did before _you_ touched +it. Get away from here!" + +"Well," Beatty growled, after a moment, as a distant step down the hall +portended the coming of one of the hotel staff, probably attracted by +the sound of the raised voices and scuffling, "keep the money, then, you +blamed nickel's worth o' nothing. I'll get the worth of it out o' you +some other way, yet--you watch me! There's goin' to come a time when +you'll need me, an' you'd better fasten onto this," he took a card from +his pocket and tossed it down on the settee. "Till then, I'll bid you +'good-day'." + +Therewith--in his intense self-reverence, half-expecting to be called +back before he reached the street-door--Mr. Frederick S. Beatty turned +on his heel and stalked out. + +But Daisy did not call him back. Neither, be it said, did she hasten to +wash her mouth. As the slam of the door downstairs gave ostentatious +notice of Beatty's exit, she moved to the window, watching him up the +sidewalk with an odd, half-maternal look. + +"That call-down may do you some good, Mr. Naughty man," she murmured; +"you've had too easy a time with girls--that's what ails you, +principally." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE MAID AND THE CLERK. + + +"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and +shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had +been sitting. "So they har." + +The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to +confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a +hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair +of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At +the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a +saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like +exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a +skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly +reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were +pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette. + +"Ar, ee--yes--s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a +hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an +ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to attention, with her head on one +side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed +themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet +of gold. + +"'Usbands _har_ queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp +sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't +they?" + +Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and +was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the +feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously, +and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded: + +"Are they?" + +"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never +say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance +from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back +to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four +times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though +she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy +noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white. + +There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall. +Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of +her hips that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable, +serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said: + +"Bob--er--Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway, +'e says." + +Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs. +She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the +counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the +register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys +on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled, +and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was +newly-barbered--shaved to the blood. + +He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from +sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words +out of the corner of his mouth: + +"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?" + +Daisy looked a little puzzled. + +"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?" + +"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips." + +"Just the _one_ grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching +up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this--see?" + +Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently. + +"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for +your board bill. You pay in advance--see?" + +Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little +flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her +blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and, +with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had +brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested +it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic. + +As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot +round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he +leaned close. + +"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie +forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, +yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and +paddled hers. + +Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the +counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his +pocket. + +"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the +little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him +when he went out." + +Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his +palms--a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very +quintessence of humor--the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face +of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his +fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, +shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, +and exclaimed: + +"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!" + +"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of +deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned--and looked +into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the +bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within +the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his +jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek. + +"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his +paternal way. + +"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. +Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?" + +Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon +other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy. +His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as a nutmeg-grater, closed +about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made +the girl wince a little. + +Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor +daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her +mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse--less because of +its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey +score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr. +Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes, +therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little +affirmative nod. + +"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the +side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus _here_? Has this lad +been sassin' ye?" + +Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added, +contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my +money in it, so he did." + +"Took your _what_?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward +Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!" + +"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to +Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You +get to hell out o' here, and get your team out. You got to meet that +south train in fifteen minutes". + +Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver +watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on +the counter. + +"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in +fifteen _seconds_. If ye don't--I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what +that means, Markey." + +Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow +bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and +slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth. + +Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He +waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around +its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his +vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on +the numbered rack behind the counter. Then--he sprang into action! + +So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm +shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he +had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was +for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was +dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the counter. Then +the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this +Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had +temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles +as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked +furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out +of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide. + +"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and +I'll kill yeh." + +"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip +holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the +latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and +shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of +Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old +Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide-- + +"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll +give the jane her purse." + +"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin' +here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let +up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the +language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a +crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl standin' here--or +have ye no shame _to_ ye? Dry up, now!" + +This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated +Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his +breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down +viciously, fell with a slap. + +"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a +little as he glanced down at it. + +Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face +which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's +collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black +and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for +a throw. + +Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his +back carelessly on Markey and missile. + +"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once +before, an' we had a--a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his +palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness, +"about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all +right for a man when he's grew up; but _some_ men never outgrows the +tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense +he's got, this world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your +eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that +midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now." + +He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked +around. + +"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and +Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r +sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob +Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out +'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty +o' time, too." + +With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across +the rotunda--the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the +cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins--and +made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"--this +being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda +of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy--glad enough to do it, too, for +her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness--took the key Markey +sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +A "STEER". + + +It might have been about four o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. +Room No. 19 looked westward--not over green swells of grass and grazing +cattle, and a wind swinging as a censer in the sky-temple, but over a +hot gravelled roof, parapetted with brick and crossed by three radial +clotheslines, upon which human garments jiggled grotesquely, like +scissored paper men. The only jig-makers extant, these, on that busy +midweek afternoon. + +At one end of this low one-story level of roof, a brick rear-wall rose, +with a row of doors that opened out upon those merry clothes-lines. +Through one of these doors, as Daisy looked, came a young girl of about +her own age. Plainly soon to become a mother, the girl's eyes had that +mild, pondering look characteristic of her condition. She dragged over +the gravel a basket of clothes; and, when she had reached an unoccupied +part of one of the clotheslines, commenced to pin the washed things +up--a mechanic's moleskin shirt, a cheap, print house-dress, a limp, +lacy blouse, a little frilled dust-cap, and other little sartorial +coquetries that told their tale of a marriage less than a year old. + +Daisy was taking her first look at "light housekeeping"; and, as she was +new from the country, with all her distaste of fields and cows and +"chores" uppermost, this back-roof prospect held her, as the new always +holds. To her, it was not sordid, but sunny and cosy, with the wonderful +city-sounds rising all about. She could almost have leaped across to the +brick parapet, which was just below the level of her window; and for one +gay adventurous moment, she came nearly doing it. She wanted to look in +those doors; to see how people lived, in the city; to talk to the young +urban housewife. She wanted to explore endlessly, to feed her boundless +and exuberant youth's appetite of the eye. + +A knock came at the door. Daisy felt a little anxious as she thought of +old Jim Hogle. He had served her turn--secured her purse for her from +Markey, toward whom she bore no grudge but felt instead a mischievous +desire to "tame down" into a wooer--and she did not want any meddling, +old, self-appointed foster-father handicapping her movements here in +town. She must let the old man, who reminded her distastefully of the +farm, know, once and for all, that her plans were "none of his +business". Perhaps, though, he would not be put aside so easily. With +this last thought in her mind, it was a very cold and hostile face that +Daisy presented, as she unlocked the door and opened it. + +"Oh-h! Woo-oo!" exclaimed a voice, with a burlesque of shivering. The +sylph of the blond coiffure skipped in, shrinking away playfully as she +closed the door. "I say--you do chill one, you know!" + +Daisy relaxed her face. + +"I thought it was that old What's-his-name," she said. + +"Ar, yes", the sylph had bobbed over, and was poking at her hair with a +forefinger, canting and turning her head before the looking +glass--trying, doubtless, to reduce her order to some semblance of +Daisy's pretty disorder; "ar, yes--'e _is_ a bit of an old nuisance, 'e +is. You carn't guess what 'e's up to now". + +"What?" Daisy's eyes widened. + +"Arskin' the boss to take you on 'ere, as a dinin'-room girl. The boss, +'e'll do it, too. 'Im and Jim-jam's old pals--'old-timers' they calls +it, among the colownials--and the 'Ogle person 'e can have any think 'e +wants for the arskin'. D'you know, I shouldn't take it, if I were you". + +"I'm not going to take it," said Daisy, with considerable fervor. + +The sylph, pulling herself away at length from the glass, came over and +sat down on the side of the bed--dangling her high heels kittenishly +and eyeing Daisy up and down. + +"Do you know what I should do, if I were in your boots?" she said. + +Daisy's eyes came up interrogatively. + +"I should go into service," pursued the sylph; "like as not, you'll 'ave +a charnce at some rich young man, that way, sooner or later. 'Ousemaids +have done that, by good management, even owver in the Old Country. Out +'ere, it's a--a caution, 'ow often it happens". + +"I don't want to marry anybody, rich or poor, just now", said Daisy; +"but how do you get into 'service', and what is it? What do you have to +do?" + +"Oh, down't you know what service is?" her companion simulated surprise +broadly; then, looking a little aside, as though addressing a third +party, the sylph murmured: "Ow, the denseniss of the mahsses! It's a +cortion, it is!" + +After this soliloquy, she faced Daisy again, looking the girl up and +down as through the mistress' lorgnette. "W'y", she said, "domestic +service, I mean--service: I carn't use any other word--in some big +'ouse, with your two evenin's off a week, if you're a good bargainer, +an' a charnce to have your comp'ny in the kitchin, when the Missis isn't +abaout--she carn't always be on 'and, can she?" + +Daisy was so attracted--not by the "company" aspect of the suggested +vocation, as by the thought that she might not only view, but actually +dwell in, some of the rich and romantic interiors she had seen in +photoplays at Thompson's Hall in Toddburn, and perhaps have an adventure +of her own in a "big 'ouse"--that she forgot to ask her companion the +obvious question: why she herself was not 'in service'. + +"I know a girl as is just leavin' her place," the sylph pursued; "I +shall give you the address, if you wish, and phone her to be on the +lookout, so you'll 'ave no trouble a-findin' the servants' entrance. +'Ave you a bit of pyper abaout you?" + +Daisy fumbled in her telescope grip and brought out an old letter, from +which she tore off the blank sheet. The sylph drew out of her coiffure a +thin pencil that had been skewered there. In a leaning, long-lettered +hand, she wrote a street name and number. + +"There", she said, as she handed the scrap of paper to Daisy, "take a +taxi--that's quickest, and it will save you arskin' your way. You'll do +withaout references--the Missis in this place I'm sendin' you to is a +bit of a soft un, and Annie will see to that paht of it. I say, I should +nip out naow, if I were you," the sylph glanced at her wrist-watch, +"while 'Ogle's away at the station with 'is bus. 'E just left as I came +up. I shan't tell him where you've gone." + +Daisy, her heart dancing with the spirit of adventure, went over to the +looking-glass to do up her hair. After a glance into the mirror, she +turned. + +"I ought to have a clean blouse," she said; then in her spirit of blunt, +brisk self-advantage, she added: "If you could lend me one, it would +help, perhaps, to make sure I get the job." + +The sylph's head came up with a snap. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if it did 'elp," she fluted, "but I sharn't do +it, just the same. W'y don't you arsk for the loan of my Sunday frock, +and 'ave done with it? Arn't I helping you enough, as it is?" + +Daisy, unabashed and with a little shrug, donned her slightly soiled +waist and brushed the worst of the lint from her travel-wrinkled skirt. +Then she picked up her telescope grip, and swung it gaily. + +"Well, I'm off," was the verbal fashion of her parting, as she skipped +down the stairs. + +In spite of the sylph's assiduity of helpfulness, the latter made no +particular demonstration of partiality as, from the head of the +stairway, she watched the girl descend. + +"Ee-yes," she murmured to herself, "they _would_ put that saucy miss +waitin' at table, in 'ere where my Bob is clerkin'. 'E's a bit rough at +the start-off with the gels, Bob is--but 'e's dreadful soft-'artid when +a gel once gets 'im gowing." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +A JOB. + + +Daisy Nixon flung out of the door of the Imperial Hotel into an +afternoon world of dust and din and ecstasy. It was the hour when +stenographers, in offices, whose high open windows command the streets +with their emancipated pedestrians, begin to rubber over-shoulder at the +clock, and to make excursions into washrooms to veneer the fresh color +of cheek and chin and forehead with cadaverous conventional powder. The +"boys" have been educated to look for this make-up (it takes an educated +taste to appreciate it!) and a girl would as soon think of leaving the +office in her stocking-feet, as without a blue-white effect on chin and +nose and forehead, and a smudge of strangulation purple blotting the +cheek's own inimitable rose. + +Six o'clock would blow shortly from a hundred sirens; and the thrill of +"quittin'-time" could already be discerned in the air. Down the street +from the direction of the big transcontinental depot came a 'bus, three +or four blocks away; and Daisy, with a habit of the countryside, +identified this vehicle instantly by the team, whose markings she had +instinctively remembered. It was the Imperial Hotel rig, returning from +the station. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if she was to evade her +self-appointed guardian, old Jim Hogle. + +A rank of jitneys was parked along the curb. Daisy approached a driver +with a mop of black curly hair so abundant that it pushed his cap to one +side. This driver half-turned his head in a formal "straight business, +and don't waste my time" way; but the corners of mouth and eye twinkled +companionably and humorously. + +"Could you", Daisy's eyes twinkled back, too, in spite of her trace of +country-girl diffidence, "could you--" + +"I should say I _could_," the chauffeur's face was expressionless, but +his accent was merry. + +"Could you", Daisy dimpled as she went on, "take me to here--see?" + +The young man hitched his chin forward in ostentatious scrutiny. Then, +in a matter-of-course way, he took the scrap of paper from Daisy's +fingers, brought it to his lips, handed it back, clicked open the +tonneau door, and motioned inward with hospitable palm. + +"Thank a-you," he said, elaborately, as Daisy stepped in; then, without +opening the fore-door, he vaulted into his own seat. There was the usual +preliminary roar, proceeding by staccato jet and pit-a-pat to smooth +pulsing motion, as the jitney glided out handily into the multifarious +traffic of the street. + +No river-ravine of Wheat-Land on a June Sunday had ever stirred Daisy +Nixon to an atom of the ecstasy that champagned her as she sailed down +that traffic-current between its Saguenay-banks of masonry, whose uneven +summits, high above her, scissored the blue silk of the sky. Forward, +upward to right, upward to left, the girl's glance travelled; then came +down to the sidewalk, no square yard of which escaped for one clear +moment from servitude to the thousand thousand tramping feet, following +at a slower pace the drift of the traffic in the hundred-foot driving +way. + +No electric welcome blazed from the front of the city hall, with its +coal-darkened brickwork and broad steps. No welcome, nor any sound but a +mighty hammer-stroke from the tall clock, telling Daisy that Time was +moving as well as she. No welcome--but Daisy Nixon felt that there could +not help be a quickening of the city's pulse at the notability of this +day, with its every moment so rare and thrilling to her. + +The pulse of the motor throbbed as, coursing in the pack of its kind, it +nosed from side to side or held a true-running swift pace astride a +tram-rail. The chauffeur, with an air of profound abstraction made +comical by his tilted cap and sportive half-presented profile, gave +"her" spark or "juice" as the occasion demanded, with a casual motion +of his gloved thumb. At a corner where two broad streets met, the +taxi-cab turned aside. Proceeding a little way down the second main +artery of traffic, it rounded a corner under a brass-grilled jeweler's +window and entered a labyrinth of side-streets in which Daisy soon lost +her sense of direction so completely that the sun, after what seemed +like an excursion into the little-visited due-north sector of the +horizon, appeared to move around to the east, and forthwith to commence +another day without pausing for the customary night-interval. + +It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the +morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly +between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved +driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and +ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to +look at it. + +This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not +the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had +set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect +would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once +been plain--very plain--Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +the chief seats in synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the +fittest--the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. +He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for +three reasons--for display, for business reasons, and to parade his +dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special +supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the +policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the +band-wagon--not because he always understood these policies and +sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em. + +The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and +if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen--we will say +for the sake of present illustration--to go, as the sylph of the +Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to +have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir +Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious +politeness Sir Thomas--at state receptions and so forth, where he was +well-watched--used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married +before he made his money--or rather, before the natural growth of the +country made his money for him. + +The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and +solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a +rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a +huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and +mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his +name--if it had not come by the political route, that is to say--had +come through connection with the building of some railroad or government +building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had +benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison. + +Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every +dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let +him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed. + +The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. +Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, +"telescope" grip in hand. + +"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not +pay for a "lift" on one's way. + +"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The +features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but +eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched. + +"What's that?" she said. + +"Your fare--one dollar." + +"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in--and was +presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the +dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed +the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes. + +"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, +don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the +mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to +find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it." + +Daisy dimpled and turned off again. + +"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." +Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps. + +"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door +is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm +only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring +the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a +green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after." + +Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have +a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not look +back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see +whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the +horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street. + +Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking +out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her +housemaid friend to be "on the lookout". + +"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a +thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as +the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out +with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely +necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could--which +was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as +she was--that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because +otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter. + +Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as +soon's I could. It's a long way." + +"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the +present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison +kitchen. + +If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it +undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in +the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the +farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it +for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. +It was great and clean and shining. + +Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain +but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of +cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong +white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk. + +"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter +with a powerful, brisk movement. + +"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I +shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets +here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and +had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her. + +"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, +clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously +against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a +canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. +"You'll come too, Allie." + +Daisy, who scented future advantage in an alliance with the hospitable +Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at +the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and +leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, +but well-worn--evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make +room for the latest and newest guest-room equipment in the apartments +the family occupied. Picture post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on +the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and +cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed +palatial. + +"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy. + +"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad +it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat. + +"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the +Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, +'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I +down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell +you." + +"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her +with considerable interest, "well, well." + +"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, cautiously, as the thought +crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back +out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, +an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle +so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we +go to see the Missis ... Ar--'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab +in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the +Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me +straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend +it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the +Manor to my Jawge." + +Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose +and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was +superbly "full" where Alice was flat. + +"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was +voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now--we sharn't have any bother. +She'll tieke you, straight off--I know she will." + +Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for +tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. +Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments +of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an +immediate curious warming of the heart--curious, because Daisy usually +faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while +the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, +and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any +eventuality. Lady Harrison--without knowing it, however--disarmed Daisy +Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely +shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she +got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this +woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, +guarded, combative sixteen and a half years. + +Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or +marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home +to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it +was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his +self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in +the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the +smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in +"getting" him--a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had +performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, +paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie +and slept in a bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. +Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a +home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other +Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention. + +"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice. + +"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table +and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very +nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady +Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the +besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a +stranger. + +"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to +conceal her impatience to be gone. + +"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's--very +nice--very nice indeed." + +"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, +"I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'." + +"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's--that's very +nice--quite." + +Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet +collected her wages, or she would have banged the door--as a parting +sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully +saucy and flopping. + +Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant +note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely +natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once +mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or +whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness +as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made +communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as +soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so +easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled +down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose. +As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more +homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased +proportionately. + +"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and +rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a +pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the +kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of +her large wandering hands. + +"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response. + +"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs +stood sociably together. + +"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down, +cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward, +beneath her chin. + +"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around. + +"Have you--have you references?" + +"What?" said Daisy. + +"A--references--letters from somebody for whom you have worked for," +Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction, +occasionally used a preposition too many. + +"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I--but I--," it was an effort +for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as +well as I can--for _you_." + +"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time, +in its proper place. "But my hus-- but Sir Thomas Harrison may require +references. He generally does." + +Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little. +She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house. + +"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she +noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to +get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy--as +I'm sure you will--that he--ur, that Sir Thomas--will give you a trial." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE PLEBEIAN. + + +Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and +broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly +as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes +pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A +great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun +found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with +light. + +"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent +joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the +window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been +an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had +glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had +previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun +that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing. + +"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking +his swivel chair in a way that made Evans--a nervous father of five, who +sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m., three nights a week, +minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish, +"took in" all the dances--writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't +you, for once." + +"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He +was a very rapid stenographer--he had to be, or he wouldn't have been +long with Sir Thomas Harrison--and the keys of his machine, on its +noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane. + +Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and +embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the +concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down +nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his +"pur-rsonal power, sir". + +"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir, +not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time." + +In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His +stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful +lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair +was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at +least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a +bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff, +close-cropped moustache; a month that blathered redly when he +conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy, +and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas. + +Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped +briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust +it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At +the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a +mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on +reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would +conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would +commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir +Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen +poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had +reached up to the hook behind him for his hat. + +Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He +dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that +he broke the pen-nib off short. + +"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue +blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put +commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they +learn y' no grammar at th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat--'n +git out y'r machine--'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r +job, or what, Evans?" + +"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a +fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right +away." + +"Oh-h--y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on +his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at +himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to +do it, Evans. I guess yeh _will_ do it over agen--an' ten times over +agen, if I say so." + +By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself +about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the +letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it--he was growing +hungry, for it was 6.15--dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a +flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror. + +Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language +that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. +Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, +showing up disastrously on their gray background--the result of that +pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen. + +A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in +front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established +dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on +arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself +another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power." + +In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what +he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger +beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another +customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: +Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, +after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, +adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for +the first time that moment, came over briskly. + +"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to +tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his +bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman +who faced him across the counter. + +"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a +customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth, +adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can take those +out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat +sir--fine material." + +Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter, +lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat. + +"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a +stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?" + +"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done +before Wednesday--the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind +this week, owing to press of work." + +"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half +an hour off, an' fix that coat--to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine +o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go. + +"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our +fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must +take its turn." + +"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time." + +"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this +house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never +shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness +and courtesy; but it has paid, as well." + +"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on the counter, and drove out the words, +"it's a ba-ad rule"--the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective +with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible, +flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth--"a bad +rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to +summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th' +jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars--get me-e?" + +"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell. + +"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a +step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up +on the Crescent. Yoe know that"--the contractor's head oscillated +laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this +forth--"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same +Crescent street. You won't get none of it--none that I ken ketch an' +head off. Understand!" + +Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the +door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas +Harrison pleasantly. + +"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. +Good evening." + +Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out. + +"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper, +whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above +Benwell's ledger. + +The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat--not +his--which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its +hook. + +"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the +hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great +credit for his energy and push--even though sometimes that energy may be +a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary--especially +about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us +instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to." + +Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused +cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but +audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation: + +"Shoelaces, sir?" + +The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from +across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, +stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat +across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his +pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting +the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the +"greenback" he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar +note. + +"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the +spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours, +an' keep the shoelaces." + +Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in +the lower part of the leather face--a slit whose corners curled slowly +upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up +the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his +pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was +folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of +his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view, +it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim +McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on +the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar +bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his +vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled +and knotted pair of shoelaces. + +"Brah-_vo_!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter; +"Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know." + +The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the +street-side, with gloved hands resting on the tonneau door and cane +hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware, +Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank +and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for +membership was even now awaiting consideration. + +Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace +man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength, +had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial +investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue. + +"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me--hey!" He +crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its +winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and +gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around +upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda. + +"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home +to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the +night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?" + +Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully, +fought back a smile. + +"Why,--er--," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment; +looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening; +then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation; +"I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir +Thomas." + +It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing +he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had +tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor--but +the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of +his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his +interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an +anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's +auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a +pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that +the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see +the beast in its native haunts--to note how it lived, and what it ate. + +Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging +like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion, +Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians +and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir +William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate +hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced +around, Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If +the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted, +there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison, +engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware. + +"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone, +through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?" + +And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back +humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!" + +Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep +in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his +presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it +progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact, +engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after +entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered +note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible, +Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The +word was "Bohunk." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +A HUMAN HORTICULTURIST. + + +"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from +the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, +the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very +well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the +things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, +you see, since Alice has left us." + +"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the +soup-tureen--watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious +to please her mistress--the first disinterestedly kind person she had +met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her +great adventure--kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it +cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye +needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when +they're set doon. There--listen!" + +Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room +swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots +dried by the sun of the street was smothered in soft carpeting as the +tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. +A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The +feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and +a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill. + +"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment +with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; +"look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll +'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is +face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an +upraw, 'e down't." + +Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she +spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed +through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held +open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered +soup-tureen and warm plates. + +"Hey--bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, +crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier +coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; +"what do we pay you for?" + +Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, +in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting +awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the +soup-dish. + +There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward--his +"pur-rsonal power" must be kept active--which Sir Thomas always +delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of +many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, +had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point +of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to +avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying +to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His +jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it +a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into +his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around +with the usual glare upward. + +A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here +at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the +greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side +of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, +knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he +saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and +dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen. + +What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your +sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire +you ..." etc., etc.--making each sentence hurt as much as possible, +according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities. + +What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the +new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty +good!" + +And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of +the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a +little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of +her eye. His face changed ever so little--just a slight lowering of the +eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip--but enough to let +Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison +except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal +with--that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy +Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures. + + * * * * * + +Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda +of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the +position, even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave +him as little work or concern as his several other business connections +of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the +money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large +unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal +thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago +"quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper." + +Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his +seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself +was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two +things most people want most--money, and social prestige and power--and +has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and +wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is +apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as +interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his +experience of the real thing. + +Ware had the highest social status, both by birth--which counts for +little in the West--and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere +in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a +gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born +wealthy. Sir William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or +wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a +friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to +have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He +wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see +everybody a friend to everybody else. + +Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved +had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate +harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, +immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had +never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that +there would some day be a Lady Ware--the kind he wanted. + +These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: +Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have +an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She +must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. +She must, above all, be new material--that is, young enough not to be +hardened against impress. + +In his quest for a wife--or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present +matrimonial vigilance--Sir William had followed a course exactly +opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of seeking out some +woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then +analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, +he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, +and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his +brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and +feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir +William Ware proposed to discover and marry. + +When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had +been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry +her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The +chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in +another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered. + + * * * * * + +Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, +Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached +out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the +doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy. + +"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a +word', as he calls it, wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of +his head. + +"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin +and making a mouth at the messenger. + +"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, +ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it +swung in his direction. + +"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, +after a rap like that. Skedaddle!" + +The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy +table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and +sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a +little poke with her forefinger and thumb. + +"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the +mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this +minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's." + +"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource +and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next +time, and send him off home." + +"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm +on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no +snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me." + +Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement +driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the +big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were +great maples, with mysterious darkness between--thickening into a group +with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked +the junction of driveway and street. + +Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty--although how he had +found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the +Imperial Hotel--for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had +estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, +might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, +the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling +for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride." + +Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees +might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each +was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to +trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to +know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the +chance to tell him, "plump and plain" and finally, that she was quite +capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She +hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about +that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning +about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he +might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men +were of only two classes--those who were "forward" and "had fun in +them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" +to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a +girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and +secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got +them started, and could not be handled at all. + +She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so--for +the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle +shaped for adventure--when there stepped out from under the foliage a +tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good +evening"--not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and +hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something +faintly familiar about his voice. + +"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he +said. + +Daisy, withholding speech--she had found out by experience that it was +a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for +the first few moments--let her companion precede her through the gate. + +In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane +on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the +big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a +certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the +pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest. + +She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized +that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"--his quiet clothes, +worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, +either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing +figure--because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the +polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with +pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray +showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed +him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of +enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in +a companionable sense, at once. + +Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and dimpling, perusing him with +eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness--armed cap-a-pie +in every virile nerve and muscle--not a bit timorous, but flashingly on +guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes +twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against +the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and +poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor +that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses +of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped--in short, +susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground. + +"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more +preface than the friendliest of all smiles. + +There! It was out--said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say +it--without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that +had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it. + +Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity--his glance steady, but +so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl +looked back at him--her face first shortening and dimpling to a +half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling +again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's natural +expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew +was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed--to +put it the way it presented itself to her--as though she had stepped +into a book or a moving-picture or a dream. + +Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it. + +"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll +answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?" + +Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins--one twin +going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's +side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see +how the adventure was going to turn out--was conscious of a short walk +under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of +a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained +alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly +behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast +face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the +quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin +of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant. + +Sir William, without looking at the menu the waiter held before him, +gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, +Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with +ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy. + +"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy--at +least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the +table--seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and +sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into +one a moment, and the whole Daisy said: + +"Who's Lady Ware?" + +Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her +with a kind of pondering exaltation--a deep but self-contained joy. + +"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long +time, my dear. But she's here at last." + +"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively. + +"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall +manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both +try hard, and try together." + +"Well--Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some +more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman." + +"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out a strong white hand and put +it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am +infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that--infinitely rejoiced. The way +you said it, too! My word!" + +His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the +air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is +surprised to find that it knows some tricks already. + +"What's your name?" said Daisy. + +Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of +his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. +Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand! + +"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, +common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have +to learn to be-Ware, you see." + +The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he +brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in +like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and +silver--and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a +neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, +bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a +coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little +cubes of cheese. + +Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, +with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter +of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their +saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream. + +"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you +don't like it, we'll have in some cream." + +Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly +lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it. + +"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some +cre-eam, quick." + +Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of +his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It +was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this +tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was +passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. +If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost +spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage +ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if +_she_ was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, +the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon +herself the bloom and body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on +his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any +sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his +half-century and more. + +"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially. + +Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her +saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and +out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness. + +"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting +her head a little on one side. + +"I say--stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt +upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know--don't flirt, +please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?" + +"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes +twinkled. + +"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir +William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't +you?" + +Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the +proffered cup. + +"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone +like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening, +covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think +about our--our plan, as it were?" + +The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something +about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from +Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with +brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and +trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which +Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its +profundity. + +Daisy cleared her throat a little--a habit she had when about to speak +seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of +the western farm country. + +"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you +anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped +beneath her chin. + +"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand +under his. + +"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I +guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and +I like all the boys the same--just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty +rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and +gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along with. But--but when +a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her +cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have +to--have to--oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know +how--they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't +want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way +I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help +it." + +Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling--as though she would +like to recall what she had just "come out with"--possessed her for a +moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen +years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and +freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, +with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite +of herself. + +Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his +eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of +several emotions. + +"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest +at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever +do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. +Boys are pretty near all alike--you go out with them a couple of times, +and you know all about them. They're all right to play with--but when a +girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way +it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as +hens' teeth." + +Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that +Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its +customary dimpling. + +"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, +putting her head on one side. + +Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to +the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with +her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she +stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his +chin. + +"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly +well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe +that I don't intend to forget you--in fact, haven't the slightest +intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do +you think, in your present position?" + +"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house." + +"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very fine, indeed.... Now, I +shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He +relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and +cane. + +Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the +way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had +drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll +keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You +won't let the city spoil you, I mean--it has a tendency that way, you +know." + +Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, +"I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this. + +"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he +said. + +"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and +gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most +previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye +moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at +the good-bye moment. + +"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his +previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean +on a cane--almost as though it were a part of him--and, just as she was +about to reply, interjected, "wait a bit, though. I believe I should +like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, +guessing. Nineteen?" + +"Seventeen," said Daisy. + +"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and +crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased +more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is +only seventeen--the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name--do you +realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate +way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I +should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean." + +"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy." + +"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I +knew--that is, I almost knew--it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, +little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his +hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright +vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye +time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what +we've been talking about--shall you?" + +If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an +attempt to take her hand, Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no +such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the +arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket +of his coat. + +Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the +light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each +of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her +cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little +hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind +her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused +there, then was extended toward Sir William. + +The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, +however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the +tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way. + +"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were +less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing +overpower you." + +With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and +flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement. + +"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had +extended toward him. With this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned +and walked away. + +Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and +humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively. + +"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well--he'll be back, if," she +flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +A KNIGHT IN THE KITCHEN. + + +Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to +the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to +certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge--the cafe, +with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on +its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight +before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the +presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply +and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had +unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole +city yet new to her--new and unexplored and fascinating--the experience +through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or +a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy +was most amazed at her own part in it--at the strong and sane impulse +which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt, +if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift +unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story. + +"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned +softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance. +He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old +enough to know his own mind." + +A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door +showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad +Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the +bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, +on this her first unfamiliar night in it. + +She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on +linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of +the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in +his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir +Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight +sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his +shirt-sleeves. + +"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of +water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from +keepin' the little date, hey?--he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us +none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have +one, on me. _Suddown!_" + +This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger--his +thick, blunt forefinger--toward one of the two chairs that stood by the +table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a +celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat +down obediently and demurely in the chair. + +Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of +water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other +glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet +in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking +vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and +the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty +chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it. + +"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are--just the two of us, hey? +Everybody else in bed, but--we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a +little drink. C'm on!" + +Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her +glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of +light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass +joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and +coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. +Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood +untouched. + +"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. +Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I +know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you _sassy_ babee--come on +to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his +new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee. + +"There," he said,--in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the +incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, +"how's that--better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist. + +Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as +she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away +from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling. + +"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't +you? Is this why the last girl left?" + +"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a +momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that +sour-mugged English rake-handle! I--I couldn't love a girl with a face +like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about +Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on--give us a little baby kiss." + +"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful +points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's +answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the +table and place it about her. + +Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the +red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places +like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond +speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, +making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be +a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness +had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and +succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, +watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a +doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis. + +At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning +flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest. + +"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for +nothing." + +Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his +pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off. + +"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, +where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering. + +"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in +oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that +bunch!" + +"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go." + +Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the +saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand. + +"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all +his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, +half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning +movement off his knee and away. + +"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to +try to get this money back, and I'll _yell_. Jean the cook is sleeping +just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack +Robi'son'." + +At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh +that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the +encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew +that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man +need only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering +passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the +gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, +finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, +elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a +sneer--such a sneer!--Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look +so ugly! + +"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words +came easily enough now. "But don't think you win--oh, no-o! D'ye know +what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?" + +"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money +is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going +to say you were sorry." + +"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in +your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're +going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye +hear!" + +"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show _you_ something now. +Here's all I care for your dirty money." + +With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, +realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big +kitchen gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, +and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame +leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's +coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as +he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless +ashes. + +"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I _am_ goin' to +fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' +over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to +lay information against you for stealin' that money--see? I'm a-goin to +have you arrested--see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town +for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his +vest, "and you--who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with +you yet, if--" + +"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from +Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the +bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas +Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an' +I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist +tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed--that's what you'll do!" + +"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, had recovered himself and +had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish +speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll +clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we +have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help. +Neither of you's worth a hurra----" + +"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not +inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide +here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an' +keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to +y'r bed, lassie." + +Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust +forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She +returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch +eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a +cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel. + +"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he +passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning." + +"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the +door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a +man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled her through the stair-door +and up the steps to the bedroom. + +"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom +door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's +folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o' +bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge +you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back--he's that kind, +ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word, +after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht', +as oor Bawby Burrns has it--is he no?" + +"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so +bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before +I'm through." + +"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers, +thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest +broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her +head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd +mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers--any mischief, I +mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye--I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn. +Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's +house-cleanin' day." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A DANCE AND AN INVITATION. + + +"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the +delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in +the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said +naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep +it in if she was worried." + +Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the +healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of +speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the +sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each +of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon +the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out +somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which +Lady Harrison--who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and +would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her +trips downtown--paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly +in its place. + +"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy. + +"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding the younger girl's curves and +color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She +disna like it, though. She's a plain woman--a richt leddy, though she +was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken." + +"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy. + +"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were +electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough +to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey--whiles +I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should +walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every +family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae +be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see--but I'd want tae be +mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle +o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some +man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and +heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration, +"how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye +were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye +an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye." + +Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile +and untired as though it were morning and she just up. Then she paused +a moment, and her face fell a little. + +"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist." + +Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo. + +"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said. + +"Thirty-eight." + +"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a +bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide +across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. +Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk." + +A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,--her serge skirt brushed +by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing +a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and +there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso--came +dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison +drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled +with the zest of life. + +As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in +the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the +driver came to a halt. + +"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going." + +Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," assumed an expression which, +just fitted the occasion. + +"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her +creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but +continued to look straight before him in his characteristic, +businesslike way--showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an +eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was +obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all. + +Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at +the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for--for +street-car fare." + +"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly. + +"Nowhere," said Daisy. + +"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?" + +"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the +corner of her eye. + +"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car +and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to +city park." + +"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest, +"I couldn't do-oo that." + +"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief +study of her face. "Got to report to mother?" + +"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?" + +"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as +I got the gasoline. Hop in!" + +The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it +off, and backed away. + +"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one--two--three--go!" + +"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy. + +"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was +you never out to a park?" + +"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry +equivocation. + +"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur +remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the +longer you wait." + +"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all +you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to +the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an' +girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run. +I'll come out to the park again for you, about eleven o'clock, and +bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?" + +"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do +I have to come home with you?" + +"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He +reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a +dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her. + +"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you +feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I--I've got +carfare--ten cents carfare--if I should take a notion to go." + +"How you goin' to find your way?" + +"Where?" + +"Park." + +"How d'you know I'd go to the park?" + +"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told +you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind +o' farmers was your people?" + +"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of +her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City +Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park, +I'll pick up some _nice_ fellow uptown and get him to take me. Some +_nice_ fellow!" + +"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this +car, you--you--" + +Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about +to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned. + +"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling +all over as she wrestled with her merriment. + +"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the +Devil, if you like. Come on--get in! Don't keep me here all night, +waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on." + +Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside +him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself. + +"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed +mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead +through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother +aspect--the look of a man to be trusted. + +"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away +down-street--the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only +being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? +S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!" + +"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him. + +"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I +said--this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump +you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed." + +It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the +promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," +enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. +Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, +exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with +either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of +pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for +purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she +was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or +beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the +street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually +more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and +drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the +skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded +road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet +bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns +interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began to bubble and +sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the +same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted +to let the crowd of passengers--many-hued in their summer dresses as +though one were looking at them through a prism--dance and chatter and +giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, +until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his +steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing +down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting +them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the +walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in +their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, +racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in +spring. + +Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park +like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns, +and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the +evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet. + +"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a +long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now, +ain't you? Yes, you are--not! Hey, don't knock a hole in the hood of my +rig, just because you think you're done with me." + +Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head +against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that, +in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and +wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned. + +"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling +and his shoulders shaking a little--his way of expressing merriment. + +"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in +the mechanism. "Get this thing open!" + +"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set +here. We don't want to--hi, there!" + +For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing +this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as +she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open +under her hand. + +"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this +town, we open the door _before_ we get out--not after. Come on, then, +friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?" + +"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, looking about her delightedly as they +ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion. + +"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was +the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner." + +Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The +two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat +down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable, +iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating +ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws. + +Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see +couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the +conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood. + +"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the +last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you +take me out there." + +"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I +don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this +apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments +impossible to find in one and the same person. + +In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nod for everybody and from +everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced +up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of +seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him--just +according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in +an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention +from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at +a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the +benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample +opportunity for a few introductions. + +"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the +waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red--naturally +red--that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend +of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with +staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to +go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've +changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a +careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with +her new friend, the red-necked Colossus. + +"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking +largely down at her, "the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't +tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie." + +Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed +in the scene before her. + +"Yon Jamie," said her companion--nudging her lightly this time, to +attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the +lass." + +"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly. + +"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the +name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way, +waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and +beamed on the big Scot. + +"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to +talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?" + +"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the +name of that boy who brought me here?" + +Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee. + +"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give +ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's +Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a +dance, lassie." + +As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time, +she heard a girl with a humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just +behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange +girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at +the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to +her Jock, on the way home to-night!" + +"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down +twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the +company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. +D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple +to the right from us?" + +"Who's he?" + +"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, +the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I +stand in the dancin'--ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor +neighbor, behind here, say--but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. +He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next +dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be +down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor." + +"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy. + +"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock, evasively, as the +dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!" + +A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up +from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, +came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, +Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as +though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He +had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and +cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of +index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, +deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly +forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, +merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the +transverse wrinkles across his forehead. + +"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at +Daisy, "what d'ye know!" + +"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' +partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to +my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon +which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin +to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love. + +A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick Cluett, champion pugilist, +was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about +to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor. + +"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy. + +Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an +angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers. + +"Want to try me?" he jetted. + +"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely. + +"Do anything once?--eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm +in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her +down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given +the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you +can be a life-saver, if you like, see?" + +"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise. + +"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the +uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard +bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman--he's the fellow +looks after my business--is getting up a little party after the boxin' +show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to +come as _my_ partner? Eh, little sporto?" + +"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?" + +"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper--game o' +cards--any old thing to kill time. Bob!" + +A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by. + +"Bob, Miss--what's this your name is, again?--Miss Nixon here's to have +first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night. +She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come." + +"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's +hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll +come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one +side. + +"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed, +glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined +his group. + +The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and +were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was +ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic +girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a +beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher +could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her +mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the two footed it in +a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be +told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, +slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at +the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued +without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as +boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as +she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his +arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been +surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat +and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in +Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had +heard of her talk, that his relish awoke. + +"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat +at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An +attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly. + +"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett. + +"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the +name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines +and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr. +Cluett." + +"Nut sundae--twice," her companion directed, briefly, with a sidewise +jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of +the realm. + +"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied +themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?" + +"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure. + +"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?" + +"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly. + +"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought +it over yet?" + +Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of +cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded. + +"Maybe," she murmured. + +"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go +at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for +a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had +another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and +he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system". + +"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr. +Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing +him any more than once in an evening." + +Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to +take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very +strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'--eh, little +one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me +down." + +Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The +trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at +the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself +t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have--I see it in +your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?" + +Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big +stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully, +moving her toe in the gravel. + +"I'm--oh, I'm just--just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright +as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy +Knight--and thanks for the 'lift'." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +THE BOXING MATCH AND AFTERWARD. + + +Daisy stood before her mirror, "fixing" her hair. Whether it was Daisy's +native knack of coiffure, or whether it was that her hair was of that +wavy kind which "fixes" becomingly almost by itself, she secured the +effect she wanted without much trouble. The dark-blue dress she had +bought with fifteen dollars borrowed from Jean, and to which she had +pinned a lace collar, set off her neck well. She made a little face at +herself in the looking-glass and turned about, just in time to face +Jean, who had entered quietly, shutting the door behind her. + +"What like o' company is yon ye're keepin', lassie?" Jean, as she spoke, +sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading out her strong digits over +her knees in a masculine attitude. + +"What company?" said Daisy, a little puzzled. She had made no mention of +her party to Jean. + +"Yon two bidin' down in the kitchen the now," Jean replied, regarding +Daisy in a slow speculative way, as though searching for some +characteristic she had perchance overlooked in forming her estimate of +the girl; "a mon wha's breath smells of thae lozenges, and a +thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes aboot. They askit for you, by +your ain name, too. Did ye tell them to ca', or," Jean's tone grew +sternly hopeful, "shall I send them packin'?" + +"I guess it's me they want," said Daisy, recognizing Masterman in Jean's +description of the man. Then she added, meeting the elder woman's glance +challengingly, "I'm going to a boxing-match, and to a--a little +party--afterwards, with Nick Cluett the fighter." + +Somewhat to Daisy's surprise, Jean seemed to look less severe as she +heard the host of the "little party" named. + +"Well," she said, after a moment, "I was just twa minds about lockin' ye +in, lassie, and sending they people aboot their business; but if it's +Nicky Cluett ye're gaun with, ye'll tak' no harm--that is, unless ye +encourage him, an' then ye'll tak' no end o' harm, and it'll serve ye +right. My cousin Jock Lauder--Baby Jock, they call him--kens Nick weel." + +"Is Baby Jock your cousin?" said Daisy, "why, I had a dance with him +last night, out at the park. + +"Is that so, then?" Jean leaned forward with interest. "Jock's a fighter +too, although he'd never let on, withoot ye speir him direct.... Well, +gae along, then, to your pairty--but keep a sharp eye on yon person with +the scentit breath. I'd no trust _him_ as far as I could cast him." + +The long red automobile that had been waiting near the sidewalk outside +the Harrison gateway, answered to the electric starter with a tigerish +snore and, as the clutch was thrown on, bore out the feline similitude +with a four-yard leap that brought it diagonally out into rapid motion +down the street. + +"Any good with the mitts?" asked Mr. Masterman jocularly, turning toward +Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible +lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of +the faculty of speech. + +"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley--she whom +Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes +aboot"--"Miss Nixon's a _lady_--can't you see! A perfect lady--huh?" +And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman +was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her +front hair, winked at Daisy. + +Daisy responded with a twinkling, half-smiling, non-committal look, and +then turned her face streetward. The sensation of the swift ride along +the thoroughfare, with its glittering electric lamps, its traffic roar, +and its trampling--these influences, and the anticipation of risk in the +coming "little party" at an unnamed place, with men of untested +tendencies, had strung the girl's nerves to a pleasant tension of +excitement. Talk would interfere with her enjoyment of the feeling +which thrilled her. Besides, Mr. Masterman's face pained Daisy. These +were the reasons she chose to watch the sights of the street in +preference to talking. + +Cutting corners with a lawless brevity after he past the last point +policeman, Mr. Masterman finally brought his car to an adroit and easy +halt in a line of others before the door of a big theatre. Dismounting, +he swung Miss Yockley to the curb. Daisy hopped out of the tonneau +without aid. The three passed through the vestibule; and, as they +confronted the ticket-taker, Mr. Masterman said, tersely, "Girls is with +me, Harry", and the official ogling Daisy a little, stood docilely +aside. + +A few moments later, Daisy Nixon, entering a curtained way and sitting +down alongside Miss Yockley on green plush seats in the lower right-hand +box, had her first look at a stage set for a boxing match. + +"What are the ropes for?" she said to Miss Yockley, as she stared across +the bare stage floor, with its Spartan garniture--the hempen square, the +backless wooden stools facing each other diagonally, the battered +water-buckets, each with its bobbing sponge. + +"You can search me, honey," absently returned Miss Stella; who was too +busy searching, with the eyes that "rolled aboot", for acquaintances +among the audience, to pay much attention, either to her "kid" companion +or to the squared "ring" which she had, as it were, seen a hundred times +but never looked at. Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with +observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the +paraphernalia. + +Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, +Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a +slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, +and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the +surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs +at the ringside. Among this crowd, which included newspaper reporters, +moneyed patrons of the boxing bouts, and near friends or relatives of +those who were to take part in the matches of the evening, Daisy soon +picked out the large ingratiating face of Mr. Masterman. + +When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two +youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes +and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at +diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young +man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, +lifting to the audience a face on which the nose had been, by some +mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it +seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud: + +"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it +will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz--on my +right--and Younk Kelly--on my left." + +Spider Clausewitz--he on the speaker's right--did not hear the +announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the +pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of +eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet +the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare +back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least +see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation +sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy. + +So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, +half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an +attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so +aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and +unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as +it were, just waiting to be turned loose. + +It seemed but a moment after the announcer--who was also the +referee--finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of +the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other +in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience +shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving +every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting +back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful +in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides +with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she +saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's +arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his +glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped. + +Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, +with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from +some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made +Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads +showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled. + +Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his +opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a win +would gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious +to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and +practically defenceless. + +It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to +the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about +Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the +roped square. Again the audience cheered. + +"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators +as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all." + +"He's one wise kid," said Miss Stella, yawning. "I wish they's quit +killin' time with stuff like that, though, an' call on the big bout. +Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett +at work! He's offering a thousand dollars to-night to anybody that will +out-point him in four rounds. This is one time, honey, when you and I +are billed to see some fun--more farce-comedy than fightin' though--when +these half-baked fighters comes after Nick's money." + +Miss Yockley's wish was not long in being gratified. The second +"preliminary" was less than one round in duration, and afforded Daisy, +for the first time in her life, that rather sickening spectacle of a +strong man sprawled half-unconscious over the straining ropes of a ring, +trying vainly to rise to his feet, while another waited with tensed +body to strike him down again as soon as his weak knees left the sawdust +floor in their slow painful uprising. + +"Aw, get the ambulance," fanned Miss Yockley loudly, chewing gum. "That +referee can't count past 8." + +"What's the matter with that poor man?" said Daisy, all sympathy. + +"Oh, nothin'," said Miss Stella. "Wants to have a little sleep, I guess. +Oh--at last!" + +For the referee, concluding his measured count to 10 while the fallen +man still rested on hand and knee, had turned brusquely, caught the +gloved hand of the other fighter, and thrust it up in the air in token +of a win. + +"O' course he's the winner," snorted Miss Daisy's companion; "they +should never have took that other fellow away from his sandwich job. He +can't stand up without he's got a couple of sign-boards to brace him.... +But look, honey; here's our Nicky. Always inspects the ring like that, +so's the boy that goes down in front of him within the first ten seconds +after Nick gets in action, can't claim he slipped on a banana peel." + +Daisy withdrew her eyes from their sympathetic following of the limp +victim of the second preliminary bout, as the latter's seconds, a +shoulder under each of his armpits, escorted him wabblingly back into +the wings. + +As she looked again at the roped square, she saw that in the interval +there had hopped into the enclosure her partner of the dance in the park +pavilion, Nick Cluett, a boxer of the kind that is born and not made. +Hither and thither, slim and lithe in his gay-colored bath-robe, he +moved--stamping the floor here and there with a testing heel, trying the +tautness of the ropes, saying nothing, but noticing everything. + +"They can't never put nothin' over on Nicky," commented Miss Yockley, +more than generous with her negatives when she wanted to be emphatic. +"They used to lay traps for him, when they seen how he was comin' on in +the boxing game--for some of these here so-called 'sports' is the +meanest, trickiest skates this side of the Hot Place. But after Nick +showed up a couple o' them kind of low-down promoters, by bawling them +out right in front of the audience, so's everybody could get a line on +them, they let up on their monkey-work. They don't try nothin' now; but +Nick, he always gives everything the onct-over, to be on the safe side." + +Apparently everything was in order in the present case; for Cluett, his +hands thrust in the pockets of his bath-robe, stepped to the centre of +the roped space to speak to the referee and to Masterman, his manager. +Facing him, on the referee's left, stood the man who was to be his first +opponent--a stocky fellow, whose calves, showing underneath the frayed +edge of the old dressing-gown he wore, were more those of a +football-player than a boxer. + +"Nothin' but a big ox," said Miss Yockley, with a sniff; "Nick'll play +with him a little, and then push him over. The gink will have some +bother fallin' down, with them size feet. Maybe he'll go to sleep +standin' up. Funny things happens in the ring sometimes, kiddo." + +In a moment or two, the fighters stepped back to their corners, threw +off their wraps, and stood forth in abbreviated trunks. It was seen that +the build of Cluett's opponent bore out the promise of his calves. He +was heavy-muscled and broad of chest; thick-necked, and with a +hard-looking chin that moved to the chewing of gum. + +About the physique of Cluett himself, as he stood at ease, his arms +lightly hanging, there was nothing remarkable, except that one shoulder +seemed to be a little lower than the other. His muscles flowed along his +limbs instead of standing out in knots and ridges. Standing unposed, +with his perennial smile and his almost sleepy expression of eye, he +looked like a somewhat indolent schoolboy, about to take a dip in a +peaceful swimming-pool. + +"That big thing over in the other chair will hurt him," said Daisy, +anxiously; "why don't they make the big fellow take somebody his own +size?" + +"Don't talk," said Miss Yockley, briefly, "just sit still and watch. It +ain't our Nick that's going to get hurt, honey." + +But Daisy exclaimed aloud, and even the confident Miss Yockley herself +almost winced, as Hobday, the big man, after a bare touch of Cluett's +glove in the customary preliminary handshake, struck upward immediately +and without warning. As the quick treacherous upper-cut shot toward +Nick's chin, Bob Masterman, who could move with a marvellous quickness +for all his avoirdupois, when occasion seemed to demand speed, jumped up +from his seat and thrust his head through between the ropes, ready to +shout his protest to the referee. + +But, before Mr. Masterman made a sound, a glove, at the end of a slim +smooth-muscled arm, waved him away with a backward gesture. Nick Cluett, +untouched, slid his manager a corner of a smile as he stepped lightly +backward, just far enough to be missed by Hobday's left, which followed +that gentleman's unsuccessful right in a brisk second try for Cluett's +jaw-point. Nick's guard was languidly low, and on his face was an almost +dreamy look which a group of Hobday's backers in the front orchestra +seats evidently took for an expression of daze; for, "Finish him, Jim! +He's all yours, boy!" they yelled lustily. + +Bob Masterman stole a look at Cluett's face. In the centre of the +never-changing smile, he saw the mouth-corner drawn up in a dry, +calculating way. The manager's momentary flicker of anxiety passed. He +leaned back, folded his arms, grinned, and waited. + +Jim Hobday grew more aggressive every moment. The round was +three-quarters over, and he had practically had the ring to himself, +except for a gliding thing like a shadow, which eluded his fists by so +little each time he swung that at every lunge he grew more encouraged, +although he hit nothing. + +"Come on--fight!" he growled, bull-like. + +Mr. Cluett's smile deepened a little, and his lips moved. "Say when," +were the words they framed. + +"When?--why, right now!" roared Hobday, loud enough for the group of his +backers to hear. + +Mr. Cluett obeyed immediately. It was difficult for the eye to register +the movement he made; but to those at the vantage-point of the ringside, +it looked as though he doubled under Hobday's guard and then +straightened up, all in one movement like a snake striking. + +Hobday's knees were seen to sag. His gloves dropped on Cluett's +shoulders, half as though caressing his opponent, then slipped limply +off. His whole heavy body collapsed, like a wet mattress. + +"Ouch!" said Miss Yockley, feeling her chin. Then, glancing sidewise at +Daisy, she commented, "Well, kid, I suppose you feel easier now, eh?" + +"W-what did he do to him?" said Daisy, a little breathlessly; mixing her +pronouns, in her marvelling. + +"Oh, nothing," said Miss Yockley, ironically, "nothing at all. Only sent +that big bovalapus off to Dreamland, on a through ticket, with one +swipe. That's all!" + +After Mr. Hobday, in an only partially recovered state, had been +removed, and the hubbub of comment among his backers in the orchestra +seats had subsided, there came a lull. Mr. Cluett sat in his chair in +the corner of the ring, nodding and occasionally replying briefly to +some remark made by the chatting group that surrounded him. From back in +the wings came presently the sound of argument and protest; and, after a +moment, a hale person in striped trunks shot into view as though he had +been playfully pushed. With one sheepish glance toward the audience, +however, he turned about and beat a retreat. + +"You see," explained Miss Yockley, to Daisy, "they put their best man up +first; and now that the others has seen what Nick done to him, you +couldn't coax 'em into the ring with old cheese. It looks to me as +though everything's all over for to-night. Wait, though--here comes the +spieler. Let's hear what he has to say; then we'll go around and see how +soon Bob and Nick will be ready to come away." + +"Ladhies and gentlemen," said the announcer, coming to the edge of the +ring, "I regret to announct that, owing to the factth that we are unable +to secure anodther oppon't in answer to Champeen Cluetth's challenge to +any fighter of any weighth--" + +At this point the speaker paused. A young man, in an automobile +dust-coat, unbuttoned--showing that he was in evening dress and had +evidently just arrived from some dance or other function--had hopped +into the ring and tapped the announcer briskly on the arm to attract his +attention. For a moment, the two held rapid conversation; then the young +man in evening dress slipped under the ropes and disappeared again into +the wings. The announcer, stepping to the very front of the stage and +raising his voice so that he might be heard above the creakings of +dispersal which already sounded in galleries and pit, said: + +"If there are any presentth who may wish to remain a little longer, I am +gladdh to be able to say that a certaint young man-about-town has +agreed to meet the champeen in a boutth of four three-minutth rounts. As +the stranger wishes his identity to be concealedh--for reasons of his +own--he will appear in the ringk masked." + +"Masked!" commented Miss Stella Yockley, "now, what's this they're +trying to spring on us, I wonder. Well, anyway, they can't put nothin' +over on Nick. He's in training to-night, and the Devil himself couldn't +trim Nicky Cluett in four rounds. There ain't a fighter living could do +it--no, sir, I don't care who he is." And with these words Miss Stella +cast a devoted glance toward the corner of the ring where Mr. Cluett, +still chatting unconcernedly, had drawn his bathrobe over his shoulders +as a sign to the unknown to hurry up, if he wanted a chance to land a +"haymaker" on a fighter whose time was money. + +He had not long to wait. A young white-limbed fellow, with a pompadour +of stiff hair rising above the black mask that covered him from +mid-forehead to just above his mouth, vaulted over the ropes into the +ring, and took the stool in the opposite corner to that in which Cluett +stood. There was something about the lines of the stranger's mouth and +chin that seemed to Daisy vaguely familiar. + +After vainly trying to remember where she had seen similar features +before, the girl turned her eyes toward the corner where Cluett had +just sat down on the stool. + +The champion, his elbows on his knees and his head leaning forward in +its customary attitude, was looking at his latest opponent with a +certain interest. Whether it was that the mask piqued his curiosity, or +that there was something in the build and agility of the unknown which +indexed prowess, was not evident to Daisy; but Miss Yockley murmured, +half to herself: + +"Sa-ay! Watch Nicky prick up his ears. He sees something--I don't know +what it is, but I know he sees it." + +As the gong sounded for the first round and the two got up from their +stools, it was evident to the professional eye that Cluett's new +opponent was, at any rate, more nearly his equal than the ill-fortuned +Mr. Hobday. + +"Say!" Miss Yockley's tone thrilled with reluctant admiration, "did you +notice the footwork of that boy?... No, you don't, Mr. Mask.... Yes, you +did, too! Sa-ay, you better watch that lad, Nicky Cluett!" + +The last three ejaculations as the masked fighter tried for the head +and--marvel of marvels to Cluett's admirers!--landed. Landed lightly; +but landed, nevertheless. + +As this happened, there came a hush of conversation all over the house. +From boxes and orchestra circle, and gallery and balcony there sounded, +as it were, one simultaneous creak as the audience leaned forward in +their seats. + +Nick Cluett was still smiling the smile that had never been known to +leave his face, even in sleep. But, otherwise, his whole demeanor had +changed. His arms, instead of swinging careless and indolently +half-crooked, at his sides, were raised in his low impassable guard. His +back, straight from hips to shoulder, leaned a little forward. The head +was bent in his customary fighting pose, forehead out and chin in. + +"'Watch', was what I said," Miss Yockley, gloved hands clasped together +with feminine tenseness under her chin, breathed, to everybody in +general, "and I hope you're watching, for th' sake of what you'll miss +if you ain't." + +The champion was following the stranger around the ring. The masked man, +with light hissings of his shoes on the canvas floor, backed at exactly +the same pace, carefully avoiding corners, seeming to know where he was +by instinct and without the necessity of what would have been an +instantly-disastrous look over-shoulder. There was neither blow nor +feint. Sometimes the gloves of the fighters touched, but the impact was +feather-light and without audible sound. + +Then Cluett struck. It was not like a blow--it was more like a shot. +That is to say, one saw nothing of the travelling fist: merely noticed +the effect, in a red which grew between the stranger's lips, until it +ran down in a long thin trickle over his bulldoggy chin. + +"Gosh all jew's-harps!" monologued the tautened Miss Yockley, who did +not seem gratified, "Nick missed him. That was meant for the point of +the jaw. Would have been a K. O., too, if it had gone where it was +looking. But ou-wouch!" + +This last as the masked man's shoulders, gleaming white under the +electric arcs, see-sawed flashingly. With apparently no visible reason +for the movement, Nick Cluett's head rocked. The gong sounded, closing +Round One. + +"Jiminy!" Miss Stella said, "watch Bob!" + +For Mr. Masterman was rushing to and fro, as the saying goes, "like a +hen on a hot griddle". Talking and gesticulating to the referee--dashing +over and shaking his fist in the face of the masked man who leaned back +calmly in his stool while his seconds sponged his mouth--then hurrying +back and whispering like a soda fountain in the ear of the champion, who +reclined against the ropes that stretched behind his seat, restoring +himself by deep inhalations and smiling crookedly at his manager's +ecstasy of anxiety. + +"That mask has got to come off!" Bob Masterman yelled, dashing over +again to the referee, "or out of this comes my man. He can fight +anything with a face on, but he ain't used to pounding away at a mask." + +"Why don't you mask your man, then?" demanded one of the stranger's +seconds, who both also wore masks, one red, one black; "That will even +things." + +"Mask nothing," grunted the monosyllabic Mr. Cluett, sitting up in +preparation for the gong; "Beat it, Bob. Keep shirt on. 'M all right." + +Round Two commenced with the house, crowded from orchestra pit to +gallery, watching in a silence unbroken except for an intermittent creak +or cough. Even the light sound of the fighters' shoes on the ring-canvas +was audible in seats half-way to the back of the big auditorium. Mr. +Masterman, fists clenched in the side-pockets of his coat, feet squared +aggressively on the floor, face thrust forward, watched the movements of +both men with as much intentness as though he were a kind of auxiliary +referee. Miss Yockley, sympathetically reflecting Masterman's moods, had +lost her nonchalance. Her mouth half-open; her hands locked together and +thrust, knuckles up, under her chin; the whites of her eyes showing in a +gawky stare: she watched Cluett let the second round go by with only one +light left swing to the neck, countered immediately by the masked man +with a lightning right which made Nick shake his head and rub the thumb +of his glove across his nostrils. Neither blow did any noticeable +damage. + +Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, +Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager +and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the +shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman +was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with +something very like a smile. + +"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a +little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother." + +The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an +exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring +at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the +same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in +the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder +and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed +by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a +contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had +countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range. + +During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost +necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by +main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett by one arm, and tried, in +spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in +the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett +himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he +regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of +Nick's scalp. + +"Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his +mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on--out +you come!" + +"Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, +as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart +momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips +are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now--leggo!" + +There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, +grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes. + +"All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick." + +"There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell +you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole +time you've knew me? Have I?" + +"Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to +lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours." + +Nick Cluett merely turned away his head, having said enough--for him. +As the gong sounded for climactic Round Four, both boxers, with the +"bluff" of the ring, sprang to meet each other as though it had required +ten men apiece to hold them back till the moment came. For all this +business of haste, however, their gloves touched warily. A four-round +mill is a very short one, even for two ringmasters like Nick and his +opponent, to feel out a new antagonist in; and, though each knew points +of the other's "style" by now, each knew there was more to uncover and +that it would be uncovered in this deciding round. The bout, so far, had +been a clean and pretty one; and that the audience had developed no +partialities was made evident by the way in which both men were cheered +as they worked. + +But in this last round it was Cluett who was especially marvellous. +Right from the tap of the gong he was the aggressor. Round and round the +ring he backed his opponent; giving the stranger never the chance to +start, much less to land, a blow. But if the champion's offensive was +lightninglike and wonderful, the masked man's guard was no less so. For, +though Cluett's glove landed in each case, it landed with its force +broken by the elastic and elusive movement of the stranger's head and +torso. + +"Easy, Nick--easy," spurted Masterman, though his eyes shone; "don't +let him play you out, boy." Besides the pride he felt in his man's work, +Bob Masterman knew that if Cluett kept this overshadowing gait to the +end of the round, he would win hands down on points. + +"Soak him, Nicky!" cheered the barometric Miss Yockley, wriggling with +delight; "he's ran short o' tricks. He's all yours." + +Daisy's sympathies had swung, quite without conscious mental volition, +to the side of the masked man, as she saw that he seemed to be losing. +Her eyes never left his face, as she watched sympathetically for the +spreading red stain that should show broken skin. But, although the +stranger's cheek below the black edge of the mask, as well as the sides +and even the point of the jaw, were dull red where Cluett had +landed--but landed as on something pneumatic--there came no vivider +crimson. Instead, Daisy saw come on the lips a smile. The smile was +still there when the round ended with the masked man skilfully covering +from a shower of taps that, though his guard broke or lightened them, +landed as true as the arrows of Locksley. Nor had the smile on the +bulldoggy lips faded when, upon Cluett being declared winner of the +bout, the stranger, followed by the commending cheers of the crowd, +vaulted out of the ring over the ropes, and was gone. A moment +afterwards, there came the great, smooth snarl of a high-powered auto +springing from the curb outside. + +"Some big bug amateur," observed Miss Yockley, shrewdly, "hence the +mask. Must have slipped on his auto-coat over his fightin' togs, to get +away that quick. Them seconds with the masks on was likely college +chums, or something. But, O teaberries! didn't he cover up from our +Nicky though! I never saw a man could do like that before.... Come on, +now, kid: let's get out in our car and wait for the boys. There's +something," Miss Stella added volubly, as she rose, "that I don't quite +understand, about that last round. Didn't seem as if the other man was +trying; he never started one punch. Can't get nothin' out of Nicky on +it--he's too close-mouthed. But Bob'll tell us." + +It was not long after the two reached the automobile, standing long and +alert by the curb where Mr. Masterman and Daisy and Miss Yockley had +left it when they entered the theatre, till they saw the two men +approaching. Mr. Cluett had just had a shower-bath in one of the +dressing-rooms, and his hair showed wet and black around the edges of +his cap. He was silent, but the perennial smile was in its place. There +was not a bruise visible to Daisy, except the slight skin-break above +his eyebrow. She scrutinized the champion with a new, but not exactly +intensified interest, as he slipped into the tonneau beside her. + +"Well," he said, taking off his cap and running his fingers through his +thick damp hair; "how's our little one? All here?" + +Mr. Masterman, getting in by Miss Yockley on the front seat, swung his +head around as he took the wheel. + +"Some boy with the mitts--eh, what?" he grinned at Daisy. Miss Yockley +caught the speaker by the ear, and promptly turned him eyes front. + +"I'm _here_," she said, as she extracted a fresh piece of gum out of her +handbag, "not _there_. Now, who's this buck with the Hallowe'en fixings, +Bob?" + +"I know," said Mr. Masterman, "but I'm ferbid to say." + +"Well," observed Miss Yockley, as her teeth industriously kneaded her +new slice of gum, "he pretty near threw a monkey-wrench into our +machinery, whoever he is. Bar all masked fighters after this, is my +little word of advice to you boys. Eatin' snowballs ain't fattening, and +it wouldn't even be nice for a change.... But who was he, Bob? Come +o-on; we're all friends here." + +Mr. Masterman shook his head. But, at the same time, the eyelid next +Miss Stella, answering a brief contraction of Bob Masterman's cheek, +swiftly closed and opened in a movement that the others did not see. + +"Precisely, brother," acknowledged Miss Yockley; then, turning toward +the two in the tonneau, with her plump arm laid along the back of the +seat, she said, with a rapid change of subject; + +"Here's a couple that ain't speakin', Bob. What does a fellow do in a +case like that?" + +"Run for the Doctor," suggested Mr. Masterman, over his shoulder. "Where +do you want to go, Nick?" + +"Home, James," said Mr. Cluett. Then, as he roused himself from an +attack of pensiveness, during which he had been making little +unconscious passes with his arms, accompanied by swift light jerks of +the shoulders he added thoughtfully, "Some class to that fellow, Bob." + +"Class is right," said Mr. Masterman; "but no more masks for us, boy. +Never again." + +"Oh, I don't know," pondered Nick Cluett; "I'd fight him again, mask and +all, just to learn something about that style of guard he's got. +Fightin' them other dubs will never get me anywhere: it's too much like +bowling." + +After turning a few corners, the car was halted near a big seven-story, +midtown block, the ground floor of which was occupied by a sporting +goods store on one side, and a great bright-windowed restaurant on the +other. + +"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" said Mr. Masterman, bustlingly, +clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody +change!" + +"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick +Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, +he followed the girls to the elevator entrance. + +The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of +the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were +being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the +situation into which her daring had projected her. The rapid, virile +beat of her blood made her tingle pleasantly, and brought a color into +her cheeks that caused the ever-observant Miss Stella to remark, as they +stepped out of the elevator: + +"Say, kid, we got to get a picture of you." + +Cluett thrust a key into the shining brass lock of a door halfway along +the corridor; swung it open; and, glancing inscrutably sidewise at +Daisy, motioned inward with his hand. Daisy, following close on Miss +Yockley's heels, found herself in an apartment with two wall-beds that, +hooked up into place, showed as nothing but a pair of full-length +mirrors, with dressing-brackets at either side that served as legs when +the beds were let down. Gus, the janitor, had tidied the place. Canvas +shoes and sweaters had been gathered into the clothes-closet. The big +porcelain tub in the bathroom had been polished until it shone white and +clean. The green carpet had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner. The +"pillow" gloves of boxing practice had been arrayed in an orderly manner +on the top of the chiffonier. + +The room was a large one, with two big airy windows. On the walls, +kalsomined in light green, were pictures of fighters of all weights; a +wire card-rack with photographs of girls; and prints, some framed and +some unframed, of the "September Morn" type. An open door showed an +inner apartment, with red burlap, plate-rail, round dining-table, and +buffet; and beyond this was a small kitchen, into which Miss Yockley, +who had unpinned and tossed aside her hat, bustled, and lit the gas +under a copper water-kettle. Almost simultaneously, a bump came at the +hall-door, and a grinning restaurant-waiter entered with a huge nickeled +tray, whose savory-smelling victuals were hidden under a white linen +cover. + +"Right here, George!" sirened Miss Stella, posting herself by a +side-table in the dining-room. + +On the heels of the "little supper" came Bob Masterman, who shook a +finger playfully at Daisy as he slammed the door on the vanishing waiter +and cast his hat into a corner. + +"This way for yours, Bob," came Miss Yockley's voice, above the clatter +of silver and bump of dishes laid out on a table-cloth; "come along, and +get your coat off, and massacree these chickens. Can't you see you ain't +wanted in there? You need a house to fall on you, you do!" + +Mr. Masterman sighed like a typhoon, but obediently passed into the +dining-room: pausing, ere he closed the door after him, to stick his +face through the aperture and close an eye at Daisy. + +"Beat it, Bob," said Mr. Cluett, absently. + +"I guess I'll go and help," said Daisy, looking brightly cornerwise at +her companion, who still seemed to have the fight on his mind. Nick +Cluett at this, came out of his half-reverie and, crossing the room, sat +down beside Daisy. He looked at her a moment in a queer way; then put +out a strong hand, with black hair growing along the finger-sinews, and +laid it on hers. Daisy noticed that the middle knuckle looked purplish. + +"Well, m' little girl," he said, "how goes it?" + +"What's happened your hand?" said Daisy; putting her head on one side, +softly touching the discolored knuckle, then looking at him through +down-held lashes. + +Cluett glanced down casually. "Oh, nothing," he said, "just a little +accident. But you ain't told me how _you_ are, yet." + +"Oh, I--I'm sick in bed," said Daisy, putting her free hand up to her +face, and bringing two dancing irises to bear on Mr. Cluett through the +fingers of it. + +"You're a little devil," commented Mr. Cluett, inching over and putting +his arm around her. Daisy's eyes, fairly coruscating with coquetry and +resource, flashed down at the hand that pressed her waist. First she +pretended to look at it from one angle; then from another. + +"I don't like the looks of it," she said, "take it away." + +"Do you mean that?" said Nick Cluett. The dark face, with its queer +stationary smile and its eyes full of a warming light, came close to +hers. Daisy waited dimpling till the rough cheek, bluish with its day's +growth of stiff hair-stubble, almost touched her ear. Then, exploding +into light quick action, she cast away the encircling arm and hopped to +her feet. + +"I'm going to help get the supper," she said; and, before Nick Cluett +could stop her, whisked to the dining-room door and flung it open. + +"What's bust loose?" said Miss Yockley, who was making coffee. + +"Frisky little thing, you!" observed Mr. Masterman, rolling up his +sporting paper, and playfully threatening Daisy with it. + +"Turn off the gas, Bob," commanded Miss Stella, "and don't have so much +to say. Come along, Nicky. Supper's on." + +Mr. Cluett strolled in, and the four drew up chairs. There were three +roast chickens, hot, carved up into handy "drumsticks" and slices by Mr. +Masterman; "French fried" potatoes; a cut-glass dish of peach preserve; +fruit cake; bakers' rolls; and an electric percolator filled with savory +coffee. + +"Some little lay-out," observed Mr. Cluett, who was hungry after his +evening's "work-out". He stepped into the chair next Daisy's by tilting +it and swinging his leg over the back to the seat. + +"Yes: Bob done well, for once," said Miss Stella, "gener'ly, when he's +ordering a supper, the only thing he can think of is 'poached on' and +raisin pie." + +"What have we got to drink, Stel'?" demanded Mr. Masterman, hitching his +cuffs as he prepared to serve the chicken. + +"Coffee," returned Miss Yockley, winking at Nick Cluett and Daisy; +"we're gettin' ready for when the country goes dry." + +"Well," said Mr. Masterman, who had paused aghast, but had recommenced +to breathe freely as he had intercepted the speaker's wink; "I guess I +can stand it as long as Stella can, anyway--and that ain't very long." + +"You bet it ain't," admitted Miss Stella, going to the buffet and +bringing back three bottles of champagne; "See what the milkman left us +for the baby, this morning." + +"Let it out, then, let it out!" said Bob Masterman, laying down his +carving-fork and setting out glasses; "I'm as dry as the night before, +boys." + +Under Miss Yockley's deft offices, a cork popped promptly, and four +glasses were filled in as many seconds. + +"I guess we can let Nick off the water-wagon for to-night," said Mr. +Masterman, "while we drink confusion to the Masked Man. But what's wrong +with Prettiness here? Swore off?" This to Daisy, who had made no +movement to lift her glass. + +Daisy merely dimpled and shook her head. + +"Somebody say something," interpolated Miss Stella; "Come on, Kid--if +you knew the pain Bob's in, you wouldn't keep him waiting. Do you want +some water in it--or what?" + +"Water in it!" ejaculated Mr. Masterman, "Help!... 'Water in it?' she +says, as though she meant it." + +Nick Cluett, who, glass in hand, had been regarding Daisy narrowly, +spoke out. + +"Let up, people," he said, tersely; "she don't want it." + +"Oh, dewberries!" observed Bob Masterman, mincingly. "Well, here's to +the trimmin' our boy Nick so nearly got--may we never, never be so near +the cruel bread-line agen!" + +Supper passed amid a continual "kidding back and forth" between Miss +Yockley and Mr. Masterman, which speeded up as the champagne bottles +emptied. + +"Oo-aw!" said Miss Stella, fanning herself and rising at length, a +little unsteadily, from behind her emptied glass and coffee-cup; "I feel +like a breath of fresh air." + +"You don't _look_ like a breath o' fresh air," chortled her drinking +companion; "you look like t-ten cents' worth o' tough luck, Stel. Get on +your hat, an' I'll walk you 'round the block, little one." + +With this, the two passed into the front room. Daisy thought they were +joking about going out, till she heard the hall-door slam behind them. +Then she jumped up. + +"Wh-why--have they gone?" she said. + +"They sure have," said Mr. Cluett, leaning back lazily in his chair; +"but we should worry." + +"Will they be long?" said Daisy. + +"Search me," responded Nick Cluett; "They may go to a picture-show. +Maybe they'll slip into a vaudeville show. We don't care--eh?" + +Daisy looked out into the empty front room of the suite. A gramophone on +a small table met her eyes. + +"Let's put on some music," she said. + +Cluett got up, and came over, and stood beside her. + +"Not to-night," he said, looking down. The champagne had brought a kind +of dull color to his cheeks and forehead. "What do we want with music, +kid? Come on--let's be a little friendly, huh?" His strong lean arm slid +around her waist. + +It was then that Daisy lifted up her face, let all the coquetry pass +from it, and regarded him with eyes that were straight and sober. + +"Stop it!" she said. + +For answer, the arm tightened about her. Nick Cluett leaned to kiss her. + +"If you don't stop it," said Daisy, rigid in his arms; "you're no +gentleman." + +Cluett relaxed his arm a little. His queer-smiling face, with its keen +eyes, slanted down towards her in concentrated, silent interrogation. +Daisy's spirit of mischief tempted her to drop her eyes; but she managed +to resist the impulse and to keep her features sober-expressioned. + +"You're not goin' to be friendly, then?" he said. + +Daisy dimpled ever so slightly. "Not just now", she answered. + +"Do you mean that--or don't you?" + +"I mean it," said Daisy, simply; "not in here, anyway. Why can't we go +out, and get a breath of fresh air, too, and go to a picture-show?" + +Nick Cluett took his arm from her waist, reached for his hat, and +opened the hall-door. + +"Come on," he said, "I'll see you safe home, Kid." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK. + + +"Who's the boy?" said Daisy, over her shoulder, to Jean; as, glancing +out of the window of the big Harrison kitchen, she saw, at the front +corner of the house, a younger man get out of the car after the bulky +Sir Thomas. "I thought all the visitors here were elderly men. There's +been no young ones at all since I've been here." + +"Ey?" Jean came to "keek," resting a hand on the shoulder of the younger +girl, "why, if it's no young Harrison! Did I never tell ye Sir Thomas +had a lad? Well, well." Jean sat down again to her pea-shelling. + +"Ay," she pursued, as her rapid fingers stripped the split pods of their +green kernels, "yon's Harold Harrison. He looks like his father, an' he +talks like his father, and as to his disposeetion--well, I'm bound in +fairness-like to say he's a bittie of his good mither--just a wee wee +streak, like the lean in bacon--pinched in between thick layers of Sir +Thomas himsel'. The young-lad's no so rough-edged in manner--the college +has polished him on the ootside.... But I'll say no more: ye'll see him +juist now, when ye serve the supper." + +And when Daisy did see the young man--sitting with his knees crossed and +his elbow on the edge of the table, talking to his father but not +noticing the quiet, awkward mother at all--she almost dropped the tray +she was carrying. For Harold Harrison and the masked fighter who had +boxed four rounds with Champion Nick Cluett, were one and the same young +man. + +"I'd know that chin anywhere," said Daisy, as she confided to Jean the +discovery she had made, "it's just like his father's. And his lower lip +is burst, too, just where I saw Nick hit the masked fighter. He has a +piece of red sticking-plaster on it." + +"Mon, mon!" Jean was interested; "is that so, then? I kenned he was a +boxer; and I suppose, as the Harrisons has the name of getting what they +'go after,' its no surprisin' he's won to the top. It's aye the way. He +has everything--his money, his schooling, his place in society, his +business chances--an' yet he'll no be satisfied till he steals the +boxin' honors from a puir lad that has nothing but his gloves. Nick's a +machinist; and, up till lately, when money from his matches commenced to +come in a little, he's had to do all his training in the nicht-time; +while the Harrison lad's had all day and all night, if he needed, to +make himsel' pairfect.... Ey, ey--it's the way o' the warld, lassie." + +"He'll never beat Nick," some flash of vague enthusiasm warmed Daisy for +an instant; then she added--boxing terms and predictions coming handily +to her tongue after that chatty hour across the supper-table from the +"sporty" Miss Yockley--"he'd never last twenty rounds, or even ten, in a +finish bout. Nicky Cluett," Daisy concluded with feminine irrelevance, +"is a gentleman. The other fellow would be afraid to fight him without a +mask on." + +Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists, +lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's +seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no +that sure that they dare play tricks with it--as they wad be doing, they +think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public +theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society, +an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family +operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle +o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds +empty, as if they was through their meat." + +As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his +father, paused in his account of the boxing-match till the girl had +collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot. +But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and +caught every word with her keen young ears: + +"----And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I +went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this +fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good--and is, too, as +witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was +a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking +sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter, +glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd +have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to +me." + +"You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and +whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em! +Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en +where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe +on the jaw, when I had him goin'." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +SAWN OFF THE OLD BLOCK. + + +The big Harrison villa,--with its broad ostentatious drive, its +unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its +elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a +dealers' reduction--soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete +cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding +of young Harold's punching bag. + +"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn +anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top +floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of +Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair +before a mirror. + +"Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully. + +"Well," said Daisy, stopping in the doorway with the roses of recent +exertion coloring her cheeks superbly, her eyes dancing in their bright +challenging way, and her plump arms displayed to fine and not +unconscious advantage as she folded them over the broom-handle which +leaned in the bend of her elbow; "one of your boxing-gloves was under +the shower-bath, with the water running on it; and your sweater was on +the floor below the punching bag, tramped in the dust----" + +"There shouldn't be any dust up there," said Harold, easily; "What do +you suppose we pay our little housemaids for? Uh?" + +"Is that so!" retorted Daisy; "well, you'd better give orders for the +wind not to blow, then; and you'd better have your father pull up that +nasty concrete drive, where all the dust comes from; and----" + +"See here! See-e here!" Sir Thomas Harrison's son jerked out, spinning +on his heel and facing her; "what do you mean by talking to me like +that? Who do you think you're speaking to--the chauffeur or the +stable-boy? Get on downstairs, or wherever you're going, and don't have +so much to say." Then, as the young heir of the place turned again to +the mirror, he added in audible soliloquy, "dashed cheek! These infernal +domestics are getting to think they can do and say what they please. +Some of these days that cook and I are going to have a rumpus too. She +chooses coolly to forget, and to keep right on forgetting, the +instructions I give her about my food.--What! you here yet?" + +"Yes!" said Daisy, looking at him with her cheeks burning redly and her +eyes fixed and bright; "I'm here yet--_Mister_ Harold!" + +"Oh, a-all right," observed the young man, sarcastically, throwing out +his palm with an elaborate motion toward a chair; "won't you have a +seat, Miss--er--er-- Miss Housemaid?" + +Daisy's long eyelashes described a flashing arc as she swept the crown +prince of the dynasty of Harrison from head to house-slippered toe. Then +she turned away. Harold Harrison, as he heard her shoe-heels tapping +smartly down the back stairs, grinned at his reflection in the +looking-glass. + +"That's putting 'em where they belong," he said; "Some kid, though, +be-lieve me--some kid!" + +Jean, at the big cooking range, heard Daisy come into the kitchen and +thrust the broom into its holder with a rap. Then there came silence, +enduring for so long that the Scotswoman glanced questioningly around. +Daisy had dropped into a chair, and was sitting in a kind of brown +study, finger at lip and eyes looking ponderingly out of window. + +"Now, now, lassie!" said the cook, kindly; "it's nae business o' mine, +likely; but this is a big hoose, an' ye canna be through reddin' up the +rooms yet, an' it's nearly eleven o'clock. Is onything amiss?" + +Daisy related her encounter with young Harrison. + +"Ey, ey," Jean smiled grimly as the girl told her what young Harold had +said about the cooking; "so he's no farin' quite as he wad at the +meal-table, and would like a bit brush with me, would he? Well, I canna +be aye getting' up special dishes for his lordship, so I may as weel +prepare to receive him. Did he tell ye of the wee bit tiff we had ance +before, him an' me? No; he didn't. Well, I'll tell ye, in a few words. +He talked wi' his tongue, and I talked with the besom; and the interview +juist lasted four minutes by the kitchen clock. He's no a bad lad +althegither, but he needs a canny bit breakin' in." + +"Well, I'm not going to bother breaking him in," said Daisy, lifting her +chin, "he's not worth it." + +Jean laughed. "Well, onyway," she said, turning again to her own work, +"don't let him start ye broodin', so the rooms'll no be done when our +good leddy goes over the huse. Ye ken weel she'd turn to and mak' up the +beds hersel', sooner than raise a fuss. Lassie, lassie, speakin' about +the Mistress, I'm sore worried. She's failed terrible this last month. I +keep tellin' her to drink milk, but she canna keep it doon. She eats nae +mair than yon dickie-bird--a great big strappin' wumman like she is--or +was--too! If onything happens to the leddy o' the hoose here--guid-bye +Harrisons! It's only for her sake I'm bidin' here, at the wage I get. +I've got a standin' offer o' half as much agen from Lady Frances +Ware--Sir William Ware's mother." + +At the mention of Ware's name, Daisy gave a little involuntary start. +But she did not tell Jean that she too had an offer of a position in the +household of Sir William Ware. + +"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding +skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, +"that the young lad here--Harold--is engaged to a girl o' what they call +the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's +way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it +brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for +puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if +onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her +long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'--her, that made +him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +A PLOT THAT MISCARRIED. + + +"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling +cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel' +sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's +gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with +thae orders, like." + +Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had +been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the +house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged." +Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook. + +"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?" + +"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the +line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like." + +Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a +fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I +doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her +shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that +stood, larded and ready, at her right. + +"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you." + +"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver. + +Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not +of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was +plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of +the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right, +I will,--bye-bye," as she hung up the phone. + +When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter, +this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man +who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the +dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and +very often twice, each week since. + +On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy, +as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the +trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford +suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was +going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know +that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did +she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something +like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll have the chance o' your life +to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite--yes, yes, +of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean +it extra good, to-night--and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets +his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy +up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around +with me to-night--the best girl in----" + +"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go +on--shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my +ear, Jim, and listen to you rave." + +"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm +bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea. +See?--the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I +intend to spring, on the way home----" + +"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the +line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?" + +"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to +spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks. +I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some +accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments----" + +"Better wait till she says 'yes'," Mrs. Farrell had advised, as she +prepared to 'hang up', "before you start counting your chickens. She may +not care to take a chance on you. I know how I'd feel about it, if it +was me. However, I'll do my best for you." + +Jimmy, who was quite ready to admit any time that he was "no hand with +girls," shoved his hat to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets, +and spat aside as, waiting outside the Harrison gate, he saw Daisy +approach along the gravel walk. + +If he had come for her in the jitney, as usual, to take her for a +companionable hour's ride up and down his round, as a "free" and welcome +passenger, he would have felt at ease; for he had become used to that. +But this waiting, with no friendly engine pounding away in front of him +and no familiar steering-wheel to lean his hands upon, was enough out of +the ordinary to have embarrassed Jimmy anyway, even without the mental +consciousness of his deep-laid matrimonial plot, and the feeling he +could not shake off that somehow Daisy might sense it prematurely and +flee. + +"'Lo, stranger," said Daisy, softly, taking the words out of Jimmy's +mouth, as it were. She was a little shy, too; but Jimmy Knight was too +busy with his own perturbation to notice that. + +"H'lo yourself," he responded, with something like gruffness, "and see +how you like it." As they dropped into step side by side, he added, +with an inspired flash, "Lookin' kind of skookum to-night, us, Friend +Nixon." + +"I might if I had a suit on," Daisy said, in her forthright way, "but +suits cost money." + +"Never mind," Jimmy, in spite of the playful breeze abroad, strove to +pull his new straw hat down more firmly on its elastic cushion of +virile, curly hair, "you may have one, soon." + +Daisy, who had not meant this at all, cast a quick side-glance at her +companion. + +"I wouldn't take a suit from you, if that's what you mean," she said, +abruptly, flushing a little. + +"There, now," Jimmy blushed an honest, vivid red, "I've went and made a +break, first crack at the bat. Say, you do the talkin' from here on. +I'll just listen. If I don't say nothin', I can't make nobody mad, can +I?" + +Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an +apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel--that structure from +whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As +she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind +reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging +out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre +of the clothesline. + +"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of +Suite 30, as Jimmy, smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a +bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy +up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!" + +Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy, +with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her +hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short +vestibule to the living-room. + +"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of +under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I +told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him +for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get +married, Miss----" + +"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its +"surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a +wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener, +who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell +you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one." + +Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took +Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her +remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to +sleep this minute, you! The idea!" + +But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka +wa'r." + +"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're +going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim--he'll have the city +waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of, +for keepin' awake." + +Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn. +Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out. + +"Might as well talk to the wind," said Mrs. Tom Farrell, "as them two. +Well, of all----" + +This last as Jimmy reappeared, carrying a sleepy three-year-old who, +supporting the tumbler with two hands that had hollows where knuckles +should be, was quaffing with all his might. Jimmy Knight had had an +inspiration, which he was not yet sure was not a blunder, to show Daisy +how a baby "became" him. + +To Daisy, in spite of its neatness, the suite looked rather small and +dingy. This impression formed itself quite unconsciously, not as the +result of deliberate glances about. Probably it was a wholly involuntary +comparison of these small rooms to the big garish apartments of the +Harrison house, to which her eyes had grown accustomed during the past +couple of months. At any rate, the impression came and stayed. Jimmy, +however, had no means of knowing this; and, as he glanced around at his +sister's handiwork, he winked his appreciation at Mrs. Betty behind +young Tommy's head; and shaped with his lips this soundless but +energetic sentence, "You're a winner, hon'." + +Tom Farrell, Senior, came from the bathroom presently, stroking a long, +new-shaven chin. His eyes were narrowed sociably, and his mouth, as he +approached Daisy, was kinked up at the corners in what seemed to Betty +Farrell's critical regard, almost an ecstasy of friendliness. He paused, +with the hand of greeting half-outstretched; then, tetering his +shoulders a little, glanced first at his wife, and from her to Jimmy, +interrogatively. + +"Somebody introduce me," interpreted his wife, with considerable warmth +and sarcasm, "or I'll go crazy." + +"Daisy, meet Brother Tom," interposed Jimmy, diplomatically, as he saw a +flash of temper in the glance Tom Farrell darted at his wife. A husband +of four years' standing will not endure being put out of countenance +before a pretty girl. + +"Howdy," said Farrell, promptly; grabbing Daisy's hand and half for his +wife's benefit and half because of Daisy's dimples, squeezing it hard +and long; "howdy, howdy?... Say, Bet, what's that kid doing out of bed, +this time o' night? Don't you know nothing at all? Get him back between +them sheets, right away!" + +"Put him to bed yourself, if you're so keen about it," Betty Farrell +retorted, hotly; "it was Jimmy brought him out here, not me. Why don't +you take a round out of Jim?" + +"I said, put him to bed," Tom Farrell was losing his self-control as his +temper rose, "and do it quick!" + +"Come along, Boy," said Jimmy Knight, genially, speaking into the ear of +Tommy, Junior; then winking at Daisy as he jerked his head in humorous +apology toward the point where Tom and Betty Farrell glared at each +other across the centre-table, "we'll go and pound our ear, son. We +don't need a house to fall on us, to show us we ain't wanted, do we?" He +got up, young Tom in his arms, and moved toward the bedroom. + +"No, sir-ree!" Tom Farrell's long arm came out and scooped out of +Jimmy's grasp the youngster, who started to cry; "it's got to be settled +right here an' now who's boss of this establishment. I ain't goin' to +let no woman run on me. Here, Bet--take this kid, and put him to bed +like I told you!" The husband was now so far beside himself that he, for +the moment, neither knew nor cared what impression he made. As he spoke, +he held out the baby boy, who yelled and kicked vigorously. + +But Betty Farrell backed away, letting young Tommy dangle from his +father's outstretched arms. + +"I don't have to take no orders from you," she said, putting her hands +obstinately behind her back, "and I won't, not if you rave till you're +blue in the face. I'll show everybody how much authority you have over +me." + +At this, young Tom felt himself set down hard on a chair. Tom Farrell, +having thus freed his hands, hopped ragingly across the room and slapped +his wife on the side of the face. Betty, true to the color of her hair, +flared up, looked about for something to throw, and swept her hand with +temper's wastefulness toward the cut-glass vase in the centre of the +table. + +"Hey!" Jimmy Knight reached across and rescued the vase; "you ain't mad +five dollars' worth, surely, Bet." Then the brother got up and came +around the table. + +"Break away, break away," he said, casting a deprecating grin toward +Daisy as he put one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other on Tom +Farrell's chest, and pushed the two apart; "hittin' in the clinches is +barred, boys. How about a little card-game, everybody? Bet and me will +take on Daisy and you, Tom, and beat yous flat." + +"Nothing doing," Farrell nasalled, closing his eyes and rocking his head +from side to side in an obdurate negative; "this here thing's got to be +settled first. Let a woman get the upper hand of you once, an' you'll +never get her back in her place." + +"Aw, go on, Bet," Jimmy gave his sister a little coaxing nudge, "put the +kid to bed." + +Betty Farrell raised eyelids, nose, chin and right foot, and brought +them all down simultaneously. + +"I--wun't!" she said; "so there." + +This repetition of her refusal, though not this time addressed to him, +brought Tom Farrell's wrath again to boiling-point, and he reached +across and cuffed her twice more. Jimmy Knight's hand, which was still +resting against his brother-in-law's chest, pushed Farrell firmly back. + +"Don't do that no more, Tom," he said, his face and voice sobering a +little. + +"Why not?" flamed Farrell, turning on him. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "I can't stand by and see you do it--that's all." + +Farrell grew hoarse and purple. "Well, come on, then," he frogged, "I'll +take on the whole blamed family, and lick 'em with one hand tied behind +me." With this, his arm shot out; and Jimmy, taken unawares, received +the blow full in the eye. Farrell followed quickly with a second thrust; +but Jimmy was ready, and the fist glanced harmlessly. + +"I don't want to fight you, Tom," he said, guarding himself with fair +skill, as the brother-in-law, shoving the table aside with a jerk of his +hip, pursued the attack furiously; "All I say is, be reasonable." + +"Reasonable, nothin'!" croaked Farrell, as he landed again, cutting +Jimmy's cheek with his thumb-nail; "I'll learn you to keep out, next +time." + +Jimmy did not answer. His lips tightened a little. Farrell, breaking +through his guard again, struck the fast-blackening eye which had +received his opening blow. Thereat Jimmy, with a vigorous shake of his +shoulders, dived in manfully. There was a brief scuffle; then Jimmy's +sinewy fist twinkled up hard, at short range, and Tom Farrell went down +flat on the floor and lay there. + +"Now, then!" the voice was Betty Farrell's; but it was addressed to +Jimmy, not to her husband, this time; "see what you've done, with your +dirty fists and your meddling. You've knocked him out--maybe hurt him--" + +"He's all right," said Jimmy, a little sheepishly, "I--I never +meant--there, he's stirring, now. I----" + +"Well, get out, then," Betty Farrell dashed over and nervously opened +the door leading out of the suite into the corridor; "go on--get out! I +don't want no more fighting in here. Go on--you, too," this last to +Daisy who, however, was already at the door. + +Jimmy glanced at Daisy as humorously as a man might who had one +supremely black eye and a cheek all over blood. + +"I guess p'raps we might as well," he said. + +There was silence on the way down the three flights of stairs, and +comparative uncommunicativeness on Jimmy's part until the end of the +walk home was reached and the two stood under the trees just within the +Harrison drive-gate. + +Then Jimmy, clearing his throat with the air of a man who has made up +his mind to say something or die, observed, "I--I got to tell you one +blamed good joke, Friend Nixon, before you go in." + +"What?" said Daisy. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "I--gr-r-h'm--I took you over there to-night to show +you a happy little home in a three-room suite. As she turns out, +however, that'n ain't so very happy to-night, huh? All my fault, for +hikin' young Tom out of his crib." + +"Oh, well," said Daisy, "everybody fights, sometimes." + +"Yes, that's so," said Jimmy; "Yes, that's--that's so. But I--I--" + +"'M?" said Daisy, feeling something in her companion's cadence that +caused a soft little titillation of her nerves. She drew back further +into the shadow as she felt her cheeks grow involuntarily warm. + +"I know two of a kind--both of 'em easy-goin', I mean--that mightn't +fight any more than oncet a week, at the outside. Do you think you could +stand for that, Friend Nix--Friend Daisy?" + +Daisy drew a long breath, raised her face, and looked clear-eyed at her +companion. + +"I know what you mean," she said, glad that the darkness prevented +cheerful, curly-headed Jimmy Knight from seeing the shine of her glance +and the color of her cheeks, "but I can't. Not the way I feel these +days. What happened over in the suite to-night didn't make any +difference. But--well, I just can't. I'm a funny girl." + +"You sure are," agreed Jimmy Knight; "how long did you say you'd need to +think it over?" + +"Forever," said Daisy, firmly, in spite of the beating of her heart. + +"All right," responded Jimmy Knight, bravely choking down a certain +obstruction that had risen in his throat, "I'll give you a day longer +than that, so's it won't look as if I was rushin' you. Well--so-long, +kid," he held out his hand. + +"Good-bye, Jimmy Knight," Daisy gave him her hand, then drew it away +gently, and ran in-doors with tears in her eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE GOLDEN STAIR. + + +Sir William Ware put aside his book, covered a yawn, glanced up at the +fireplace clock, which was about to chime nine; then, taking up the +telephone which had been ringing with shrill iteration for a moment or +two, casually laid his ear to it. + +"Yes," he said. + +"Sir William Ware?" vibrated the disk. + +"Himself," responded Sir William, lightly. + +"Well," said the voice at the other end of the line, "this is me." + +"Eh?" + +"Me." + +"Ah." Sir William rubbed his chin in bewilderment; then he added, +humorously, "_Miss_ Me? Right, so far?" + +"You have a short memory," commented the voice on the phone. + +"You have chanced," said Ware, pleasantly, "upon a melancholy fact, +madam. But may I not ask the identity of--Jove! wait a bit, though! My +creaking wheels of recollection are beginning to revolve.... I have it! +I have it! Miss Nixon?" + +"Yes," said Daisy's voice, in a matter-of-fact way, "it is. I want to +see you." + +Sir William, at the speaker's naive directness, covered the transmitter +with his palm and rocked in enjoyment. + +"Bravo!" he said, then, uncovering the instrument; "the city hasn't +spoiled you yet, my dear--has it?" + +"I'm waiting near that cafe we were at before," said Daisy, "how long +will you be?" + +Something in the bare blunt words made Sir William hug himself in an +almost boyish ecstasy. "I shall come," he answered, "on the wings of +Hermes. They should bring me into your presence in from three to five +minutes, young lady." + +Daisy Nixon, after hanging up the telephone in the little candy store +across from the Cumberland Cafe, had waited barely four minutes in the +shadowed street just beyond the circle of light from the Cumberland's +windows, when she saw a tall figure, cane in hand, walk briskly into +that area of illumination. She crossed the street. + +Ware, dangling his cane and glancing about enquiringly, saw her when she +was half-way across the circle of light and facing the full blaze of it. +Her bright frank eyes; her clear girlish fresh cheeks, on which a +certain nervousness kept the tide of color changing its shape and +margin; her round maidenly lines of bust and hip and ankle: all wrought +curiously and strongly and with a united effect upon Ware, as they had +on that night in the Harrison dining-room when his attention, drawn to +her casually by the accident to the soup-tureen, had changed at once to +the heartiest interest. + +Material absolutely fresh and new! Molten and virgin gold, not yet +resistable to the stamp of the die! + +"Well," he said, stepping forward hospitably, "how are you, my dear? +Shall we go in?" + +"Yes." Daisy stepped inside, deliberately unpinned and hung up her hat, +and sat down opposite to the baronet at the table he had chosen along +the side of the room. It was the same table they had occupied on their +previous visit. + +"Don't order much," she said; "I'm not hungry. I came here to talk." + +"I think," said Sir William, "that talking will be much more enjoyable. +I dined late, myself. Suppose we have, say, a few grapes and a little +something to drink--an iced drink of some sort." + +"Anything you like," said Daisy. She laid her hands on the table, caught +her lower lip under her teeth with a shy gesture that was delicious to +Ware, and said--quite plainly, and without yielding to that impulse of +coquetry which had made him so brief with her on their previous +meeting--"Were you in earnest, that time you asked me to marry you?" + +"My dear," answered Sir William, leaning forward, and extending his hand +on the table until it was almost touching hers, "I made the proposal +quite seriously and in good faith. I should not do otherwise. If you are +still in a position to accept it, I make it again now." + +Daisy looked across at the real eagerness in the fine eyes; at the face, +with its skin cleanly and handsomely tinted under the few faint lines +that indicated the light passage of the years; at the hand, smooth, +white and gently masterful. Then she dropped her glance; but her voice +was firm and her manner direct and frank as she answered him. + +"I'll marry you," she said. + +The white hand, with a strong and gentle pressure, came over hers, until +her fingers were between the thumb and the heel of the palm. Something +great and calm and authoritative seemed communicated with that touch. +Daisy felt quelled and dutiful, but, best of all, as she lifted her eyes +to his, she knew, less by his expression than by an unexplainable +feeling within herself, that she could trust him. For in all +essentials--so she read and knew calmly and surely that she read +aright--he was, as Daisy herself would have put it, simply, "a +gentleman." + +"Thank you, my dear," he said, quietly, "I may say sincerely that I +think we shall grow very fond of one another. Waiter!--here, please." + +A dress suit glided forward and an obsequious ear leaned down. The +waiter knew quite thoroughly what was "doing", although by the +expression on his face during the conversation between Daisy and Ware, +one would have thought he was working out in his head a problem in +trigonometry. + +"May I speak to the manager?" said Ware. + +The manager, who had curly jet hair, an immense slope of white +waistcoat, and an Alice-blue chin, appeared in exactly fifteen seconds. + +"Have you," said Sir William, "a room where a marriage ceremony may be +performed?" + +The manager started a smile--but it got no further than a slight twitch +in the eye-corners before something in Sir William's expression,--though +the baronet changed not a feature nor abated anything of his +pleasantness--checked it. + +"Yes, sir," the manager answered, voice and face returning instantly to +business formality; "my office is at your service, sir, if you wish." + +"That will do nicely, thank you," said Ware, rising; then to Daisy he +said, as he offered his arm, "we will go there now--shall we?" + +Daisy nodded, without speaking. Her faith in him was as absolute as it +was instinctive and involuntary. + +As the manager bowed them into the office--a room of fair size--and, +partially closing the door, made polite exit, Ware handed Daisy to a +seat, and himself dropped into the swivel-chair before the manager's +desk and took up the telephone. + +"Hello!" he said, as he got his number; "that you, Mrs. Heathcote? Good +evening; how's your neuralgia?... Splendid, splendid--I _am_ glad to +hear that. I say, is George about?" + +Evidently George was at hand; for in a second or two the transmitter +returned to Sir William's lips. + +"That you, George? I say, are you busy?... Well, then, look here--could +you slip around to the Cumberland Cafe, Osborne Street.... No, no, +nothing about 'hay'; Cumberland Cafe, you ass.... Yes, that's it--can't +miss it--big, bright, plate-glass windows, half-way between Wardlow and +Pembina.... I say, that's very jolly of you, old man.... Yes, I--we--are +waiting.... Yes: I said 'we'.... None of your bally business--that is, +I'll explain when you get here. Make haste now, won't you?... Right-O!" +Sir William hung up the phone and turned to Daisy. + +"That was the Reverend George Heathcote, my dear," he said, "rector of +St. George's. Do you know St. George's?" + +Daisy knew it--a big Episcopal church, with beautiful chimes, that made +Sunday morning glorious. Right in the heart of the fashionable district. +Ivied to the gables, with a mighty stretch of green ground about, +bounded by a massive iron fence. And its rector was familiar "George" +and "old man" to him who was shortly to become her husband. + +Daisy Nixon's heart bounded, and the color leapt into her cheeks. Three +months ago, clad in an old smock of Jack Nixon's and with a cuff +administered by Mother Lovina smarting and tingling on her ear, she had +waded, on an evening that she remembered well,--because it was her last +on a farm--down to a miry cattle-corral to sit in the rain and milk four +cows. It was in this moment, as the recollection of that final ineffably +drab farm evening slipped into her mind, that Daisy formulated a certain +daughterly resolve with regard to her parents--a resolve she was +afterwards able to keep. + +"I should explain," said Ware, a touch of color in his cheeks and his +fingers playing a soft tattoo on the desk blotter, "why I am doing +things in this apparently hasty and stealthy manner. I have been +expecting, for the last moment or so, that you would ask me to +explain--and I may say that I consider it very sweet of you, my dear, +that you have refrained from asking." + +"Whatever _you_ do," said Daisy, "is all right. I know that." + +"Thank you, dear child. Nevertheless, I shall explain. In the first +place, I have a very headstrong old mother at home, who considers me, in +spite of my 58 years--yes, my dear, I am 58--not yet grown up. With her, +there might--I do not positively say there would, but there might--be +difficulties. In the second place, and to be quite frank with you and +with myself, this is the main reason for doing things on the dot, as it +were--I know that young people are to a certain extent impulsive and +that a great many things may happen in a short time, and I want you just +as you are now, before anything can happen to change you in any way. I +confess freely, my dear, that I really want you very much, and that it +has been harder than you may think, for me since I last talked with you +to keep my resolve to let you quite alone so that you might think this +matter out for yourself. That, having thought it out, you have not been +afraid or ashamed to voluntarily let me know your decision, is to me +convincing proof--though short-sighted people may think this +paradoxical--of that modesty which is to me your most precious quality." + +Nervousness, more than he had ever imagined his socially-inured self +could feel, was the cause of the latter half of this little speech of +Sir William's being slightly formal. This marrying of a girl "of the +people"--forty years distant from him and yet in her land of +boy-and-girl--which had been easy enough to do in theory, in his +study-chair, was a "bit of a pull" in actual execution. He had just +finished speaking, when there came a knock at the door. + +"Ah!" he said, getting up, "I shouldn't wonder if that's our friend. +That you, George?" + +"Yes--and I've jolly well run my legs off," exclaimed a voice, as a +bustling and rather stout figure in clerical coat burst cyclonically +into the room, dropped into a chair, and fanned itself with a +flat-crowned black hat. "I couldn't get it out of my head, some way, +that you are more in need of medical than spiritual attention at the +present moment, Will. Now, calm yourself, old man, and let me have the +whole story, and we'll examine the matter squarely and sensibly. I +assume," the Reverend George glanced at Daisy, whose color was rising, +"this is the young lady in the case. Jove, Will, I thought you had more +bally sense, especially at your time of life--I did, really." + +Sir William looked at his ministerial friend open-mouthed; then, as the +clergyman's meaning burst upon him, he sat up in his chair with a jerk. + +"Now, look here, George," he said, as the swivel creaked at the vigor +with which he gripped the chair-arms, "I should hate our forty-five +years of close friendship to end in fisticuffs. It will, though, I give +you fair warning, if--if--what the devil do you think I've been doing, +you ass! Must I repeat that, of our mutual choice--quite unforced by +circumstances, if I must say so baldly--Miss Daisy Nixon and I have +decided to be married." + +Reverend George Heathcote, who was smooth-faced and good-looking, except +for a few myopic wrinkles around his eyes, put on his glasses and looked +keenly at Daisy, who met his glance with nose and chin well up, and +brown eyes flashing aggressively. + +"Don't look at me like that," he said, after a moment, "please don't, +Miss Nixon. I'm a blundering idiot, but I mean well--I do, really. Can +you honestly, down in your heart of hearts, assert that you wish to +marry the shelf-worn relic in the office-chair there? Can you?" + +"Yes," said Daisy, pugnaciously. + +"Oh--very well." Rev. George Heathcote, adjusting his glasses firmly, +brought out from his pocket a black-covered book. Shuffling the leaves +till he found the desired place, he closed the book, slipping his finger +between the leaves; lowered it till it rested on his knee; and looked at +Sir William, who looked back at him a little challengingly. After a +moment of this scrutiny, the clergyman arose, went over beside his +friend, and laid a hand on Ware's shoulder. + +"Dear old man," he said, "I do want you to consider this thing very +seriously. You've always been a bit of a boy, you know. I, of course, +know the fancies you've petted about marriage--I always thought they +were merely fancies, or I should have tried harder to reason you out of +them. Now, is your mind absolutely, irrevocably, and after due +deliberation made up? By the bye, have you thought of--your mother?" + +Sir William Ware stood up, settling his coat about his fine spare +shoulders. + +"I have thought about everything--considered everything, George," he +said. "I know you mean well, old chap," Ware, in turn, put his hand on +his old schoolmate's shoulder, "but really, I don't care to discuss the +matter any further, even with you. Besides, all this is, as you must +understand, very embarrassing, for Miss Nixon." He turned to Daisy. +"Come, dear," he said. + +Daisy Nixon stood up; and, in the presence of two decorously +expressionless figures of the cafe staff--the manager and one of the +waiters--as witnesses, she was presently by brief and grave ritual +united in the bond of holy matrimony to Sir William Ware, Baronet. + +As the ceremony ended, and she stood awed and a little pale, Sir William +approached and, very softly and tenderly, put his hands upon her +shoulders and stooped to kiss her. He would have kissed her forehead; +but Daisy, lifting her face with an altogether sweet gesture of +yielding, gave him her lips. + +His countenance, upon which the girl's eyes had continued to look as it +approached near to hers for the caress, had not shown, in its nearness, +any grossness of line or texture, any twitching muscle betraying some +unexplainable dark trait. It was masculine, thoroughbred, honorable-eyed +and--clean. It was pleasant and thoughtful. Face and figure were full of +quiet mastery, yet had no outward suggestion nor pose nor plebeian +ostentation of "masterfulness." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +THE LADY OF THE HOUSE. + + +Daisy, in whose virile young body the habit of sound and healthy sleep +was too firmly established for even an event so epochal as that of the +previous evening to break her rest, awoke next morning, after a night of +undisturbed slumber. A little clock, sounding one of the hours with +chimes instead of the ordinary striking gong, drew her notice. The dial +registered nine. + +The first use she made of her opened eyes was to glance, with a thrill, +about that beautiful pink bedchamber; a door at one end showing a little +bathroom, tiled in clean and shining white, with folded towels on a +glass roller above the long porcelain tub. The morning sun came rosily +in through a curtained bow window, that had an alcoved seat piled +comfortably with cushions. A fresh draught coming from another quarter +drew her eyes toward an open way leading to a balcony, with straw +matting, a hammock, and comfortable-looking rattan rocking-chair. + +There was some uneasy feeling in the back, as it were, of Daisy's head. +For a moment or two, she could not understand it; then, as she found +herself instinctively glancing about the apartment to see if there were +any corners hard to reach with the broom, the solution of her sensation +of unrest came. It was nine o'clock and she was still in mental habit a +housemaid at the big Harrison villa. By this hour she should have had +all the windows in the sleeping-rooms opened and the blankets and sheets +turned back to air the beds. + +Daisy laughed to herself, and snuggled back luxuriously on the deep soft +pillows. Her mind resumed its office of recollection and ratchetted on +over the events of the night before. The evening had been spent, by the +rector's invitation, at his house, adjoining massive St. George's +church. There had been a pleasant little wedding "dinner," during which +Daisy had met a Mrs. Heathcote who had afterwards taken her off by +herself and asked her a good many blunt and, as Daisy thought, rather +intimate questions. She had met one Jessica Heathcote, too, a bird of +slightly different plumage--a companionable, back-slapping girl, who sat +on the edges of tables, or put her feet up on chairs like a man, while +she conversed; haw-hawed and whacked her knee when she heard a good +joke; and was in every way a person to banish misgiving and dolor and, +unaided, to make things hum. Jess was coming over to see her early +to-day. + +"You'll need a bit of help, you know, young-un," Jessica had predicted, +"when you face 'Grandmammah'. Yes--rathah!" + +After the little family wedding-supper at the Heathcotes', Daisy had +gone home with Sir William in the rector's car. Everybody at the Ware +house had retired when they reached it, for the hour was well on toward +midnight; and Sir William, after--as he jokingly put it, to +Daisy--"smuggling" her up to this apartment, had pushed her playfully +in, and with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered "pleasant dreams," +had considerately departed to his own rooms. + +The air that entered from the balcony was very inviting. Daisy could +hear the whisper of ivy-leaves. Flower-breath came up and in from some +hidden garden below. Fitful rattlings of a mower and the hiss from a +hose-nozzle sounded on the lawn. + +Daisy's garments--the white waist, the stuff skirt, the brown stockings, +one with an incipient hole in the heel--lay over the foot of the bed, +where she had yawningly cast them when she disrobed last midnight. They +looked very cheap and poor and out of place in this lovely room; and +Daisy pursed her lips a moment, and wrinkled her brows after a way she +had, as she regarded them. But presently, with that little shrug of the +shoulders that was her customary way of casting off trouble, she hopped +out of bed, dressed up in the old clothes--which somehow, as she +fastened them about her handily, conveyed a comfortable at-home +feeling--and, sticking a pin or two in her hair, stepped out on the +balcony. Leaning her elbows on the rail, she looked down and about. + +The Ware house and grounds were very different from the Harrison house +and grounds. No concrete in evidence here--no artificial terracing--no +stone garage. No evidence of money anywhere, except such as was +incidentally shown by possession, in the costly residential section of +the city, of these great broad grounds, with their natural swell and +slope; their big trees, between which here and there a little footpath +wandered wild; their plain white street-fence, twinkling afar through +the shrubbery. The house was frame, ivied from the ground almost to the +chimney-tops (ends of the green runners, as Daisy could see on an +adjoining gable, had climbed right up on the shingles), and with +verandahs everywhere. It was a villa for people who loved fresh air; +whereas the Harrison house, for all its massive and costly ostentation, +was no more airy than a prison. The object in the case of the latter was +display, the manifestation of the Ware place, good-mannered reserve, +with reasonable provision for comfort and health. + +The Harrison house was like a striped shirt, a broad-check suit, a +scarlet tie, with a blatbump figure housed in them, thumbs in +sleeve-holes, striding toe-out, gold chain-links dangling, diamond stud +flashing, tongue blathering, along the main street. The Ware place was +like one quietly-dressed and thoughtful, strolling in a grassy lane. + +Down below Daisy was a tuft of shrubbery, and behind this the +garden-hose was going merrily, with a sound like fat frying. A spray of +water came out from a point near the base of the foliage; and, where it +fell, the grass and the scattered coin-like yellow flowers glistened in +the morning sun. These soft-petalled wild-flowers were the only manner +in which gold or its effect was displayed on the Ware grounds. + +Presently the nozzle of the hose came into view, and behind it the +rubber tube emerged until Daisy could see a black-sleeved arm, with +white cuffs turned back at the wrist. Then, following the arm, there +passed into sight a statelily-moving, moderately stout, slightly stooped +old lady, with a white lace cap pinned on her gray hair. + +Lady Frances Ware, who, for more than three-score of her eighty-two +years--ever since, in fact, she had become a member of the Ware +household--had been an absolute ruler, possessed a face in which every +lineament was almost mesmerically masterful. Beneath the silvered hair +that on either side of its straight central parting, was drawn back +smoothly under her cap, a forehead, puckered in a Frontenac-like way +between the brows, sloped up and forward. Behind her glasses her eyes, +keen, dark-blue, and eagle-like, looked out level-irised. Her mouth was +bent down at the corner, and, beneath the underthrust lower lip, the +chin was gathered tensely. + +Evidently she had that uncanny faculty, peculiar to those long +habituated to directing a household, of instantly and by instinct +detecting the irregular; for she was barely in view, before her eyes +travelled up to the balcony where Daisy leaned. Lady Frances adjusted +her glasses; looked hard at the girl a moment; then turned off the +nozzle of the garden-hose, folded her hands across one another at a +point just below her waistband, and glanced off across the lawn toward +where the mower was clattering. + +"Will," she said, "come here--at once." + +The mower stopped obediently; and Daisy, who had drawn back a little, +saw the tall figure of Sir William come into view between the trees. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and his neatly-cropped head was bare. + +"Yes, mother," he said, as deferentially as though he were ten years +old. + +"Who," said Lady Frances, "is that--up there? Or do you know?" + +Sir William, as he glanced up to the balcony and saw Daisy, gave a +little start. Then he nodded and smiled at the girl; and, appearing to +square his shoulders a little, turned again to the old lady. + +"That, mother," he said, simply and with a dignity equal to Lady +Frances' own, "is--my wife." + +The dictatress of the Ware household lifted her eyes again, and regarded +Daisy for nearly three minutes. Then she faced her son, took off her +glasses, and looked at _him_ for a short period. As, at the conclusion +of this survey, she inhaled preparatory to speaking, Sir William had an +odd sensation of tingling down the backs of his legs, as in the days +when his mother had prepared to supplement reproof with liberal +administration of the tawze. + +"Have you gone quite daft?" she demanded; then, with an imperious motion +of her finger, she said, "Now, exactly what do you mean by this, Will? +If you were not speaking seriously, I may tell you at once that I wish +no trifling on such a subject. Now, answer me immediately." + +"Well," responded Sir William, a little lamely, "we were married last +night, mother--that's all. I don't know that there is much more I can +say." + +"I differ from you on that point," Lady Frances' voice was formal; "I +think that there is a very great deal more to be said. I take it for +granted, however, that in a man of your years, this step was not +necessary, or considered so, because of previous unwise conduct. Where +did this affair take place?" + +"In the Cumberland Cafe," Sir William said, redly as a lad. + +"The Cumberland Cafe!" The old lady repeated the words slowly and with +stress. "Will, I think you should be in a sanitarium--I do, really. Now, +go up and bring that young woman downstairs at once. Meet me in the +library with her. To say that I am astounded, and disappointed in you, +would be to put it in the mildest possible way--the mildest possible +way!" + +When Sir William, his arm through Daisy's, entered the long +drawing-room, Lady Frances had taken a seat near the window. The baronet +led the girl over. + +"This," he said, "is Daisy, mother. Dear--my mother." + +"How do you do," said Lady Frances Ware, evenly. "Sit down." The words +were plain, but without any inflection to make Daisy feel ill at ease. +Lady Frances Ware, no matter what the provocation, never descended to +the plebeian level of scolding or bullying. + +As the girl took the high-backed chair by the window, a puff of the +morning breeze bulged the great lace curtain, laying a fold of it across +her knee. Bending forward to release the curtain, Daisy, in the +necessary glance toward her coarse black skirt, became for the first +time acutely conscious of her clothes. She had always moved in circles +where people thought of clothes as entirely indexing the person. If she +had had on a fine dress at that moment, Daisy could have faced a queen +unabashed. + +But Lady Frances never even glanced toward her new-made +daughter-in-law's dress. She was concerned completely with the girl's +face. Without any ostentatious flourish of lorgnette, but simply and +quietly and thoroughly, she studied it. + +"You have a frank expression, at any rate," she said, half to herself; +then, more directly, she added, "How old are you?" + +"Seventeen past," said Daisy, as though to a schoolmistress. + +"Ah!" said Lady Frances. "Very young indeed to be away from home. But +the viewpoint as to that is, I have noticed, different in this country. +Where are your parents?" + +"At--at home," said Daisy, a little confusedly. She wanted to avoid, for +the present at least, explaining that she had run away from home. + +"Quite so," commented the old lady, a little dryly; "and where is your +home?" + +"Out in the country--on a farm." + +Lady Frances seemed relieved. "That is very satisfactory," she said, +"highly so. There are--possibilities--in young people who have been +brought up out of contact with the city. And you are only--how old?" + +"Seventeen, ma'am," Daisy repeated. + +"You must not, of course, say 'ma'am'. But externals can be attended to +gradually. Do you care for your--for my son?" + +"I guess so," said Daisy. + +Lady Frances, for an instant, looked at her so freezingly that Daisy +moved her knees uncomfortably. + +"That answer," said the old gentlewoman, "pleases me less than anything +you have said, up to this point. I had hoped to find more +enthusiasm--much more enthusiasm. In fact, it will be quite necessary to +convince me that you are frankly enthusiastic in this matter before we +shall get along at all." + +"Daisy," put in Sir William, shrewdly, "is non-committal by nature, +mother. You yourself know that you prefer that to evasiveness or +untruthfulness. We shall be able to reassure you...." + +"I shall most decidedly expect to be reassured," said Lady Frances Ware. +She rose energetically to her feet. + +"You may go now," she said, glancing in Daisy's direction. "Return to +your room until I have Ada look you up something to put on. Will, I +should like to see you again before you go downtown." + +With these words, Lady Frances Ware returned to her duties among the +flowers and hedges and shrubbery, in the fresh air that had brought her +to past fourscore with full retention of middle-aged vigor in faculty +and body. As she passed down the outer hall, she instructed the maid as +to Daisy's attire. + +"I think we shall go along very finely, dear," Sir William said as he +went upstairs with an arm about Daisy's shoulder. "Now, as soon as Ada +is through with you, I shall take you out for a spin--just our two +selves. Can you drive a motor? No--then we'll have a lesson this very +morning. It will be fine sport.... And, by the way, talking of 'going +out' suggests going away. Where shall we go, for a bit of a wedding +trip?" + +"No place--not just now," Daisy looked up, then set her head on one +side, put a finger under Sir William's lapel, and dropped her lashes, "I +tell you what I _would_ like to do, though, sir." + +"Not 'sir'," put in Ware. "Say 'Will'. And don't flirt, even with your +husband. In the first place, it's bad form; in the second place, I won't +have it. Now, what's this you would like to do?" + +"I would like," said Daisy, "to go over to Harrisons' for dinner, on +Sunday, with you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +TAKING A REST. + + +But there was no "company" invited to the Harrisons' on the following +Sunday. + +On the preceding Thursday, which was just two days after the evening she +was married, Daisy had an impulse to go and see Jean. By arrangement +with the Heathcotes, no notice of the wedding had been allowed to get to +the papers; and when Daisy, in a white dress, popped in through the +kitchen door of the Harrison house on Thursday afternoon, all Jean knew +was that she had mysteriously slipped out on Tuesday evening and had not +been seen since. + +Daisy bounced over to hug her; but the honest Scot drew herself up +sternly, and put out a hand. + +"It's no like ye," she said, "to traipze oot like yon, an' gie the good +leddy no notice--and her on the broad of her back now, at death's door, +too. I ha' made the beds mysel' and sweepit up, forbye my ain work, for +twa fu' days now, to save her the worry of havin' a stranger aboot, in +her last hours." + +"Last hours!" exclaimed Daisy, her breath catching, in the impulsive +wave of self-reproach that swept over her, "Is she--dying, then, +Jeanie? Why, I--" + +"Ay," Jean set her great knuckles against her hip as she stirred the +broth she was making for the sickroom; "ye reck of naebody so long as ye +can please yersel', an gang oot an' in, and come an' go, withoot a 'by +your leave' tae ony person.... An' how come ye tae be here, all fettled +up, in the middle of the afternoon? Are ye no workin'? An' if no, what +are ye daein'? Say!" Jean turned, gripped Daisy by the shoulders +suddenly and hard, and studied her with brows knit and eyes ablaze, +"ye'll answer me _that_ this minute--what are ye daein' for your bed an' +board? If all's no richt, man! I'll tur-rn ye across my knee an' skelp +ye, like a bairn! I'll save ye from the street, or I'll no leave a whole +inch o' hide on your back!" + +"Is the Missis dying?" Daisy repeated, tears now in her eyes. + +"Ay," said Jean, shaking her, "an' all the greetin' in the warld'll no +save her the now. But come! Aboot yersel'! Oot wi't, I say!" + +"Oh, I'm all right, Jean," said Daisy, still thinking about Lady +Harrison, "I'm married.... Say, can I go upstairs with you, when you +take up her broth, and see her?" + +"Married!" Jean sat, almost stumbled, into a chair behind her. In this +position, she stared at Daisy for a moment; then murmured, half, as it +were, to herself, "Lassie, lassie! ye're a mystery to me. I absolutely +gie ye up, as I wad a conundrum book wi' no key. Wha's the lad? Yon +jitney man?" + +"No." Daisy dimpled a little. + +"No?" Jean, her elbow on the side-table, leaned forward with renewed +interest; "I thocht, now, it could be nane other than Curly Head Jamie. +Well, then, ye've no done the impossible, I take it, and hookit Nicky +Cluett, have ye? Man! if ye ha' got him, yon's a laddie will soon gie ye +your fine hoose an' motor-car. He's drawin' in the siller with a +hand-rake, like, these days." + +"It's not Nicky," said Daisy, smoothing out her sash and putting her +head a little on one side. + +"Weel, ye micht have set your cap for him, onyway," Jean commented, as +she reached over and gave the broth a little stir to keep it from +burning; "Baby Jock tells me it's common talk ye made a hit wi' Nick, +you nicht at the dance. Wha did ye tak', then, if it wasna Nick? Oot +wi't. Ye've fair got me on pins an' needles. Do I ken him?" + +"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, protracting her mystery with a teasing +delight; "may be you do. Yes, I think you know him. It's-- it's--" Daisy +leaned over, and said the name dramatically, right in Jean's ear. + +The Scotswoman looked at her hard: sternness returning to every +feature. + +"I doubt ye been misconductin' yersel' after all," she said, levelly and +coldly, "I kenned it when ye cm' in through yon door. Tellin' me a pack +o' lies'll no improve matters--" + +"I'm telling you the truth," Daisy asseverated, warmly, "I didn't think +you'd go and insult me, Jean!" + +The other eyed her doubtfully. "I'd fair loe tae believe ye, lassie," +she breathed, "but the thing's impossible. It sounds like a story out of +a book. Why, besides his money an' his social position, he's sixty years +old, if he's a day--an' forbye, he's an ingrown bachelor. He'd ha' +wedded long or now, if it had been in him to marry. He--he hasna offered +to keep ye--that's not what ye mean, is it? But, no--I ken fine he +wouldna dae that. He's an honorable man, Sir William Ware." + +Daisy regarded Jean a second or two; then went over, sat plumply down on +the elder woman's knee, and put an arm about her neck. + +"Listen", she said, "and I'll tell you all about it, right from the +start-off, when I left here Tuesday evening." And therewith Daisy did +so. By the time she had finished, Jean's arms were about her waist, and +penitence blended with the amazed, generous, unenvying delight that +radiated from the Scotswoman's harsh-lined but kindly-expressioned +face. + +"Forgie me, bairnie," she said, as she laid her great palm around the +girl's cheek; "but I--I--why, I juist canna find the words tae say what +I think. I'm fair--fair tongue-tied. Fast married--and to a laird o' +lairds! Ey, ye bonnie wee thing, ye, bide till I buss ye," and the great +arms, tightening about Daisy's waist, hugged her ecstatically. Then Jean +set her free, rose up with vigor, and reached down a bowl, spoon and +plate of crackers. + +"Come!" she exclaimed, as she turned out the gas-jet under the broth, +poured the liquid into the bowl, and went to the cupboard for a +dessert-spoon; "if the good leddy's conscious an' no in ane of her bad +spells, we'll tell her the news. A bittie o' gossip like yon's better +than physic or food to a sick wuman.... By the bye, here's a letter cam' +for ye yesterday. Open it an' read it, if ye like, while the broth's +coolin'." + +The letter was from Mrs. Lovina Nixon, in answer to Daisy's first letter +home, written under a daughterly impulse during one of Jean's "nights +out", when Daisy was alone in the big Harrison kitchen. In her letter, +the girl had asked for forgiveness and had hoped that "You and Pa are +getting along all right, and that crops are looking good." + +Mrs. Lovina's answer was somewhat grim and ominous. "I suppose," she +wrote, "you think yourself mighty smart, taking off like that. I suppose +you think it was kind of respectable, eh, to go away like you done, +alone with a feller. I suppose you reckon your going to have high jinks +in town there while me and your Pa milks all them cows, well you ain't. +Your not of age yet understand, and your pa and me is coming right into +the city to get you, one of these days and fetch you strait home, and if +you don't get one tanning from your pa that youl remember all your days, +my name aint lovina janet nixon, so mind." + +"Bad news, bairnie?" Jean enquired; as Daisy, sobered not so much by the +letter as by momentary recollection of her past, stared down at the +floor in a grave, pondering way. + +"Oh--no," Daisy folded up the letter and slipped it into the bosom of +her dress, "not exactly. Is the broth cool now, Jean?" + +"Ay," said Jean, picking up the bowl and the plate of crackers; "Come +on. The Mistress is lyin' in Sir Thomas' room. I had him move his ugly +carcass out of it, because it's the best-ventilated room in the +hoose--the best o' the worst, like. He didna object, at least naething +to speak of. He kenned fine I'd have taken the besom tae him without +much encouragin'.... Ey, what d'ye think, now, I caught him sayin' tae +her, one time when I came in to red up the room. He was standin' by the +bedside, with his hands in his pockets and his feet spraddled out, in +yon way he has. + +"'We-ell, Marth',' he oppens up, in his big healthy blat, 'har yuh +feelin'? Uh?'. + +"'Poorly, Tom, very poorly,' says the good leddy--puir soul!--in a +faint-like voice. + +"'Thaat's ba-ad,' he says, suckin' his teeth like somebody chirpin' tae +a pair o' horses, 'but anyway, I guess, Marth', it's time you was +restin' under the sod. You've done your share o' this world's toughin' +it. You've aimed the right to rest, if anybody hezz. Ever'thin' wurks +furr th' best. Y'see that, don't yuh, Marth'-girl? Uh?' + +"Juist then I cam up and gied him a push from behind. Ey, a bonny push! +'Get oot!' I says, chokin'-like. I was sae blind mad, I could ha' +stranglit yon man, then and there, so I could. Weel, he went!" + +The great muscles on Jean's arms were knotted into ribs and ridges like +a man's; her chin was thrust out; her eyes were narrowed into shining +slits. Her whole strong frame seemed to become a banked fire of +indignation, as memory recalled that scene in the sickroom. + +The door of Lady Harrison's room was slightly open as the two reached +it. They were barely inside the chamber, when Jean, with an exclamation +thrust the broth and crackers down on a side-table and rushed over to +the bed. + +Daisy, following quickly, saw the Scotswoman, after glancing closely at +the half-open eyes and laying her ear to the gaunt sunken chest, hastily +remove the pillows from under Lady Martha Harrison's head, lay the scalp +levelly on the mattress, and press down the eyelids with her fingers. + +"Ey, puir, puir leddy," Jean, keeping finger and thumb on the dead +eyelids, turned toward Daisy with two tear-balls bowling down the rugged +field of her face; "she's gone, she's gone. Ey, gone off all her +lone--died as she lived, bairnie--while we're crackin' awa careless-like +down in yon kitchen. Stane deid, an' nigh stark against the layin'-oot." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +A RAINCLOUD. + + +"When a chap has a bit of a brain," said a voice, speaking from behind a +crinkled newspaper that was doing temporary service as a fan, "and a +habit of seeing rather far into things, if you know what I mean--it's +_such_ a jolly nuisance that he can't get it before the public without +writing it down. Isn't it, rather, don't you think, Lady Ware?" + +"I suppose it rather must be, kind of," said Daisy, who, in a smart +white skirt and blouse, and canvas shoes, occupied the other end of the +tennis-court bench on the Wares' lawn, "but you should worry about that, +Arthur. The public has enough books to read anyway." + +"Not of the kind I should write, they haven't," declared Lord Arthur +Milcourt, raising toward a green bough above them the ingenuous face of +twenty-one; "I say, can you type a bit?" + +"What?" Daisy demanded, wrinkling her brows at the speaker in a comical +way; "oh, you mean, run a typewriter. No." + +"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will +discovered--er--met you? And didn't you run--that is, operate--a typing +machine there?" + +"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and +I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay." + +"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer +sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a +moment. + +Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench. + +"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning +on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay +here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or +something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for +something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is--some of +them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars." + +"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out +luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you, +there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting. +Baldheaded men! You _are_ a rum one." + +"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly; +"who was your servant this time last year?" + +"Ah--sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the words were apologetic, but the +tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to +the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve, +but it's _wickid_--poor old Will!" + +Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She +did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh +and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when +she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped +about now with a casual and proprietary air--turning the shower on in +the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with +young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")--laying out a +simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe--shaking out a +folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end +of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring. +But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep +on in the same way. + +Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out +through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a +leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at +the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her +face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her modiste had corseted +her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not +increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk +stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her +short neat walking-skirt. + +She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line +crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon +"off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage +downtown. + +Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter +from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any +further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her +maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note, +which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of +John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability, +actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking +her back to the farm. + +She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching +this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day. + +Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and +stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed +in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina Nixon; the postmark +showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to +one of the side-tables and opened it. + +"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I +said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the +like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we +wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the +train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police +onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of +your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind, +itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to +do." + +Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the +letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon! + +When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled +the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung +javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she +leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in +her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had +been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy +clouds had come up and that, already, there showed here and there on +the glass, the splash of a raindrop. + +As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware +gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy +decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis +which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the +postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of +the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to +step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney +drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner +of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky" +hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little +to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked +soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head +passenger?" + +"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily +forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the +tonneau door. + +"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly, +then dropped them and put her head on one side. + +"You ken sit in front if you so prefer, lady," Jimmy answered, with +emphasis of politeness, as he closed the tonneau again, and opened the +fore-door. Daisy had no sooner hopped in and seated herself than the +rain came on heavily. Jimmy, reaching up, let down the storm-curtains on +both sides and buttoned them fast before he started the car. + +"Thanks so much, chauffeur," acknowledged Daisy, smiling up sidewise as +she mimicked his manner. + +"Don't mention it, madam," deprecated Jimmy Knight, throwing in his +clutch. The car skidded slightly on the arch of the pavement, but ran +smooth and straight, as the engine, in the street-centre, picked up +speed. Jimmy's gloved finger mechanically "gave her gas" or advanced the +spark, as occasion required. Outside, the rain poured steadily, misting +the mica peep-holes in the storm-curtains and half-blinding the +windshield. The car stopped frequently for additional passengers; and +soon the tonneau was filled with dour figures in wet raincoats that +rustled shrilly as the owners moved, watching in a fidget for home +streets. + +Said one of the passengers, a girl, as, leaning back in her seat after +glancing around the edge of the storm-curtain, her eyes fell on Daisy's +fashionably-clad figure: + +"Some swell jane in the front seat with the driver, Lil." + +The remark was made with unmannerly distinctness; and the speaker's +companion, another girl of the same commonplace city type, made answer, +also in a tone purposely raised to reach Daisy's ear: + +"Oh, well, we all know what them dolled-up kind is." + +"Hey!" Jimmy Knight's head jerked around, and a glinting iris swam into +that corner of his eye-socket next the last speaker, "do you skirts want +to get out o' this car head-first? If not, shut up!" + +The second girl looked at the first one. + +"Well, the _very_ idea!" she said audibly, after a second or two. + +"The idosity of him!" commented Girl Number One, also in a loud tone; +"some friend, I guess. They all have their friends." + +Jimmy turned toward the curb, and threw on the brake. As the car skidded +to a standstill, he banged open the tonneau door. + +"Get out!" he said. "Go on--the both of you! Get to hell out of here! +Keep your darned fares." + +There was that in Jimmy's tone and look which caused the two to act +promptly. + +"Some gentleman!" remarked Girl Number Two, as she descended on the wet +street. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter," fired back Number One, as they walked away, +heads up, "we live on the next street, anyway." + +"That's ten cents I owe you," said Daisy to Jimmy Knight, dimpling. + +Jimmy did not answer--at least, not in words. He put his lips together, +slammed home the clutch and the car leaped forward. + +By the end of another ten minutes the last two of the passengers in the +back portion of the jitney had reached their home corner, and the car +was empty except for Daisy and Jimmy. + +"I'll take y' home, lady," he said, brusquely; "no coat--get wet to the +skin--this here rain." + +"Thank you," aped Daisy, formally. Then she put her chin in the air, and +silence reigned. + +"What _you_ mad at?" came Jimmy's voice, presently. "Who said they +didn't 'feel like' marryin', and then went straight off and married +money? Not me. You ain't got a thing in the world to be sore at: I have, +an' I'm darned good and sore. I didn't think it was in you, Kid--honest, +I didn't.... Here we are at your door. Get out! don't set there, with +the servants maybe lookin' out of the windows." + +Daisy's face was red as she dismounted. She made a step away, then came +back. + +"I'm--I'm--", she began, the color on her cheeks deepening. + +"Yes, you are," said Jimmy Knight, dryly, "good an' plenty. No use o' +standin' there and chewin' the fat now. Get into the house, and get them +wet duds off. You give me a pain, you do!" + +The car, with a scornful roar, shot off along the driveway of the Ware +grounds, and Daisy was alone. Presently something rolled down her cheek +and ran into the corner of her mouth. It had a salt taste. It was a +tear. + +"Some folk wad still be findin' something tae greet about, even if they +had the warld with a wire dike aboot it," remarked Jean, who was now +chief (under Lady Frances, of course) in the Ware kitchen; regarding +Daisy in her keen and kind scrutinizing way, as the latter, entering the +room, sat down moodily in a chair, dropped her hands into her lap, and +stared before her with pensive wet lashes lowered; "Man! lassie, but +ye're ill tae suit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE BLEAK TWO. + + +The November draught swept frostily down from the tracks to the station +subway where Daisy, in her smart furs, stood, some three months later, +waiting for the passengers from the train which had just roared into the +great iron-ceiled shed overhead. She could not help thinking of the day +when, gazing wonderingly about her, she had trotted alongside the +self-assured and patronising Fred Beatty through this very +way--forgetting, on that occasion, her travel-soiled blouse, in her +wonder and rapture as the city rose about her like a warm sun-glowing +tide. Only six months ago! + +As the passengers from the newly-arrived train commenced to file along +the corridor, Daisy, watching from her place in line, found her interest +centred almost as much in looking for some forlorn and eager little +person like that self of her present memory, as in "keeping her eye +peeled" (in accordance with the request contained in a recently-received +letter) for John and Lovina Nixon. But the travellers on this train were +nearly all either blase souls of the "drummer" type, who have no wonder +left for anything beneath the sun, or badger-gray country people who +looked as though they were on a business trip and were doing mental +arithmetic relating to hotel-bills as they stumped along. All bored, +dull, worried or indifferent. No gay, no dancing, no holiday souls in +the whole drab-faced file--at almost the end of which came stony-faced +John Nixon with his square beard, dingy skin, harshly-drawn brows and +mouth, and small suspicious eyes; and thin, stooped, fault-finding +Lovina, with her sharp nose, her glance of ill-surmise, and bonnet +pinned teeteringly on her top-knot. + +Recollection blew on Daisy like a cold wave with her first view of them; +but the feeling passed, and she found herself waiting mischievously to +see if they would recognize her. + +John Nixon passed dourly on; but Lovina's hawklike eyes, as she drew +opposite to where Daisy stood, found her daughter instantly. + +"Well, mother," Daisy drew her cape of sables about her shoulders and, +moulding her features into a welcoming smile--which, when facing Lovina +Nixon, required an effort--stepped forward. + +The mother's chin came out. Her eyes drew to button-like points. There +was nothing maternal about the look. It was merely a glance which +bespoke ill-expectation gratified. + +"John!" she chirped, to the stepfather, who had meandered on, "here!" + +John Nixon turned and came back. His brows knitted as he glanced from +his wife to the girl in her splendid furs; then, as his eyes travelled +to Daisy's face, he gave vent to an expression which sounded like, +"Ur-rh!" + +"Look at this!" said Lovina Nixon; catching an end of the sable cape, +holding it up for her husband's scrutiny, and then tossing it from her +and making a motion of dusting off her hands; "You know what that means, +I s'pose, John?" + +"Ay," said John Nixon, "ay-hay." + +"Disgraced!" said Lovina Nixon; "Disgraced! Oh, you--you thing! Just +wait till I get you home! Just you wait!" + +Daisy's cheeks warmed at this. But, a moment after, her indignation +changed to an impulse of roguery: she would let these two, for the +present, believe the things they thought! + +"I s'pose you can show us a respectable hotel," said her mother. "But +remember--you don't get out of my sight again. You stay right with me in +the hotel, till we leave town. Carry this valise for me." + +Daisy dimpled with devilment as she obeyed this refreshingly familiar +instruction; and, accentuating her figure-lines as she walked, for the +especial benefit of the furtively-watching couple, she led the way to +where Tim Davitt, the Wares' chauffeur, waited outside the depot with +the limousine. + +"What's this?" demanded Lovina Nixon, surveying the vehicle, "a livery +rig?" + +"Yes, mother," said Daisy, smiling aside at the chauffeur, as Davitt, +touching his hat, held the door open. The mother, knocking her bonnet +askew against the top of the car, blundered to the farther end of a +seat. John Nixon lumbered in after her. Then Daisy, after a low-toned +"Home, Timmy," hopped in and snuggled mischievously against her +stepfather, who was in the centre of the seat. + +"Don't ye be 'fraid," he leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, in her +ear, "I'll not let yur Moh whup ye." + +Turning street-corners smoothly and swiftly, the limousine soon reached +the home grounds and was brought by Tim Davitt, deftest of chauffeurs, +to a soft gliding halt before the long front veranda of the Ware house. + +"Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and +her husband followed Daisy up the steps. + +"Oh--not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered +her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, +polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on the right led into the +library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in +the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady +Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the +supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office. + +"Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter +suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive +volume with brass binding and buckle. + +"Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer +expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the +sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing +as live fire. + +Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; +and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record +of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +THE CHOICE OF THE DRAY. + + +Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon. + +As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him, +Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a +chair and cocked _his_ feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon +might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only +one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace, +Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that +locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware; +but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned, +in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling +with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his +chair. + +As far, however, as putting Nixon at his ease was concerned, Sir William +need not have troubled. It was an oft-enunciated maxim of John Nixon's +that whatever he did was right, if he did it. "Do's you wanter," was the +way Nixon put it; "dun't ast nobuddy fur nawthun." + +Presently, noting that the moistened area in front of the fireplace +threatened to overflow and inundate the flooring about the tiles, Sir +William jumped up, as though with a sudden inspiration and said, smiting +Nixon playfully on his tree-stump shoulder: + +"Take you on at billiards upstairs, old chap!" + +"Ur-rh?" Another salivation dampened the tiling as Nixon twisted his +stocky torso about. + +"I was about to say," Sir William pursued--having gathered from his +guest's tone and attitude that John Nixon did not know anything about +playing billiards--"that I would take you on at a game of billiards, +only it's so jolly uninteresting. Shall we stroll out and see the deer?" + +"Ain't interested in deers," said Nixon, "'n I wun't budge a step to see +nawthun I dun't want for to see. Never _would_." + +"You're jolly well right," agreed Sir William; "I can thoroughly +sympathize with you, Nixon, old man.... Silly things, deer, after +all--aren't they?" + +"I tell you, though," Nixon arose, grunted, stretched, scratched, shook +his legs, and, with a certain awesome gapping sound and a gust of fetid +breath, yawned in his host's face, "what I _will_ do, English. Take me +somewhurs whurr I ken git a schooner o' beer--thuh drinks on you, mind, +fur I ain't got a cent to spare--an' I'll go along, every steppuh the +way. How des that ketch you?" + +"Happy thought!" Sir William clapped his guest heartily on the back. +"Bright idea! Nixon, you're a man after my own heart. Half a jiff, till +I bring our hats and coats." + +The two left the house by the side door; but, as they reached the gate +of the grounds, Sir William on the excuse that he had forgotten his +pocket-book, requested Nixon to walk on slowly, and himself hurried back +to the house. + +"Was you tannin' thuh leather furr a new bill-book, er whutt?" demanded +John Nixon, testily, as his host, after quite a lapse of time, rejoined +him. + +"I really must apologise, old chap--I really must. Shan't let it occur +again," Sir William said, good-humoredly. He could not very well tell +Nixon that he had spent the interval in personally cleaning up with +pieces of newspaper the mess by the fireplace, for fear Lady Frances +should happen in and see it while they were away. + +Upstairs, in Lady Frances' own sitting-room--a big, airy apartment, in +which, on quiet afternoons, she read or sewed or knitted, or napped in +the old arm-chair she had brought with her from overseas--the venerable +lady of the house had set herself the task of entertaining the mother of +her son's wife. + +"Ineffably, innately common and nasty-natured," had been her inward +pronouncement when first she faced Lovina Nixon; but there had been no +outward sign, although one who knew the old gentlewoman's ways might +have discerned a more careful and precise politeness in her attitude. +Now, on this afternoon of the last day of the Nixons' stay, which had +endured, for what Lady Frances had termed, in a matin soliloquy, "three +dreadful days", she had steeled herself to the duty of making the time +pass agreeably until evening and train-time should bring deliverance. + +Ada, the maid, had brought the tea-urn and "curate"; and now the three +women--Lady Frances in her big chair; Mrs. John Nixon dangling one of +the fine china tea-cups, which she had drained at a draught, from her +forefinger, and eating cake with her elbow on the table and the cake +scattering crumbs as she gesticulated with the hand that held it; and +Daisy holding a skein of yarn, from which Lady Frances was winding a +ball--sat ill-assorted in the large room. + +"Do have some more tea, Mrs. Nixon, won't you?" invited Lady Frances, +eyeing the suspended teacup nervously. "Daisy, dear, give your mother +some more tea." + +But, as Mrs. Nixon had already had three cups, the urn was empty. Daisy +hopped up and carried the shapely silver receptacle to the kitchen, to +get some more hot water from Jean's kettle. As the door closed after her +daughter, Mrs. Lovina Nixon leaned over toward Lady Frances with a +greenish light in her eyes. + +"I s'pose it ain't no use o' tellin' you, Mam, now," she said; "I mean, +now that your son's tight married to her and can't get loose, that yen +girl run away from us. Yes, sir--run away with a feller. Never seen +nawthun like it in all m' born days. Never did." And Mrs. Lovina +nid-nodded and sowed caraway seed on the carpet in showers as she +vibrated the cake. + +"Just like'r, though," she supplemented, after a moment, "so it was. +'Xpected somethin' like it, all along. Warn't s'prised one iota." + +"Your daughter," Lady Frances said--very slowly, and governing her voice +with difficulty--"has quite voluntarily told us all the circumstances +you mention. I--I really do not think," the old gentlewoman could barely +keep the frost out of her tone, "that we should discuss her in her +absence. I really don't think we should." + +"Oh, well," Mrs. John Nixon's radial arm described a flying circle of +cake-crumbs about her chair as she indicated, with a sweeping gesture, +that she washed her hands of the matter, "if you're satisfied, we are." + +"Daisy," Lady Frances said, levelly, "has proved a very fine and frank +and sweet young woman. Her adaptability, too, has been most +satisfactory. I have become very much attached to her--and I really +cannot listen, nor will I listen, to anything against my son's wife." + +"Oh, all right, all--right," Lovina Nixon smacked her cup down. "I +wish't you'd had a siege of her like I've had, so I do. You'd talk +different." + +"I think," Lady Frances Ware rose out of her chair with remarkable vigor +for eighty-two, "that you have probably taken a wrong course with +her--in fact, I feel quite sure you must have taken a wrong course with +her. Now, as I proposed before, we will change the subject. Would you +care to go for a motor ride? I shall tell Davitt, the chauffeur, to have +you back here in time for a leisurely and comfortable meal before your +train." + +Mrs. Lovina Nixon shrugged. "Might's well do that as anything else, I +s'pose." + +Lady Frances rang the bell. "Telephone Davitt," she said, to Ada the +maid, "to bring around the larger car. Then tell Lady Ware her mother +would like to do a little shopping, and wishes her to go as well. Take +my hand-bag with you, and tell Lady Ware she may use what money she +likes from my purse, if she is short." + +A quarter of an hour later, Lady Frances, having seen the motor car off +down the drive, returned to her sanctum, sat down quietly in her big +chair, and took up her sewing. Presently, however, her needle paused, +and she found herself, after a habit she had, drifting off into +half-audible soliloquy. + +"William said," she murmured musingly, "that he thought the man a fair +masculine type, who might have developed well, with proper opportunity. +But that woman! Thoroughly nasty, ingrate, underhand. An improvement in +manners would only be a hopelessly inadequate veneer. A nature such as +she has would not be mended by the opportunities of three generations +and more. I do hope William does _not_ intend to take those people in +tow, for I am really not equal to it." + +A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later, +pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her +lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the +hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked +down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a +crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance. + +Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an +unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"--a word that with him, +meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line--and had, in spite of +Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits: +dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon +him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying +for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of +buying any more for him. + +"You _are_ rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken +only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at +last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It +was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware +had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last +half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the +latter had not received so much as a scratch. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +JOHN NIXON'S INVITATION. + + +"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool +beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a +position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has +jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am +what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss--aren't you +sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering +idiot." + +"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?" + +"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded +the girl with a bright and tender approval. + +"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the +bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice." + +"For the third and last time--no!" Sir William responded, flipping her +ear; "this ice is cold enough: it has clotted every vein in my bally +forehead. I say, kitten, isn't that somebody knocking?" + +The knock which sounded on the door--that of the small sitting-room of +Sir William's bedroom suite--was clumsily-knuckled and hesitating. It +sounded once, audibly--then a second time, feebly--and, after the second +knock, the scuffle of a heavy foot receding indicated that the knocker +was going away without entering. Daisy went quickly and opened the door. + +"Come on, Dad," she said. + +Nixon stopped in the hall, his back half-turned, and spoke to his +foster-daughter over-shoulder. + +"You go on about your business a while," he said, gruffly, "I want to +talk to the boss." + +Ware, hearing this dialogue from his chair, smiled queerly to himself. + +"Right-O," he called, "run along, my dear, for a jiffy; see if Mother +has any messages for us. Come on, Nixon, old chap!" + +Reddening in an odd way at the cordial tone, John Nixon, his hands +hanging awkwardly and his beard canted aside in a sheepish attitude, +came in, pushing the door shut behind him. He lowered himself into the +nearest chair. + +"How are _you_?" said Sir William, humorously and companionably, "I +say--that _was_ a jolly cataclysm! Lucky to get off with our lives, +what?" Nixon, sheepish but still characteristically blunt, came straight +to his point. + +"I wouldn't have got off with no life," he said, "if you hadn't slung +me out o' the way and got stepped on yourself." + +"Rubbish!" said Ware, briefly; "all the same, it's good of you to put it +that way, old chap. Makes me feel less mortified at my stupidity in +standing there like a post and getting knocked down. Let's jolly well +talk of something else." + +John Nixon's head came up and back. He put his right hand down on his +knee-cap with a slap that could be heard across the room. + +"Don't you go tryin' for to head me off, English," he said, "I done +wrong and I'm a-goin' to own up to it. Here, I been walkin' around your +nice house here, a-spittin' all over the floor as if it was a hotel--it +kind of seems like that to me, because we don't sling on no style out +west here--and all because I never did like an Englishman. They always +make me contrairy. When I'm with an Englishman, I talk rough and go +bullin' around, just to be the opposite to what I think he is--" + +Sir William leaned out over the arm of his chair and extended his +uninjured hand toward Nixon. + +"Put her there, as you say in Canada," he said, beamingly, "Nixon, +you're a brick. And if we English make you Canadians feel contrary, I'll +admit we bring it on ourselves. We, too, are a contrary people; and the +more you try to put on this roughness of manner, which is not your own, +the more we try to put on this finicky niceness, which so rubs you the +wrong way. Just because we desire to rub you the wrong way. And so we +see-saw, back and forth, until eventually we come to fisticuffs, or +worse. Nixon, I believe you've hit the peg on which hangs the whole +difficulty between England and Canada. Now that we two understand each +other, let's set an example to our peoples: let's be natural. Put her +there, I say." + +John Nixon put her there, and the two shook hands--an inter-imperial +handshake. + +"How would you like for to come out to my place a while, English?" he +said, after a moment. "As I said, we don't sling on no style nor +nothin', but we never know what it is to go hungry. The roof don't let +in no rain, neither; and you can't sleep on nothin' more comfortable +than a bedtick stuffed with prairie hay." + +"Ripping!" Sir William, "knocked about" as he was, all but hoisted +himself to his feet in his enthusiasm; "I say, Nixon, when shall we +start?" + +"Next train, if you say so. Anyway," John Nixon rubbed an eyebrow with +his gray-bristled forefinger, "I'm worryin' about the stock, and I want +to get back home. Got any drinkin-water around, English?" + +Sir William was about to touch the bell, when Nixon, glancing toward the +bathroom, saw basin, tap and tumbler. + +"Don't ring, for me," he said, getting up, "I can work the fasset +myself, without no help botherin' around." + +As his guest returned from the bathroom, sweeping the water-drops from +his beard by drawing his hand down over it, Sir William said: + +"Will you be offended if I ask you a question--a straight +question--Nixon, old chap?" + +"You couldn't offend me now, English," said John Nixon, "anyhow straight +questions goes, between us, after this. That's our agreement, ain't it?" + +"That's it, exactly," said Ware, "so my question is this: Why do you +persist in calling me 'English'? It sounds a bit like some sort of an +imputation. Do you see my point?" + +"I don't foller you," said John Nixon, as he laid his hand on the +door-knob; "the only reason I call you 'English' is because your reel +name keeps slippin' my mind." + +"It shouldn't be hard to remember," said Ware. + +"What is it?" queried Nixon. + +"To you, henceforth," said the baronet, "it is--Bill." + +"Yes, that's you, all over again," said Lovina Nixon, late that evening, +as she thrust into her iron-gray hair two or three matutinal hairpins, +in places where they would not jab her, and clambered into bed, "astin' +these tony English people out to the farm, to turn up their noses at +everything. Well, Daise'll have to look after them, for I got enough to +do with the housework and the milkin'. Is the old woman coming along, +too?" + +John Nixon yawned, turned his back to her, and wrapped around himself +two-thirds of the bed-clothes. + +"You go on to sleep," he said, "you'll feel better in the mornin'." + +Lovina, however, continued on rebelliously, although the rest of her +grumbling was sunk to a smothered monotone by her nightly habit of +sleeping with the blankets over her head; but her last thought before +she dropped off to sleep was that now at last she would have a chance to +bring from the back of the farmhouse cupboard the "weddin' set" of neat +china that had been waiting there during nearly a quarter of a century +for an appropriate guest. + +"No, I don't think I shall go, William," said Lady Frances, adjusting +the cushion at the back of her son's head and handing him the evening +newspaper, "this northwest winter is here now--don't forget that it's +November, not May, outside--and the plan sounds to me rather too much +like Polar exploration. You say you intend to go out for the winter. +Well, if you survive the experience, perhaps I shall join you in the +spring. But surely you're not going to start on this wild expedition +the way you are. I am told it is difficult to go on snowshoes with a +crutch. Those people, too! William, you are insane." + +"Mother, dear," Ware patted the capable old hand that rested on his +chair-arm, "you said that once before, you remember. And that reminds +me--we haven't discussed this with Daisy. Let's have her in now, if +she's about." + +"She's about," rejoined Lady Frances--a little sarcastically, but with +an unconcealed accent of motherly affection--, "she's having tea with +McTavish, the cook." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +IN THE BLIZZARD. + + +"Shove on all the clothes you can get on to you, Eng--Bill," counselled +John Nixon, sucking his teeth shrilly as he donned a lupine-looking +wombat coat and reached for his mittens, "and after that put on an extry +sweater, as they say. She's a-going to blow." + +The place was the Toddburn hotel, where Sir William and John Nixon, left +there by the warm and friendly train at 11 a.m., had now, an hour and a +half later, come out of the dining-room with a good meal "under their +belts". + +"You don't need to hurry, gettin' your duds on, Bill," John Nixon said, +as he went out, "the Missis will be pokin' around the store down there +for an hour yet, and Jim's buyin' himself a new suit, to have for when +Daise gets here. I've told him she's married now, but it don't seem to +sink in.... You better stay here and keep warm till we fetch the team +round to the door." + +Sir William stayed--not to keep warm, but to look about him, like a boy +at a circus. Somehow, the effect of the cold dry tingling air that +resided in the streets of this prairie hamlet seemed to percolate in +from outside, in spite of storm window and door, striking upon the +nostrils bracingly and making one "feel good" in spite of the blue fog +of tobacco-smoke and the odor of wet leather and fur. The effects of +Ware's accident, now a week old, had pretty well passed, and the +hereditary health of the Wares glowed in his face again and sparkled in +his eyes. + +He stood with his back toward the window, his hands tucked into the +side-pockets of his Norfolk coat, his attitude the Englishman's +inimitable easy and negligent one which imparts to the stiffest suit the +comfortable effect of flannels, and glanced down the short perspective +of the Toddburn hotel sitting room and bar, which were in a kind of +suite, with a swinging-door between. + +The roof of this place was very low, and the walls were very near one, +and after the spacious places in which Ware had lived his life, it was a +bit like standing in a piano-box. If the situation of this hotel had +been a narrow byway in a city, it would have been a slum, a locality of +death, a room of hollow coughings and faces dreary with debility and +gloom. But here, on the wide prairie it was in effect a sanitarium, if +one might judge by the figures that breezed about, the harsh but +deep-lunged voices that came out of the midst of steam-clouds made when +the outside door opened, the faces glowing and tanned by gale and +snow-shine. + +One only needed to listen a moment to the hearty laughing and the +sentences detached at random from the blend of cheery, companionable +greeting and rallying, to know that the minds of these western men were +as healthy as their bodies. + +"No, sir--I'd never go back on him. Bob an' me was neighbors +a-homesteadin'. It ain't his fault if he had to give up farmin' and get +a job in Jim McMillan's livery stable. His health give out--that's all." + +"Yes, sir, boy--she's a-goin' to blow up some harricane before dark. +This reminds me of yon day, four years ago--yous'll all remember the +time--when Elleck Hamilton an' me started out for home on the +bob-sleighs, pickled up to the eyebrows. Elleck, he was worse than me +when we started; but Elleck's as strong as a horse, and when she started +to blow, he slung off the effects of the licker like tossin' off a hat. +But the stuff had got a kind of a holt on me; I got cold and started for +to go to sleep. However, Elleck he seen me home safe. My face was froze +a little, that's all--but Elleck, he'd had to get out of his bob-sleigh +so many times to look after my team, that he'd froze both legs, one as +fur as the ankle and the other clare up to the knee. Had to have her +taken off. Never was any good after that, Elleck. He was worth about ten +thousand dollars when that happened; and to-day he's buyin' grain for +an elevator company, at seventy-five dollars a month. But I've done +pretty well myself, an' old Elleck knows this--that whenever his +pride'll let him quit work, he can come over to my place, and set down +by the stove, and put his bad leg up on a chair an' keep her there, for +life, even if he lives to be a hundred and fifty." + +Exclamation and anecdote rattled on; fog of tobacco-smoke and stench of +snow melting on fur filled the air; free grammar and the broad "a" had +unchecked currency in this organ-box of a western railway-hamlet hotel: +but Sir William Ware, standing by the iron-rodded window with +philosophic hands in his coat-pockets, had only one distinguishable +impression--that he was being educated, that this west was giving him +something denied by the university. + +This was Western Canada--blunt, gruff, western Canada. Not too forward +in making one's acquaintance; not too stiff and "standoffish". Not +caring sixpence--so long as you yourself were "all right"--who your +father was, nor how much money you were worth. Western Canada, where +nobody who works--or, if he can't or won't work, can tell a good +yarn--is allowed to starve. Western Canada, which never "picks" a fight, +but--well, just try to "run on" her! + +A raucous "hey!" brought Sir William about. Glancing out through the +window, in the direction of the hall, he saw John Nixon signalling to +him from the seat of a bob-sleigh. Hurrying on scarf and coat, Ware +hastened out, creaked across the sidewalk and smilingly awaited +instructions as to boarding this western vehicle of the long trail. It +had a high, green-painted double box. The front and rear seats were two +boards laid across the box and draped with gunny-sacks. The front seat +was occupied by John Nixon and Jim Burns, the hired man who had brought +the equipage in to meet the train. On the hind seat Lovina Nixon +perched, nothing of her visible except one stoical pioneer-woman eye +which looked out unwinkingly at Ware through a crack between folds of +gray shawl. + +"Climb in alongside the Missis, Bill," directed John Nixon, who had made +no special preparation for extreme weather conditions, other than to +pull his corduroy cap down over his ears, "We'll need to get a-goin', if +we're intendin' to strike home before we get blew off the trail. All +set?" + +"All set, old chap," Sir William responded, as he tucked his end of the +goatskin robe around his knees and, in response to Lovina's mumbled +recommendation, felt with his toes for the extra brick which Nixon had +heated for him on the top of the livery stable stove; "it's a jolly good +thing Daisy decided to do as Mother wanted and stay in town for a week. +Perhaps we shall have a better day, to bring her out." + +"Oh, the gal wouldn't mind this," Nixon rejoined, casually, after he had +"clucked" the horses into a trot down the drifted street; "no, sir, +Bill; she'd have got you off that seat, a-runnin' behind in the +sleigh-track, as soon as your toes would start for to feel nippy. It +would take a mighty high wind to chase Daise into the house in the +winter-time, except when dinner is ready. Her and the dog is about even, +when it comes to standin' the cold. Ain't that so mother?" + +"Oh, yes, it's so," Lovina's voice, muffled but still recognizable in +its sharpness, said through the swathes of shawl, "except when I ust to +want her to fetch in an armful o' wood or a pail of water. Then you +couldn't budge her from behint the stove." + +"Aw, go on," Nixon, happy to be on the way home to the "stock" again, +swung his whip jovially but harmlessly over the backs of the horses. +"Wait till you see the happy reunion between her and Rove, Bill, when +she gets here next week. It'll prove what I say about them bein' chums. +Rove, he would have no use for a girl that stayed in the house: you +couldn't coax him any closer to in-doors than the chip-pile, not if it +was sixty below zero." + +The two bay sleigh-ponies--a light team had been chosen, as they could +stand quick travel over difficult roads better than the heavy-fetlocked, +big-haunched, working horses--trotted along sure-footed on the hard +ridge of the trail. The last house on Toddburn's one short street was +soon passed. Turning out at a wide angle from the railroad, at a point +where Ware saw one of the country's tall red elevators, with staccato +explosion of gasoline engine, pouring wheat into a freight-car, the +prairie road set off alone across the white country. + +The snowfall had been unseasonably heavy this autumn; and Sir William, +looking over the side of the sleigh-box at a point where some passing +horse had accidentally inched out into the soft snow and put down a leg, +saw a hole nearly fifty inches deep. Plainly, if the bob-sleigh should +slip off the packed hard ridge of the road, it meant a wholesale +"spill", a floundering of horses, a chilling to the marrow of all +concerned, and much delay. If it happened after dark, with the +blizzard--the effect of which Ware had often watched from the study +window of his city home--at its height, it _would_ be a bit awkward. + +"Was you ever out in a blizzard?" said John Nixon, suddenly: as though +the thought, like that of a group of castaways in an open boat under +squall-clouds, had become by sympathy communal. "No? Well, you're +a-goin' to be out in one to-night, English--" + +"Come, come, now, old chap," reminded Ware, "no national imputations, +remember. I thought it was to be 'Bill'--wasn't it?" + +"Well, Bill," conceded Nixon, "as I was about to say, you're goin' to be +out to-night in the finest whoopin' he-blizzard since '97. I can smell +her a-comin'--all through me." + +From the sleigh--which now, with the village in the distance behind and +a wholly roofless horizon-line before, was the sole, small centre of +life and companionship in the midst of a snowy waste--Ware looked across +the drifts toward the west, where the sun of the short, late-November +afternoon was trending low. The trail ran almost due north, to where the +white line of the horizon met the pale blue of that part of the sky +distant from the transfiguring sun. Between these two cardinal +points--north and west--the voice of winter megaphoned from +northwestward that bitter weather was at hand. + +The distant groves roared softly, like surf heard against the wind. +Afar, the sound had the similitude of hoarse, enormous exhalation; near +at hand, it was like the wash and hiss of water. The whole surface of +the prairie that had been fixed and frozen, now took on an aspect of +life, of ceaseless scintillation and quivering like ripples in the sun. +Ware, looking along the bright faces of the drifts, saw that this +phenomenon was caused by multitudinous lines of hurrying snow-grains, +serpentining over those white billows in the track of the wind, building +with a wondrous rapidity little ribs and ridges of snow in the lee of +every bump and projection in their path. + +In the early afternoon, it had been warm, even to thawing-point. But +now, as the wind rose, it shuttled with a sharp cold the woof of the +air. Earlier, the air had been clear and speckless as the void above +quiet water, and bland in its touch upon the skin. Now, it was clouded +with gathering snow-atoms, hard as sand, whose impact upon face and +hands was needle-sharp and whose irritation of the eyeballs blinded the +vision with rheum. Earlier, the sky had been bright-blue from horizon to +zenith. Now, it was half-fogged with a kind of smoke-blue mist, that was +nothing other than the first draft of a trillion-atomed host of +snow-motes drawn up to their unfriendly function by the cold whirlwind +that should general their attack upon the prairie's winter peace. + +The blizzard is like, and yet contrary to, the thunderstorm that is the +crowning phenomenon of summer. It is like, in that it is preceded by a +"weather-breeding" twelve hours or so of undue heat; it is like, in the +effect of its attack; it is like, in its whipping of the outcast, its +lashing of the earth; it is somewhat like in its roar, although there +is no thunder to diapason the storm of mid-winter. But it is contrary in +color, and in duration, and in direction--or rather, lack of direction. +For the color of a blizzard is not a definite black, but a blinding +white; its duration is not a few moments, but long hours of terrific, +unabated wind-energy; its direction is everywhere--that is to say, you +can turn your back to a thunderstorm, but you cannot turn your back to a +blizzard. If you face to windward, you get the volley of the "spindrift" +direct; if you face leeward, you get it round a corner, just as +stingingly. To the wanderer, a blizzard is a succession of intersecting +whirlwinds, not a direct blast from a definite point in the compass. + +Sir William Ware, in this sleigh that was inching its course--at least, +so it seemed--across the long ten miles that separated Toddburn village +from the Nixon farm, felt an odd sense of dependence as he watched the +gathering of the storm. There was in his whole fine body and brain no +fibre of fear, as far as personal danger was concerned--for, besides the +heritage of his family and race, he was too much the philosopher to +regard the chance of death with anything but curiosity. But he felt awed +by the cold, the great white vastness, the thrilling mighty wind--not +yet at anything like its crescendo, either--and the feeling that his +sole link with safety, this bluff Canadian pioneer who held the destiny +of that sleighful in his rough-mittened hands that held the horses' +reins and his wonderful, but not infallible, pioneer's sense of +direction, was plainly a bit anxious in spite of all his experience. + +"Suppose we have a song, old chap," he leaned forward and shouted in +Nixon's ear; "start up something you know, and we'll all join in the +chorus." + +But John Nixon shook a diffident head. "I got all I can do, handlin' the +team, Bill," he said--in his Canadian way avoiding by the excuse the +admission that he could not sing. "Try Jim, here--he's the singin' bird +out on our ranch. Let's have that there about the 'Mistle-tree Bough', +Jim--you ain't got nothin' on your mind just now." + +Jim Burns, a man of few words and short, cleared his throat and, without +preamble, started "The Mistletoe Bough": + + + The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall, + The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all, + The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ay + A-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday; + O Mistletoe Bough! + O Mistletoe Bough! + + +There is something "catchy" about the words and the tune of this old +song of a famous tragedy, whose human interest has carried it as far +around the world as "Home, Sweet Home". Ware had heard it in his nursery +when it was reasonably new. He joined in it now, with a vigor that +fended off the dolor of the stormy sunset and the inching sleigh on its +high lonely trail. Nixon swung his whip in time; even a diffident +humming came from the shawl that wrapped the head of Mrs. Lovina Nixon. + +After the refrain following the last stanza was concluded, Jim Burns, on +his own initiative, started his favorite, the "Blizzard Song of +Meadowlea." It is a characteristic of prairie people to sing or to talk +about an especially gloomy phase of a present situation. The person who +has newly contracted rheumatism, for instance, is told glowingly by a +sympathetic visitor that, "Hank McCaffrey, he took it in the knee--just +where you got it, Joe--an' he's a-settin' on the same chair yit, an' +that's ten years ago." And if Mrs. Pelkey, on the northwest quarter of +Section Twenty-three, sneezes after peppering the meat in the +frying-pan, Mrs. Mair, over from the northeast quarter to borrow flour +for a baking of bread, remarks, "This is a bad season for to catch a +cold, Bella--right in the spring o' the year. I never saw a person yet +that tot'ly threw off a cold they caught in the month of Ape-rile." + +It was this prairie characteristic that possessed Jim Burns, when he +struck up the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea" in the face of a gathering +blizzard. This melody is a versified account of an actual happening, in +which a farmhouse in the School District of Meadowlea caught fire during +a blizzard and the family lost their lives in the storm. + +"I say, old son," Ware leaned and tapped the singer on the shoulder at +the conclusion of a line running: 'An' here an' there, in drifts of +snow, a frozen corpse they found', "that _is_ a piquant tune, you know, +and you're in splendid voice--but shall we try something we all +know--something comic, for instance?" + +Jim Burns paused reluctantly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, after a +moment; "how about 'The Dying Cowboy'?" + +"Splendid!" assented Sir William, "is that comic?" + +Jim Burns rubbed his head ponderingly. + +"It ain't very comic, Bill," John Nixon explained, "but--I begin to see +your point--there ain't nothin' about blizzards in it. Let her go, Jim." + +"Yes," said Ware, "let her go, Burns, old chap. Majority vote for 'The +Dying Cowboy'. What do _you_ say, Mrs. Nixon?" + +"Oh, don't bother to ast the weemen folk, out in this country," Lovina +Nixon's voice came, muffled and sarcastic, from the depths of her shawl, +"we ain't got no say, even when it comes to invitin' pernicketty people +out to a house that ain't been swept nor dusted for two weeks." + +"I took and scrubbed the whole floor, Mam, two days ago," said Jim +Burns, in an injured voice. "The minute I got your letter that you was +comin' home, I peeled off and went to her, with snow-water an' soap." +Jim Burns did not add that he had scrubbed the farmhouse because he had +expected Daisy with the party. + +"Snow-water, eh?" Lovina's tone was half-hopeful, "well, Jim, you got +more sense than I thought you had. Did you scrub behind the stove?" + +"I scrubbed everywhere _but_ there, Mam," said Jim Burns, a little +sheepishly. + +"Everywhere but where the most grease-spots is," Lovina threw up her +hands and lapsed again into brooding silence, "that's a man, all over +again; so it is." + +The last verse of "The Dying Cowboy" was snatched out of the mouths of +its singers by a great gust of wind and snow, scattering over the sleigh +like a wave breaking over a boat. Ware, concentrated on keeping the +sleighful "in good spirits", had for the moment almost forgotten the +storm; but now, rudely reminded of it by the bitter, stinging +snow-grains that assailed his face and drove deep between scarf and +neck, he drew tight the collar of his top-coat and looked up and about. + +The blizzard had not yet closed about them. But in the far and hither +distance it had thickened, blotting out the sun, that must now be almost +at the horizon. Above, one could catch faint passing glimpses of the +sky, beneath which the hurricane was throwing a dim-white canopy of +upblown snow. About and about, the prairie and the air were a uniform +quivering white. For perhaps a quarter-mile radius, one could still see +definitely the drifts and the half-buried willow and poplar scrub; but +beyond this the storm had built a superstructure, that was in opacity +like a wall, but bellied and blew like a curtain under the huge +inconstant impulse of the gale. Only in one respect was the motion of +this rampart steady and uniform. That was in respect to its gradual, +sure, terrific closing-in about the sleigh and its human handful. Ware, +watching it fascinated, thought of the cell in the famous tale of "The +Pit and the Pendulum", with its contracting circular wall that +precipitated the prisoner into a central abyss. + +No abyss yawned beneath the feet of the laboring horses nor the runners +of the creaking, inching sleigh. But that road they trod was like the +narrow path over a morass: all about it the footing was soft, deep, +delaying. If iron-shod hoof or steel-shod runner slipped, it meant loss +of time, lowering of precious bodily heat, fatigue, failing of the +heart--all preparations for that slowing-down of the restless +body-molecules to the final stoppage which should mark the cold triumph +of the frost: + +"And here and there, in drifts of snow--" + +"Ugh!" said Ware, humorously. + +But there was nothing comic in that nearing wall, whose base crept over +the drifts like the edge of a tide at flow. + +It might have been midnight, or a little before, when the Galician girl +whose function it had been to keep the fire going in the Nixon farmhouse +stove, saw a face move by the window outside, on the way to the door. +Mary had plenty of time to see it, for the face moved very slowly beyond +the frost-edged pane; and she noted that it was not the face of John +Nixon, with his corduroy cap, nor the red face under a "dogskin" cap, of +Jim Burns. Nor was the knock, which presently sounded faint and erratic +on the door-panel--like the chance rap of a frozen branch on a +window--recognizable as that of anybody she knew. + +She was a little afraid, as she listened to that rap which sounded as +though the visitor were half-asleep; but Mary knew enough about the +northwest not to keep a man standing outside on a night like this, no +matter who he might be. Accordingly, she ran and opened the door. + +"G'd ev'ng," said the blue lips of Sir William Ware, as he fumbled his +way across the doorjamb. Mary, glancing at his face, saw that uncanny +white patches covered his cheeks and that his nose was whitened to the +bridge. His feet, on the floor, dragged and scuffled like the ends of +cordwood sticks. + +Mary knew: she had spent five winters in the west. + +"You stay there," she said, backing Sir William out of the doorway with +a vigorous palm, "till I big pail ice-water bring. I fix you." + +"Ah, but--stop a bit," Ware spoke thickly; "your master--and +mistress--far along the trail--need help. We--Burns and I--followed the +horses here. Nixon stayed--with wife--she wouldn't leave the sleigh." He +stopped and leaned heavily back against the door frame. Mary saw that +his eyes were closing. + +"I fix you first," she said, snatching up an enormous wooden bucket, +throwing her apron over her head, and rushing out to the well. About her +the huge veil-ends of the storm swirled as, racing down the track of +light from the open doorway, she disappeared a moment into the roaring +dark; then, presently, came into view again, running, with the +newly-pumped icy water splashing over the edge of the bucket. + +Ware, his initiative suspended and the world appearing to race about him +in a dizzy flicker of white and glare and black, leaned upon the door. +He felt his legs giving way, but could not stiffen them; and presently +he fell into a sitting posture on the door-sill, with the wild night on +his right hand, and on his left the homely interior of the farmhouse +with its coal-oil lamp flaring frantically in the draught from the open +door. + +In this position, and with his eyes closed, Sir William felt a hand come +up to his face and rub so vigorously that the back of his head bumped +the door-panel with a jolt. + +"I don't know what's happening," was Sir William's vague thought, "but +let it happen, whatever it is. Let anything happen--now." + +The rubbing continued, with an occasional pause by the aggressor--that +might have been for more or less malicious scrutiny of his or her +work--and presently Sir William became aware of a slight tingling in a +face that up till now had been wholly without sensation. The tingling +grew to a glow; and with the glow came a bracing mental effect that +brought Ware's eyes open. + +"See--I fix your face," said the voice of Mary, the Galician girl, in a +self-congratulatory way, "now I take me your boots off." And, without +waiting for the word of consent, she ripped open the laces and drew off +Ware's boots and socks. After which Sir William, watching with a curious +half-interest, beheld her scoop up liberal handfuls of snow and commence +to rub the bared feet from toe to ankle, as she had rubbed the face. + +In the midst of this operation, a peal of bells sounded; and around the +corner of the house came Jim Burns, with a fresh team hitched to the +"jumper". Burns, a tough westerner, had been barely affected by the +storm, except for frozen cheeks and nose, which he had rubbed out down +at the stable. His feet, clad in thick felt "duffels", had escaped +freezing. + +"Hey-o;" he said, unconcernedly; "gittin' thawed out all right? Mary, I +got to go back for Jack and the Missis--the sleigh's stuck in a drift, +about two mile back along the trail. We cut the ponies loose, an' they +led us home, right up to the stable door. Jack, he was a-goin' to come +along too, at first, and fetch the Missis on his back--him and me would +have took turns carryin' her. But she wouldn't hear of it, so Jack he +told us to go on ahead. Said the ponies would take us home, all right, +and I could come back in the jumper when I got warmed up. But," Jim +Burns could not help a bit of western swagger, "I'm all right--I don't +need no warmin' up. Rustle me a couple more blankets, Mary. I'll finish +rubbin' them feet out." + +"Aa, you go on, Jeem Burns," Mary, interested in this tall, +pleasant-faced man the storm had brought her, pushed Burns away; "You +know you where yon blankets is. You get them yourself--see!" + +"A-all right," the hired man, swinging his shoulders, stepped into the +farmhouse living-room, gathered up a pair of heavy gray blankets from +the rail bunk in a corner, brought the coal-oil can and refilled the +lantern he was to take with him, and then lighted the lantern. + +"I guess I can keep the trail all right, goin' out," he said, as he +stepped outside, "the wind, she'll be behind me. Comin' home, the +horses'll face it all right, they'll be that keen to get back into the +stable again. Well, so-long, yous; keep a good fire on, Mary." + +With this, Jim Burns tossed the blankets into the jumper, hopped in +after them and, standing up in the vehicle as though it was a +bob-sleigh, this conscious master of the northwest blizzard took off his +dogskin cap, whirled it jovially around his head, and whooped to the +horses. They broke into a trot, receding down the lee of the grove where +the snow came tumbling over the tree-tops in vaporous clouds, like smoke +from a huge smoke-stack; and in a trice the night had swallowed them. + +"You come in now," said Mary, finally; "wait, I help you." And Sir +William Ware felt an arm, strong as the coil of a pythoness, constrict +his waist and lift him bodily to his now sore and burning feet. +Sensitive as they were, however, Sir William, putting away gentle Mary's +supporting arm, stood his full weight on those restored feet, rose on +his toes, turned them from side to side, and otherwise moved them to +bring back circulation and pliancy. + +"The doctor, he no cut them off now, eh?" commented Mary, glancing down +at the healthily-reddened members in a satisfied way. Ware turned toward +her instantly; stepped over; grasped her hand; shook it warmly. + +"Thanks, so much," he said, with a shining gratitude, "and I wish there +was a more expressive word I might use, Mary. We are, some of us," he +eyed her thoughtfully, "so used to having these things done for us as a +matter of course by those who are really our fellow-beings, that we +often omit the 'thank you'--taking the often vital service rendered as +our due, just because the good Samaritan happens to be a maid or valet. +But here in Canada we're all fellow-citizens, aren't we?" + +"I get you some supper," said Mary, "and fetch you a pair of the boss's +socks." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +IN THE DRIFTED SLEIGH. + + +The Nixon sleigh stood in the drifts, tilted end up in the attitude of a +sinking boat. There were no billows to rock it, and the place where it +stuck was solid enough. There was no danger of the sleigh being covered +by submersion, either sudden or gradual; but the prairie winter tempest +has another way of achieving burial of derelict craft and spent crews, +when the travelling foot slows to a halt and the numbed brain yields to +the coaxing of sleep. + +There are beautiful things done between October and April by the +northwest frost and sun--pattern on pane, transformation of twig, +fashion of flake, aurora, twin "dogs" of the spectral sun-bow--but +nothing more marvellous and swift than the building, over fallen body or +stopped vehicle, of the white and wonderful sepulchre of the snow. + +Out from the back of the sleigh as it stood, there tailed an +indescribable drift, geometrically proportioned, beautiful beyond words. +Fifteen full feet it extended, from the high sleigh-box windward, to the +low drift-surface a-lee. In shape it was like the back of a saurian--one +of those ruder, hardier things generationed before the earth was +tempered by the Creator to the habitation of man. Within the sleigh-box +another drift had formed, extending similarly from the wind-breaking +frontboard along the floor to the back end. On the high seat above the +central point of this latter drift, her feet buried in it, her upper +body mummied in sacks and every loose thing the sleigh had held, froze +and mumbled Lovina Nixon. Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but +uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon +stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward +side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a +vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals +paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement +to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in +horse-blankets and gunny-sacks. + +"How's them feet, Lovina-girl?" would come the question--raised to a +whoop in order to out-crow the hurricane and penetrate the hempen +coccoon. After due pause, the response would come, querulous, monotoned +and faint as a voice heard through a wall: + +"Ain't I said it often, that you'd--be the death of me--Jack Nixon. +Why-for did you--let them team go? Just to save your tony +friends--that's all. O-o-oh!" + +And John Nixon--though, with his own feet aching and his finger-ends +tingling, he would be tempted to retort, "How about me?"--would +respond, bracingly, "Never mind, girl--there, I think I hear Jim +a-comin' now. Listen!" + +But the moments passed; the half-hours grew to hours; and out of the +quivering white, with its perpetual hiss and whistle, its under-roar of +distant wind-shaken groves, came no companionable jangle of bells. It +was not until the hot bricks under Lovina's toes had lost their heat and +she had commenced to cry and to labor against the creeping ache of cold +by beating her feet with a dismal weak "tap-tap" against the bottom of +the sleigh-box--not until stout John Nixon, aching from shoulder to +waist with flailing his arms about his body, felt a cold doubt begin to +rise even in the face of his confidence in hardy Jim Burns--that the +shape and the sound of deliverance bulged and tinkled out through the +texture of the storm-curtain, just ahead of the sleigh. + +"Now, see here, you Mary," the voice was that of Lovina Nixon as, +something over three-quarters of an hour later, she sat, feet in oven +and tea-cup and saucer in lap, in the centre of the reassembled family +group of the Nixon farmhouse; "I don't mind you helpin' yourself to +Nixon's socks, when people is in need--but why don't you give 'em +something to put on over the top of them, so's they won't walk the heels +through," the reference was to Ware who, after an unconscious habit, +developed by the usage of almost a lifetime, was pacing thoughtfully up +and down the creaky floor overhead, where the spare bed was; "I got to +darn them socks, not you." + +"Jim," said John Nixon, as he propped a piece of pine board on the +stove-pan and commenced to whittle kindlings for the morning fire, +"don't forget to remind me, tomorrow, that we got to sharpen up the +corks (caulks) of all them horses' shoes. I noticed yon Prince-horse +kind of gruntin' as I led him into the stable, there, to-night. You +ain't been loadin' them team too heavy while I been away?" + +Jim Burns paused in the winding of a heavy nickel watch and glanced at +his employer. + +"Aw, now, Jack," he remonstrated, "don't you know no better than for to +ask me a question like that? You'd think I was some green Englishman, or +somethin'." + +Ware, to whom this dialogue came up freely through the cracks between +the warped floor-boards, smiled to himself as he sat down on the edge of +the spare bed and slipped off the enormous gray socks borrowed from the +wardrobe of his host. + +"We do so like to be each other's critics," he murmured, with a half-sad +cadence; "but I suppose it's the same, the world over.... If we could +only get away from that, we children of this planet might win back what +we lost at Bab-el." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +DAISY'S HOME COMING. + + +"Well, Jim," Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the +passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware +called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting +the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a +recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the +ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?" + +"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three +of us altogether. How's _your_self?" + +"Oh, not too bad," Daisy, answering in the old phrase, caught up her +"kit-bag" and stepped briskly along beside her escort; "what did you +bring, Jim--the jumper?" + +"What did you think I was a-goin' to bring," retorted her former +playfellow, "the high-box wagon?" + +They reached the end of the station platform. Down on the snow +alongside, that homely but comfortable vehicle called a "jumper", full +of warm-looking blankets, topped with the gray goatskin robe, slid to +and fro as Prince the colt, secured to the hitching-ring by his +halter-rope, rocked spiritedly from foot to foot and pawed the snow up +in clouds. + +"Whoa, you!" directed Jim Burns, as he untied the haltershank. Daisy +pushed her grip under the seat, looked at the blankets, and then looked +at Burns. + +"What have you got all these things for?" she said. + +"Oh, I thought you'd be a soft city-bug by now," said Jim Burns, as he +came around with the reins in his hand, "and would want every rug I +could find. Jump in, an' we'll drive around to the Toddburn House. +Dinner's on." + +The sleigh, at a trot, crossed toward the main street, half-way down +which was the Toddburn hotel, with its stable just beyond. + +"Where's that Beatty?" said Jim Burns, as the two heads rocked together +to the plunging of the "jumper". + +"Beatty?" Daisy had been looking half-dreamily around her at the +familiar little frame houses and black-lettered store-fronts, "oh--him! +You better ask somebody that knows, Jimmy." + +"I'm going to break his neck," said Jim Burns. + +"You'd be wasting your time, Jim," Daisy returned, half-absently, as the +sleigh pulled up in front of the Toddburn House. "Don't be long putting +the horses away. I'll go on into the dining-room and order your dinner +too. I know what you like. Turnips, isn't it?" + +"Turnips!" whooped Jim Burns; "say, if we was out where nobody was +lookin', I'd wash your face in the snow for that, Miss!" + +"You'd try to, you mean," Daisy flung back, as she ran virilely up the +steps to the hotel veranda; "hurry in, Jim." + +Daisy had left her hat and furs in the "ladies' parlor" upstairs and was +just coming out of the door of that apartment, when a diffident but +somewhat sweet voice said, "Hello, Daisy." + +Spinning about in her vigorous way, Daisy Ware looked into the mild blue +eyes of a girl who had just come out of a room across the hall. In the +girl's arms was a tiny baby. + +"Why, Pearlie Brodie!" + +"Not Pearlie Brodie now," said the fair-haired girl who had been a +waitress in the Toddburn House when Mr. Frederick Beatty used to come +there for his meals; "Pearlie Halliday now. Ed's buying here for the +Northern Elevator Company, and we stay at the hotel." + +She looked shyly down at the baby, and then added, giving the confidence +of one girl to another, "Ed says the baby here will get used just the +same as one of his own, and that if he ever hears of anybody saying a +word to me about it, he'll knock their heads off. We were married just +a little while after you went away." + +"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring +up a little. + +"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get +ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I +wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy." + +"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, +Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl +in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes +you best." + +"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, +a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see." + +"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be +'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes +better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no +good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married +you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going +to call him, Pearlie--or is it a him?" + +"I--I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes +dreamily on the infant, "but of course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't +be any Freddies in our family now, can there." + +"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you +better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a +_man_. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred." + +Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses +away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with +Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the +long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and +approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin. + +In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, +and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the +dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be +treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or +she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) +own fault; for the country--unlike the city--is quick to see and ready +to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and +honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her +critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married +Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburn grain-grower, who had never taken +any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator. + +"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had +remarked; but--he slapped Ed on the shoulder--"a man that's helped that +poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to +get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here +in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy--an' watch them +grain checks." + +Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the +infant--who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat +surlily--he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment: + +"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of +steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain." + +"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with +Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You +seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was +through the Third Reader." + +"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather +feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to +conversation. + +The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilarating way out to the Nixon farm, +had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of +tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay +nearest his heart: + +"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back +married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up +my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, +Daise?" + +"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the +corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you +were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have +been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me." + +"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at +her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?" + +"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her +effort to keep a straight face. + +The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her +dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and +made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team. + +"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, get _epp_!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin +you alive!" + +The horses obligingly, but without any manifestation of alarm, +quickened their stride for perhaps ten paces. Then they looked at each +other--seemed mutually to smile--and dropped easily back to their normal +trotting-gait. In the interval, Daisy had slipped a piece of ice off the +dash-board of the "jumper" down the back of Jim Burns' neck. + +It was a different day from that upon which John Nixon, his wife, and +Ware had driven out of Toddburn. Overhead, there was neither wind nor +cloud. The wonderful sky stretched blue and bright from the black and +stark groves on the east to the long expanse of snow-waves that planed +away treeless to westward, meeting in a rippling line the point where +earth and firmament parted on their clean, splendid and vast ways. + +Daisy presently ceased from play and, under the sway of a wave of +recollection, leaned back and looked about her. The sundance of her +spirits, that in the old days had made summer of every season, had not +been able to thaw the frost of surliness about the Nixon home. Not then; +but now, it seemed, things were different. Ever since that understanding +which had been arrived at in the Ware library, between Sir William and +John Nixon, the farmer seemed to have opened out, changed--ratchetted +back, as it were, to play over again his tune of life with a merrier +lilt. The young wife had often sensed vaguely the power which proceeded +from this friendly philosophy which was at the root of, and gave point +and purpose to, all her husband's thoughts, words and actions; but the +change in her fosterfather gave her the first striking and definite +illustration of its effect. + +"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of +these is charity." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +A WESTERN WILD MAN. + + +"Now, what do you suppose that is?" Sir William Ware remarked, cocking +his head a little as, stepping alongside John Nixon up Toddburn's main +street, he approached the hotel door. The two had come into town with a +load of wheat, which had been duly hoppered and weighed at the elevator. +The team had been put in the livery stable, and the bell of the Toddburn +House had just given intimation that dinner was "on". + +"Oh, nothin'," replied John Nixon, although he smiled a little, "nothin' +at all, Eng--Bill." + +"Quite so," Ware commented, glancing at something long which moved and +vociferated inside the hotel window, "but don't you think, Nixon, that +it's a bit loud for nothing at all?" + +"Well," conceded Nixon, as they went up the steps, "when I say 'nothin' +at all', Bill, I mean it's something special. You ain't got used to us +Canadians yet, I see. In other words, the occasion of yon rumpus is Long +Tom Mewha. He's gittin' tanked up." + +"Yeow-e-wow-e-yippyhoo!" Mr. Mewha was remarking, his arm rib-crackingly +about a less tall friend, as Nixon and Ware entered the hall of the +Toddburn House, "Rip, slam, razzaberry jam! We don't care--do we, Joe. +Whoa, you son of a moose, whoa!" This last as Joe coyly but vigorously +endeavored to twist himself loose from the sociable arm. + +"I'll turn you over my knee, an' spank you, Joe," Mr. Mewha reproved, +pointing his words with a mighty slap that lifted Joe off his feet, "if +you don't set still. We-e-ell--look who's with us!" + +Long Tom--flinging away the unsteady Joe, who fetched up against the +wall, eight feet away, with a window-rattling bang--turned to face Ware, +who had just come through the hall door into the room. + +"English!" he half-sung, "English, frum his scalp-lock to his +moccasin-toes. Come here to me, English!" + +Sir William's eye, gray, unwavering, infinitely friendly, met steadily +the red-lidded glare of Long Tom Mewha--who emphasized his loud-toned +invitation by rocking the upper part of his body from side to side, +punctuating this movement with beckoning backward jerks of his head and +crookings of a strong black-nailed forefinger. + +"Come here to me," repeated Mr. Mewha, making a sound-box of his +nostrils, "and do it sudden!" + +He was a mighty man, in build, this Tom Mewha. Tough, long-sinewed, +panther-shouldered, the seams of his buckskin coat straining under the +twisting of a torso, muscle-flexed with the excitation of alcohol. He +had a black moustache that swept below his chin on either side; a blunt +nose skinned with frostbite; eyes aglow with virility and physical +well-being; a forehead that just now was, from shaggy eyebrows to +hair-roots, dotted and beaded with sweat. The incarnation of physical +force; spurred to height of power by the liquor that had wakened every +healthy artery to racing-pace: Long Tom could have taken any two of +those who stood about him and without undue effort dashed their heads +together. They all knew it, and stood back: all but Ware, the calm +new-comer. + +"Better give him his way, Bill," advised Nixon sotto voce, behind Ware's +shoulder, "he's one bad-actor when he's pickled, if you go to cross +him." + +"I shan't cross him, old chap," Ware responded, a little drily, +"nothing, in fact, was farther from my thoughts. How are you, Mr. +Mewha?" He stepped forward, and held out a friendly hand. + +"What do you-u mean," Mr. Mewha demanded, "by standin' in your tracks, +like a bump on a log, after I holler 'come'. Do you know that I could +bust you right in two?" Ignoring Sir William's hand, the speaker inched +close, scuffing his feet ominously over the creaking boards, thrusting +his chin out, glaring like a stiffened and challenging beast. + +"Exactly," the word came briefly, distinctly, clear-cut as a knuckle-tap +on glass. "Will you shake hands." + +Often, in the days that followed, John Nixon, thoughtful in his evening +chair, reflected on those four words and the way Ware said them. The +inflexion was smooth and even; the tone hardly more than gentle; the +expression pleasant. But the effect--which Nixon and all those who stood +about felt equally with the one to whom the words were addressed--was +that of a mandate. Not a foolish command, proceeding from the habit of +authority, without present power to exact obedience; but the serene, +confident, all-potent fiat of brotherhood. Long Tom, at the moment the +sentence was uttered, was in the attitude of a great animal about to +spring. His face, shining with perspiration, was pushed close to Ware's; +his hands, the fingers tensed and crooked, were raised to the level of +the baronet's shoulders, preparatory to gripping. The great muscles were +heaved up in a mound between his shoulders, giving him a stooping +aspect. His eyes held shining points, like fire-sparks. + +But the effect of the words was instantaneous. Nixon nor none of those +about knew why nor how. All they knew was that Tom Mewha relaxed his +threatening attitude; straightened to his full magnificent six feet +four; swung up a hand. + +"Put it there," he said: this Peril of the west. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +WHY? + + +Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive +than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March +drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old +wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair +was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; +her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance. + +"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got +married up, Daise?" + +Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her +questioner teasingly. Rover waited, wagging from neck to tail like a +young pup. + +"I suppose you mean that you'd have been about ready to say something +then, eh?" she remarked, putting her head on one side. + +"No," said Jim Burns, a little shortly; "what I mean is, that you ought +to be goin' to school instead of bein' married." + +"Would you object to me being married, if I was married to you?" was +Daisy's response, as she tweaked Rover's tail. + +"Say, Daise," Jim Burns blurted out headlong a query he had carried +around in his brain for some days, "why did you marry that old fellow? +Wasn't there no young ones handy? I know you didn't marry him for his +money: you ain't that kind. I can't figure the thing out nohow, Daise." + +Daisy Ware's eyes, as she looked at her questioner silently for a +moment, did not see him. Neither did they see the farm barn, the +straw-bucks in the distance, the thawing ice at the cattle-trough, the +drifts reduced to liquefying ice by the spring sun. For the girl was +back in a massive ugly upstairs hall, with broom and dustpan, facing the +son of a pile-driving millionaire who was trying to, after the pattern +of his parent, "put her where she belonged;" in her memory again, as +there had been on that occasion, a certain man equal in fortune but very +different otherwise, who had in spite of his apparent fifty or so years, +made her a boyish and eager proposal of marriage. + +"Because," Daisy, this picture out of the past in her mind, answered Jim +Burns unconsciously, by what was really a sentence thought aloud, "I +wanted to show some people where they got off at." + +Jim Burns' legs went numb at the vigor with which she said this. His +hands opened loosely, and his pitchfork slid out of them. + +"Well," he gulped, presently, "you needn't have went and did a trick +like that. Why couldn't you have given me a hint, Daise?" + +At this, Daisy came out of her reverie and stared. + +"Given you a hint?" she repeated, "wha--o-oh I see. Well, that's what +you get by being slow, Mr. Man. See!" + +She caught Rover's tail, and raced away with him over the big drift that +ran up to the top of the snow-flattened haystack. Jim Burns took off his +hat and rubbed the back of his head till it tingled. + +"Can't make head or tail of that'n," he said finally, replacing the +weathered "dogskin" cap; "But I might ast _him_. Say--I _will_ ast him! +I b'en a kind of a brother to the girl, and I got a right to know, ain't +I?" + +The chance to ask Ware, who had gone for a stroll about the farm with +Nixon, did not present itself till toward evening. Then Burns, returning +with the horse from the trough, met Sir William, thoughtfully inspecting +the architecture of an old log wing of the stable. + +"Clever work, that dovetailing, Burns," Ware said casually; then, as he +noted that Jim Burns had halted and fixed him with a glance conveying +what seemed to be determination, the baronet, said, briskly, + +"Well, old chap? What is it?" + +"I got something to say to you, sir," Jim Burns responded, setting his +feet a little apart and squaring his shoulders. + +"Say on," Ware invited, dropping his hands in his pockets, and regarding +his catechist pleasantly. + +"It's about Daise," Jim Burns went on, "I've knew her since she was a +kid. We went to school together, and we was pretty good chums them days, +and in fact right up to the time she skinned out with yon Beatty. I was +figurin' I'd marry her some time (she claims I never said nothin', but I +wouldn't have got no satisfaction anyway, if I _had_ ast her, which I +guess after all I didn't, but she might have knew, for I didn't try to +cover it up none). Well, now she comes back married up to you. O' +course, the girl's her own boss, I know that. But--if you don't like me +talkin' to you this way, sir, you'll have for to lump it; I never was +one to hold back anything I got to say, not for no man--there seems to +me to be somethin' queer, mighty queer, about the way you an' her yips +along. You go out with Jack for a walk, or for a load o' hay, or off to +town; and she hurrays around with the dog or me. Yous never seem to be +together, nor neither one of you to care one rip what the other's doin'. +And--now here's the place where maybe there's an apology comin' to you +for what I'm going to say, so I'm going to apologise first, and then go +ahead--" + +"Go on," said Sir William, gravely. + +"I been brought up out here in the country," Jim Burns continued, a +little more slowly, "and I don't know what they do in town, or over +there where you come from; but out in this country, when two people are +married, they're married. It don't matter whether he's old and she's +young, or whether she's old and he's young. They're married, and they +act married, and they stay married, or they don't get the respect of the +settlement--and if they don't get that, they might as well be dead." + +"Do go on," said Ware, his eyes alight. "I'm vastly interested, Burns. I +am, really. What is your point?" + +"The point," Daisy's schoolmate pursued, stoutly, "is just this. You +sleep upstairs there, in the spare bed; and Daise, she still climbs into +her old bunk downstairs, where she slept when she was a kid. Now," Jim's +voice broke a little, "that suits me fine, for I'm sure I don't want to +think of her as a married woman, married to somebody else. But it ain't +right, and you know it ain't right. Yous two are married, and you ought +to act married. First thing you know, some neighbor woman will notice +it--one of the talky ones--and she'll put it around the whole district." + +The speaker paused; cleared his throat; and went on: + +"I know it ain't Daise's fault; for she was born in this country and she +knows what's right; and whatever bargain she made, she'd stick to it. So +I blame it onto you. Now, what's the matter? Ain't she good enough for +you? If you didn't intend to treat her like a wife, why did you marry +her? That's my point! I can't very well speak to Daise about it; so, as +man to man, I put it up to you." + +There were a few moments of silence after Jim Burns finished speaking. +Something sincere and high in the quiet gray eyes across from him +quelled his bristling earnestness. + +"Dear old chap," said Sir William, dropping his hand on the other's +shoulder, "first, don't think I wish any apology for what you have said. +Secondly, be patient. That is all I may say in words, by way of reply to +what I believe you have said in thorough sincerity: be patient, as I +myself am patient. You will see that all will be well. Now--shall we +speak of something else?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +A NEW SETTLER. + + +"Why don't His Nobs go home out of the slush, and come back here when +it's dry, if he wants to?" demanded, one night, Lovina Nixon of her +husband, as he performed the ultimate evening ceremonial of whittling +kindlings for the morning fire. "There's no sense of him and Daise +wading around here through the mud, making four more feet to track my +floor up, when they've got a comfortable home, with a dry sidewalk to +it, laying idle in town. Now, is there?" + +John Nixon, his sock-feet propped on the stove-pan, pushed hard with his +jack-knife against a tough shaving, and allowed the usual interval to +elapse before he made response. + +"You claim to see everything," he remarked, finally, as the shaving +split off and fell to the floor, "an' I guess you do. Like most of the +weemen, there ain't much you miss. Ain't you noticed nothing about +Bill's actions lately that might tell you why he stays around?" + +Lovina came to attention, her hands at her hips. + +"Why, no," she said, "I ain't. How could I? He spends most of his time +out o' doors with you." + +"Well," said her husband, "you can gener'ly take in things without +lookin'--through the pores of your skin, like. Hasn't your sense of +feelin' told you before now, that Bill's been bit by the farmin' +bug?--bit hard, too!" + +"What!" Lovina smiled incredulously; "why, he don't know a plow from a +set of harrows. Have some sense, man." + +"Don't he?" Nixon applied his knife again to the edge of the piece of +pine board; "maybe he didn't when he first come out here, but there +ain't much now he don't know. He's watched me blue-stonin' the seed +wheat; he's had me take the fannin' mill apart to see what makes it go; +and I guess I've plowed pretty near thirty acres for him, in pantomime, +with the old breakin' plow, out there in the snow. No hired farmin' for +Bill--he's a-goin' to do all the work himself." + +"I pity his hands," Lovina Nixon observed, her knuckles at her chin +reflectively. "Where's he gettin' his farm? Not going to buy us out, I +suppose." + +"Oh, we're fixin' that part of it," John Nixon, having finished the +kindlings, folded his knife and returned it to his hip-pocket. "To keep +you from gettin' any wrong notions into your head, I might say that he +ain't goin' to buy _us_ out, however. It's Jimmy Tomlinson's place he's +gettin'. We're going over to see Jimmy to-morrow." + +Jimmy Tomlinson, standing in the doorway of his bachelor cabin across +the road-allowance from the Nixon farm, next morning welcomed glowingly +the tall man in gray and the short broad man in overalls who drove up to +his door in a muddy-spoke blackboard. + +"Spring-like weather, Jim," said John Nixon, quizzically, as he pulled +up the bay horse in the lee of the house bluff, "why ain't you down't +the granary, picklin' up your seed?" + +Jimmy Tomlinson merely grinned. He was uncommunicative and small and +somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. To his gray flannel shirt +he had this morning buttoned the celluloid collar which was always added +to his attire when receiving callers or when working in his front field, +which adjoined the Toddburn road. He had a little sandy moustache and a +rather delicately-tipped chin which, as a cut in its cleft attested, had +just been shaven. + +"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie +him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, +upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson--who wanted $20,000, for his +half-section--were fixed in timid appraisal. + +Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a country bachelor for over half a +century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two +things--to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out +in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the +house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a +sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his +fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years +"above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty +farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 +which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If +no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000--even though +slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced--then +the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there +was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if--as said a certain +beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of +toilet soap--massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with +the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the +door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain +youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, +and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition. + +Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with +a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the +corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger +than himself. + +Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a +single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the +central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with +home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp +and--their titled backs turned outward--a little pile of paper-bound +books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all +was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's +attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old +upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his +guest. + +"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in +the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there +must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open +all winter?" + +"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the +simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time." + +With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread +his hands upon them; and, as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no +more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the +stable. + +"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up +a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business--eh, boys? Jim +here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty +foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers +just commencin' to make a little money." + +"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice. + +"You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, +and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the +knee; "ain't that it, Jim?" + +"I--I--yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he +continued--haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with +the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in +his mind that every detail of it was complete--"in storm and sunshine, +neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured +on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a +civilized man--" + +"Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out +of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look at +him, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over +his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, +and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and +then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of +a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?" + +"Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, +Tomlinson." + +"----like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, +resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of +town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world +we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this +settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller----" + +"I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim----" + +"Do shut-up, Nixon. You _are_ an incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind +him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am--that is +to say, vastly. Please go on. + +"----or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and +unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, +"and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you----" + +"Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Did you hear that, Bill--he wants +them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you +listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, +Jimmy--at fifty-six." + +"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his +thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man +to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see +nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, +he married late in life--you know that, Jack--an' when I was born, my +parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had +nobody to talk to--no brothers n'r sisters--so it's natural, ain't it, +that I grew up kind of backward. + +"Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the +kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd +stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my +way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell +out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or +more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm +kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets +older--not that I'm anyways old yet, you know----" + +"Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy--that's all." + +"----and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, +Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good +now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have +considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," +Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his +farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung +his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining +briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty +thousand, cash down, takes this place--buildin's, stock, implements, +what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it +all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is +to hitch up my team--his team, it will be then--and drive me and my +trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand--no +notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I +thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide +world. Well, sir?" + +"Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to +accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the +table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth. + +Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this +climactic moment of his whole life, brought an old stone ink-bottle and +a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote. + +An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges +tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at +last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled +emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four +tardy-marrying generations. + +It was a final instinct of caution that made the vendor, a few moments +later, as Nixon returned from the hitched buckboard for the leather +mittens he had accidentally left on the window-sill, whisper hoarsely, +"Is he good for it, Jack?" + +"Good for it!" Nixon, drawing on the mittens, dealt Jimmy Tomlinson such +a congratulatory whack on the shoulder that the latter took two +involuntary steps forward; "good for it, Jimmy! Why, Bill yonder could +buy up the whole settlement, with Toddburn throwed in for good measure, +if he had any use for it." + +"Well, I s'pose it's so, if you say it is, neighbor. He's your girl's +man, and you ought to know, if anybody does. But somebody, I forget just +who, was tellin' me he heard this Ware was goin' to run the farm +himself, without hirin' any help. So naturally I figured, if that was +so, he hadn't the money to pay a man." + +"No, it ain't that," said John Nixon, as he turned toward the door; +"it's true that he don't intend to hire any more men than he has to, and +it's true that he's going to work right along with the ones he does +hire. But when you say why--I don't know. All I know is, Bill's just +a-pawin' the air to get to a pitchfork. Ain't that always the way, +Jim?--ain't it, now? Nobody satisfied. Them that has to buck wood, like +you an' me, don't want to. Them that don't have to, is fairly bawlin' +and pawin' up the sod, to get to a sawhorse." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +THE SEWING MACHINE LOVEMAKER. + + +"Here's somebody you ought to know, Daise," remarked Lovina Nixon, +coming in from feeding the calves: "Look down the road there." + +Daisy turned from her ironing and crossed to the window. + +"Yes, that's Dex," she said, coolly, as she looked out, "I can see the +sewing-machine in the back of the rig, as plain as anything. Who would +that be, with him, Mother? Oh, yes, I see--it's that Mrs. Rourke. Is she +as flirty as ever?" + +"Oh, she just _acts_ flirty," Lovina answered, sticking up for her old +crony, "nothin' wrong about Jen. She likes the men, an' she's full of +the ol' Nick. But it's just fun, with her--that's all." + +Presently the buggy of Dex Coleman, the agent who was responsible for +district sewing machine sales, drew up in the yard. On the seat of it +were two persons--a young man with a smooth face and red lips, and his +hat a little to one side, and a buxom woman of about forty-five, with a +color like a girl and a hand that slapped her knee as she tilted back +her head and laughed. _Her_ hat was also a little on one side--pushed +into that position by a playful attempt of Mr. Coleman to kiss her. + +"Well, I'm sorry the drive is ended," the latter was saying, as, having +jumped out of the buggy, he reached up a chivalrous hand to assist down +the healthy weight of Mrs. Jenny Rourke. + +"Oh, indade," observed that lady, her head on one side and her foot on +the step. "Well," she added, coquettishly, as she stepped lightly out, +executed a little jig, clicked her heels together, stood up straight, +and made a face at Mr. Coleman, "I'm to be the wan that's _not_ sorry, +then--is that it. You're a divil, Dexie!" + +"Your sayin' that don't make it so-o, sweetheart," returned the sewing +machine man, pleasantly; "kee-wick!" (This last a curious squirting +sound, produced with tongue and cheek, as Mr. Coleman aimed an intimate +jab at Mrs. Jenny Rourke's ribs.) + +"Lave alone what don't concern you," was the advice this feat elicited +from his driving companion, as she wrinkled an eye-corner at him over +her shoulder, and vibrated (there is no other word that exactly +describes the brisk teetering walk of Mrs. Jenny Rourke) off toward the +house; "you sassy brat!" + +The sedate and somewhat sour-faced Lovina was grabbed and all but lifted +off her feet by the embrace of her friend, as the latter breezed into +the farm kitchen. Then Mrs. Rourke turned and saw Daisy. + +"Well, well, we-ell, an' how's the little squiress!" she roared, as she +made for the girl; "come here, me darlin', and give me the feel of your +pretty face. M-m-m!" and Mrs. Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion +of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips. + +"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country, +alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile +palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope +he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I +love Canadians--especially young ones, whether they're he's or +she's--but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to +his name. What's like flannel pants an a negligee shirt to an +Englishman, makes a Canadian look like a tailor's dummy. Where is he?" + +"He's gone over with Jack to the new farm," Lovina put in, somewhat +grumblingly, "they spend all their time over there, when Jack ought to +be attendin' to his own work, if he expects to get his seedin' done in +anyways decent time this spring." + +At this, Mrs. Rourke let go of Daisy, bounced over, grabbed Lovina Nixon +around the waist, threw her into a chair, and sat down plumply on her +knee. + +"Aw, Jen!" her friend protested, diffident and red, but cracking a +shadowy smile for the first time that afternoon; "my hands is all +dishwatery. Set down here yourself, n' let me work while we talk." + +"You stay where you are, an' let the work go for an hour. Then I'll let +you up, an' we'll both fall to; an' when the men comes in t'l their +supper, there'll not be a pin out of place," rippled Mrs. Jenny Rourke; +then she turned to Daisy and waved the hand of dismissal. + +"Run on an' see your Dexie that used to be," she said, lowering her +voice to a mischievous cooing, "sure, we'll not tell, if your husband's +the jealous-minded kind. Dex knows you're here, the divil--that's why +he's waitin' outside." + +Daisy, conceding a smile and a little toss of her head, went out. As she +passed through the door, the Irishwoman murmured, half to herself, her +voice warm with approval: "Straight as a string, the dear, an' able to +take care of herself, right from the time she first knew a boy was a +boy. Sure, if I didn't know that, do ye think I'd send her out with +that--that what-iver-ye-want-to-call-him. He needs managin', the worst +way. There's not half enough discipline and reshtraint in the sewing +machine business, Lovina darlin'." + +Mr. Dex Coleman left the wheel of his buggy, upon which he had been +draped gracefully, and came to meet Daisy, extending both hands. + +"Well, look who's he-ere!" he fluted, melodiously, "little one, little +one! there _has_ been a pain where my heart is, you kno-ow, since some +lying son of a seacook told me you were married. What, oh, what could +you have been thinking about. Why-ee, I ain't slept a wink, not for +days--not for da-ays, Dear." + +Daisy, looking at him, blushed a little. She blushed because she +remembered that, not so very long ago, when the method of his approach +was new to her, her heart _had_ fluttered a little in response to the +addresses of this late-unripened, yodling, golden-noted, social +abortion. But, now that she had become habituated to men, the blush was +accompanied by a smile--a smile that wrinkled her nose a little, as the +eau-de-cologned Coleman floated close. + +"Does the heart still beat true?" enquired Mr. Dexter Coleman, +"crushing" her hands in fingers that were a workless white, except where +cigarettes had stained them yellow, "does it--little one?" Studying the +slight blush on Daisy's cheeks, Mr. Coleman missed those danger-lights, +her eyes. + +For the imp of mischief had sprung up in the girl like a kindled flame, +in which danced the two-horned and tridented devil of daring. + +"Shall we--s-shall we go for a little drive, Dexie?" she said, making +her voice low, and leaning her head for a second against the lapel of +the Coleman coat. + +"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a +spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way +in, an' that way out--huh?" + +So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy +into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail. + +"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart +driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey--shake +yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it +stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked +out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside +and the white of an eye showing. + +"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently, +his whip poised for another cut. + +"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out +of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she +caught the reins from her companion; then pulled the whip out of his +hand and dropped it into the holster. + +Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased +soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his +eye. + +"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on +Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you--all up to you, boy." + +"This sure is the life--ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with +which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept +along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her +waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep. + +It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry; +but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where +the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary +to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance +was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened +panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an +unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire +rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house +threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of +"pliers" out of the question. Here there was nothing for it but to +drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of +paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels. + +"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own +hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved +down until it now lightly touched her waist. + +"I can't do nothin' with it, you see," he complained, a moment later, as +the recalcitrant arm settled itself snugly about his companion; "just +look at it now, Precious!" + +"I see it," Daisy responded, looking straight before her; "looks kind of +becoming, doesn't it, Dexie?" + +"Mighty becomin', if you ask me," corroborated the arm's proprietor, +warmly "I think it ought to stay right there, now I notice how it +looks." + +Following this remark, Mr. Coleman stole a glance at the cheek that was +turned his way. The glance intoxicated him. He tightened his grip, edged +close, and dropped suddenly from jest to earnestness. + +"Say!" he breathed into her ear, "let's just keep on goin', little +girl." + +"Where?" + +"Right on to town. Train comes in at six pee-ex. Little supper in the +hotel here, an' then board her. What do we care?" + +"Aw, but, Dexie, what will people say?" + +"I don't give a whoop what they say--why should you mind? I can take a +chance, if you can, Sweetheart. Come on: be a sport!" + +"Aw, Dexie!" + +"That's m'little girl. I knew you was game. Give us a sweet kiss +now--come awn. Whass matter?" + +"The wind's pulling my hat loose," said Daisy, "I'll take it off." + +"That's th' idea," approved Mr. Coleman, reining his impatience. + +They were descending a hill, at the bottom of which a slough crossed the +trail. Fences to right and left forbade a detour. + +"I guess we'll have to drive right through it," said Daisy. + +"How about the hat?" demanded Mr. Coleman, who was now so close that his +companion could barely move her elbow, "can't you get it off?" + +"Oh," Daisy looked up innocently, "I forgot about the hat. All +right--there, it's off." + +She took off the hat and laid it in her lap. They had now reached the +edge of the shallow slough in the valley-bottom, into which the livery +horse waded, gingerly and slow. + +"Maybe he wants a drink," said Daisy; "whoa, pettie! Thirsty?" + +The horse halted and lowered his head to the water-level. + +"Poor fellow!" Daisy commented, as he drank in great famished gulps, +"don't you ever water him, Dex? Aw, quit! Aw-w--you're mean! There, +now--see what you've done," and, as Coleman, red and hot-eyed, drew back +from kissing her, Daisy pointed to her hat, afloat on the slough. + +"That's nothin'," said Coleman, regarding the hat as it slowly floated +away from the side of the buggy. + +"Oh, no," said Daisy, with sarcasm, "it just means I've got to go home +and get another hat, before we start on this trip you were speaking of. +I won't go into Toddburn bareheaded--not even for you." + +Coleman rose from his seat. "I'll sure get it for you, right now, +Sweetness," he said, "if that's how you feel about it." + +"Well, you'd better hurry, for it's sailing away," Daisy advised; "no, +you can't reach it over the wheel. You'll have to stand out on the +step." + +Mr. Dexie Coleman, who believed in doing everything with grace and ease, +scorned to grip the honest buggy-top for sensible support, as he poised +himself on the iron step, like Hermes, tiptoe for flight, and extended +an arm out over the water. He calculated, and rightly, that he could +just reach the hat and keep his balance. + +But he had not reckoned with a gathering force behind him; and perhaps +there was no more surprised man in Toddburn than this cavalier of the +sewing machine when, a second or two later, just as his fingers closed +upon the hat, a strong push from rearward propelled him sprawlingly into +the slough. The water was only three feet deep; but, as he fell +horizontally, he went right under. + +Mr. Coleman's astonishment at the turn events had taken was so intense +that he, as one might say, reclined for a moment in the bottom of the +slough, with the water roaring in his ears and choking in his throat, +before he gathered his wits together sufficiently to grope to his feet. +By the time he had regained a wet uprightness, sputtered the muddy water +out of his mouth, and blinked his eyes till vision returned, he found +that he was alone in the slough. Daisy had driven the horse out on the +farther shore, and was just getting out of the buggy. Mr. Coleman, +watching in a fascinated way, with too much water still in his windpipe +to speak, saw his late companion loop up the horse's lines in the +backhand ring, knotting them so they would not fall and tangle the +animal; then give the beast a smart little slap on the flank that +started it off at a brisk trot down the trail. + +"Whoa, there!" Mr. Coleman found breath to exclaim, in a thin aqueous +squeal, as he paddled splashingly and frantically toward land. But the +horse, headed toward its evening meal of loft-dried hay and oats in the +Toddburn livery stable, exchanged its trot for a canter, and kept on +going. + +"You'll have to go some, to catch him," said Daisy, levelly and +unsmiling; "he knows when he's well off." She kept her eyes steadily on +Coleman, tightening her grip on the handle of the horsewhip which she +had retained. + +"Ha-agh!" + +This is the nearest possible phonetic representation of the sound which +came from the man's throat, as he jumped at her. But Daisy was alert and +strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The +sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's +right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the +left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped, +straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was +running. + +"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and +sparkling. "You're _some_ man!" + +There is something salutary and restorative about the rod--that +corrective instrument recommended by Solomon the Wise. Perhaps it is +less the sting than the shame--although one must admit that both must go +together, to produce the effect. + +Dexie Coleman, all the bad humor gone out of him, sat down dejectedly +on a boulder. For the moment, he forgot pose,--forgot that his face was +muddy and bleeding, his hair rumpled, his clothes soaked and +dripping--forgot himself altogether. + +"I'm a mean son of a gun, ain't I?" he said. + +Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither +flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on." +The girl's face softened a little. + +"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; +"talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the +girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to +'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. +You're just an honest farm boy--why don't you be one? Get out and do +some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white +hands on a pitchfork-handle." + +Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very +well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights, +showed it. + +"I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here." + +He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye, +stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed +to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed of himself. A young +man shows shame by rudeness. + +"Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy +called. + +"Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder; +then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long--Kid." + +The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy +reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the +oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes +and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in +contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a +department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he +had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light +the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered. + +As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to +right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms +up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips. + +"I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby--bestest in the world!" + +Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close. + +Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he +approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. +Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back +toward the barn. + +"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the +matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +THE COMING OF THE MOTHER. + + +Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness +of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind +her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, +took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady +Frances Ware's train. + +For half a mile, the road led past Sir William's fields, in which the +wheat was now its full ripe harvest yellow. Around one of these fields, +a binder hummed, and the shirt-sleeved man on the seat of it flung a +kiss to Daisy from afar. That shirt-sleeved man was Sir William Ware, +Baronet. The man who was stooking behind the binder also lifted his hand +to his lips, though in _his_ case the salute was not a kiss but a +friendly hail; for the stooker was he who had been yodling, artificial, +"city-bug"-imitating Dexie Coleman. He had callouses on his palms now +that it would be hard to get through with a chisel, and on each arm a +biceps that would burst an iron ring. + +Daisy herself was changed in some indefinable way. Her mouth was +softened, her eyes had become forward-looking and dreamy, her color +more delicate. Her attitude was not now tensed, aggressive, a-jump with +schoolgirlish spirit; but gentle, relaxed, restful. One could not on +this day imagine her with the horsewhip of punishment in her hand. + +There were no pools on the Toddburn highway to impede this August drive. +The breath of autumn was soft in the air, and the summer's work of the +sun was over. The ruts of the trail were cushioned with soft dust, the +uplands ripe green, the trees full-sapped and thriving, every twig +deciduously ready for the going of the leaves. The prairie plants had +long ago sent the last of their pollen abroad by wind and voyaging bee. +There were red berries on the rose-bushes, and white on the wolf-willow. +The house of the world was swept and garnished for the fall. + +The thoughts of the young woman who sat, with that quiescent and settled +look in her eyes, on the seat of the tranquilly-travelling buggy, moved +to her beginning of life and ratchetted slowly up the years to the now; +and it came to Daisy Ware, as it has come to many another who thinks +more abstrusely, that consummated marriage is, and properly, the climax +of womanhood. Every growing thing about her whispered it to-day. The +message received definiteness and point as there blew across her lap a +fragment of fertile fluff that had in its heyday and its summer +nodding-time been part of a maiden dandelion-blossom. + +In the light of this flash of truth from exemplary Nature, the young +wife saw in its true light the "board and lodging" marriage in which she +might have continued unawakened--continued, perhaps, until she was old +and blase and "set" and sterile--if it had not been for the potent +something, salutarily born, both to her and to her husband, by the airs +that move among the hills and groves of God. She saw why a "little chum" +is not a wife. + +Lady Frances had been held, partly by her years and partly by the +prejudices which fixedly inhabit the old, from exploring far this +northwest of her son's adoption. Among people not socially en rapport +with her, she had long ago decided she was too advanced in years to +commence to mingle. She had found few enough intimates in the cities of +this colonial dominion; she anticipated there would be in the country no +"nice people" at all. + +She had at last consented to come out to the farm, less because she had +been assured that now suitable and comfortable accommodation awaited +her, than because her heart contained a vague hunger. When she had +started on her journey, she had thought it was her son she wanted to +see. But now, as she sat reflectively in the coach that--after +travelling what had seemed to her an interminable stretch of +country--was at last approaching the place Toddburn, Lady Frances Ware +discovered that the one she most looked forward to meeting was, not her +son, but her young daughter-in-law. + +This was not wholly because of regard for Daisy herself--although the +young wife, with her frank and clean girlishness, had won the warmest +possible place in the old lady's affections--but because Daisy was +linked with a hope and a dream that now abode daily with the mother of +the last male of the ancient lineage of Ware. + +Daisy had, by letting the bronco take its own gait, occupied a little +too much time on the trip to the village--a thing her alert and +practical former self would never have done--and, as she rose to the +crest of the last hill outside Toddburn, she saw the passenger train +just leaving the station, from which she was still separated by about +half a mile. This meant that Lady Frances, if she had come--which was +certain, for she was always punctual--was waiting alone at the little +depot. Daisy sat up straight, rousing the little bronco to its best +speed with voice and driving-reins. + +"My dear, it's quite immaterial," was the response of the old +gentlewoman to her apology, as the two embraced--not in the little depot +waiting-room, but out on the end of the platform, where Daisy had found +Lady Frances, standing by her luggage and looking about her. The old +lady had on a simple black travelling dress and a light wrap, rather +Victorian in pattern. Neither glasses nor any substitute were in view. +Lady Frances could see "her way about" quite easily without them, and +never carried anything as a concession to mode, or for pose or show. + +"I have been enjoying myself immensely during the interval," she said, +as the two proceeded to the sloping end of the platform, at the foot of +which stood the buggy; "this is an enormous country--simply enormous, my +dear. No, you needn't help me in." + +Putting one gloved hand on the brace of the buggy-top, Lady Frances, +from the slight eminence of the platform-end, reached handily the iron +step of the buggy and raised herself halely to the cushioned seat. + +"No, no, child--I should much prefer to wait till we are home--that is +to say, unless you are hungry," she said, as Daisy started the pony in +the direction of the Toddburn House. + +"I'm not hungry, Mother. Billy said----" + +"Billy?" Lady Frances made the interruption in a tone of pleasant +interrogation. + +"Will," Daisy substituted, with a little blush (Lady Frances, of course, +could not know that she was a real wife now), "said that he thought you +would rather lunch at home, so I had a little something just before I +left." + +"Billy--Billy," Lady Frances, in mental enquiry, repeated the nickname, +which had at first grated her a bit. Then her heart gave a great leap. +She turned and looked closely at Daisy. One glance at the softened eyes, +the delicate-hued and somewhat pale cheeks, the dreamy lips, the relaxed +and restful lines of neck and bosom--and the old gentlewoman and mother, +warmth of joy flooding all her arteries, reached out her hand, covered +Daisy's with it, and held the young girl's fingers in a close and long +caress. + +"My darling, my darling!" she murmured, with a thrilling tenderness, +"oh, we _will_ have to take such care of you. Does William know?" + +Daisy answered with her frank and matter-of-fact affirmative nod. + +The drive home was a very quiet one. Daisy's new habit of +forward-looking occupied her. Lady Frances Ware was wrapped in an +ecstasy of that kind and depth which one does not want to break or to +have broken by the paltry sound of the spoken word. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +THE BUD. + + +"That high-priced doctor from the city fired me out," said Dex Coleman, +coming down to the barn where Jim Burns sat on the oat-box, behind the +stall where the newly-arrived Toddburn livery horse munched hungrily at +a fresh feed of hay, "and Bill's upstairs, so I couldn't ast him what it +is. If it's a boy, the old lady will go crazy--that's one thing sure. +Milt Hayes says he'll find out, as soon as he gets warmed up, and come +down here and let us know." + +Milt Hayes was the Toddburn liveryman's son, who had brought out the +doctor to the Ware farm over roads crisped and snowbound by February, +and had been given license to remain by the stove in the bustling and +anxious house, until he "got thawed out". + +"Ain't it queer, when you come to think of it, Dex?" remarked Jim Burns, +as the other sat down beside him on the oat-box. + +"Ain't what queer, Jim?" said Dex Coleman. + +"Her," said Jim Burns, "goin' to school with us about five years ago, +an' now--" + +"It's queer, all right," agreed Dex Coleman. + +"I wonder what she could have saw in him," pursued Jim Burns, following +the groove of an old problem. + +"Oh, I dunno," Dex Coleman set his hat to the back of his head and spat +down between his hands in a thoughtful way, "Bill ain't a bad head, Jim, +when you get to know him. I never worked for a better boss, nor for +higher wages. He pays me every cent I'm worth an' a little more." + +"Maybe so," said Jim Burns, "I ain't got nothin' against him personally. +But--" + +"But what?" + +"Oh--nothin'," said Jim Burns. + +"Come on, now, Jim,--tell us. What's wrong with Bill?" + +"Well," Jim Burns flung out an expressive hand, "I could have had Daise +myself, if he hadn't took her." + +Dex Coleman tilted back his head and laughed till the barn rang. Jim +Burns got up slowly off the oat-box and commenced to take off his coat. + +"Come on," he said, "if you want a fight. I'll push your nose out +through the back of your head, if you laugh at me that way, Coleman." + +Coleman sobered, and slapped the other on the back. + +"I ain't laughin' at you, boy," he said; "don't you ever think it. It +was myself I was laughin' at. I wanted her too, Jim, them days. But we +both went at it the wrong way. You said nothin' at all to her, and I +said too much. Bill goes about it in the right way, and he gets the +girl. Bill's a gentleman." + +"Well," demanded Burns, "ain't we gentlemen, too? I am, anyway, and I +have a poke in the jaw for any man that says I ain't." + +"That," rejoined Dex Coleman, "is one son of a moose of a way to prove +to a man that you're a _gentleman_. The trouble with us out in this +section of the country, Jim, is that, some way, we seem to have the idea +in the back of our heads that a gentleman is a man who's got either +money enough or nerve enough to sport around in a tailor-made suit and +not do any work. That's the reason each of us is so sensitive about his +claim to the title: because we think the man who says 'you're no +gentleman' sees us as day-laborers and himself as our wealthy or nervy +neighbor who don't have to work. Jim, this gentleman thing is inside of +you--not outside. I've learned that much from workin' alongside of Bill, +anyway.... Here comes Milt. Well, Milt, did they let you see it?" + +"It ain't a 'it', boys," said Milt Hayes, "it's a him." + +"Three cheers!" shouted Dex Coleman; "how did the old lady take it?" + +"Oh, carried it kind of easy, in a shawl so clean-white it pretty near +blinded you," replied Milt Hayes, staring; "why, how did you suppose +she'd take it? By the scruff of the neck?" + +"I don't mean the baby," explained Dex Coleman, "I mean the news." + +"It wasn't no news to her," responded the other vaguely, "she brung him +downstairs herself, I'm tellin' you." + +"Oh, go to blazes!" exclaimed Dex Coleman, jumping off the oat-box, +"boys, I'm goin' up to the house. I'll get in, sir, if I have to +massacree that city doctor to do it." + +"Ast how Daise is," called Jim Burns after Coleman as he went out, "we +don't care about whether the old lady likes the baby or lumps it." + +It was not long till tall, good-looking and still somewhat "nervy" Dex +Coleman came whooping back to the barn with the word, "I bunted past the +doctor, fellows--never even let on I knew he was there--and spoke right +up to Lady Frances herself. She says all you boys may come right up and +have a look at the baby." + +"I guess we _may_," said Jim Burns, as he followed the speaker out +through the door; "it's Daise's baby, not hers." + +"I had one look at him," commented Milt Hayes, as he brought up the rear +of the procession, "but I guess I can stand another." + +Lady Frances, as the three young men entered, was sitting in the big +upholstered chair in the centre of the farmhouse living-room. Her eyes +were shining, and her whole figure radiated an extraordinary animation. +In her lap lay something in shawls--something that waved tiny red +antennæ in a futile way, and emitted a series of unclassifiable sounds. + +"He sounds like a crow," Milt Hayes said, sotto voce, to Jim Burns, +"don't he?" + +"You wouldn't know a crow from a cowbird, Hayes," Jim Burns muttered; +"talk sense, or keep still." + +The three approached on tiptoe. Lady Frances looked up and smiled. + +"You may walk briskly, young men," she said, "the child is quite wide +awake, and not at all nervous, I think." + +The three came on abreast, a little sheepishly; but when they were about +five feet away, Jim Burns, with an air of proprietorship, elbowed the +other two aside and stepped to the front. Arriving at Lady Frances' +chair, he leaned over and took a lengthy and critical survey of the +infant. + +"Well, ma'am," he said, "I been like a brother to Daise, and I've give +Bill a talkin'-to, more than the once: so I can speak my mind plain-out +about this baby. It's pretty fair-looking, and I guess by the way it +slings its hands around and hollers, it'll live--but I don't think it +does entire justice to Daise's looks and Bill's style. I certainly +don't. Come on, boys: yous can take a peek, but don't touch it with your +big clumsy hands. You first, Dex, and then Milt. Don't breathe in his +face, Coleman, you galoot!" + +Here obviously ends the book of Daisy the Girl, but not the story of +Daisy. For as Daisy--or, more briefly, "Daise"--she still lives in the +Toddburn district of Plowland. If you are ever that way along, you may +call--any hour of any day, for there are no receiving days in Plowland. +In asking your direction of those along the trail, do not enquire for +the "estate of Sir William Ware". Nobody would know whom you meant. Just +say, "Where does Bill Ware live?" + +For the ancient title has fallen into disuse, and the big house in the +city has been sold, and Lady Frances does not wince when little Billie +Ware, jumping up and down ecstatically at the window, shouts across to +her, "Oh, Gamma, see _zem_ horses wun!" + +--THE END-- + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49188 *** diff --git a/49188-h/49188-h.htm b/49188-h/49188-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3cfc0b2 --- /dev/null +++ b/49188-h/49188-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8058 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + + p.bold {text-align: center; font-weight: bold;} + p.bold2 {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 150%;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + h1 span, h2 span { display: block; text-align: center; } + #id1 { font-size: smaller } + + + hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 5px; border-collapse: collapse; border: none; text-align: right;} + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0px; + } /* page numbers */ + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smaller {font-size: smaller;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .mynote { background-color: #DDE; color: black; padding: .5em; margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; } /* colored box for notes at beginning of file */ + .space-above {margin-top: 3em;} + .left {text-align: left;} + .s3 {display: inline; margin-left: 3em;} + + .poem {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem div {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem div.i5 {margin-left: 5em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49188 ***</div> + +<div class = "mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br /> +Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.<br /></p></div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="center"><a name="cover.jpg" id="cover.jpg"></a><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /></div> + +<hr /> + +<h1>DAISY HERSELF</h1> + +<p class="bold space-above">By</p> + +<p class="bold2">WILL E. INGERSOLL</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Author of "The Road that led Home", "The Centenarian" etc.</i></p> + +<div class="center space-above"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div> + +<p class="bold space-above">TORONTO<br />THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY<br />LIMITED</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center">Copyright, Canada, 1920<br />THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED<br /> +PUBLISHERS<span class="s3"> </span>TORONTO</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="CONTENTS"> + <tr> + <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td> + <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>I</td> + <td class="left"> A Two Hundred Mile Dash</td> + <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>II</td> + <td class="left"> The City Swallows Daisy</td> + <td><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>III</td> + <td class="left"> The Maid and the Clerk</td> + <td><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IV</td> + <td class="left"> A "Steer"</td> + <td><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>V</td> + <td class="left"> A Job</td> + <td><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VI</td> + <td class="left"> The Plebeian</td> + <td><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VII</td> + <td class="left"> A Human Horticulturist</td> + <td><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VIII</td> + <td class="left"> A Knight in the Kitchen</td> + <td><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IX</td> + <td class="left"> A Dance and an Invitation</td> + <td><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>X</td> + <td class="left"> The Boxing Match and Afterward</td> + <td><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XI</td> + <td class="left"> The Face Behind the Mask</td> + <td><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XII</td> + <td class="left"> Sawn Off the Old Block</td> + <td><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIII</td> + <td class="left"> A Plot that Miscarried</td> + <td><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIV</td> + <td class="left"> The Golden Stair</td> + <td><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XV</td> + <td class="left"> The Lady of the House</td> + <td><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVI</td> + <td class="left"> Taking a Rest</td> + <td><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVII</td> + <td class="left"> A Raincloud</td> + <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVIII</td> + <td class="left"> The Bleak Two</td> + <td><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIX</td> + <td class="left"> The Choice of the Dray</td> + <td><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XX</td> + <td class="left"> John Nixon's Invitation</td> + <td><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXI</td> + <td class="left"> In the Blizzard</td> + <td><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXII</td> + <td class="left"> In the Drifted Sleigh</td> + <td><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIII</td> + <td class="left"> Daisy's Home Coming</td> + <td><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIV</td> + <td class="left"> A Western Wild Man</td> + <td><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXV</td> + <td class="left"> Why?</td> + <td><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVI</td> + <td class="left"> A New Settler</td> + <td><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVII</td> + <td class="left"> The Sewing Machine Lovemaker</td> + <td><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVIII</td> + <td class="left"> The Coming of the Mother</td> + <td><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIX</td> + <td class="left"> The Bud</td> + <td><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold2">DAISY HERSELF</p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER I.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Two Hundred Mile Dash.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy had run away from her home on the farm outside Toddburn village +with this young store clerk, Beatty, who now sat holding her hand in the +moonlight "flyer" of the M. & N. Beatty, who came originally from the +city, was a bad young rascal; and Daisy—who, neglected and exposed to +temptation since her earliest girlhood, had developed an innate +awareness of "fellows"—knew it. None of her several reasons for this +escapade had been the usual one—love. It suited her, however, to let +Beatty think that she had come prepared to follow him to the world's +end—a lengthy journey, upon which the railway ticket Beatty had bought +for her was only good for the first two hundred miles.</p> + +<p>Daisy was proceeding daringly, easily, without pause or regret, toward +whatever lay in store for her along the path she had taken. Her +locomotion was that of a thing which is both propelled and drawn. The +propulsive force was her hatred of the farm where she had drudged for +all the workable years of her seventeen under that plebeian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> taskmaster, +stolid, selfish John Nixon, her stepfather, and that unmaternal mother +whose forename, by some perpetuated sarcasm, was Lovina. The drawing +force was Daisy's own eager, vigorous, intrepid spirit of +adventure—green maidenhood's hunger for the sensational new.</p> + +<p>The car in which the two sat was not a "sleeper," but an ordinary +red-upholstered day coach. The two had boarded the train at Oak Lake, +the first station east of Toddburn (where neither of them were known by +the new station agent) at a little after midnight. They were due to +reach the city between six and seven o'clock in the morning.</p> + +<p>Even if the car had been a berth coach, and there had been opportunity +for retirement, Daisy could not have slept. The hour, the situation, the +novelty of the rushing, lamplit train (she had never been on a train +before), kept every faculty ablaze and awake in a pleasant intoxication +of excitement. Elbow on window-sill and chin in palm, the girl sat, +glancing now out at the flying moonlit telegraph posts, now about the +interior of the dingy branch-line passenger coach. All seemed fairylike +to her eyes habituated only to prairie fallow and lea.</p> + +<p>Young Beatty, holding her hand and thrilling in a delightful though less +spiritual than fleshly way, at the occasional glances with which Daisy +baited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> him, looked out of the corner of his eye at her and felt very +much pleased, indeed, with himself. First, she had a glorious color, the +like of which one could not buy for money, nor yet for love—a color +that resided comely and rich in her cheeks, even at feeling's lowest +tide, but which now, in the high tide of her adventure, overflowed down +in a bonny estuary toward the milk-warm curve of her chin. Then, there +were the features, each with its peculiar likability or lure—lips made +and eager for enjoyment, yet with something in their set and pose that +was constant and fine—a nose humorous and short, tiltable to every +gradation of coquetry—eyes with dancing irises, soft baffling shadows, +and brows that trended downward at the outer ends. Lastly, the +hair—brown, with a wave that made it comely in any coiffure; coiled +carelessly under a hasty pin or two at temple, crown, and white nape of +neck where a curl caressed—had a piquancy even in its disarray. Beatty +cuddled his head back against the red upholstery of the seat in +luxurious contemplation, and again expressively squeezed the fingers he held.</p> + +<p>Beatty himself was a slim, white-handed youth whose abundant blond hair +and smooth "way" had made the world, for him, a kind of garden of the +Hesperides—the fault with this simile being that he was no Hercules, +except in his vanity. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> this, his strength was as the strength of ten, +though not because his heart was pure. If you had taxed him with that +characteristic in which Beatty was eminently taxable—his attitude +toward girls—he would have regarded you indulgently a moment, and would +then have explained that it was not his fault if "Janes fell for him" +and "fooled with the band-wagon" to their own undoing. Surely it was a +"free country."</p> + +<p>In spite, however, of the fact that the country was a free one, the +special thing which had sent Beatty out of the city "for his health" was +the quest after him by a two-hundred-pound brother of a sister some +ninety pounds lighter. The brother, who carried a professional "haymaker +in either mitt" for even those of his own gender who could use their +fists with fair ability, was as sincere in his desire to interview +Beatty as Beatty was considerate in his desire to save the brother the +embarrassment of such an interview. A recently-received picture postcard +from a friend of Beatty's had, however, intimated that the family of +which the brother and sister in question were members had since "gone to +the coast," and that Beatty's home city had therefore become again for +Beatty a consistent metropolis of a free country, if he wished to return to it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>Beatty did wish to return to it; and, returning with round and pretty +Daisy Nixon as a travelling companion—made, Beatty felt assured, wholly +and dependently his by the manner of her home-leaving—he felt that the +several months of his exile had not been wasted.</p> + +<p>"The boys", so Beatty reflected complacently, as he leaned back on the +car-cushion, "will cert'n'ee set up an 'take notice w'en they see this +w'at I got here. They cert'n'ee will."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER II.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The City Swallows Daisy.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The summer dawn came with a warm melting of the dark and a running out +over the sky-floor of spilled light from under the edge of the world. +Daisy, her nerves thrilling like the nerves of one drunken with wine, +leaned untired on the varnished window-sill; looking, with all her young +vitality gathered into shine of eyes and beat of heart, for her first +view of the city.</p> + +<p>The shadow of the express, as the early sun came up, coursed like a +hound along the barrow-pits of the right-of-way, and quivered, as it +were, in noiseless impact against the stolid cedar fence-posts that +stood still and were whipped by in the guise of staring bumpkins as the +smart, swift train hummed on its way.</p> + +<p>Daisy saw these effects at the edge of her travel-picture out of the +corner of her eye merely. Her attention was concentrated +forward—forward, to watch for the first white trimming of roof-tops on +the dewy green fabric of the prairie-rim. Hateful to her were the square +fields by the track, where phlegmatic men and teams moved up and down +the black fallow; hateful the whitewashed houses, the homely +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>poplar-clumps, the stacks of straw. Appurtenances, all, of the life +with which she had been surfeited (she thought): reminding her of cows +to be milked, of barnyard drudgery, of gawky, red-visaged, wholly +unpiquant boys, of men content to smoke and drawl away their rare hours +of ease.</p> + +<p>Hateful! The term is too mild to express the immense energy of the +girl's distaste for the life she had, with youth's dash, pushed behind +her in one reckless thrust.</p> + +<p>She was done with it. For good or for ill, she was done with it all, or +thought so, in these kinetic and dancing moments, as new leagues of her +unexplored earth uprolled along the endless ribbon of this two-railed +track of dreams. New leagues, yes—but, so far, no new scenery. The +stations she had passed, and continued to pass, were nothing but an +endless chain of Toddburns; the intervening reaches of farm land, no +more than linked replicas without number or variation, of the Nixon +farm. In spite of the "flyer" and its obvious achievement over distance, +Daisy Nixon at moments had the odd sensation that the track was +revolving beneath the car-wheels, treadmill-style, and the train merely +standing maddeningly still amid the old locale.</p> + +<p>But there—there! A quick hypodermic needle of joy pricked her throat, +and Daisy caught her breath as the strong keen drug of excitement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +tingled out to all her nerve-ends. A white kite-tail of houses seemed to +drop down and flicker, half in the air, at the point where the uprolling +earth revolved against the broad-open casement of the morning sky. +Appearing for a moment as a fantasy, it soon settled into a lengthening +white saw-blade of joined buildings, low in the distance, dividing the +solid green world from the dreamy firmament of a June dawn. Straight +toward it rushed the cleaving bullet of the train.</p> + +<p>Her head out beneath the raised window-sash, her companion forgotten as +though he had never existed, Daisy wrapped herself in the joy of the +hour. The white house-line, advancing along the angle of its +perspective, broadened and took form and character, split into rays of +streets, discovered great chimneys with smoke-plumes, unveiled square +buildings in a caparison of glittering windows, began to live and move +and give forth human signs. The first workers were already in the +streets, for a goose-herd of city whistles was croaking out seven, vying +therein with the warning blast of the "flyer's" engine as, barely +slackening speed, it rushed along the cobweb of tracks, arrogant and +favored possessor, for the time being, of the right of way to the great +urban station in the heart of all.</p> + +<p>"Well, kid," said the voice of Beatty, "how d'ye like it?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p><p>"Fine, Freddie," Daisy replied, blithely. The comment was plain and +simple enough; but her eyes and cheeks told the rest, without need of +words.</p> + +<p>Beatty stuck on his hat, tilting it a little.</p> + +<p>"It ain't so bad, either," he conceded, grinning to himself, as he +picked up his smart leather suitcase and Daisy's battered telescope +grip, "not so bad, at that, kiddo."</p> + +<p>With a hollow, drumlike roar, the train drew to a halt beneath a dome of +glass and iron; and Daisy and her companion, inching along behind the +file of passengers, at length emerged upon a cement walk, walled in on +either side by the bulk of varnished railway coaches. Passing along +this, descending a stair with an iron balustrade, and proceeding through +a great, busy, and echoing rotunda with a ceiling almost as far away as +a sky, Daisy and her companion emerged upon a stretch of granolithic +pavement.</p> + +<p>Beyond the curb, a bevy of bus-drivers from city hotels crowed like a +flock of roosters—the surmounting voice in this bedlam being that of a +sandy-mustached old-timer, whose vehicle was labelled "Imperial Hotel." +By his hind-wheel he stood, moving nothing but the hinges of his jaws; +and to see his mouth open to its red limit was to be filled with +consternation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p><p>"Imm-Peary-ail Hoat'l!" he sang, his eyes looking nonchalantly up and +away, with something of the expression he used to wear when scouting the +sky for signs of rain, in the old farming days before he became poet +laureate of the city's pioneer hotel.</p> + +<p>"Why—look who's here, will you!" The exclamation was Beatty's, as he +stopped alongside the scratched old bus. "This is him, Mrs. Beatty—old +Jim-Jam Hogle. Can you take a passenger, J. J.?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hogle, without ceasing his vocal offices for so much as the fraction +of a moment, let his eyes flicker down over Beatty with no sign of +recognition, returned his gaze again to its former direction above the +depot roof, and jerked his thumb casually toward the interior of his +craft. Beatty handed the girl in, climbed in after her, and set down the +suitcase and grip. No others entered; and presently Mr. Hogle, turning +from his post by the wheel-rim and glancing inscrutably in at Daisy as +he passed the glass panel behind where his two passengers sat, unsnapped +and threw in his iron hitching-weight, climbed to his high seat, and +rattled away.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon had never before seen such crowds nor such coachmanship. +With the horses trotting at a good speed, the old teamster wound in and +out by motor-trucks, autos, street-cars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> horse-drays, and thronging +pedestrians, as smoothly, swiftly and carelessly as though he had the +whole street to himself. The traffic grew less dense as they passed out +of the vicinity of the depot, crossed a corner where the car-tracks met +at right angles, and, after bowling for a block or two down the city's +main thoroughfare, turned down a side street and drew up at the door of +a hoary frame hotel, its white-painted two-tier piazza weathered to a +dingy gray.</p> + +<p>Beatty and Daisy descended; and the old bus-driver, after first hitching +the team to the weight, followed with the grips.</p> + +<p>"You wait in the hall here, while I go an' dicker with the clerk, dear," +said Beatty, ostentatiously, "I'll be right back."</p> + +<p>Daisy, looking about her curiously, encountered suddenly the eye of Mr. +Hogle, standing up the hall, out of sight of the hotel office. The eye +had been trying for some moments to catch hers; and, now that it had +succeeded, Mr. Hogle raised a huge forefinger, stained indelibly with +harness-oil, and beckoned. Daisy went over briskly.</p> + +<p>"<i>Missis</i> Beatty, hey?" said Mr. Hogle, toning his great voice to a low +interrogative rumble.</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded a careless affirmative. It was none of his business. She +felt able to take care of this point herself, when the time should +arrive.</p> + +<p>"Like hell you are," said the unmincing Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Hogle, "ner wun't be. Break +away from him as soon's as you can—that's if it ain't too late already. +I know <i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled; raising her chin challengingly, after a manner she had. +But she did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I guess you're all right yet," said Mr. Hogle, after a shrewd fatherly +glance, "an' I see you're one of them confident kind. Them's the ones +that gets ketched easiest. Now you'll mind what I told you—won't you, +Missie?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, regarding her adviser with dancing eyes, bobbed her chin up and +down in mock docility; and Mr. Hogle, shaking his head pessimistically, +went out to put away his team.</p> + +<p>"What was that old geezer saying?" said Beatty, coming out of the office +as the old man went outside.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm sure I don't know," said Daisy, gravely, "I think he was trying +to make love to me, Freddie."</p> + +<p>"Wants to get his can beat off, eh?" remarked Beatty, carelessly; "well, +what-oh-what does my little girlie want worst, right now?"</p> + +<p>"Breakfast," replied Daisy, plumply; ducking roguishly to avoid the +caress her questioner, imagining <i>that</i> was the thing she "wanted +worst," sought to bestow.</p> + +<p>"A-all right," said Beatty, swallowing his pique; "we'll go and see if +they can scare us up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> some poached-two-on, right now. Then 'm going to +take my baby out an' show her the best time <i>she</i> ever had, in all her +young life—eh?"</p> + +<p>"M'h'm," murmured Daisy, smiling to herself, as she followed her +companion into the dining-room.</p> + +<p>Breakfast that morning was a notable affair, a milestone in Daisy +Nixon's days. Not because there was anything novel or striking about the +garniture of the Imperial Hotel dining-room, which was a plain homely +place, differing little from the eating-room of the Jubilee House in +Toddburn—but because there hummed, and called, and clanged, and +whistled through the open windows the multitudinous sounds of this new +urban life into which she had, as it were, plunged headlong. Daisy +listened absently to Beatty's chatter, conceding him an occasional +dimple or smile; but otherwise almost forgot him until, as the meal +ended, he laid his hand, hot and moist, over hers, and said:</p> + +<p>"Well, how does my little-one feel about it now?"</p> + +<p>Daisy glanced down at his white-pored hand, with its cigarette-yellowed +finger-tips and outstanding blue veins. Then she looked up at him, and +leaned one pretty cheek coaxingly close.</p> + +<p>"You's baby feels ashamed in this old waist and skirt and hat," she +said, softly; "ain't you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>going to get her some nice things to be +married in?"</p> + +<p>Beatty's hand squeezed hers.</p> + +<p>"Your Freddie sure will do that for you," he said. "Let's go upstairs +now, and figure out what we'll need."</p> + +<p>Daisy suffered him to pull her out of her chair by the hand he held. +Still retaining it, he led her out of the dining-room, along the hall, +and up the stairway. At the top, she halted—fetching her companion, who +had kept right on going, to a standstill with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"Come on, come on," he said, making his tone matter-of-course, "the room +is No. 19."</p> + +<p>"What's the number of <i>my</i> room?" said Daisy, regarding him pleasantly +but with a kind of odd under-gleam in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Y—your room!" Even Beatty, the inured, was embarrassed by that +searching, direct look. "Why, I—I—darned if I remember the number."</p> + +<p>Daisy continued to look at him a moment; then the shine in her eyes was +succeeded by a twinkle, and this by a promising, coaxing side-glance.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, let's go into the women's sitting-room, Freddie—this +time."</p> + +<p>Beatty knew when to yield a point—so he flattered himself.</p> + +<p>"All right, Sweetest," he said, "you're the doctor—always."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p><p>They passed into the "ladies' parlor," which was empty, except for a +few articles of faded furniture, among which a new red settee in one +corner glowed with a preternatural brilliance. Beatty sat on the red +settee and drew the girl down beside him.</p> + +<p>"Somebody got a kiss for her Freddie?" he said, his lips loosely apart +and wrinkles springing into view at the sides of his nostrils.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I—do' know," Daisy dropped her head a little; "let's just talk. +It's nice to sit together an' talk, when we love each other so, isn't +it?"</p> + +<p>Beatty's answer to this was to thrust his arm about her waist, push his +palm beneath her chin, and pull up her face toward his. The girl +resisted at first; then, with a motion of yielding, laid her head back +on his shoulder and raised her lips. Beatty kissed her, not reverently +but roughly; then kissed her again; then again and again: burying his +mouth into hers. A little hand came up and caressed his neck; then +slipped down within his coat and rested as it were, upon his +heart—moving softly, as though feeling for its beats.</p> + +<p>Then hand and girl and all tore suddenly and strongly away—and Daisy +Nixon was upon her feet, her cheeks glowing like fire, laughing as she +held up the leather purse she had taken from his pocket.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>"It was the only way!" she cried, breathlessly and sparklingly, as he +sat agape; "the only way to get out of you what you owe to me, for the +things I have let you think about me, Mr. Fred Beatty. You thought I +didn't know all about you—what you did to poor Pearlie Brodie, making +her the talk of Toddburn, with worse to come yet—a poor motherless +girl, who was given up by a decent fellow that would have married her, +if it hadn't been for you. You thought I didn't know. Yes: you thought I +'fell for you', as you'd call it. But I'll tell you what I did, an' you +can put it in your pipe an' smoke it, and I hope it'll do you good. I +needed you. I needed to get away from that place where I was wasting my +life, and I had no money—so I used you. I've met ginks like you before. +I could see through you from the first like a pane of glass—you poor, +miserable imitation of a man!</p> + +<p>"Now, I'm going to take this money and use it, to keep me till I get a +job somewhere. Then I'm going to pay it back. But not to you—don't you +ever think it. I'm going to send it to Pearlie Brodie. She'll need it +badly enough, in a few months from now. She'd never have got it from you +straight—never in this world—so she'll get it through me. Now, you get +out of here! I've wasted too much breath talking to you. And keep this +in your memory-box: <i>I don't know you</i>! So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> don't speak to me, if I ever +have the bad luck to meet you again!"</p> + +<p>The girl had barely finished speaking, when Beatty leaped at her, +grabbing for the purse which she held. But she stepped quickly +back—and, as he pressed in, gave him, with all the strength of her +virile young body, a push that sent him sprawling.</p> + +<p>"You give me that money," Beatty said, his face pasty and mean with +fury, as he climbed to his feet and stood, slowly dusting off his +clothes; "that's all I want out o' you. Hand it over, or I'll go down +and phone for a constable, and have you taken to the police station.</p> + +<p>"Yes—you will!" Daisy challenged. "I suppose you think no person around +Toddburn ever reads the city papers and notices what the law does to a +fellow that brings a girl sixteen years old to a hotel. Go down and +phone for the police, if you feel like it! I know who they'll take back +with them when they come, and it won't be me. And I'll tell you +something more, Mr. Smart Man: If you're not out of here in the next +three minutes or less, <i>I'll</i> phone for the constable. It makes me sick +to look at you. I want to go and wash my mouth, too. It'll take a good +many washings to make it feel as clean as it did before <i>you</i> touched +it. Get away from here!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p><p>"Well," Beatty growled, after a moment, as a distant step down the hall +portended the coming of one of the hotel staff, probably attracted by +the sound of the raised voices and scuffling, "keep the money, then, you +blamed nickel's worth o' nothing. I'll get the worth of it out o' you +some other way, yet—you watch me! There's goin' to come a time when +you'll need me, an' you'd better fasten onto this," he took a card from +his pocket and tossed it down on the settee. "Till then, I'll bid you +'good-day'."</p> + +<p>Therewith—in his intense self-reverence, half-expecting to be called +back before he reached the street-door—Mr. Frederick S. Beatty turned +on his heel and stalked out.</p> + +<p>But Daisy did not call him back. Neither, be it said, did she hasten to +wash her mouth. As the slam of the door downstairs gave ostentatious +notice of Beatty's exit, she moved to the window, watching him up the +sidewalk with an odd, half-maternal look.</p> + +<p>"That call-down may do you some good, Mr. Naughty man," she murmured; +"you've had too easy a time with girls—that's what ails you, +principally."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER III.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Maid and the Clerk.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and +shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had +been sitting. "So they har."</p> + +<p>The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to +confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a +hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair +of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At +the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a +saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like +exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a +skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly +reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were +pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette.</p> + +<p>"Ar, ee—yes—s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a +hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an +ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> attention, with her head on one +side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed +themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet +of gold.</p> + +<p>"'Usbands <i>har</i> queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp +sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't +they?"</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and +was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the +feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously, +and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded:</p> + +<p>"Are they?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never +say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance +from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back +to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four +times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though +she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy +noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white.</p> + +<p>There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall. +Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of +her hips<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable, +serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said:</p> + +<p>"Bob—er—Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway, +'e says."</p> + +<p>Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs. +She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the +counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the +register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys +on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled, +and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was +newly-barbered—shaved to the blood.</p> + +<p>He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from +sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words +out of the corner of his mouth:</p> + +<p>"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked a little puzzled.</p> + +<p>"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?"</p> + +<p>"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips."</p> + +<p>"Just the <i>one</i> grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching +up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this—see?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p><p>"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for +your board bill. You pay in advance—see?"</p> + +<p>Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little +flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her +blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and, +with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had +brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested +it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic.</p> + +<p>As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot +round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he +leaned close.</p> + +<p>"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie +forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, +yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and +paddled hers.</p> + +<p>Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the +counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his +pocket.</p> + +<p>"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the +little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him +when he went out."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his +palms—a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very +quintessence of humor—the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face +of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his +fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, +shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, +and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!"</p> + +<p>"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of +deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned—and looked +into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the +bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within +the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his +jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek.</p> + +<p>"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his +paternal way.</p> + +<p>"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. +Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?"</p> + +<p>Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon +other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy. +His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> a nutmeg-grater, closed +about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made +the girl wince a little.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor +daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her +mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse—less because of +its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey +score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr. +Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes, +therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little +affirmative nod.</p> + +<p>"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the +side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus <i>here</i>? Has this lad +been sassin' ye?"</p> + +<p>Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added, +contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my +money in it, so he did."</p> + +<p>"Took your <i>what</i>?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward +Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!"</p> + +<p>"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to +Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You +get to hell out o' here, and get your team out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> You got to meet that +south train in fifteen minutes".</p> + +<p>Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver +watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on +the counter.</p> + +<p>"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in +fifteen <i>seconds</i>. If ye don't—I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what +that means, Markey."</p> + +<p>Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow +bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and +slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth.</p> + +<p>Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He +waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around +its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his +vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on +the numbered rack behind the counter. Then—he sprang into action!</p> + +<p>So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm +shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he +had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was +for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was +dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> counter. Then +the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this +Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had +temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles +as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked +furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out +of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide.</p> + +<p>"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and +I'll kill yeh."</p> + +<p>"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip +holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the +latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and +shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of +Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old +Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide—</p> + +<p>"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll +give the jane her purse."</p> + +<p>"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin' +here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let +up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the +language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a +crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> standin' here—or +have ye no shame <i>to</i> ye? Dry up, now!"</p> + +<p>This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated +Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his +breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down +viciously, fell with a slap.</p> + +<p>"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a +little as he glanced down at it.</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face +which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's +collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black +and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for +a throw.</p> + +<p>Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his +back carelessly on Markey and missile.</p> + +<p>"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once +before, an' we had a—a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his +palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness, +"about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all +right for a man when he's grew up; but <i>some</i> men never outgrows the +tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense +he's got, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your +eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that +midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now."</p> + +<p>He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked +around.</p> + +<p>"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and +Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r +sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob +Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out +'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty +o' time, too."</p> + +<p>With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across +the rotunda—the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the +cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins—and +made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"—this +being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda +of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy—glad enough to do it, too, for +her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness—took the key Markey +sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A "Steer".</span></span></h2> + +<p>It might have been about four o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. +Room No. 19 looked westward—not over green swells of grass and grazing +cattle, and a wind swinging as a censer in the sky-temple, but over a +hot gravelled roof, parapetted with brick and crossed by three radial +clotheslines, upon which human garments jiggled grotesquely, like +scissored paper men. The only jig-makers extant, these, on that busy +midweek afternoon.</p> + +<p>At one end of this low one-story level of roof, a brick rear-wall rose, +with a row of doors that opened out upon those merry clothes-lines. +Through one of these doors, as Daisy looked, came a young girl of about +her own age. Plainly soon to become a mother, the girl's eyes had that +mild, pondering look characteristic of her condition. She dragged over +the gravel a basket of clothes; and, when she had reached an unoccupied +part of one of the clotheslines, commenced to pin the washed things +up—a mechanic's moleskin shirt, a cheap, print house-dress, a limp, +lacy blouse, a little frilled dust-cap, and other little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> sartorial +coquetries that told their tale of a marriage less than a year old.</p> + +<p>Daisy was taking her first look at "light housekeeping"; and, as she was +new from the country, with all her distaste of fields and cows and +"chores" uppermost, this back-roof prospect held her, as the new always +holds. To her, it was not sordid, but sunny and cosy, with the wonderful +city-sounds rising all about. She could almost have leaped across to the +brick parapet, which was just below the level of her window; and for one +gay adventurous moment, she came nearly doing it. She wanted to look in +those doors; to see how people lived, in the city; to talk to the young +urban housewife. She wanted to explore endlessly, to feed her boundless +and exuberant youth's appetite of the eye.</p> + +<p>A knock came at the door. Daisy felt a little anxious as she thought of +old Jim Hogle. He had served her turn—secured her purse for her from +Markey, toward whom she bore no grudge but felt instead a mischievous +desire to "tame down" into a wooer—and she did not want any meddling, +old, self-appointed foster-father handicapping her movements here in +town. She must let the old man, who reminded her distastefully of the +farm, know, once and for all, that her plans were "none of his +business". Perhaps, though, he would not be put aside so easily. With +this last thought in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> her mind, it was a very cold and hostile face that +Daisy presented, as she unlocked the door and opened it.</p> + +<p>"Oh-h! Woo-oo!" exclaimed a voice, with a burlesque of shivering. The +sylph of the blond coiffure skipped in, shrinking away playfully as she +closed the door. "I say—you do chill one, you know!"</p> + +<p>Daisy relaxed her face.</p> + +<p>"I thought it was that old What's-his-name," she said.</p> + +<p>"Ar, yes", the sylph had bobbed over, and was poking at her hair with a +forefinger, canting and turning her head before the looking +glass—trying, doubtless, to reduce her order to some semblance of +Daisy's pretty disorder; "ar, yes—'e <i>is</i> a bit of an old nuisance, 'e +is. You carn't guess what 'e's up to now".</p> + +<p>"What?" Daisy's eyes widened.</p> + +<p>"Arskin' the boss to take you on 'ere, as a dinin'-room girl. The boss, +'e'll do it, too. 'Im and Jim-jam's old pals—'old-timers' they calls +it, among the colownials—and the 'Ogle person 'e can have any think 'e +wants for the arskin'. D'you know, I shouldn't take it, if I were you".</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to take it," said Daisy, with considerable fervor.</p> + +<p>The sylph, pulling herself away at length from the glass, came over and +sat down on the side of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> the bed—dangling her high heels kittenishly +and eyeing Daisy up and down.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what I should do, if I were in your boots?" she said.</p> + +<p>Daisy's eyes came up interrogatively.</p> + +<p>"I should go into service," pursued the sylph; "like as not, you'll 'ave +a charnce at some rich young man, that way, sooner or later. 'Ousemaids +have done that, by good management, even owver in the Old Country. Out +'ere, it's a—a caution, 'ow often it happens".</p> + +<p>"I don't want to marry anybody, rich or poor, just now", said Daisy; +"but how do you get into 'service', and what is it? What do you have to +do?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, down't you know what service is?" her companion simulated surprise +broadly; then, looking a little aside, as though addressing a third +party, the sylph murmured: "Ow, the denseniss of the mahsses! It's a +cortion, it is!"</p> + +<p>After this soliloquy, she faced Daisy again, looking the girl up and +down as through the mistress' lorgnette. "W'y", she said, "domestic +service, I mean—service: I carn't use any other word—in some big +'ouse, with your two evenin's off a week, if you're a good bargainer, +an' a charnce to have your comp'ny in the kitchin, when the Missis isn't +abaout—she carn't always be on 'and, can she?"</p> + +<p>Daisy was so attracted—not by the "company"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> aspect of the suggested +vocation, as by the thought that she might not only view, but actually +dwell in, some of the rich and romantic interiors she had seen in +photoplays at Thompson's Hall in Toddburn, and perhaps have an adventure +of her own in a "big 'ouse"—that she forgot to ask her companion the +obvious question: why she herself was not 'in service'.</p> + +<p>"I know a girl as is just leavin' her place," the sylph pursued; "I +shall give you the address, if you wish, and phone her to be on the +lookout, so you'll 'ave no trouble a-findin' the servants' entrance. +'Ave you a bit of pyper abaout you?"</p> + +<p>Daisy fumbled in her telescope grip and brought out an old letter, from +which she tore off the blank sheet. The sylph drew out of her coiffure a +thin pencil that had been skewered there. In a leaning, long-lettered +hand, she wrote a street name and number.</p> + +<p>"There", she said, as she handed the scrap of paper to Daisy, "take a +taxi—that's quickest, and it will save you arskin' your way. You'll do +withaout references—the Missis in this place I'm sendin' you to is a +bit of a soft un, and Annie will see to that paht of it. I say, I should +nip out naow, if I were you," the sylph glanced at her wrist-watch, +"while 'Ogle's away at the station with 'is bus. 'E just left as I came +up. I shan't tell him where you've gone."</p> + +<p>Daisy, her heart dancing with the spirit of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>adventure, went over to the +looking-glass to do up her hair. After a glance into the mirror, she +turned.</p> + +<p>"I ought to have a clean blouse," she said; then in her spirit of blunt, +brisk self-advantage, she added: "If you could lend me one, it would +help, perhaps, to make sure I get the job."</p> + +<p>The sylph's head came up with a snap.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be surprised if it did 'elp," she fluted, "but I sharn't do +it, just the same. W'y don't you arsk for the loan of my Sunday frock, +and 'ave done with it? Arn't I helping you enough, as it is?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, unabashed and with a little shrug, donned her slightly soiled +waist and brushed the worst of the lint from her travel-wrinkled skirt. +Then she picked up her telescope grip, and swung it gaily.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm off," was the verbal fashion of her parting, as she skipped +down the stairs.</p> + +<p>In spite of the sylph's assiduity of helpfulness, the latter made no +particular demonstration of partiality as, from the head of the +stairway, she watched the girl descend.</p> + +<p>"Ee-yes," she murmured to herself, "they <i>would</i> put that saucy miss +waitin' at table, in 'ere where my Bob is clerkin'. 'E's a bit rough at +the start-off with the gels, Bob is—but 'e's dreadful soft-'artid when +a gel once gets 'im gowing."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER V.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Job.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy Nixon flung out of the door of the Imperial Hotel into an +afternoon world of dust and din and ecstasy. It was the hour when +stenographers, in offices, whose high open windows command the streets +with their emancipated pedestrians, begin to rubber over-shoulder at the +clock, and to make excursions into washrooms to veneer the fresh color +of cheek and chin and forehead with cadaverous conventional powder. The +"boys" have been educated to look for this make-up (it takes an educated +taste to appreciate it!) and a girl would as soon think of leaving the +office in her stocking-feet, as without a blue-white effect on chin and +nose and forehead, and a smudge of strangulation purple blotting the +cheek's own inimitable rose.</p> + +<p>Six o'clock would blow shortly from a hundred sirens; and the thrill of +"quittin'-time" could already be discerned in the air. Down the street +from the direction of the big transcontinental depot came a 'bus, three +or four blocks away; and Daisy, with a habit of the countryside, +identified this vehicle instantly by the team, whose markings she had +instinctively remembered. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> was the Imperial Hotel rig, returning from +the station. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if she was to evade her +self-appointed guardian, old Jim Hogle.</p> + +<p>A rank of jitneys was parked along the curb. Daisy approached a driver +with a mop of black curly hair so abundant that it pushed his cap to one +side. This driver half-turned his head in a formal "straight business, +and don't waste my time" way; but the corners of mouth and eye twinkled +companionably and humorously.</p> + +<p>"Could you", Daisy's eyes twinkled back, too, in spite of her trace of +country-girl diffidence, "could you—"</p> + +<p>"I should say I <i>could</i>," the chauffeur's face was expressionless, but +his accent was merry.</p> + +<p>"Could you", Daisy dimpled as she went on, "take me to here—see?"</p> + +<p>The young man hitched his chin forward in ostentatious scrutiny. Then, +in a matter-of-course way, he took the scrap of paper from Daisy's +fingers, brought it to his lips, handed it back, clicked open the +tonneau door, and motioned inward with hospitable palm.</p> + +<p>"Thank a-you," he said, elaborately, as Daisy stepped in; then, without +opening the fore-door, he vaulted into his own seat. There was the usual +preliminary roar, proceeding by staccato jet and pit-a-pat to smooth +pulsing motion, as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> jitney glided out handily into the multifarious +traffic of the street.</p> + +<p>No river-ravine of Wheat-Land on a June Sunday had ever stirred Daisy +Nixon to an atom of the ecstasy that champagned her as she sailed down +that traffic-current between its Saguenay-banks of masonry, whose uneven +summits, high above her, scissored the blue silk of the sky. Forward, +upward to right, upward to left, the girl's glance travelled; then came +down to the sidewalk, no square yard of which escaped for one clear +moment from servitude to the thousand thousand tramping feet, following +at a slower pace the drift of the traffic in the hundred-foot driving +way.</p> + +<p>No electric welcome blazed from the front of the city hall, with its +coal-darkened brickwork and broad steps. No welcome, nor any sound but a +mighty hammer-stroke from the tall clock, telling Daisy that Time was +moving as well as she. No welcome—but Daisy Nixon felt that there could +not help be a quickening of the city's pulse at the notability of this +day, with its every moment so rare and thrilling to her.</p> + +<p>The pulse of the motor throbbed as, coursing in the pack of its kind, it +nosed from side to side or held a true-running swift pace astride a +tram-rail. The chauffeur, with an air of profound abstraction made +comical by his tilted cap and sportive half-presented profile, gave +"her" spark or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> "juice" as the occasion demanded, with a casual motion +of his gloved thumb. At a corner where two broad streets met, the +taxi-cab turned aside. Proceeding a little way down the second main +artery of traffic, it rounded a corner under a brass-grilled jeweler's +window and entered a labyrinth of side-streets in which Daisy soon lost +her sense of direction so completely that the sun, after what seemed +like an excursion into the little-visited due-north sector of the +horizon, appeared to move around to the east, and forthwith to commence +another day without pausing for the customary night-interval.</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the +morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly +between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved +driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and +ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to +look at it.</p> + +<p>This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not +the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had +set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect +would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once +been plain—very plain—Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +the chief seats in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the +fittest—the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. +He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for +three reasons—for display, for business reasons, and to parade his +dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special +supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the +policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the +band-wagon—not because he always understood these policies and +sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em.</p> + +<p>The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and +if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen—we will say +for the sake of present illustration—to go, as the sylph of the +Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to +have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir +Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious +politeness Sir Thomas—at state receptions and so forth, where he was +well-watched—used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married +before he made his money—or rather, before the natural growth of the +country made his money for him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p><p>The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and +solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a +rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a +huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and +mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his +name—if it had not come by the political route, that is to say—had +come through connection with the building of some railroad or government +building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had +benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison.</p> + +<p>Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every +dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let +him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed.</p> + +<p>The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. +Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, +"telescope" grip in hand.</p> + +<p>"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not +pay for a "lift" on one's way.</p> + +<p>"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The +features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but +eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>"What's that?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Your fare—one dollar."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in—and was +presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the +dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed +the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes.</p> + +<p>"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, +don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the +mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to +find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled and turned off again.</p> + +<p>"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." +Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door +is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm +only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring +the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a +green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after."</p> + +<p>Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have +a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> look +back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see +whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the +horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street.</p> + +<p>Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking +out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her +housemaid friend to be "on the lookout".</p> + +<p>"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a +thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as +the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out +with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely +necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could—which +was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as +she was—that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because +otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter.</p> + +<p>Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as +soon's I could. It's a long way."</p> + +<p>"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the +present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison +kitchen.</p> + +<p>If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it +undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the +farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it +for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. +It was great and clean and shining.</p> + +<p>Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain +but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of +cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong +white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk.</p> + +<p>"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter +with a powerful, brisk movement.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I +shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets +here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and +had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her.</p> + +<p>"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, +clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously +against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a +canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. +"You'll come too, Allie."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who scented future advantage in an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>alliance with the hospitable +Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at +the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and +leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, +but well-worn—evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make +room for the latest and newest guest-room equipment in the apartments +the family occupied. Picture post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on +the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and +cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed +palatial.</p> + +<p>"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad +it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat.</p> + +<p>"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the +Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, +'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I +down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell +you."</p> + +<p>"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her +with considerable interest, "well, well."</p> + +<p>"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>cautiously, as the thought +crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back +out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, +an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle +so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we +go to see the Missis ... Ar—'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab +in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the +Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me +straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend +it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the +Manor to my Jawge."</p> + +<p>Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose +and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was +superbly "full" where Alice was flat.</p> + +<p>"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was +voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now—we sharn't have any bother. +She'll tieke you, straight off—I know she will."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for +tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. +Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments +of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an +immediate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> curious warming of the heart—curious, because Daisy usually +faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while +the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, +and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any +eventuality. Lady Harrison—without knowing it, however—disarmed Daisy +Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely +shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she +got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this +woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, +guarded, combative sixteen and a half years.</p> + +<p>Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or +marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home +to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it +was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his +self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in +the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the +smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in +"getting" him—a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had +performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, +paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie +and slept in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. +Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a +home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other +Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention.</p> + +<p>"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table +and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very +nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady +Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the +besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a +stranger.</p> + +<p>"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to +conceal her impatience to be gone.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's—very +nice—very nice indeed."</p> + +<p>"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, +"I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'."</p> + +<p>"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's—that's very +nice—quite."</p> + +<p>Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet +collected her wages, or she would have banged the door—as a parting +sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully +saucy and flopping.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant +note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely +natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once +mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or +whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness +as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made +communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as +soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so +easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled +down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose. +As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more +homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased +proportionately.</p> + +<p>"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and +rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a +pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the +kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of +her large wandering hands.</p> + +<p>"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response.</p> + +<p>"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs +stood sociably together.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down, +cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward, +beneath her chin.</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around.</p> + +<p>"Have you—have you references?"</p> + +<p>"What?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"A—references—letters from somebody for whom you have worked for," +Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction, +occasionally used a preposition too many.</p> + +<p>"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I—but I—," it was an effort +for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as +well as I can—for <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time, +in its proper place. "But my hus— but Sir Thomas Harrison may require +references. He generally does."</p> + +<p>Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little. +She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house.</p> + +<p>"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she +noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to +get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy—as +I'm sure you will—that he—ur, that Sir Thomas—will give you a trial."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Plebeian.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and +broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly +as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes +pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A +great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun +found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with +light.</p> + +<p>"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent +joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the +window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been +an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had +glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had +previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun +that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing.</p> + +<p>"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking +his swivel chair in a way that made Evans—a nervous father of five, who +sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m.,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> three nights a week, +minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish, +"took in" all the dances—writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't +you, for once."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He +was a very rapid stenographer—he had to be, or he wouldn't have been +long with Sir Thomas Harrison—and the keys of his machine, on its +noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and +embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the +concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down +nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his +"pur-rsonal power, sir".</p> + +<p>"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir, +not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time."</p> + +<p>In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His +stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful +lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair +was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at +least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a +bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff, +close-cropped <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>moustache; a month that blathered redly when he +conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy, +and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas.</p> + +<p>Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped +briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust +it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At +the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a +mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on +reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would +conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would +commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir +Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen +poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had +reached up to the hook behind him for his hat.</p> + +<p>Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He +dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that +he broke the pen-nib off short.</p> + +<p>"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue +blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put +commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they +learn y' no grammar at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat—'n +git out y'r machine—'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r +job, or what, Evans?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a +fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right +away."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h—y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on +his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at +himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to +do it, Evans. I guess yeh <i>will</i> do it over agen—an' ten times over +agen, if I say so."</p> + +<p>By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself +about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the +letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it—he was growing +hungry, for it was 6.15—dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a +flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror.</p> + +<p>Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language +that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. +Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, +showing up disastrously on their gray background—the result of that +pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in +front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established +dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on +arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself +another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power."</p> + +<p>In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what +he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger +beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another +customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: +Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, +after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, +adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for +the first time that moment, came over briskly.</p> + +<p>"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to +tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his +bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman +who faced him across the counter.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a +customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth, +adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> those +out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat +sir—fine material."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter, +lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat.</p> + +<p>"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a +stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done +before Wednesday—the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind +this week, owing to press of work."</p> + +<p>"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half +an hour off, an' fix that coat—to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine +o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go.</p> + +<p>"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our +fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must +take its turn."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time."</p> + +<p>"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this +house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never +shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness +and courtesy; but it has paid, as well."</p> + +<p>"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> counter, and drove out the words, +"it's a ba-ad rule"—the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective +with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible, +flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth—"a bad +rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to +summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th' +jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars—get me-e?"</p> + +<p>"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell.</p> + +<p>"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a +step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up +on the Crescent. Yoe know that"—the contractor's head oscillated +laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this +forth—"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same +Crescent street. You won't get none of it—none that I ken ketch an' +head off. Understand!"</p> + +<p>Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the +door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas +Harrison pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. +Good evening."</p> + +<p>Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out.</p> + +<p>"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper, +whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above +Benwell's ledger.</p> + +<p>The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat—not +his—which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its +hook.</p> + +<p>"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the +hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great +credit for his energy and push—even though sometimes that energy may be +a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary—especially +about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us +instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused +cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but +audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation:</p> + +<p>"Shoelaces, sir?"</p> + +<p>The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from +across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, +stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat +across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his +pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting +the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the +"greenback"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar +note.</p> + +<p>"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the +spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours, +an' keep the shoelaces."</p> + +<p>Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in +the lower part of the leather face—a slit whose corners curled slowly +upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up +the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his +pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was +folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of +his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view, +it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim +McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on +the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar +bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his +vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled +and knotted pair of shoelaces.</p> + +<p>"Brah-<i>vo</i>!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter; +"Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know."</p> + +<p>The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the +street-side, with gloved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> hands resting on the tonneau door and cane +hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware, +Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank +and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for +membership was even now awaiting consideration.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace +man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength, +had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial +investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue.</p> + +<p>"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me—hey!" He +crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its +winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and +gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around +upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda.</p> + +<p>"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home +to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the +night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?"</p> + +<p>Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully, +fought back a smile.</p> + +<p>"Why,—er—," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment; +looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation; +"I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir +Thomas."</p> + +<p>It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing +he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had +tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor—but +the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of +his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his +interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an +anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's +auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a +pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that +the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see +the beast in its native haunts—to note how it lived, and what it ate.</p> + +<p>Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging +like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion, +Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians +and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir +William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate +hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced +around,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If +the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted, +there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison, +engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware.</p> + +<p>"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone, +through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?"</p> + +<p>And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back +humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!"</p> + +<p>Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep +in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his +presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it +progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact, +engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after +entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered +note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible, +Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The +word was "Bohunk."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Human Horticulturist.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from +the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, +the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very +well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the +things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, +you see, since Alice has left us."</p> + +<p>"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the +soup-tureen—watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious +to please her mistress—the first disinterestedly kind person she had +met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her +great adventure—kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it +cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye +needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when +they're set doon. There—listen!"</p> + +<p>Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room +swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots +dried by the sun of the street was smothered in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> soft carpeting as the +tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. +A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The +feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and +a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill.</p> + +<p>"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment +with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; +"look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll +'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is +face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an +upraw, 'e down't."</p> + +<p>Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she +spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed +through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held +open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered +soup-tureen and warm plates.</p> + +<p>"Hey—bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, +crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier +coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; +"what do we pay you for?"</p> + +<p>Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, +in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the +soup-dish.</p> + +<p>There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward—his +"pur-rsonal power" must be kept active—which Sir Thomas always +delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of +many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, +had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point +of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to +avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying +to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His +jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it +a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into +his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around +with the usual glare upward.</p> + +<p>A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here +at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the +greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side +of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, +knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he +saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen.</p> + +<p>What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your +sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire +you ..." etc., etc.—making each sentence hurt as much as possible, +according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities.</p> + +<p>What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the +new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty +good!"</p> + +<p>And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of +the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a +little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of +her eye. His face changed ever so little—just a slight lowering of the +eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip—but enough to let +Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison +except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal +with—that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy +Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda +of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the +position,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave +him as little work or concern as his several other business connections +of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the +money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large +unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal +thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago +"quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper."</p> + +<p>Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his +seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself +was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two +things most people want most—money, and social prestige and power—and +has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and +wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is +apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as +interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his +experience of the real thing.</p> + +<p>Ware had the highest social status, both by birth—which counts for +little in the West—and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere +in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a +gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born +wealthy. Sir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or +wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a +friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to +have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He +wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see +everybody a friend to everybody else.</p> + +<p>Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved +had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate +harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, +immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had +never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that +there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted.</p> + +<p>These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: +Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have +an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She +must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. +She must, above all, be new material—that is, young enough not to be +hardened against impress.</p> + +<p>In his quest for a wife—or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present +matrimonial vigilance—Sir William had followed a course exactly +opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> seeking out some +woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then +analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, +he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, +and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his +brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and +feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir +William Ware proposed to discover and marry.</p> + +<p>When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had +been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry +her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The +chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in +another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, +Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached +out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the +doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy.</p> + +<p>"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a +word', as he calls it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of +his head.</p> + +<p>"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin +and making a mouth at the messenger.</p> + +<p>"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, +ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it +swung in his direction.</p> + +<p>"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, +after a rap like that. Skedaddle!"</p> + +<p>The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy +table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and +sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a +little poke with her forefinger and thumb.</p> + +<p>"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the +mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this +minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource +and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next +time, and send him off home."</p> + +<p>"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm +on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me."</p> + +<p>Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement +driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the +big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were +great maples, with mysterious darkness between—thickening into a group +with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked +the junction of driveway and street.</p> + +<p>Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty—although how he had +found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the +Imperial Hotel—for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had +estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, +might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, +the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling +for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride."</p> + +<p>Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees +might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each +was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to +trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to +know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the +chance to tell him, "plump and plain"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and finally, that she was quite +capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She +hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about +that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning +about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he +might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men +were of only two classes—those who were "forward" and "had fun in +them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" +to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a +girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and +secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got +them started, and could not be handled at all.</p> + +<p>She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so—for +the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle +shaped for adventure—when there stepped out from under the foliage a +tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good +evening"—not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and +hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something +faintly familiar about his voice.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he +said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>Daisy, withholding speech—she had found out by experience that it was +a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for +the first few moments—let her companion precede her through the gate.</p> + +<p>In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane +on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the +big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a +certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the +pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest.</p> + +<p>She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized +that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"—his quiet clothes, +worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, +either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing +figure—because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the +polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with +pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray +showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed +him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of +enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in +a companionable sense, at once.</p> + +<p>Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>dimpling, perusing him with +eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness—armed cap-a-pie +in every virile nerve and muscle—not a bit timorous, but flashingly on +guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes +twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against +the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and +poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor +that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses +of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped—in short, +susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more +preface than the friendliest of all smiles.</p> + +<p>There! It was out—said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say +it—without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that +had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it.</p> + +<p>Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity—his glance steady, but +so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl +looked back at him—her face first shortening and dimpling to a +half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling +again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> natural +expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew +was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed—to +put it the way it presented itself to her—as though she had stepped +into a book or a moving-picture or a dream.</p> + +<p>Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it.</p> + +<p>"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll +answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins—one twin +going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's +side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see +how the adventure was going to turn out—was conscious of a short walk +under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of +a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained +alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly +behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast +face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the +quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin +of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant.</p> + +<p>Sir William, without looking at the menu the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> waiter held before him, +gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, +Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with +ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy.</p> + +<p>"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy—at +least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the +table—seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and +sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into +one a moment, and the whole Daisy said:</p> + +<p>"Who's Lady Ware?"</p> + +<p>Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her +with a kind of pondering exaltation—a deep but self-contained joy.</p> + +<p>"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long +time, my dear. But she's here at last."</p> + +<p>"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively.</p> + +<p>"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall +manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both +try hard, and try together."</p> + +<p>"Well—Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some +more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman."</p> + +<p>"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> a strong white hand and put +it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am +infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that—infinitely rejoiced. The way +you said it, too! My word!"</p> + +<p>His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the +air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is +surprised to find that it knows some tricks already.</p> + +<p>"What's your name?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of +his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. +Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand!</p> + +<p>"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, +common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have +to learn to be-Ware, you see."</p> + +<p>The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he +brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in +like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and +silver—and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a +neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, +bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a +coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little +cubes of cheese.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, +with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter +of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their +saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream.</p> + +<p>"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you +don't like it, we'll have in some cream."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly +lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it.</p> + +<p>"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some +cre-eam, quick."</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of +his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It +was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this +tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was +passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. +If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost +spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage +ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if +<i>she</i> was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, +the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon +herself the bloom and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on +his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any +sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his +half-century and more.</p> + +<p>"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially.</p> + +<p>Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her +saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and +out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting +her head a little on one side.</p> + +<p>"I say—stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt +upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know—don't flirt, +please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?"</p> + +<p>"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes +twinkled.</p> + +<p>"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir +William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't +you?"</p> + +<p>Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the +proffered cup.</p> + +<p>"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone +like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think +about our—our plan, as it were?"</p> + +<p>The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something +about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from +Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with +brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and +trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which +Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its +profundity.</p> + +<p>Daisy cleared her throat a little—a habit she had when about to speak +seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of +the western farm country.</p> + +<p>"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you +anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped +beneath her chin.</p> + +<p>"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand +under his.</p> + +<p>"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I +guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and +I like all the boys the same—just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty +rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and +gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> with. But—but when +a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her +cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have +to—have to—oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know +how—they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't +want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way +I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help +it."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling—as though she would +like to recall what she had just "come out with"—possessed her for a +moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen +years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and +freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, +with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite +of herself.</p> + +<p>Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his +eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of +several emotions.</p> + +<p>"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest +at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever +do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. +Boys are pretty near all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> alike—you go out with them a couple of times, +and you know all about them. They're all right to play with—but when a +girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way +it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as +hens' teeth."</p> + +<p>Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that +Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its +customary dimpling.</p> + +<p>"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, +putting her head on one side.</p> + +<p>Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to +the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with +her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she +stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his +chin.</p> + +<p>"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly +well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe +that I don't intend to forget you—in fact, haven't the slightest +intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do +you think, in your present position?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house."</p> + +<p>"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> fine, indeed.... Now, I +shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He +relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and +cane.</p> + +<p>Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the +way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had +drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll +keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You +won't let the city spoil you, I mean—it has a tendency that way, you +know."</p> + +<p>Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, +"I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this.</p> + +<p>"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he +said.</p> + +<p>"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and +gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most +previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye +moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at +the good-bye moment.</p> + +<p>"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his +previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean +on a cane—almost as though it were a part of him—and, just as she was +about to reply, interjected,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> "wait a bit, though. I believe I should +like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, +guessing. Nineteen?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and +crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased +more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is +only seventeen—the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name—do you +realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate +way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I +should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean."</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy."</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I +knew—that is, I almost knew—it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, +little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his +hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright +vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye +time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what +we've been talking about—shall you?"</p> + +<p>If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an +attempt to take her hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no +such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the +arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket +of his coat.</p> + +<p>Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the +light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each +of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her +cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little +hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind +her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused +there, then was extended toward Sir William.</p> + +<p>The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, +however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the +tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way.</p> + +<p>"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were +less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing +overpower you."</p> + +<p>With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and +flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement.</p> + +<p>"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had +extended toward him. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned +and walked away.</p> + +<p>Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and +humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively.</p> + +<p>"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well—he'll be back, if," she +flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Knight in the Kitchen.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to +the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to +certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge—the cafe, +with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on +its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight +before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the +presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply +and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had +unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole +city yet new to her—new and unexplored and fascinating—the experience +through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or +a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy +was most amazed at her own part in it—at the strong and sane impulse +which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt, +if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift +unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned +softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance. +He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old +enough to know his own mind."</p> + +<p>A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door +showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad +Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the +bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, +on this her first unfamiliar night in it.</p> + +<p>She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on +linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of +the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in +his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir +Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight +sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his +shirt-sleeves.</p> + +<p>"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of +water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from +keepin' the little date, hey?—he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us +none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have +one, on me. <i>Suddown!</i>"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p><p>This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger—his +thick, blunt forefinger—toward one of the two chairs that stood by the +table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a +celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat +down obediently and demurely in the chair.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of +water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other +glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet +in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking +vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and +the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty +chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it.</p> + +<p>"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are—just the two of us, hey? +Everybody else in bed, but—we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a +little drink. C'm on!"</p> + +<p>Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her +glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of +light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass +joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and +coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. +Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood +untouched.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. +Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I +know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you <i>sassy</i> babee—come on +to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his +new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee.</p> + +<p>"There," he said,—in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the +incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, +"how's that—better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist.</p> + +<p>Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as +she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away +from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't +you? Is this why the last girl left?"</p> + +<p>"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a +momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that +sour-mugged English rake-handle! I—I couldn't love a girl with a face +like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about +Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on—give us a little baby kiss."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p><p>"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful +points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's +answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the +table and place it about her.</p> + +<p>Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the +red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places +like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond +speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, +making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be +a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness +had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and +succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, +watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a +doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis.</p> + +<p>At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning +flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest.</p> + +<p>"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for +nothing."</p> + +<p>Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his +pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, +where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering.</p> + +<p>"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in +oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that +bunch!"</p> + +<p>"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go."</p> + +<p>Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the +saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand.</p> + +<p>"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all +his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, +half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning +movement off his knee and away.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to +try to get this money back, and I'll <i>yell</i>. Jean the cook is sleeping +just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack +Robi'son'."</p> + +<p>At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh +that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the +encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew +that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man +need<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering +passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the +gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, +finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, +elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a +sneer—such a sneer!—Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look +so ugly!</p> + +<p>"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words +came easily enough now. "But don't think you win—oh, no-o! D'ye know +what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money +is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going +to say you were sorry."</p> + +<p>"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in +your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're +going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye +hear!"</p> + +<p>"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show <i>you</i> something now. +Here's all I care for your dirty money."</p> + +<p>With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, +realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big +kitchen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, +and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame +leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's +coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as +he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless +ashes.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I <i>am</i> goin' to +fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' +over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to +lay information against you for stealin' that money—see? I'm a-goin to +have you arrested—see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town +for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his +vest, "and you—who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with +you yet, if—"</p> + +<p>"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from +Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the +bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas +Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an' +I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist +tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed—that's what you'll do!"</p> + +<p>"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> recovered himself and +had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish +speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll +clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we +have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help. +Neither of you's worth a hurra——"</p> + +<p>"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not +inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide +here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an' +keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to +y'r bed, lassie."</p> + +<p>Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust +forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She +returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch +eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a +cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel.</p> + +<p>"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he +passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning."</p> + +<p>"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the +door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a +man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> through the stair-door +and up the steps to the bedroom.</p> + +<p>"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom +door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's +folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o' +bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge +you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back—he's that kind, +ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word, +after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht', +as oor Bawby Burrns has it—is he no?"</p> + +<p>"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so +bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before +I'm through."</p> + +<p>"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers, +thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest +broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her +head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd +mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers—any mischief, I +mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye—I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn. +Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's +house-cleanin' day."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Dance and an Invitation.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the +delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in +the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said +naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep +it in if she was worried."</p> + +<p>Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the +healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of +speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the +sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each +of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon +the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out +somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which +Lady Harrison—who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and +would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her +trips downtown—paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly +in its place.</p> + +<p>"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> younger girl's curves and +color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She +disna like it, though. She's a plain woman—a richt leddy, though she +was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken."</p> + +<p>"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were +electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough +to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey—whiles +I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should +walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every +family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae +be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see—but I'd want tae be +mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle +o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some +man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and +heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration, +"how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye +were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye +an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye."</p> + +<p>Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile +and untired as though it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> were morning and she just up. Then she paused +a moment, and her face fell a little.</p> + +<p>"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist."</p> + +<p>Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo.</p> + +<p>"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Thirty-eight."</p> + +<p>"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a +bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide +across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. +Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk."</p> + +<p>A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,—her serge skirt brushed +by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing +a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and +there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso—came +dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison +drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled +with the zest of life.</p> + +<p>As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in +the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the +driver came to a halt.</p> + +<p>"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>assumed an expression which, +just fitted the occasion.</p> + +<p>"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her +creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but +continued to look straight before him in his characteristic, +businesslike way—showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an +eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was +obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all.</p> + +<p>Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at +the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for—for +street-car fare."</p> + +<p>"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly.</p> + +<p>"Nowhere," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the +corner of her eye.</p> + +<p>"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car +and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to +city park."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest, +"I couldn't do-oo that."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief +study of her face. "Got to report to mother?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?"</p> + +<p>"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as +I got the gasoline. Hop in!"</p> + +<p>The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it +off, and backed away.</p> + +<p>"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one—two—three—go!"</p> + +<p>"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was +you never out to a park?"</p> + +<p>"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry +equivocation.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur +remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the +longer you wait."</p> + +<p>"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all +you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to +the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an' +girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run. +I'll come out to the park again for you, about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> eleven o'clock, and +bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?"</p> + +<p>"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do +I have to come home with you?"</p> + +<p>"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He +reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a +dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her.</p> + +<p>"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you +feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I—I've got +carfare—ten cents carfare—if I should take a notion to go."</p> + +<p>"How you goin' to find your way?"</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Park."</p> + +<p>"How d'you know I'd go to the park?"</p> + +<p>"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told +you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind +o' farmers was your people?"</p> + +<p>"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of +her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City +Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park, +I'll pick up some <i>nice</i> fellow uptown and get him to take me. Some +<i>nice</i> fellow!"</p> + +<p>"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this +car, you—you—"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about +to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned.</p> + +<p>"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling +all over as she wrestled with her merriment.</p> + +<p>"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the +Devil, if you like. Come on—get in! Don't keep me here all night, +waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on."</p> + +<p>Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside +him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself.</p> + +<p>"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed +mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead +through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother +aspect—the look of a man to be trusted.</p> + +<p>"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away +down-street—the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only +being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? +S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!"</p> + +<p>"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p><p>"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I +said—this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump +you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed."</p> + +<p>It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the +promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," +enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. +Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, +exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with +either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of +pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for +purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she +was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or +beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the +street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually +more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and +drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the +skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded +road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet +bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns +interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> to bubble and +sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the +same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted +to let the crowd of passengers—many-hued in their summer dresses as +though one were looking at them through a prism—dance and chatter and +giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, +until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his +steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing +down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting +them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the +walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in +their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, +racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in +spring.</p> + +<p>Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park +like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns, +and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the +evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet.</p> + +<p>"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a +long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now, +ain't you? Yes, you are—not! Hey, don't knock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> a hole in the hood of my +rig, just because you think you're done with me."</p> + +<p>Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head +against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that, +in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and +wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned.</p> + +<p>"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling +and his shoulders shaking a little—his way of expressing merriment.</p> + +<p>"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in +the mechanism. "Get this thing open!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set +here. We don't want to—hi, there!"</p> + +<p>For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing +this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as +she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open +under her hand.</p> + +<p>"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this +town, we open the door <i>before</i> we get out—not after. Come on, then, +friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> about her delightedly as they +ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion.</p> + +<p>"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was +the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner."</p> + +<p>Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The +two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat +down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable, +iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating +ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws.</p> + +<p>Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see +couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the +conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood.</p> + +<p>"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the +last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you +take me out there."</p> + +<p>"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I +don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this +apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments +impossible to find in one and the same person.</p> + +<p>In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> for everybody and from +everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced +up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of +seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him—just +according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in +an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention +from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at +a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the +benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample +opportunity for a few introductions.</p> + +<p>"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the +waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red—naturally +red—that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend +of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with +staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to +go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've +changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a +careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with +her new friend, the red-necked Colossus.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking +largely down at her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> "the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't +tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie."</p> + +<p>Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed +in the scene before her.</p> + +<p>"Yon Jamie," said her companion—nudging her lightly this time, to +attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the +lass."</p> + +<p>"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly.</p> + +<p>"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the +name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way, +waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and +beamed on the big Scot.</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to +talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?"</p> + +<p>"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the +name of that boy who brought me here?"</p> + +<p>Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee.</p> + +<p>"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give +ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's +Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a +dance, lassie."</p> + +<p>As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time, +she heard a girl with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> a humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just +behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange +girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at +the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to +her Jock, on the way home to-night!"</p> + +<p>"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down +twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the +company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. +D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple +to the right from us?"</p> + +<p>"Who's he?"</p> + +<p>"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, +the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I +stand in the dancin'—ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor +neighbor, behind here, say—but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. +He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next +dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be +down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor."</p> + +<p>"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> evasively, as the +dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!"</p> + +<p>A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up +from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, +came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, +Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as +though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He +had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and +cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of +index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, +deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly +forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, +merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the +transverse wrinkles across his forehead.</p> + +<p>"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at +Daisy, "what d'ye know!"</p> + +<p>"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' +partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to +my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon +which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin +to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love.</p> + +<p>A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Cluett, champion pugilist, +was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about +to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor.</p> + +<p>"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy.</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an +angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers.</p> + +<p>"Want to try me?" he jetted.</p> + +<p>"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely.</p> + +<p>"Do anything once?—eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm +in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her +down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given +the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you +can be a life-saver, if you like, see?"</p> + +<p>"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise.</p> + +<p>"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the +uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard +bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman—he's the fellow +looks after my business—is getting up a little party after the boxin' +show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to +come as <i>my</i> partner? Eh, little sporto?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p><p>"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper—game o' +cards—any old thing to kill time. Bob!"</p> + +<p>A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by.</p> + +<p>"Bob, Miss—what's this your name is, again?—Miss Nixon here's to have +first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night. +She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come."</p> + +<p>"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's +hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll +come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one +side.</p> + +<p>"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed, +glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined +his group.</p> + +<p>The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and +were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was +ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic +girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a +beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher +could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her +mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> footed it in +a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be +told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, +slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at +the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued +without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as +boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as +she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his +arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been +surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat +and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in +Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had +heard of her talk, that his relish awoke.</p> + +<p>"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat +at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An +attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly.</p> + +<p>"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett.</p> + +<p>"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the +name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines +and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr. +Cluett."</p> + +<p>"Nut sundae—twice," her companion directed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> briefly, with a sidewise +jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of +the realm.</p> + +<p>"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied +themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?"</p> + +<p>"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly.</p> + +<p>"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought +it over yet?"</p> + +<p>Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of +cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded.</p> + +<p>"Maybe," she murmured.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go +at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for +a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had +another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and +he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system".</p> + +<p>"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr. +Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing +him any more than once in an evening."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to +take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very +strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'—eh, little +one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me +down."</p> + +<p>Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The +trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at +the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself +t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have—I see it in +your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?"</p> + +<p>Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big +stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully, +moving her toe in the gravel.</p> + +<p>"I'm—oh, I'm just—just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright +as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy +Knight—and thanks for the 'lift'."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER X.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Boxing Match and Afterward.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy stood before her mirror, "fixing" her hair. Whether it was Daisy's +native knack of coiffure, or whether it was that her hair was of that +wavy kind which "fixes" becomingly almost by itself, she secured the +effect she wanted without much trouble. The dark-blue dress she had +bought with fifteen dollars borrowed from Jean, and to which she had +pinned a lace collar, set off her neck well. She made a little face at +herself in the looking-glass and turned about, just in time to face +Jean, who had entered quietly, shutting the door behind her.</p> + +<p>"What like o' company is yon ye're keepin', lassie?" Jean, as she spoke, +sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading out her strong digits over +her knees in a masculine attitude.</p> + +<p>"What company?" said Daisy, a little puzzled. She had made no mention of +her party to Jean.</p> + +<p>"Yon two bidin' down in the kitchen the now," Jean replied, regarding +Daisy in a slow speculative way, as though searching for some +characteristic she had perchance overlooked in forming her estimate of +the girl; "a mon wha's breath smells of thae lozenges, and a +thick-legged wench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> that rolls her eyes aboot. They askit for you, by +your ain name, too. Did ye tell them to ca', or," Jean's tone grew +sternly hopeful, "shall I send them packin'?"</p> + +<p>"I guess it's me they want," said Daisy, recognizing Masterman in Jean's +description of the man. Then she added, meeting the elder woman's glance +challengingly, "I'm going to a boxing-match, and to a—a little +party—afterwards, with Nick Cluett the fighter."</p> + +<p>Somewhat to Daisy's surprise, Jean seemed to look less severe as she +heard the host of the "little party" named.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, after a moment, "I was just twa minds about lockin' ye +in, lassie, and sending they people aboot their business; but if it's +Nicky Cluett ye're gaun with, ye'll tak' no harm—that is, unless ye +encourage him, an' then ye'll tak' no end o' harm, and it'll serve ye +right. My cousin Jock Lauder—Baby Jock, they call him—kens Nick weel."</p> + +<p>"Is Baby Jock your cousin?" said Daisy, "why, I had a dance with him +last night, out at the park.</p> + +<p>"Is that so, then?" Jean leaned forward with interest. "Jock's a fighter +too, although he'd never let on, withoot ye speir him direct.... Well, +gae along, then, to your pairty—but keep a sharp eye on yon person with +the scentit breath. I'd no trust <i>him</i> as far as I could cast him."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p><p>The long red automobile that had been waiting near the sidewalk outside +the Harrison gateway, answered to the electric starter with a tigerish +snore and, as the clutch was thrown on, bore out the feline similitude +with a four-yard leap that brought it diagonally out into rapid motion +down the street.</p> + +<p>"Any good with the mitts?" asked Mr. Masterman jocularly, turning toward +Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible +lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of +the faculty of speech.</p> + +<p>"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley—she whom +Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes +aboot"—"Miss Nixon's a <i>lady</i>—can't you see! A perfect lady—huh?" +And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman +was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her +front hair, winked at Daisy.</p> + +<p>Daisy responded with a twinkling, half-smiling, non-committal look, and +then turned her face streetward. The sensation of the swift ride along +the thoroughfare, with its glittering electric lamps, its traffic roar, +and its trampling—these influences, and the anticipation of risk in the +coming "little party" at an unnamed place, with men of untested +tendencies, had strung the girl's nerves to a pleasant tension of +excitement. Talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> would interfere with her enjoyment of the feeling +which thrilled her. Besides, Mr. Masterman's face pained Daisy. These +were the reasons she chose to watch the sights of the street in +preference to talking.</p> + +<p>Cutting corners with a lawless brevity after he past the last point +policeman, Mr. Masterman finally brought his car to an adroit and easy +halt in a line of others before the door of a big theatre. Dismounting, +he swung Miss Yockley to the curb. Daisy hopped out of the tonneau +without aid. The three passed through the vestibule; and, as they +confronted the ticket-taker, Mr. Masterman said, tersely, "Girls is with +me, Harry", and the official ogling Daisy a little, stood docilely +aside.</p> + +<p>A few moments later, Daisy Nixon, entering a curtained way and sitting +down alongside Miss Yockley on green plush seats in the lower right-hand +box, had her first look at a stage set for a boxing match.</p> + +<p>"What are the ropes for?" she said to Miss Yockley, as she stared across +the bare stage floor, with its Spartan garniture—the hempen square, the +backless wooden stools facing each other diagonally, the battered +water-buckets, each with its bobbing sponge.</p> + +<p>"You can search me, honey," absently returned Miss Stella; who was too +busy searching, with the eyes that "rolled aboot", for acquaintances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +among the audience, to pay much attention, either to her "kid" companion +or to the squared "ring" which she had, as it were, seen a hundred times +but never looked at. Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with +observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the +paraphernalia.</p> + +<p>Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, +Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a +slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, +and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the +surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs +at the ringside. Among this crowd, which included newspaper reporters, +moneyed patrons of the boxing bouts, and near friends or relatives of +those who were to take part in the matches of the evening, Daisy soon +picked out the large ingratiating face of Mr. Masterman.</p> + +<p>When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two +youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes +and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at +diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young +man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, +lifting to the audience a face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> on which the nose had been, by some +mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it +seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud:</p> + +<p>"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it +will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz—on my +right—and Younk Kelly—on my left."</p> + +<p>Spider Clausewitz—he on the speaker's right—did not hear the +announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the +pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of +eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet +the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare +back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least +see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation +sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy.</p> + +<p>So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, +half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an +attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so +aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and +unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as +it were, just waiting to be turned loose.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p><p>It seemed but a moment after the announcer—who was also the +referee—finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of +the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other +in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience +shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving +every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting +back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful +in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides +with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she +saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's +arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his +glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped.</p> + +<p>Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, +with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from +some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made +Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads +showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled.</p> + +<p>Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his +opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +would gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious +to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and +practically defenceless.</p> + +<p>It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to +the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about +Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the +roped square. Again the audience cheered.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators +as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all."</p> + +<p>"He's one wise kid," said Miss Stella, yawning. "I wish they's quit +killin' time with stuff like that, though, an' call on the big bout. +Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett +at work! He's offering a thousand dollars to-night to anybody that will +out-point him in four rounds. This is one time, honey, when you and I +are billed to see some fun—more farce-comedy than fightin' though—when +these half-baked fighters comes after Nick's money."</p> + +<p>Miss Yockley's wish was not long in being gratified. The second +"preliminary" was less than one round in duration, and afforded Daisy, +for the first time in her life, that rather sickening spectacle of a +strong man sprawled half-unconscious over the straining ropes of a ring, +trying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> vainly to rise to his feet, while another waited with tensed +body to strike him down again as soon as his weak knees left the sawdust +floor in their slow painful uprising.</p> + +<p>"Aw, get the ambulance," fanned Miss Yockley loudly, chewing gum. "That +referee can't count past 8."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with that poor man?" said Daisy, all sympathy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothin'," said Miss Stella. "Wants to have a little sleep, I guess. +Oh—at last!"</p> + +<p>For the referee, concluding his measured count to 10 while the fallen +man still rested on hand and knee, had turned brusquely, caught the +gloved hand of the other fighter, and thrust it up in the air in token +of a win.</p> + +<p>"O' course he's the winner," snorted Miss Daisy's companion; "they +should never have took that other fellow away from his sandwich job. He +can't stand up without he's got a couple of sign-boards to brace him.... +But look, honey; here's our Nicky. Always inspects the ring like that, +so's the boy that goes down in front of him within the first ten seconds +after Nick gets in action, can't claim he slipped on a banana peel."</p> + +<p>Daisy withdrew her eyes from their sympathetic following of the limp +victim of the second preliminary bout, as the latter's seconds, a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>shoulder under each of his armpits, escorted him wabblingly back into +the wings.</p> + +<p>As she looked again at the roped square, she saw that in the interval +there had hopped into the enclosure her partner of the dance in the park +pavilion, Nick Cluett, a boxer of the kind that is born and not made. +Hither and thither, slim and lithe in his gay-colored bath-robe, he +moved—stamping the floor here and there with a testing heel, trying the +tautness of the ropes, saying nothing, but noticing everything.</p> + +<p>"They can't never put nothin' over on Nicky," commented Miss Yockley, +more than generous with her negatives when she wanted to be emphatic. +"They used to lay traps for him, when they seen how he was comin' on in +the boxing game—for some of these here so-called 'sports' is the +meanest, trickiest skates this side of the Hot Place. But after Nick +showed up a couple o' them kind of low-down promoters, by bawling them +out right in front of the audience, so's everybody could get a line on +them, they let up on their monkey-work. They don't try nothin' now; but +Nick, he always gives everything the onct-over, to be on the safe side."</p> + +<p>Apparently everything was in order in the present case; for Cluett, his +hands thrust in the pockets of his bath-robe, stepped to the centre of +the roped space to speak to the referee and to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>Masterman, his manager. +Facing him, on the referee's left, stood the man who was to be his first +opponent—a stocky fellow, whose calves, showing underneath the frayed +edge of the old dressing-gown he wore, were more those of a +football-player than a boxer.</p> + +<p>"Nothin' but a big ox," said Miss Yockley, with a sniff; "Nick'll play +with him a little, and then push him over. The gink will have some +bother fallin' down, with them size feet. Maybe he'll go to sleep +standin' up. Funny things happens in the ring sometimes, kiddo."</p> + +<p>In a moment or two, the fighters stepped back to their corners, threw +off their wraps, and stood forth in abbreviated trunks. It was seen that +the build of Cluett's opponent bore out the promise of his calves. He +was heavy-muscled and broad of chest; thick-necked, and with a +hard-looking chin that moved to the chewing of gum.</p> + +<p>About the physique of Cluett himself, as he stood at ease, his arms +lightly hanging, there was nothing remarkable, except that one shoulder +seemed to be a little lower than the other. His muscles flowed along his +limbs instead of standing out in knots and ridges. Standing unposed, +with his perennial smile and his almost sleepy expression of eye, he +looked like a somewhat indolent schoolboy, about to take a dip in a +peaceful swimming-pool.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p>"That big thing over in the other chair will hurt him," said Daisy, +anxiously; "why don't they make the big fellow take somebody his own +size?"</p> + +<p>"Don't talk," said Miss Yockley, briefly, "just sit still and watch. It +ain't our Nick that's going to get hurt, honey."</p> + +<p>But Daisy exclaimed aloud, and even the confident Miss Yockley herself +almost winced, as Hobday, the big man, after a bare touch of Cluett's +glove in the customary preliminary handshake, struck upward immediately +and without warning. As the quick treacherous upper-cut shot toward +Nick's chin, Bob Masterman, who could move with a marvellous quickness +for all his avoirdupois, when occasion seemed to demand speed, jumped up +from his seat and thrust his head through between the ropes, ready to +shout his protest to the referee.</p> + +<p>But, before Mr. Masterman made a sound, a glove, at the end of a slim +smooth-muscled arm, waved him away with a backward gesture. Nick Cluett, +untouched, slid his manager a corner of a smile as he stepped lightly +backward, just far enough to be missed by Hobday's left, which followed +that gentleman's unsuccessful right in a brisk second try for Cluett's +jaw-point. Nick's guard was languidly low, and on his face was an almost +dreamy look which a group of Hobday's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> backers in the front orchestra +seats evidently took for an expression of daze; for, "Finish him, Jim! +He's all yours, boy!" they yelled lustily.</p> + +<p>Bob Masterman stole a look at Cluett's face. In the centre of the +never-changing smile, he saw the mouth-corner drawn up in a dry, +calculating way. The manager's momentary flicker of anxiety passed. He +leaned back, folded his arms, grinned, and waited.</p> + +<p>Jim Hobday grew more aggressive every moment. The round was +three-quarters over, and he had practically had the ring to himself, +except for a gliding thing like a shadow, which eluded his fists by so +little each time he swung that at every lunge he grew more encouraged, +although he hit nothing.</p> + +<p>"Come on—fight!" he growled, bull-like.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cluett's smile deepened a little, and his lips moved. "Say when," +were the words they framed.</p> + +<p>"When?—why, right now!" roared Hobday, loud enough for the group of his +backers to hear.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cluett obeyed immediately. It was difficult for the eye to register +the movement he made; but to those at the vantage-point of the ringside, +it looked as though he doubled under Hobday's guard and then +straightened up, all in one movement like a snake striking.</p> + +<p>Hobday's knees were seen to sag. His gloves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> dropped on Cluett's +shoulders, half as though caressing his opponent, then slipped limply +off. His whole heavy body collapsed, like a wet mattress.</p> + +<p>"Ouch!" said Miss Yockley, feeling her chin. Then, glancing sidewise at +Daisy, she commented, "Well, kid, I suppose you feel easier now, eh?"</p> + +<p>"W-what did he do to him?" said Daisy, a little breathlessly; mixing her +pronouns, in her marvelling.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing," said Miss Yockley, ironically, "nothing at all. Only sent +that big bovalapus off to Dreamland, on a through ticket, with one +swipe. That's all!"</p> + +<p>After Mr. Hobday, in an only partially recovered state, had been +removed, and the hubbub of comment among his backers in the orchestra +seats had subsided, there came a lull. Mr. Cluett sat in his chair in +the corner of the ring, nodding and occasionally replying briefly to +some remark made by the chatting group that surrounded him. From back in +the wings came presently the sound of argument and protest; and, after a +moment, a hale person in striped trunks shot into view as though he had +been playfully pushed. With one sheepish glance toward the audience, +however, he turned about and beat a retreat.</p> + +<p>"You see," explained Miss Yockley, to Daisy, "they put their best man up +first; and now that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the others has seen what Nick done to him, you +couldn't coax 'em into the ring with old cheese. It looks to me as +though everything's all over for to-night. Wait, though—here comes the +spieler. Let's hear what he has to say; then we'll go around and see how +soon Bob and Nick will be ready to come away."</p> + +<p>"Ladhies and gentlemen," said the announcer, coming to the edge of the +ring, "I regret to announct that, owing to the factth that we are unable +to secure anodther oppon't in answer to Champeen Cluetth's challenge to +any fighter of any weighth—"</p> + +<p>At this point the speaker paused. A young man, in an automobile +dust-coat, unbuttoned—showing that he was in evening dress and had +evidently just arrived from some dance or other function—had hopped +into the ring and tapped the announcer briskly on the arm to attract his +attention. For a moment, the two held rapid conversation; then the young +man in evening dress slipped under the ropes and disappeared again into +the wings. The announcer, stepping to the very front of the stage and +raising his voice so that he might be heard above the creakings of +dispersal which already sounded in galleries and pit, said:</p> + +<p>"If there are any presentth who may wish to remain a little longer, I am +gladdh to be able to say that a certaint young man-about-town has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +agreed to meet the champeen in a boutth of four three-minutth rounts. As +the stranger wishes his identity to be concealedh—for reasons of his +own—he will appear in the ringk masked."</p> + +<p>"Masked!" commented Miss Stella Yockley, "now, what's this they're +trying to spring on us, I wonder. Well, anyway, they can't put nothin' +over on Nick. He's in training to-night, and the Devil himself couldn't +trim Nicky Cluett in four rounds. There ain't a fighter living could do +it—no, sir, I don't care who he is." And with these words Miss Stella +cast a devoted glance toward the corner of the ring where Mr. Cluett, +still chatting unconcernedly, had drawn his bathrobe over his shoulders +as a sign to the unknown to hurry up, if he wanted a chance to land a +"haymaker" on a fighter whose time was money.</p> + +<p>He had not long to wait. A young white-limbed fellow, with a pompadour +of stiff hair rising above the black mask that covered him from +mid-forehead to just above his mouth, vaulted over the ropes into the +ring, and took the stool in the opposite corner to that in which Cluett +stood. There was something about the lines of the stranger's mouth and +chin that seemed to Daisy vaguely familiar.</p> + +<p>After vainly trying to remember where she had seen similar features +before, the girl turned her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> eyes toward the corner where Cluett had +just sat down on the stool.</p> + +<p>The champion, his elbows on his knees and his head leaning forward in +its customary attitude, was looking at his latest opponent with a +certain interest. Whether it was that the mask piqued his curiosity, or +that there was something in the build and agility of the unknown which +indexed prowess, was not evident to Daisy; but Miss Yockley murmured, +half to herself:</p> + +<p>"Sa-ay! Watch Nicky prick up his ears. He sees something—I don't know +what it is, but I know he sees it."</p> + +<p>As the gong sounded for the first round and the two got up from their +stools, it was evident to the professional eye that Cluett's new +opponent was, at any rate, more nearly his equal than the ill-fortuned +Mr. Hobday.</p> + +<p>"Say!" Miss Yockley's tone thrilled with reluctant admiration, "did you +notice the footwork of that boy?... No, you don't, Mr. Mask.... Yes, you +did, too! Sa-ay, you better watch that lad, Nicky Cluett!"</p> + +<p>The last three ejaculations as the masked fighter tried for the head +and—marvel of marvels to Cluett's admirers!—landed. Landed lightly; +but landed, nevertheless.</p> + +<p>As this happened, there came a hush of conversation all over the house. +From boxes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>orchestra circle, and gallery and balcony there sounded, +as it were, one simultaneous creak as the audience leaned forward in +their seats.</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett was still smiling the smile that had never been known to +leave his face, even in sleep. But, otherwise, his whole demeanor had +changed. His arms, instead of swinging careless and indolently +half-crooked, at his sides, were raised in his low impassable guard. His +back, straight from hips to shoulder, leaned a little forward. The head +was bent in his customary fighting pose, forehead out and chin in.</p> + +<p>"'Watch', was what I said," Miss Yockley, gloved hands clasped together +with feminine tenseness under her chin, breathed, to everybody in +general, "and I hope you're watching, for th' sake of what you'll miss +if you ain't."</p> + +<p>The champion was following the stranger around the ring. The masked man, +with light hissings of his shoes on the canvas floor, backed at exactly +the same pace, carefully avoiding corners, seeming to know where he was +by instinct and without the necessity of what would have been an +instantly-disastrous look over-shoulder. There was neither blow nor +feint. Sometimes the gloves of the fighters touched, but the impact was +feather-light and without audible sound.</p> + +<p>Then Cluett struck. It was not like a blow—it was more like a shot. +That is to say, one saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> nothing of the travelling fist: merely noticed +the effect, in a red which grew between the stranger's lips, until it +ran down in a long thin trickle over his bulldoggy chin.</p> + +<p>"Gosh all jew's-harps!" monologued the tautened Miss Yockley, who did +not seem gratified, "Nick missed him. That was meant for the point of +the jaw. Would have been a K. O., too, if it had gone where it was +looking. But ou-wouch!"</p> + +<p>This last as the masked man's shoulders, gleaming white under the +electric arcs, see-sawed flashingly. With apparently no visible reason +for the movement, Nick Cluett's head rocked. The gong sounded, closing +Round One.</p> + +<p>"Jiminy!" Miss Stella said, "watch Bob!"</p> + +<p>For Mr. Masterman was rushing to and fro, as the saying goes, "like a +hen on a hot griddle". Talking and gesticulating to the referee—dashing +over and shaking his fist in the face of the masked man who leaned back +calmly in his stool while his seconds sponged his mouth—then hurrying +back and whispering like a soda fountain in the ear of the champion, who +reclined against the ropes that stretched behind his seat, restoring +himself by deep inhalations and smiling crookedly at his manager's +ecstasy of anxiety.</p> + +<p>"That mask has got to come off!" Bob Masterman yelled, dashing over +again to the referee, "or out of this comes my man. He can fight +anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> with a face on, but he ain't used to pounding away at a mask."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you mask your man, then?" demanded one of the stranger's +seconds, who both also wore masks, one red, one black; "That will even +things."</p> + +<p>"Mask nothing," grunted the monosyllabic Mr. Cluett, sitting up in +preparation for the gong; "Beat it, Bob. Keep shirt on. 'M all right."</p> + +<p>Round Two commenced with the house, crowded from orchestra pit to +gallery, watching in a silence unbroken except for an intermittent creak +or cough. Even the light sound of the fighters' shoes on the ring-canvas +was audible in seats half-way to the back of the big auditorium. Mr. +Masterman, fists clenched in the side-pockets of his coat, feet squared +aggressively on the floor, face thrust forward, watched the movements of +both men with as much intentness as though he were a kind of auxiliary +referee. Miss Yockley, sympathetically reflecting Masterman's moods, had +lost her nonchalance. Her mouth half-open; her hands locked together and +thrust, knuckles up, under her chin; the whites of her eyes showing in a +gawky stare: she watched Cluett let the second round go by with only one +light left swing to the neck, countered immediately by the masked man +with a lightning right which made Nick shake his head and rub the thumb +of his glove across his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> nostrils. Neither blow did any noticeable +damage.</p> + +<p>Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, +Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager +and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the +shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman +was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with +something very like a smile.</p> + +<p>"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a +little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother."</p> + +<p>The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an +exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring +at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the +same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in +the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder +and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed +by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a +contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had +countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range.</p> + +<p>During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost +necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by +main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> one arm, and tried, in +spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in +the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett +himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he +regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of +Nick's scalp.</p> + +<p>"Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his +mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on—out +you come!"</p> + +<p>"Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, +as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart +momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips +are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now—leggo!"</p> + +<p>There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, +grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes.</p> + +<p>"All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick."</p> + +<p>"There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell +you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole +time you've knew me? Have I?"</p> + +<p>"Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to +lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>Nick Cluett merely turned away his head, having said enough—for him. +As the gong sounded for climactic Round Four, both boxers, with the +"bluff" of the ring, sprang to meet each other as though it had required +ten men apiece to hold them back till the moment came. For all this +business of haste, however, their gloves touched warily. A four-round +mill is a very short one, even for two ringmasters like Nick and his +opponent, to feel out a new antagonist in; and, though each knew points +of the other's "style" by now, each knew there was more to uncover and +that it would be uncovered in this deciding round. The bout, so far, had +been a clean and pretty one; and that the audience had developed no +partialities was made evident by the way in which both men were cheered +as they worked.</p> + +<p>But in this last round it was Cluett who was especially marvellous. +Right from the tap of the gong he was the aggressor. Round and round the +ring he backed his opponent; giving the stranger never the chance to +start, much less to land, a blow. But if the champion's offensive was +lightninglike and wonderful, the masked man's guard was no less so. For, +though Cluett's glove landed in each case, it landed with its force +broken by the elastic and elusive movement of the stranger's head and +torso.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"Easy, Nick—easy," spurted Masterman, though his eyes shone; "don't +let him play you out, boy." Besides the pride he felt in his man's work, +Bob Masterman knew that if Cluett kept this overshadowing gait to the +end of the round, he would win hands down on points.</p> + +<p>"Soak him, Nicky!" cheered the barometric Miss Yockley, wriggling with +delight; "he's ran short o' tricks. He's all yours."</p> + +<p>Daisy's sympathies had swung, quite without conscious mental volition, +to the side of the masked man, as she saw that he seemed to be losing. +Her eyes never left his face, as she watched sympathetically for the +spreading red stain that should show broken skin. But, although the +stranger's cheek below the black edge of the mask, as well as the sides +and even the point of the jaw, were dull red where Cluett had +landed—but landed as on something pneumatic—there came no vivider +crimson. Instead, Daisy saw come on the lips a smile. The smile was +still there when the round ended with the masked man skilfully covering +from a shower of taps that, though his guard broke or lightened them, +landed as true as the arrows of Locksley. Nor had the smile on the +bulldoggy lips faded when, upon Cluett being declared winner of the +bout, the stranger, followed by the commending cheers of the crowd, +vaulted out of the ring over the ropes, and was gone. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> moment +afterwards, there came the great, smooth snarl of a high-powered auto +springing from the curb outside.</p> + +<p>"Some big bug amateur," observed Miss Yockley, shrewdly, "hence the +mask. Must have slipped on his auto-coat over his fightin' togs, to get +away that quick. Them seconds with the masks on was likely college +chums, or something. But, O teaberries! didn't he cover up from our +Nicky though! I never saw a man could do like that before.... Come on, +now, kid: let's get out in our car and wait for the boys. There's +something," Miss Stella added volubly, as she rose, "that I don't quite +understand, about that last round. Didn't seem as if the other man was +trying; he never started one punch. Can't get nothin' out of Nicky on +it—he's too close-mouthed. But Bob'll tell us."</p> + +<p>It was not long after the two reached the automobile, standing long and +alert by the curb where Mr. Masterman and Daisy and Miss Yockley had +left it when they entered the theatre, till they saw the two men +approaching. Mr. Cluett had just had a shower-bath in one of the +dressing-rooms, and his hair showed wet and black around the edges of +his cap. He was silent, but the perennial smile was in its place. There +was not a bruise visible to Daisy, except the slight skin-break above +his eyebrow. She scrutinized the champion with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> a new, but not exactly +intensified interest, as he slipped into the tonneau beside her.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, taking off his cap and running his fingers through his +thick damp hair; "how's our little one? All here?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman, getting in by Miss Yockley on the front seat, swung his +head around as he took the wheel.</p> + +<p>"Some boy with the mitts—eh, what?" he grinned at Daisy. Miss Yockley +caught the speaker by the ear, and promptly turned him eyes front.</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>here</i>," she said, as she extracted a fresh piece of gum out of her +handbag, "not <i>there</i>. Now, who's this buck with the Hallowe'en fixings, +Bob?"</p> + +<p>"I know," said Mr. Masterman, "but I'm ferbid to say."</p> + +<p>"Well," observed Miss Yockley, as her teeth industriously kneaded her +new slice of gum, "he pretty near threw a monkey-wrench into our +machinery, whoever he is. Bar all masked fighters after this, is my +little word of advice to you boys. Eatin' snowballs ain't fattening, and +it wouldn't even be nice for a change.... But who was he, Bob? Come +o-on; we're all friends here."</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman shook his head. But, at the same time, the eyelid next +Miss Stella, answering a brief contraction of Bob Masterman's cheek,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +swiftly closed and opened in a movement that the others did not see.</p> + +<p>"Precisely, brother," acknowledged Miss Yockley; then, turning toward +the two in the tonneau, with her plump arm laid along the back of the +seat, she said, with a rapid change of subject;</p> + +<p>"Here's a couple that ain't speakin', Bob. What does a fellow do in a +case like that?"</p> + +<p>"Run for the Doctor," suggested Mr. Masterman, over his shoulder. "Where +do you want to go, Nick?"</p> + +<p>"Home, James," said Mr. Cluett. Then, as he roused himself from an +attack of pensiveness, during which he had been making little +unconscious passes with his arms, accompanied by swift light jerks of +the shoulders he added thoughtfully, "Some class to that fellow, Bob."</p> + +<p>"Class is right," said Mr. Masterman; "but no more masks for us, boy. +Never again."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," pondered Nick Cluett; "I'd fight him again, mask and +all, just to learn something about that style of guard he's got. +Fightin' them other dubs will never get me anywhere: it's too much like +bowling."</p> + +<p>After turning a few corners, the car was halted near a big seven-story, +midtown block, the ground floor of which was occupied by a sporting +goods store on one side, and a great bright-windowed restaurant on the +other.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" said Mr. Masterman, bustlingly, +clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody +change!"</p> + +<p>"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick +Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, +he followed the girls to the elevator entrance.</p> + +<p>The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of +the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were +being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the +situation into which her daring had projected her. The rapid, virile +beat of her blood made her tingle pleasantly, and brought a color into +her cheeks that caused the ever-observant Miss Stella to remark, as they +stepped out of the elevator:</p> + +<p>"Say, kid, we got to get a picture of you."</p> + +<p>Cluett thrust a key into the shining brass lock of a door halfway along +the corridor; swung it open; and, glancing inscrutably sidewise at +Daisy, motioned inward with his hand. Daisy, following close on Miss +Yockley's heels, found herself in an apartment with two wall-beds that, +hooked up into place, showed as nothing but a pair of full-length +mirrors, with dressing-brackets at either side that served as legs when +the beds were let down. Gus, the janitor, had tidied the place. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>Canvas +shoes and sweaters had been gathered into the clothes-closet. The big +porcelain tub in the bathroom had been polished until it shone white and +clean. The green carpet had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner. The +"pillow" gloves of boxing practice had been arrayed in an orderly manner +on the top of the chiffonier.</p> + +<p>The room was a large one, with two big airy windows. On the walls, +kalsomined in light green, were pictures of fighters of all weights; a +wire card-rack with photographs of girls; and prints, some framed and +some unframed, of the "September Morn" type. An open door showed an +inner apartment, with red burlap, plate-rail, round dining-table, and +buffet; and beyond this was a small kitchen, into which Miss Yockley, +who had unpinned and tossed aside her hat, bustled, and lit the gas +under a copper water-kettle. Almost simultaneously, a bump came at the +hall-door, and a grinning restaurant-waiter entered with a huge nickeled +tray, whose savory-smelling victuals were hidden under a white linen +cover.</p> + +<p>"Right here, George!" sirened Miss Stella, posting herself by a +side-table in the dining-room.</p> + +<p>On the heels of the "little supper" came Bob Masterman, who shook a +finger playfully at Daisy as he slammed the door on the vanishing waiter +and cast his hat into a corner.</p> + +<p>"This way for yours, Bob," came Miss <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>Yockley's voice, above the clatter +of silver and bump of dishes laid out on a table-cloth; "come along, and +get your coat off, and massacree these chickens. Can't you see you ain't +wanted in there? You need a house to fall on you, you do!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman sighed like a typhoon, but obediently passed into the +dining-room: pausing, ere he closed the door after him, to stick his +face through the aperture and close an eye at Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Beat it, Bob," said Mr. Cluett, absently.</p> + +<p>"I guess I'll go and help," said Daisy, looking brightly cornerwise at +her companion, who still seemed to have the fight on his mind. Nick +Cluett at this, came out of his half-reverie and, crossing the room, sat +down beside Daisy. He looked at her a moment in a queer way; then put +out a strong hand, with black hair growing along the finger-sinews, and +laid it on hers. Daisy noticed that the middle knuckle looked purplish.</p> + +<p>"Well, m' little girl," he said, "how goes it?"</p> + +<p>"What's happened your hand?" said Daisy; putting her head on one side, +softly touching the discolored knuckle, then looking at him through +down-held lashes.</p> + +<p>Cluett glanced down casually. "Oh, nothing," he said, "just a little +accident. But you ain't told me how <i>you</i> are, yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I—I'm sick in bed," said Daisy, putting her free hand up to her +face, and bringing two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> dancing irises to bear on Mr. Cluett through the +fingers of it.</p> + +<p>"You're a little devil," commented Mr. Cluett, inching over and putting +his arm around her. Daisy's eyes, fairly coruscating with coquetry and +resource, flashed down at the hand that pressed her waist. First she +pretended to look at it from one angle; then from another.</p> + +<p>"I don't like the looks of it," she said, "take it away."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that?" said Nick Cluett. The dark face, with its queer +stationary smile and its eyes full of a warming light, came close to +hers. Daisy waited dimpling till the rough cheek, bluish with its day's +growth of stiff hair-stubble, almost touched her ear. Then, exploding +into light quick action, she cast away the encircling arm and hopped to +her feet.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to help get the supper," she said; and, before Nick Cluett +could stop her, whisked to the dining-room door and flung it open.</p> + +<p>"What's bust loose?" said Miss Yockley, who was making coffee.</p> + +<p>"Frisky little thing, you!" observed Mr. Masterman, rolling up his +sporting paper, and playfully threatening Daisy with it.</p> + +<p>"Turn off the gas, Bob," commanded Miss Stella, "and don't have so much +to say. Come along, Nicky. Supper's on."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Cluett strolled in, and the four drew up chairs. There were three +roast chickens, hot, carved up into handy "drumsticks" and slices by Mr. +Masterman; "French fried" potatoes; a cut-glass dish of peach preserve; +fruit cake; bakers' rolls; and an electric percolator filled with savory +coffee.</p> + +<p>"Some little lay-out," observed Mr. Cluett, who was hungry after his +evening's "work-out". He stepped into the chair next Daisy's by tilting +it and swinging his leg over the back to the seat.</p> + +<p>"Yes: Bob done well, for once," said Miss Stella, "gener'ly, when he's +ordering a supper, the only thing he can think of is 'poached on' and +raisin pie."</p> + +<p>"What have we got to drink, Stel'?" demanded Mr. Masterman, hitching his +cuffs as he prepared to serve the chicken.</p> + +<p>"Coffee," returned Miss Yockley, winking at Nick Cluett and Daisy; +"we're gettin' ready for when the country goes dry."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Masterman, who had paused aghast, but had recommenced +to breathe freely as he had intercepted the speaker's wink; "I guess I +can stand it as long as Stella can, anyway—and that ain't very long."</p> + +<p>"You bet it ain't," admitted Miss Stella, going to the buffet and +bringing back three bottles of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> champagne; "See what the milkman left us +for the baby, this morning."</p> + +<p>"Let it out, then, let it out!" said Bob Masterman, laying down his +carving-fork and setting out glasses; "I'm as dry as the night before, +boys."</p> + +<p>Under Miss Yockley's deft offices, a cork popped promptly, and four +glasses were filled in as many seconds.</p> + +<p>"I guess we can let Nick off the water-wagon for to-night," said Mr. +Masterman, "while we drink confusion to the Masked Man. But what's wrong +with Prettiness here? Swore off?" This to Daisy, who had made no +movement to lift her glass.</p> + +<p>Daisy merely dimpled and shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Somebody say something," interpolated Miss Stella; "Come on, Kid—if +you knew the pain Bob's in, you wouldn't keep him waiting. Do you want +some water in it—or what?"</p> + +<p>"Water in it!" ejaculated Mr. Masterman, "Help!... 'Water in it?' she +says, as though she meant it."</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett, who, glass in hand, had been regarding Daisy narrowly, +spoke out.</p> + +<p>"Let up, people," he said, tersely; "she don't want it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dewberries!" observed Bob Masterman, mincingly. "Well, here's to +the trimmin' our boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> Nick so nearly got—may we never, never be so near +the cruel bread-line agen!"</p> + +<p>Supper passed amid a continual "kidding back and forth" between Miss +Yockley and Mr. Masterman, which speeded up as the champagne bottles +emptied.</p> + +<p>"Oo-aw!" said Miss Stella, fanning herself and rising at length, a +little unsteadily, from behind her emptied glass and coffee-cup; "I feel +like a breath of fresh air."</p> + +<p>"You don't <i>look</i> like a breath o' fresh air," chortled her drinking +companion; "you look like t-ten cents' worth o' tough luck, Stel. Get on +your hat, an' I'll walk you 'round the block, little one."</p> + +<p>With this, the two passed into the front room. Daisy thought they were +joking about going out, till she heard the hall-door slam behind them. +Then she jumped up.</p> + +<p>"Wh-why—have they gone?" she said.</p> + +<p>"They sure have," said Mr. Cluett, leaning back lazily in his chair; +"but we should worry."</p> + +<p>"Will they be long?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Search me," responded Nick Cluett; "They may go to a picture-show. +Maybe they'll slip into a vaudeville show. We don't care—eh?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked out into the empty front room of the suite. A gramophone on +a small table met her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Let's put on some music," she said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p><p>Cluett got up, and came over, and stood beside her.</p> + +<p>"Not to-night," he said, looking down. The champagne had brought a kind +of dull color to his cheeks and forehead. "What do we want with music, +kid? Come on—let's be a little friendly, huh?" His strong lean arm slid +around her waist.</p> + +<p>It was then that Daisy lifted up her face, let all the coquetry pass +from it, and regarded him with eyes that were straight and sober.</p> + +<p>"Stop it!" she said.</p> + +<p>For answer, the arm tightened about her. Nick Cluett leaned to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"If you don't stop it," said Daisy, rigid in his arms; "you're no +gentleman."</p> + +<p>Cluett relaxed his arm a little. His queer-smiling face, with its keen +eyes, slanted down towards her in concentrated, silent interrogation. +Daisy's spirit of mischief tempted her to drop her eyes; but she managed +to resist the impulse and to keep her features sober-expressioned.</p> + +<p>"You're not goin' to be friendly, then?" he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled ever so slightly. "Not just now", she answered.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that—or don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I mean it," said Daisy, simply; "not in here, anyway. Why can't we go +out, and get a breath of fresh air, too, and go to a picture-show?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>Nick Cluett took his arm from her waist, reached for his hat, and +opened the hall-door.</p> + +<p>"Come on," he said, "I'll see you safe home, Kid."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Face Behind the Mask.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Who's the boy?" said Daisy, over her shoulder, to Jean; as, glancing +out of the window of the big Harrison kitchen, she saw, at the front +corner of the house, a younger man get out of the car after the bulky +Sir Thomas. "I thought all the visitors here were elderly men. There's +been no young ones at all since I've been here."</p> + +<p>"Ey?" Jean came to "keek," resting a hand on the shoulder of the younger +girl, "why, if it's no young Harrison! Did I never tell ye Sir Thomas +had a lad? Well, well." Jean sat down again to her pea-shelling.</p> + +<p>"Ay," she pursued, as her rapid fingers stripped the split pods of their +green kernels, "yon's Harold Harrison. He looks like his father, an' he +talks like his father, and as to his disposeetion—well, I'm bound in +fairness-like to say he's a bittie of his good mither—just a wee wee +streak, like the lean in bacon—pinched in between thick layers of Sir +Thomas himsel'. The young-lad's no so rough-edged in manner—the college +has polished him on the ootside.... But I'll say no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> more: ye'll see him +juist now, when ye serve the supper."</p> + +<p>And when Daisy did see the young man—sitting with his knees crossed and +his elbow on the edge of the table, talking to his father but not +noticing the quiet, awkward mother at all—she almost dropped the tray +she was carrying. For Harold Harrison and the masked fighter who had +boxed four rounds with Champion Nick Cluett, were one and the same young +man.</p> + +<p>"I'd know that chin anywhere," said Daisy, as she confided to Jean the +discovery she had made, "it's just like his father's. And his lower lip +is burst, too, just where I saw Nick hit the masked fighter. He has a +piece of red sticking-plaster on it."</p> + +<p>"Mon, mon!" Jean was interested; "is that so, then? I kenned he was a +boxer; and I suppose, as the Harrisons has the name of getting what they +'go after,' its no surprisin' he's won to the top. It's aye the way. He +has everything—his money, his schooling, his place in society, his +business chances—an' yet he'll no be satisfied till he steals the +boxin' honors from a puir lad that has nothing but his gloves. Nick's a +machinist; and, up till lately, when money from his matches commenced to +come in a little, he's had to do all his training in the nicht-time; +while the Harrison lad's had all day and all night, if he needed, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +make himsel' pairfect.... Ey, ey—it's the way o' the warld, lassie."</p> + +<p>"He'll never beat Nick," some flash of vague enthusiasm warmed Daisy for +an instant; then she added—boxing terms and predictions coming handily +to her tongue after that chatty hour across the supper-table from the +"sporty" Miss Yockley—"he'd never last twenty rounds, or even ten, in a +finish bout. Nicky Cluett," Daisy concluded with feminine irrelevance, +"is a gentleman. The other fellow would be afraid to fight him without a +mask on."</p> + +<p>Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists, +lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's +seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no +that sure that they dare play tricks with it—as they wad be doing, they +think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public +theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society, +an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family +operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle +o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds +empty, as if they was through their meat."</p> + +<p>As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his +father, paused in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> account of the boxing-match till the girl had +collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot. +But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and +caught every word with her keen young ears:</p> + +<p>"——And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I +went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this +fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good—and is, too, as +witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was +a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking +sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter, +glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd +have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to me."</p> + +<p>"You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and +whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em! +Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en +where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe +on the jaw, when I had him goin'."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Sawn off the Old Block.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The big Harrison villa,—with its broad ostentatious drive, its +unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its +elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a +dealers' reduction—soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete +cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding +of young Harold's punching bag.</p> + +<p>"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn +anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top +floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of +Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair +before a mirror.</p> + +<p>"Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Daisy, stopping in the doorway with the roses of recent +exertion coloring her cheeks superbly, her eyes dancing in their bright +challenging way, and her plump arms displayed to fine and not +unconscious advantage as she folded them over the broom-handle which +leaned in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> the bend of her elbow; "one of your boxing-gloves was under +the shower-bath, with the water running on it; and your sweater was on +the floor below the punching bag, tramped in the dust——"</p> + +<p>"There shouldn't be any dust up there," said Harold, easily; "What do +you suppose we pay our little housemaids for? Uh?"</p> + +<p>"Is that so!" retorted Daisy; "well, you'd better give orders for the +wind not to blow, then; and you'd better have your father pull up that +nasty concrete drive, where all the dust comes from; and——"</p> + +<p>"See here! See-e here!" Sir Thomas Harrison's son jerked out, spinning +on his heel and facing her; "what do you mean by talking to me like +that? Who do you think you're speaking to—the chauffeur or the +stable-boy? Get on downstairs, or wherever you're going, and don't have +so much to say." Then, as the young heir of the place turned again to +the mirror, he added in audible soliloquy, "dashed cheek! These infernal +domestics are getting to think they can do and say what they please. +Some of these days that cook and I are going to have a rumpus too. She +chooses coolly to forget, and to keep right on forgetting, the +instructions I give her about my food.—What! you here yet?"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" said Daisy, looking at him with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> cheeks burning redly and her +eyes fixed and bright; "I'm here yet—<i>Mister</i> Harold!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, a-all right," observed the young man, sarcastically, throwing out +his palm with an elaborate motion toward a chair; "won't you have a +seat, Miss—er—er— Miss Housemaid?"</p> + +<p>Daisy's long eyelashes described a flashing arc as she swept the crown +prince of the dynasty of Harrison from head to house-slippered toe. Then +she turned away. Harold Harrison, as he heard her shoe-heels tapping +smartly down the back stairs, grinned at his reflection in the +looking-glass.</p> + +<p>"That's putting 'em where they belong," he said; "Some kid, though, +be-lieve me—some kid!"</p> + +<p>Jean, at the big cooking range, heard Daisy come into the kitchen and +thrust the broom into its holder with a rap. Then there came silence, +enduring for so long that the Scotswoman glanced questioningly around. +Daisy had dropped into a chair, and was sitting in a kind of brown +study, finger at lip and eyes looking ponderingly out of window.</p> + +<p>"Now, now, lassie!" said the cook, kindly; "it's nae business o' mine, +likely; but this is a big hoose, an' ye canna be through reddin' up the +rooms yet, an' it's nearly eleven o'clock. Is onything amiss?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>Daisy related her encounter with young Harrison.</p> + +<p>"Ey, ey," Jean smiled grimly as the girl told her what young Harold had +said about the cooking; "so he's no farin' quite as he wad at the +meal-table, and would like a bit brush with me, would he? Well, I canna +be aye getting' up special dishes for his lordship, so I may as weel +prepare to receive him. Did he tell ye of the wee bit tiff we had ance +before, him an' me? No; he didn't. Well, I'll tell ye, in a few words. +He talked wi' his tongue, and I talked with the besom; and the interview +juist lasted four minutes by the kitchen clock. He's no a bad lad +althegither, but he needs a canny bit breakin' in."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not going to bother breaking him in," said Daisy, lifting her +chin, "he's not worth it."</p> + +<p>Jean laughed. "Well, onyway," she said, turning again to her own work, +"don't let him start ye broodin', so the rooms'll no be done when our +good leddy goes over the huse. Ye ken weel she'd turn to and mak' up the +beds hersel', sooner than raise a fuss. Lassie, lassie, speakin' about +the Mistress, I'm sore worried. She's failed terrible this last month. I +keep tellin' her to drink milk, but she canna keep it doon. She eats nae +mair than yon dickie-bird—a great big strappin' wumman like she is—or +was—too! If onything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> happens to the leddy o' the hoose here—guid-bye +Harrisons! It's only for her sake I'm bidin' here, at the wage I get. +I've got a standin' offer o' half as much agen from Lady Frances +Ware—Sir William Ware's mother."</p> + +<p>At the mention of Ware's name, Daisy gave a little involuntary start. +But she did not tell Jean that she too had an offer of a position in the +household of Sir William Ware.</p> + +<p>"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding +skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, +"that the young lad here—Harold—is engaged to a girl o' what they call +the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's +way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it +brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for +puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if +onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her +long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'—her, that made him!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Plot That Miscarried.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling +cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel' +sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's +gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with +thae orders, like."</p> + +<p>Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had +been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the +house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged." +Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?"</p> + +<p>"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the +line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like."</p> + +<p>Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a +fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I +doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her +shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that +stood, larded and ready, at her right.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you."</p> + +<p>"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver.</p> + +<p>Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not +of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was +plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of +the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right, +I will,—bye-bye," as she hung up the phone.</p> + +<p>When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter, +this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man +who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the +dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and +very often twice, each week since.</p> + +<p>On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy, +as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the +trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford +suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was +going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know +that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did +she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something +like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> have the chance o' your life +to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite—yes, yes, +of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean +it extra good, to-night—and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets +his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy +up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around +with me to-night—the best girl in——"</p> + +<p>"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go +on—shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my +ear, Jim, and listen to you rave."</p> + +<p>"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm +bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea. +See?—the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I +intend to spring, on the way home——"</p> + +<p>"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the +line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?"</p> + +<p>"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to +spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks. +I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some +accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>"Better wait till she says 'yes'," Mrs. Farrell had advised, as she +prepared to 'hang up', "before you start counting your chickens. She may +not care to take a chance on you. I know how I'd feel about it, if it +was me. However, I'll do my best for you."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, who was quite ready to admit any time that he was "no hand with +girls," shoved his hat to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets, +and spat aside as, waiting outside the Harrison gate, he saw Daisy +approach along the gravel walk.</p> + +<p>If he had come for her in the jitney, as usual, to take her for a +companionable hour's ride up and down his round, as a "free" and welcome +passenger, he would have felt at ease; for he had become used to that. +But this waiting, with no friendly engine pounding away in front of him +and no familiar steering-wheel to lean his hands upon, was enough out of +the ordinary to have embarrassed Jimmy anyway, even without the mental +consciousness of his deep-laid matrimonial plot, and the feeling he +could not shake off that somehow Daisy might sense it prematurely and +flee.</p> + +<p>"'Lo, stranger," said Daisy, softly, taking the words out of Jimmy's +mouth, as it were. She was a little shy, too; but Jimmy Knight was too +busy with his own perturbation to notice that.</p> + +<p>"H'lo yourself," he responded, with something like gruffness, "and see +how you like it." As they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> dropped into step side by side, he added, +with an inspired flash, "Lookin' kind of skookum to-night, us, Friend +Nixon."</p> + +<p>"I might if I had a suit on," Daisy said, in her forthright way, "but +suits cost money."</p> + +<p>"Never mind," Jimmy, in spite of the playful breeze abroad, strove to +pull his new straw hat down more firmly on its elastic cushion of +virile, curly hair, "you may have one, soon."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who had not meant this at all, cast a quick side-glance at her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't take a suit from you, if that's what you mean," she said, +abruptly, flushing a little.</p> + +<p>"There, now," Jimmy blushed an honest, vivid red, "I've went and made a +break, first crack at the bat. Say, you do the talkin' from here on. +I'll just listen. If I don't say nothin', I can't make nobody mad, can +I?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an +apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel—that structure from +whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As +she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind +reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging +out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre +of the clothesline.</p> + +<p>"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of +Suite 30, as Jimmy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a +bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy +up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy, +with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her +hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short +vestibule to the living-room.</p> + +<p>"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of +under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I +told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him +for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get +married, Miss——"</p> + +<p>"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its +"surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a +wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener, +who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell +you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one."</p> + +<p>Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took +Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her +remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to +sleep this minute, you! The idea!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka +wa'r."</p> + +<p>"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're +going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim—he'll have the city +waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of, +for keepin' awake."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn. +Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out.</p> + +<p>"Might as well talk to the wind," said Mrs. Tom Farrell, "as them two. +Well, of all——"</p> + +<p>This last as Jimmy reappeared, carrying a sleepy three-year-old who, +supporting the tumbler with two hands that had hollows where knuckles +should be, was quaffing with all his might. Jimmy Knight had had an +inspiration, which he was not yet sure was not a blunder, to show Daisy +how a baby "became" him.</p> + +<p>To Daisy, in spite of its neatness, the suite looked rather small and +dingy. This impression formed itself quite unconsciously, not as the +result of deliberate glances about. Probably it was a wholly involuntary +comparison of these small rooms to the big garish apartments of the +Harrison house, to which her eyes had grown accustomed during the past +couple of months. At any rate, the impression came and stayed. Jimmy, +however, had no means of knowing this; and, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> he glanced around at his +sister's handiwork, he winked his appreciation at Mrs. Betty behind +young Tommy's head; and shaped with his lips this soundless but +energetic sentence, "You're a winner, hon'."</p> + +<p>Tom Farrell, Senior, came from the bathroom presently, stroking a long, +new-shaven chin. His eyes were narrowed sociably, and his mouth, as he +approached Daisy, was kinked up at the corners in what seemed to Betty +Farrell's critical regard, almost an ecstasy of friendliness. He paused, +with the hand of greeting half-outstretched; then, tetering his +shoulders a little, glanced first at his wife, and from her to Jimmy, +interrogatively.</p> + +<p>"Somebody introduce me," interpreted his wife, with considerable warmth +and sarcasm, "or I'll go crazy."</p> + +<p>"Daisy, meet Brother Tom," interposed Jimmy, diplomatically, as he saw a +flash of temper in the glance Tom Farrell darted at his wife. A husband +of four years' standing will not endure being put out of countenance +before a pretty girl.</p> + +<p>"Howdy," said Farrell, promptly; grabbing Daisy's hand and half for his +wife's benefit and half because of Daisy's dimples, squeezing it hard +and long; "howdy, howdy?... Say, Bet, what's that kid doing out of bed, +this time o' night? Don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> you know nothing at all? Get him back between +them sheets, right away!"</p> + +<p>"Put him to bed yourself, if you're so keen about it," Betty Farrell +retorted, hotly; "it was Jimmy brought him out here, not me. Why don't +you take a round out of Jim?"</p> + +<p>"I said, put him to bed," Tom Farrell was losing his self-control as his +temper rose, "and do it quick!"</p> + +<p>"Come along, Boy," said Jimmy Knight, genially, speaking into the ear of +Tommy, Junior; then winking at Daisy as he jerked his head in humorous +apology toward the point where Tom and Betty Farrell glared at each +other across the centre-table, "we'll go and pound our ear, son. We +don't need a house to fall on us, to show us we ain't wanted, do we?" He +got up, young Tom in his arms, and moved toward the bedroom.</p> + +<p>"No, sir-ree!" Tom Farrell's long arm came out and scooped out of +Jimmy's grasp the youngster, who started to cry; "it's got to be settled +right here an' now who's boss of this establishment. I ain't goin' to +let no woman run on me. Here, Bet—take this kid, and put him to bed +like I told you!" The husband was now so far beside himself that he, for +the moment, neither knew nor cared what impression he made. As he spoke, +he held out the baby boy, who yelled and kicked vigorously.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><p>But Betty Farrell backed away, letting young Tommy dangle from his +father's outstretched arms.</p> + +<p>"I don't have to take no orders from you," she said, putting her hands +obstinately behind her back, "and I won't, not if you rave till you're +blue in the face. I'll show everybody how much authority you have over +me."</p> + +<p>At this, young Tom felt himself set down hard on a chair. Tom Farrell, +having thus freed his hands, hopped ragingly across the room and slapped +his wife on the side of the face. Betty, true to the color of her hair, +flared up, looked about for something to throw, and swept her hand with +temper's wastefulness toward the cut-glass vase in the centre of the +table.</p> + +<p>"Hey!" Jimmy Knight reached across and rescued the vase; "you ain't mad +five dollars' worth, surely, Bet." Then the brother got up and came +around the table.</p> + +<p>"Break away, break away," he said, casting a deprecating grin toward +Daisy as he put one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other on Tom +Farrell's chest, and pushed the two apart; "hittin' in the clinches is +barred, boys. How about a little card-game, everybody? Bet and me will +take on Daisy and you, Tom, and beat yous flat."</p> + +<p>"Nothing doing," Farrell nasalled, closing his eyes and rocking his head +from side to side in an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> obdurate negative; "this here thing's got to be +settled first. Let a woman get the upper hand of you once, an' you'll +never get her back in her place."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on, Bet," Jimmy gave his sister a little coaxing nudge, "put the +kid to bed."</p> + +<p>Betty Farrell raised eyelids, nose, chin and right foot, and brought +them all down simultaneously.</p> + +<p>"I—wun't!" she said; "so there."</p> + +<p>This repetition of her refusal, though not this time addressed to him, +brought Tom Farrell's wrath again to boiling-point, and he reached +across and cuffed her twice more. Jimmy Knight's hand, which was still +resting against his brother-in-law's chest, pushed Farrell firmly back.</p> + +<p>"Don't do that no more, Tom," he said, his face and voice sobering a +little.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" flamed Farrell, turning on him.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "I can't stand by and see you do it—that's all."</p> + +<p>Farrell grew hoarse and purple. "Well, come on, then," he frogged, "I'll +take on the whole blamed family, and lick 'em with one hand tied behind +me." With this, his arm shot out; and Jimmy, taken unawares, received +the blow full in the eye. Farrell followed quickly with a second thrust; +but Jimmy was ready, and the fist glanced harmlessly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p><p>"I don't want to fight you, Tom," he said, guarding himself with fair +skill, as the brother-in-law, shoving the table aside with a jerk of his +hip, pursued the attack furiously; "All I say is, be reasonable."</p> + +<p>"Reasonable, nothin'!" croaked Farrell, as he landed again, cutting +Jimmy's cheek with his thumb-nail; "I'll learn you to keep out, next +time."</p> + +<p>Jimmy did not answer. His lips tightened a little. Farrell, breaking +through his guard again, struck the fast-blackening eye which had +received his opening blow. Thereat Jimmy, with a vigorous shake of his +shoulders, dived in manfully. There was a brief scuffle; then Jimmy's +sinewy fist twinkled up hard, at short range, and Tom Farrell went down +flat on the floor and lay there.</p> + +<p>"Now, then!" the voice was Betty Farrell's; but it was addressed to +Jimmy, not to her husband, this time; "see what you've done, with your +dirty fists and your meddling. You've knocked him out—maybe hurt him—"</p> + +<p>"He's all right," said Jimmy, a little sheepishly, "I—I never +meant—there, he's stirring, now. I——"</p> + +<p>"Well, get out, then," Betty Farrell dashed over and nervously opened +the door leading out of the suite into the corridor; "go on—get out!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> I +don't want no more fighting in here. Go on—you, too," this last to +Daisy who, however, was already at the door.</p> + +<p>Jimmy glanced at Daisy as humorously as a man might who had one +supremely black eye and a cheek all over blood.</p> + +<p>"I guess p'raps we might as well," he said.</p> + +<p>There was silence on the way down the three flights of stairs, and +comparative uncommunicativeness on Jimmy's part until the end of the +walk home was reached and the two stood under the trees just within the +Harrison drive-gate.</p> + +<p>Then Jimmy, clearing his throat with the air of a man who has made up +his mind to say something or die, observed, "I—I got to tell you one +blamed good joke, Friend Nixon, before you go in."</p> + +<p>"What?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "I—gr-r-h'm—I took you over there to-night to show +you a happy little home in a three-room suite. As she turns out, +however, that'n ain't so very happy to-night, huh? All my fault, for +hikin' young Tom out of his crib."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well," said Daisy, "everybody fights, sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's so," said Jimmy; "Yes, that's—that's so. But I—I—"</p> + +<p>"'M?" said Daisy, feeling something in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> companion's cadence that +caused a soft little titillation of her nerves. She drew back further +into the shadow as she felt her cheeks grow involuntarily warm.</p> + +<p>"I know two of a kind—both of 'em easy-goin', I mean—that mightn't +fight any more than oncet a week, at the outside. Do you think you could +stand for that, Friend Nix—Friend Daisy?"</p> + +<p>Daisy drew a long breath, raised her face, and looked clear-eyed at her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I know what you mean," she said, glad that the darkness prevented +cheerful, curly-headed Jimmy Knight from seeing the shine of her glance +and the color of her cheeks, "but I can't. Not the way I feel these +days. What happened over in the suite to-night didn't make any +difference. But—well, I just can't. I'm a funny girl."</p> + +<p>"You sure are," agreed Jimmy Knight; "how long did you say you'd need to +think it over?"</p> + +<p>"Forever," said Daisy, firmly, in spite of the beating of her heart.</p> + +<p>"All right," responded Jimmy Knight, bravely choking down a certain +obstruction that had risen in his throat, "I'll give you a day longer +than that, so's it won't look as if I was rushin' you. Well—so-long, +kid," he held out his hand.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, Jimmy Knight," Daisy gave him her hand, then drew it away +gently, and ran in-doors with tears in her eyes.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Golden Stair.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir William Ware put aside his book, covered a yawn, glanced up at the +fireplace clock, which was about to chime nine; then, taking up the +telephone which had been ringing with shrill iteration for a moment or +two, casually laid his ear to it.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said.</p> + +<p>"Sir William Ware?" vibrated the disk.</p> + +<p>"Himself," responded Sir William, lightly.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the voice at the other end of the line, "this is me."</p> + +<p>"Eh?"</p> + +<p>"Me."</p> + +<p>"Ah." Sir William rubbed his chin in bewilderment; then he added, +humorously, "<i>Miss</i> Me? Right, so far?"</p> + +<p>"You have a short memory," commented the voice on the phone.</p> + +<p>"You have chanced," said Ware, pleasantly, "upon a melancholy fact, +madam. But may I not ask the identity of—Jove! wait a bit, though! My +creaking wheels of recollection are beginning to revolve.... I have it! +I have it! Miss Nixon?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," said Daisy's voice, in a matter-of-fact way, "it is. I want to +see you."</p> + +<p>Sir William, at the speaker's naive directness, covered the transmitter +with his palm and rocked in enjoyment.</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" he said, then, uncovering the instrument; "the city hasn't +spoiled you yet, my dear—has it?"</p> + +<p>"I'm waiting near that cafe we were at before," said Daisy, "how long +will you be?"</p> + +<p>Something in the bare blunt words made Sir William hug himself in an +almost boyish ecstasy. "I shall come," he answered, "on the wings of +Hermes. They should bring me into your presence in from three to five +minutes, young lady."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon, after hanging up the telephone in the little candy store +across from the Cumberland Cafe, had waited barely four minutes in the +shadowed street just beyond the circle of light from the Cumberland's +windows, when she saw a tall figure, cane in hand, walk briskly into +that area of illumination. She crossed the street.</p> + +<p>Ware, dangling his cane and glancing about enquiringly, saw her when she +was half-way across the circle of light and facing the full blaze of it. +Her bright frank eyes; her clear girlish fresh cheeks, on which a +certain nervousness kept the tide of color changing its shape and +margin; her round maidenly lines of bust and hip and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> ankle: all wrought +curiously and strongly and with a united effect upon Ware, as they had +on that night in the Harrison dining-room when his attention, drawn to +her casually by the accident to the soup-tureen, had changed at once to +the heartiest interest.</p> + +<p>Material absolutely fresh and new! Molten and virgin gold, not yet +resistable to the stamp of the die!</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, stepping forward hospitably, "how are you, my dear? +Shall we go in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." Daisy stepped inside, deliberately unpinned and hung up her hat, +and sat down opposite to the baronet at the table he had chosen along +the side of the room. It was the same table they had occupied on their +previous visit.</p> + +<p>"Don't order much," she said; "I'm not hungry. I came here to talk."</p> + +<p>"I think," said Sir William, "that talking will be much more enjoyable. +I dined late, myself. Suppose we have, say, a few grapes and a little +something to drink—an iced drink of some sort."</p> + +<p>"Anything you like," said Daisy. She laid her hands on the table, caught +her lower lip under her teeth with a shy gesture that was delicious to +Ware, and said—quite plainly, and without yielding to that impulse of +coquetry which had made him so brief with her on their previous +meeting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>—"Were you in earnest, that time you asked me to marry you?"</p> + +<p>"My dear," answered Sir William, leaning forward, and extending his hand +on the table until it was almost touching hers, "I made the proposal +quite seriously and in good faith. I should not do otherwise. If you are +still in a position to accept it, I make it again now."</p> + +<p>Daisy looked across at the real eagerness in the fine eyes; at the face, +with its skin cleanly and handsomely tinted under the few faint lines +that indicated the light passage of the years; at the hand, smooth, +white and gently masterful. Then she dropped her glance; but her voice +was firm and her manner direct and frank as she answered him.</p> + +<p>"I'll marry you," she said.</p> + +<p>The white hand, with a strong and gentle pressure, came over hers, until +her fingers were between the thumb and the heel of the palm. Something +great and calm and authoritative seemed communicated with that touch. +Daisy felt quelled and dutiful, but, best of all, as she lifted her eyes +to his, she knew, less by his expression than by an unexplainable +feeling within herself, that she could trust him. For in all +essentials—so she read and knew calmly and surely that she read +aright—he was, as Daisy herself would have put it, simply, "a +gentleman."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"Thank you, my dear," he said, quietly, "I may say sincerely that I +think we shall grow very fond of one another. Waiter!—here, please."</p> + +<p>A dress suit glided forward and an obsequious ear leaned down. The +waiter knew quite thoroughly what was "doing", although by the +expression on his face during the conversation between Daisy and Ware, +one would have thought he was working out in his head a problem in +trigonometry.</p> + +<p>"May I speak to the manager?" said Ware.</p> + +<p>The manager, who had curly jet hair, an immense slope of white +waistcoat, and an Alice-blue chin, appeared in exactly fifteen seconds.</p> + +<p>"Have you," said Sir William, "a room where a marriage ceremony may be +performed?"</p> + +<p>The manager started a smile—but it got no further than a slight twitch +in the eye-corners before something in Sir William's expression,—though +the baronet changed not a feature nor abated anything of his +pleasantness—checked it.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," the manager answered, voice and face returning instantly to +business formality; "my office is at your service, sir, if you wish."</p> + +<p>"That will do nicely, thank you," said Ware, rising; then to Daisy he +said, as he offered his arm, "we will go there now—shall we?"</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded, without speaking. Her faith in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> him was as absolute as it +was instinctive and involuntary.</p> + +<p>As the manager bowed them into the office—a room of fair size—and, +partially closing the door, made polite exit, Ware handed Daisy to a +seat, and himself dropped into the swivel-chair before the manager's +desk and took up the telephone.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" he said, as he got his number; "that you, Mrs. Heathcote? Good +evening; how's your neuralgia?... Splendid, splendid—I <i>am</i> glad to +hear that. I say, is George about?"</p> + +<p>Evidently George was at hand; for in a second or two the transmitter +returned to Sir William's lips.</p> + +<p>"That you, George? I say, are you busy?... Well, then, look here—could +you slip around to the Cumberland Cafe, Osborne Street.... No, no, +nothing about 'hay'; Cumberland Cafe, you ass.... Yes, that's it—can't +miss it—big, bright, plate-glass windows, half-way between Wardlow and +Pembina.... I say, that's very jolly of you, old man.... Yes, I—we—are +waiting.... Yes: I said 'we'.... None of your bally business—that is, +I'll explain when you get here. Make haste now, won't you?... Right-O!" +Sir William hung up the phone and turned to Daisy.</p> + +<p>"That was the Reverend George Heathcote, my dear," he said, "rector of +St. George's. Do you know St. George's?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>Daisy knew it—a big Episcopal church, with beautiful chimes, that made +Sunday morning glorious. Right in the heart of the fashionable district. +Ivied to the gables, with a mighty stretch of green ground about, +bounded by a massive iron fence. And its rector was familiar "George" +and "old man" to him who was shortly to become her husband.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon's heart bounded, and the color leapt into her cheeks. Three +months ago, clad in an old smock of Jack Nixon's and with a cuff +administered by Mother Lovina smarting and tingling on her ear, she had +waded, on an evening that she remembered well,—because it was her last +on a farm—down to a miry cattle-corral to sit in the rain and milk four +cows. It was in this moment, as the recollection of that final ineffably +drab farm evening slipped into her mind, that Daisy formulated a certain +daughterly resolve with regard to her parents—a resolve she was +afterwards able to keep.</p> + +<p>"I should explain," said Ware, a touch of color in his cheeks and his +fingers playing a soft tattoo on the desk blotter, "why I am doing +things in this apparently hasty and stealthy manner. I have been +expecting, for the last moment or so, that you would ask me to +explain—and I may say that I consider it very sweet of you, my dear, +that you have refrained from asking."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>"Whatever <i>you</i> do," said Daisy, "is all right. I know that."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, dear child. Nevertheless, I shall explain. In the first +place, I have a very headstrong old mother at home, who considers me, in +spite of my 58 years—yes, my dear, I am 58—not yet grown up. With her, +there might—I do not positively say there would, but there might—be +difficulties. In the second place, and to be quite frank with you and +with myself, this is the main reason for doing things on the dot, as it +were—I know that young people are to a certain extent impulsive and +that a great many things may happen in a short time, and I want you just +as you are now, before anything can happen to change you in any way. I +confess freely, my dear, that I really want you very much, and that it +has been harder than you may think, for me since I last talked with you +to keep my resolve to let you quite alone so that you might think this +matter out for yourself. That, having thought it out, you have not been +afraid or ashamed to voluntarily let me know your decision, is to me +convincing proof—though short-sighted people may think this +paradoxical—of that modesty which is to me your most precious quality."</p> + +<p>Nervousness, more than he had ever imagined his socially-inured self +could feel, was the cause of the latter half of this little speech of +Sir <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>William's being slightly formal. This marrying of a girl "of the +people"—forty years distant from him and yet in her land of +boy-and-girl—which had been easy enough to do in theory, in his +study-chair, was a "bit of a pull" in actual execution. He had just +finished speaking, when there came a knock at the door.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he said, getting up, "I shouldn't wonder if that's our friend. +That you, George?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—and I've jolly well run my legs off," exclaimed a voice, as a +bustling and rather stout figure in clerical coat burst cyclonically +into the room, dropped into a chair, and fanned itself with a +flat-crowned black hat. "I couldn't get it out of my head, some way, +that you are more in need of medical than spiritual attention at the +present moment, Will. Now, calm yourself, old man, and let me have the +whole story, and we'll examine the matter squarely and sensibly. I +assume," the Reverend George glanced at Daisy, whose color was rising, +"this is the young lady in the case. Jove, Will, I thought you had more +bally sense, especially at your time of life—I did, really."</p> + +<p>Sir William looked at his ministerial friend open-mouthed; then, as the +clergyman's meaning burst upon him, he sat up in his chair with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"Now, look here, George," he said, as the swivel creaked at the vigor +with which he gripped the chair-arms, "I should hate our forty-five +years of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> close friendship to end in fisticuffs. It will, though, I give +you fair warning, if—if—what the devil do you think I've been doing, +you ass! Must I repeat that, of our mutual choice—quite unforced by +circumstances, if I must say so baldly—Miss Daisy Nixon and I have +decided to be married."</p> + +<p>Reverend George Heathcote, who was smooth-faced and good-looking, except +for a few myopic wrinkles around his eyes, put on his glasses and looked +keenly at Daisy, who met his glance with nose and chin well up, and +brown eyes flashing aggressively.</p> + +<p>"Don't look at me like that," he said, after a moment, "please don't, +Miss Nixon. I'm a blundering idiot, but I mean well—I do, really. Can +you honestly, down in your heart of hearts, assert that you wish to +marry the shelf-worn relic in the office-chair there? Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Daisy, pugnaciously.</p> + +<p>"Oh—very well." Rev. George Heathcote, adjusting his glasses firmly, +brought out from his pocket a black-covered book. Shuffling the leaves +till he found the desired place, he closed the book, slipping his finger +between the leaves; lowered it till it rested on his knee; and looked at +Sir William, who looked back at him a little challengingly. After a +moment of this scrutiny, the clergyman arose, went over beside his +friend, and laid a hand on Ware's shoulder.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p><p>"Dear old man," he said, "I do want you to consider this thing very +seriously. You've always been a bit of a boy, you know. I, of course, +know the fancies you've petted about marriage—I always thought they +were merely fancies, or I should have tried harder to reason you out of +them. Now, is your mind absolutely, irrevocably, and after due +deliberation made up? By the bye, have you thought of—your mother?"</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware stood up, settling his coat about his fine spare +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I have thought about everything—considered everything, George," he +said. "I know you mean well, old chap," Ware, in turn, put his hand on +his old schoolmate's shoulder, "but really, I don't care to discuss the +matter any further, even with you. Besides, all this is, as you must +understand, very embarrassing, for Miss Nixon." He turned to Daisy. +"Come, dear," he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon stood up; and, in the presence of two decorously +expressionless figures of the cafe staff—the manager and one of the +waiters—as witnesses, she was presently by brief and grave ritual +united in the bond of holy matrimony to Sir William Ware, Baronet.</p> + +<p>As the ceremony ended, and she stood awed and a little pale, Sir William +approached and, very softly and tenderly, put his hands upon her +shoulders and stooped to kiss her. He would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> kissed her forehead; +but Daisy, lifting her face with an altogether sweet gesture of +yielding, gave him her lips.</p> + +<p>His countenance, upon which the girl's eyes had continued to look as it +approached near to hers for the caress, had not shown, in its nearness, +any grossness of line or texture, any twitching muscle betraying some +unexplainable dark trait. It was masculine, thoroughbred, honorable-eyed +and—clean. It was pleasant and thoughtful. Face and figure were full of +quiet mastery, yet had no outward suggestion nor pose nor plebeian +ostentation of "masterfulness."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Lady of the House.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy, in whose virile young body the habit of sound and healthy sleep +was too firmly established for even an event so epochal as that of the +previous evening to break her rest, awoke next morning, after a night of +undisturbed slumber. A little clock, sounding one of the hours with +chimes instead of the ordinary striking gong, drew her notice. The dial +registered nine.</p> + +<p>The first use she made of her opened eyes was to glance, with a thrill, +about that beautiful pink bedchamber; a door at one end showing a little +bathroom, tiled in clean and shining white, with folded towels on a +glass roller above the long porcelain tub. The morning sun came rosily +in through a curtained bow window, that had an alcoved seat piled +comfortably with cushions. A fresh draught coming from another quarter +drew her eyes toward an open way leading to a balcony, with straw +matting, a hammock, and comfortable-looking rattan rocking-chair.</p> + +<p>There was some uneasy feeling in the back, as it were, of Daisy's head. +For a moment or two, she could not understand it; then, as she found +herself instinctively glancing about the apartment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> to see if there were +any corners hard to reach with the broom, the solution of her sensation +of unrest came. It was nine o'clock and she was still in mental habit a +housemaid at the big Harrison villa. By this hour she should have had +all the windows in the sleeping-rooms opened and the blankets and sheets +turned back to air the beds.</p> + +<p>Daisy laughed to herself, and snuggled back luxuriously on the deep soft +pillows. Her mind resumed its office of recollection and ratchetted on +over the events of the night before. The evening had been spent, by the +rector's invitation, at his house, adjoining massive St. George's +church. There had been a pleasant little wedding "dinner," during which +Daisy had met a Mrs. Heathcote who had afterwards taken her off by +herself and asked her a good many blunt and, as Daisy thought, rather +intimate questions. She had met one Jessica Heathcote, too, a bird of +slightly different plumage—a companionable, back-slapping girl, who sat +on the edges of tables, or put her feet up on chairs like a man, while +she conversed; haw-hawed and whacked her knee when she heard a good +joke; and was in every way a person to banish misgiving and dolor and, +unaided, to make things hum. Jess was coming over to see her early +to-day.</p> + +<p>"You'll need a bit of help, you know, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>young-un," Jessica had predicted, +"when you face 'Grandmammah'. Yes—rathah!"</p> + +<p>After the little family wedding-supper at the Heathcotes', Daisy had +gone home with Sir William in the rector's car. Everybody at the Ware +house had retired when they reached it, for the hour was well on toward +midnight; and Sir William, after—as he jokingly put it, to +Daisy—"smuggling" her up to this apartment, had pushed her playfully +in, and with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered "pleasant dreams," +had considerately departed to his own rooms.</p> + +<p>The air that entered from the balcony was very inviting. Daisy could +hear the whisper of ivy-leaves. Flower-breath came up and in from some +hidden garden below. Fitful rattlings of a mower and the hiss from a +hose-nozzle sounded on the lawn.</p> + +<p>Daisy's garments—the white waist, the stuff skirt, the brown stockings, +one with an incipient hole in the heel—lay over the foot of the bed, +where she had yawningly cast them when she disrobed last midnight. They +looked very cheap and poor and out of place in this lovely room; and +Daisy pursed her lips a moment, and wrinkled her brows after a way she +had, as she regarded them. But presently, with that little shrug of the +shoulders that was her customary way of casting off trouble, she hopped +out of bed, dressed up in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> old clothes—which somehow, as she +fastened them about her handily, conveyed a comfortable at-home +feeling—and, sticking a pin or two in her hair, stepped out on the +balcony. Leaning her elbows on the rail, she looked down and about.</p> + +<p>The Ware house and grounds were very different from the Harrison house +and grounds. No concrete in evidence here—no artificial terracing—no +stone garage. No evidence of money anywhere, except such as was +incidentally shown by possession, in the costly residential section of +the city, of these great broad grounds, with their natural swell and +slope; their big trees, between which here and there a little footpath +wandered wild; their plain white street-fence, twinkling afar through +the shrubbery. The house was frame, ivied from the ground almost to the +chimney-tops (ends of the green runners, as Daisy could see on an +adjoining gable, had climbed right up on the shingles), and with +verandahs everywhere. It was a villa for people who loved fresh air; +whereas the Harrison house, for all its massive and costly ostentation, +was no more airy than a prison. The object in the case of the latter was +display, the manifestation of the Ware place, good-mannered reserve, +with reasonable provision for comfort and health.</p> + +<p>The Harrison house was like a striped shirt, a broad-check suit, a +scarlet tie, with a blatbump<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> figure housed in them, thumbs in +sleeve-holes, striding toe-out, gold chain-links dangling, diamond stud +flashing, tongue blathering, along the main street. The Ware place was +like one quietly-dressed and thoughtful, strolling in a grassy lane.</p> + +<p>Down below Daisy was a tuft of shrubbery, and behind this the +garden-hose was going merrily, with a sound like fat frying. A spray of +water came out from a point near the base of the foliage; and, where it +fell, the grass and the scattered coin-like yellow flowers glistened in +the morning sun. These soft-petalled wild-flowers were the only manner +in which gold or its effect was displayed on the Ware grounds.</p> + +<p>Presently the nozzle of the hose came into view, and behind it the +rubber tube emerged until Daisy could see a black-sleeved arm, with +white cuffs turned back at the wrist. Then, following the arm, there +passed into sight a statelily-moving, moderately stout, slightly stooped +old lady, with a white lace cap pinned on her gray hair.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances Ware, who, for more than three-score of her eighty-two +years—ever since, in fact, she had become a member of the Ware +household—had been an absolute ruler, possessed a face in which every +lineament was almost mesmerically masterful. Beneath the silvered hair +that on either side of its straight central parting, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> drawn back +smoothly under her cap, a forehead, puckered in a Frontenac-like way +between the brows, sloped up and forward. Behind her glasses her eyes, +keen, dark-blue, and eagle-like, looked out level-irised. Her mouth was +bent down at the corner, and, beneath the underthrust lower lip, the +chin was gathered tensely.</p> + +<p>Evidently she had that uncanny faculty, peculiar to those long +habituated to directing a household, of instantly and by instinct +detecting the irregular; for she was barely in view, before her eyes +travelled up to the balcony where Daisy leaned. Lady Frances adjusted +her glasses; looked hard at the girl a moment; then turned off the +nozzle of the garden-hose, folded her hands across one another at a +point just below her waistband, and glanced off across the lawn toward +where the mower was clattering.</p> + +<p>"Will," she said, "come here—at once."</p> + +<p>The mower stopped obediently; and Daisy, who had drawn back a little, +saw the tall figure of Sir William come into view between the trees. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and his neatly-cropped head was bare.</p> + +<p>"Yes, mother," he said, as deferentially as though he were ten years +old.</p> + +<p>"Who," said Lady Frances, "is that—up there? Or do you know?"</p> + +<p>Sir William, as he glanced up to the balcony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and saw Daisy, gave a +little start. Then he nodded and smiled at the girl; and, appearing to +square his shoulders a little, turned again to the old lady.</p> + +<p>"That, mother," he said, simply and with a dignity equal to Lady +Frances' own, "is—my wife."</p> + +<p>The dictatress of the Ware household lifted her eyes again, and regarded +Daisy for nearly three minutes. Then she faced her son, took off her +glasses, and looked at <i>him</i> for a short period. As, at the conclusion +of this survey, she inhaled preparatory to speaking, Sir William had an +odd sensation of tingling down the backs of his legs, as in the days +when his mother had prepared to supplement reproof with liberal +administration of the tawze.</p> + +<p>"Have you gone quite daft?" she demanded; then, with an imperious motion +of her finger, she said, "Now, exactly what do you mean by this, Will? +If you were not speaking seriously, I may tell you at once that I wish +no trifling on such a subject. Now, answer me immediately."</p> + +<p>"Well," responded Sir William, a little lamely, "we were married last +night, mother—that's all. I don't know that there is much more I can +say."</p> + +<p>"I differ from you on that point," Lady Frances' voice was formal; "I +think that there is a very great deal more to be said. I take it for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +granted, however, that in a man of your years, this step was not +necessary, or considered so, because of previous unwise conduct. Where +did this affair take place?"</p> + +<p>"In the Cumberland Cafe," Sir William said, redly as a lad.</p> + +<p>"The Cumberland Cafe!" The old lady repeated the words slowly and with +stress. "Will, I think you should be in a sanitarium—I do, really. Now, +go up and bring that young woman downstairs at once. Meet me in the +library with her. To say that I am astounded, and disappointed in you, +would be to put it in the mildest possible way—the mildest possible +way!"</p> + +<p>When Sir William, his arm through Daisy's, entered the long +drawing-room, Lady Frances had taken a seat near the window. The baronet +led the girl over.</p> + +<p>"This," he said, "is Daisy, mother. Dear—my mother."</p> + +<p>"How do you do," said Lady Frances Ware, evenly. "Sit down." The words +were plain, but without any inflection to make Daisy feel ill at ease. +Lady Frances Ware, no matter what the provocation, never descended to +the plebeian level of scolding or bullying.</p> + +<p>As the girl took the high-backed chair by the window, a puff of the +morning breeze bulged the great lace curtain, laying a fold of it across +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> knee. Bending forward to release the curtain, Daisy, in the +necessary glance toward her coarse black skirt, became for the first +time acutely conscious of her clothes. She had always moved in circles +where people thought of clothes as entirely indexing the person. If she +had had on a fine dress at that moment, Daisy could have faced a queen +unabashed.</p> + +<p>But Lady Frances never even glanced toward her new-made +daughter-in-law's dress. She was concerned completely with the girl's +face. Without any ostentatious flourish of lorgnette, but simply and +quietly and thoroughly, she studied it.</p> + +<p>"You have a frank expression, at any rate," she said, half to herself; +then, more directly, she added, "How old are you?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen past," said Daisy, as though to a schoolmistress.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Lady Frances. "Very young indeed to be away from home. But +the viewpoint as to that is, I have noticed, different in this country. +Where are your parents?"</p> + +<p>"At—at home," said Daisy, a little confusedly. She wanted to avoid, for +the present at least, explaining that she had run away from home.</p> + +<p>"Quite so," commented the old lady, a little dryly; "and where is your +home?"</p> + +<p>"Out in the country—on a farm."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances seemed relieved. "That is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> satisfactory," she said, +"highly so. There are—possibilities—in young people who have been +brought up out of contact with the city. And you are only—how old?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen, ma'am," Daisy repeated.</p> + +<p>"You must not, of course, say 'ma'am'. But externals can be attended to +gradually. Do you care for your—for my son?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances, for an instant, looked at her so freezingly that Daisy +moved her knees uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>"That answer," said the old gentlewoman, "pleases me less than anything +you have said, up to this point. I had hoped to find more +enthusiasm—much more enthusiasm. In fact, it will be quite necessary to +convince me that you are frankly enthusiastic in this matter before we +shall get along at all."</p> + +<p>"Daisy," put in Sir William, shrewdly, "is non-committal by nature, +mother. You yourself know that you prefer that to evasiveness or +untruthfulness. We shall be able to reassure you...."</p> + +<p>"I shall most decidedly expect to be reassured," said Lady Frances Ware. +She rose energetically to her feet.</p> + +<p>"You may go now," she said, glancing in Daisy's direction. "Return to +your room until I have Ada look you up something to put on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> Will, I +should like to see you again before you go downtown."</p> + +<p>With these words, Lady Frances Ware returned to her duties among the +flowers and hedges and shrubbery, in the fresh air that had brought her +to past fourscore with full retention of middle-aged vigor in faculty +and body. As she passed down the outer hall, she instructed the maid as +to Daisy's attire.</p> + +<p>"I think we shall go along very finely, dear," Sir William said as he +went upstairs with an arm about Daisy's shoulder. "Now, as soon as Ada +is through with you, I shall take you out for a spin—just our two +selves. Can you drive a motor? No—then we'll have a lesson this very +morning. It will be fine sport.... And, by the way, talking of 'going +out' suggests going away. Where shall we go, for a bit of a wedding +trip?"</p> + +<p>"No place—not just now," Daisy looked up, then set her head on one +side, put a finger under Sir William's lapel, and dropped her lashes, "I +tell you what I <i>would</i> like to do, though, sir."</p> + +<p>"Not 'sir'," put in Ware. "Say 'Will'. And don't flirt, even with your +husband. In the first place, it's bad form; in the second place, I won't +have it. Now, what's this you would like to do?"</p> + +<p>"I would like," said Daisy, "to go over to Harrisons' for dinner, on +Sunday, with you."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Taking a Rest.</span></span></h2> + +<p>But there was no "company" invited to the Harrisons' on the following +Sunday.</p> + +<p>On the preceding Thursday, which was just two days after the evening she +was married, Daisy had an impulse to go and see Jean. By arrangement +with the Heathcotes, no notice of the wedding had been allowed to get to +the papers; and when Daisy, in a white dress, popped in through the +kitchen door of the Harrison house on Thursday afternoon, all Jean knew +was that she had mysteriously slipped out on Tuesday evening and had not +been seen since.</p> + +<p>Daisy bounced over to hug her; but the honest Scot drew herself up +sternly, and put out a hand.</p> + +<p>"It's no like ye," she said, "to traipze oot like yon, an' gie the good +leddy no notice—and her on the broad of her back now, at death's door, +too. I ha' made the beds mysel' and sweepit up, forbye my ain work, for +twa fu' days now, to save her the worry of havin' a stranger aboot, in +her last hours."</p> + +<p>"Last hours!" exclaimed Daisy, her breath catching, in the impulsive +wave of self-reproach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> that swept over her, "Is she—dying, then, +Jeanie? Why, I—"</p> + +<p>"Ay," Jean set her great knuckles against her hip as she stirred the +broth she was making for the sickroom; "ye reck of naebody so long as ye +can please yersel', an gang oot an' in, and come an' go, withoot a 'by +your leave' tae ony person.... An' how come ye tae be here, all fettled +up, in the middle of the afternoon? Are ye no workin'? An' if no, what +are ye daein'? Say!" Jean turned, gripped Daisy by the shoulders +suddenly and hard, and studied her with brows knit and eyes ablaze, +"ye'll answer me <i>that</i> this minute—what are ye daein' for your bed an' +board? If all's no richt, man! I'll tur-rn ye across my knee an' skelp +ye, like a bairn! I'll save ye from the street, or I'll no leave a whole +inch o' hide on your back!"</p> + +<p>"Is the Missis dying?" Daisy repeated, tears now in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Jean, shaking her, "an' all the greetin' in the warld'll no +save her the now. But come! Aboot yersel'! Oot wi't, I say!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm all right, Jean," said Daisy, still thinking about Lady +Harrison, "I'm married.... Say, can I go upstairs with you, when you +take up her broth, and see her?"</p> + +<p>"Married!" Jean sat, almost stumbled, into a chair behind her. In this +position, she stared at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Daisy for a moment; then murmured, half, as it +were, to herself, "Lassie, lassie! ye're a mystery to me. I absolutely +gie ye up, as I wad a conundrum book wi' no key. Wha's the lad? Yon +jitney man?"</p> + +<p>"No." Daisy dimpled a little.</p> + +<p>"No?" Jean, her elbow on the side-table, leaned forward with renewed +interest; "I thocht, now, it could be nane other than Curly Head Jamie. +Well, then, ye've no done the impossible, I take it, and hookit Nicky +Cluett, have ye? Man! if ye ha' got him, yon's a laddie will soon gie ye +your fine hoose an' motor-car. He's drawin' in the siller with a +hand-rake, like, these days."</p> + +<p>"It's not Nicky," said Daisy, smoothing out her sash and putting her +head a little on one side.</p> + +<p>"Weel, ye micht have set your cap for him, onyway," Jean commented, as +she reached over and gave the broth a little stir to keep it from +burning; "Baby Jock tells me it's common talk ye made a hit wi' Nick, +you nicht at the dance. Wha did ye tak', then, if it wasna Nick? Oot +wi't. Ye've fair got me on pins an' needles. Do I ken him?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, protracting her mystery with a teasing +delight; "may be you do. Yes, I think you know him. It's— it's—" Daisy +leaned over, and said the name dramatically, right in Jean's ear.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>The Scotswoman looked at her hard: sternness returning to every +feature.</p> + +<p>"I doubt ye been misconductin' yersel' after all," she said, levelly and +coldly, "I kenned it when ye cm' in through yon door. Tellin' me a pack +o' lies'll no improve matters—"</p> + +<p>"I'm telling you the truth," Daisy asseverated, warmly, "I didn't think +you'd go and insult me, Jean!"</p> + +<p>The other eyed her doubtfully. "I'd fair loe tae believe ye, lassie," +she breathed, "but the thing's impossible. It sounds like a story out of +a book. Why, besides his money an' his social position, he's sixty years +old, if he's a day—an' forbye, he's an ingrown bachelor. He'd ha' +wedded long or now, if it had been in him to marry. He—he hasna offered +to keep ye—that's not what ye mean, is it? But, no—I ken fine he +wouldna dae that. He's an honorable man, Sir William Ware."</p> + +<p>Daisy regarded Jean a second or two; then went over, sat plumply down on +the elder woman's knee, and put an arm about her neck.</p> + +<p>"Listen", she said, "and I'll tell you all about it, right from the +start-off, when I left here Tuesday evening." And therewith Daisy did +so. By the time she had finished, Jean's arms were about her waist, and +penitence blended with the amazed, generous, unenvying delight that +radiated from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> the Scotswoman's harsh-lined but kindly-expressioned +face.</p> + +<p>"Forgie me, bairnie," she said, as she laid her great palm around the +girl's cheek; "but I—I—why, I juist canna find the words tae say what +I think. I'm fair—fair tongue-tied. Fast married—and to a laird o' +lairds! Ey, ye bonnie wee thing, ye, bide till I buss ye," and the great +arms, tightening about Daisy's waist, hugged her ecstatically. Then Jean +set her free, rose up with vigor, and reached down a bowl, spoon and +plate of crackers.</p> + +<p>"Come!" she exclaimed, as she turned out the gas-jet under the broth, +poured the liquid into the bowl, and went to the cupboard for a +dessert-spoon; "if the good leddy's conscious an' no in ane of her bad +spells, we'll tell her the news. A bittie o' gossip like yon's better +than physic or food to a sick wuman.... By the bye, here's a letter cam' +for ye yesterday. Open it an' read it, if ye like, while the broth's +coolin'."</p> + +<p>The letter was from Mrs. Lovina Nixon, in answer to Daisy's first letter +home, written under a daughterly impulse during one of Jean's "nights +out", when Daisy was alone in the big Harrison kitchen. In her letter, +the girl had asked for forgiveness and had hoped that "You and Pa are +getting along all right, and that crops are looking good."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Lovina's answer was somewhat grim and ominous. "I suppose," she +wrote, "you think yourself mighty smart, taking off like that. I suppose +you think it was kind of respectable, eh, to go away like you done, +alone with a feller. I suppose you reckon your going to have high jinks +in town there while me and your Pa milks all them cows, well you ain't. +Your not of age yet understand, and your pa and me is coming right into +the city to get you, one of these days and fetch you strait home, and if +you don't get one tanning from your pa that youl remember all your days, +my name aint lovina janet nixon, so mind."</p> + +<p>"Bad news, bairnie?" Jean enquired; as Daisy, sobered not so much by the +letter as by momentary recollection of her past, stared down at the +floor in a grave, pondering way.</p> + +<p>"Oh—no," Daisy folded up the letter and slipped it into the bosom of +her dress, "not exactly. Is the broth cool now, Jean?"</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Jean, picking up the bowl and the plate of crackers; "Come +on. The Mistress is lyin' in Sir Thomas' room. I had him move his ugly +carcass out of it, because it's the best-ventilated room in the +hoose—the best o' the worst, like. He didna object, at least naething +to speak of. He kenned fine I'd have taken the besom tae him without +much encouragin'.... Ey, what d'ye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> think, now, I caught him sayin' tae +her, one time when I came in to red up the room. He was standin' by the +bedside, with his hands in his pockets and his feet spraddled out, in +yon way he has.</p> + +<p>"'We-ell, Marth',' he oppens up, in his big healthy blat, 'har yuh +feelin'? Uh?'.</p> + +<p>"'Poorly, Tom, very poorly,' says the good leddy—puir soul!—in a +faint-like voice.</p> + +<p>"'Thaat's ba-ad,' he says, suckin' his teeth like somebody chirpin' tae +a pair o' horses, 'but anyway, I guess, Marth', it's time you was +restin' under the sod. You've done your share o' this world's toughin' +it. You've aimed the right to rest, if anybody hezz. Ever'thin' wurks +furr th' best. Y'see that, don't yuh, Marth'-girl? Uh?'</p> + +<p>"Juist then I cam up and gied him a push from behind. Ey, a bonny push! +'Get oot!' I says, chokin'-like. I was sae blind mad, I could ha' +stranglit yon man, then and there, so I could. Weel, he went!"</p> + +<p>The great muscles on Jean's arms were knotted into ribs and ridges like +a man's; her chin was thrust out; her eyes were narrowed into shining +slits. Her whole strong frame seemed to become a banked fire of +indignation, as memory recalled that scene in the sickroom.</p> + +<p>The door of Lady Harrison's room was slightly open as the two reached +it. They were barely inside the chamber, when Jean, with an exclamation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +thrust the broth and crackers down on a side-table and rushed over to +the bed.</p> + +<p>Daisy, following quickly, saw the Scotswoman, after glancing closely at +the half-open eyes and laying her ear to the gaunt sunken chest, hastily +remove the pillows from under Lady Martha Harrison's head, lay the scalp +levelly on the mattress, and press down the eyelids with her fingers.</p> + +<p>"Ey, puir, puir leddy," Jean, keeping finger and thumb on the dead +eyelids, turned toward Daisy with two tear-balls bowling down the rugged +field of her face; "she's gone, she's gone. Ey, gone off all her +lone—died as she lived, bairnie—while we're crackin' awa careless-like +down in yon kitchen. Stane deid, an' nigh stark against the layin'-oot."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Raincloud.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"When a chap has a bit of a brain," said a voice, speaking from behind a +crinkled newspaper that was doing temporary service as a fan, "and a +habit of seeing rather far into things, if you know what I mean—it's +<i>such</i> a jolly nuisance that he can't get it before the public without +writing it down. Isn't it, rather, don't you think, Lady Ware?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it rather must be, kind of," said Daisy, who, in a smart +white skirt and blouse, and canvas shoes, occupied the other end of the +tennis-court bench on the Wares' lawn, "but you should worry about that, +Arthur. The public has enough books to read anyway."</p> + +<p>"Not of the kind I should write, they haven't," declared Lord Arthur +Milcourt, raising toward a green bough above them the ingenuous face of +twenty-one; "I say, can you type a bit?"</p> + +<p>"What?" Daisy demanded, wrinkling her brows at the speaker in a comical +way; "oh, you mean, run a typewriter. No."</p> + +<p>"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will +discovered—er—met you?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> And didn't you run—that is, operate—a typing +machine there?"</p> + +<p>"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and +I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer +sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a +moment.</p> + +<p>Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench.</p> + +<p>"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning +on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay +here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or +something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for +something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is—some of +them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars."</p> + +<p>"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out +luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you, +there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting. +Baldheaded men! You <i>are</i> a rum one."</p> + +<p>"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly; +"who was your servant this time last year?"</p> + +<p>"Ah—sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> words were apologetic, but the +tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to +the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve, +but it's <i>wickid</i>—poor old Will!"</p> + +<p>Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She +did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh +and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when +she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped +about now with a casual and proprietary air—turning the shower on in +the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with +young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")—laying out a +simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe—shaking out a +folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end +of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring. +But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep +on in the same way.</p> + +<p>Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out +through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a +leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at +the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her +face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>modiste had corseted +her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not +increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk +stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her +short neat walking-skirt.</p> + +<p>She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line +crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon +"off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage +downtown.</p> + +<p>Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter +from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any +further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her +maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note, +which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of +John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability, +actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking +her back to the farm.</p> + +<p>She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching +this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day.</p> + +<p>Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and +stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed +in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> Nixon; the postmark +showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to +one of the side-tables and opened it.</p> + +<p>"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I +said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the +like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we +wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the +train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police +onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of +your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind, +itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to +do."</p> + +<p>Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the +letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon!</p> + +<p>When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled +the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung +javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she +leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in +her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had +been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy +clouds had come up and that, already, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> showed here and there on +the glass, the splash of a raindrop.</p> + +<p>As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware +gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy +decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis +which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the +postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of +the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to +step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney +drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner +of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky" +hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little +to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked +soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head +passenger?"</p> + +<p>"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily +forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the +tonneau door.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly, +then dropped them and put her head on one side.</p> + +<p>"You ken sit in front if you so prefer, lady," Jimmy answered, with +emphasis of politeness, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> he closed the tonneau again, and opened the +fore-door. Daisy had no sooner hopped in and seated herself than the +rain came on heavily. Jimmy, reaching up, let down the storm-curtains on +both sides and buttoned them fast before he started the car.</p> + +<p>"Thanks so much, chauffeur," acknowledged Daisy, smiling up sidewise as +she mimicked his manner.</p> + +<p>"Don't mention it, madam," deprecated Jimmy Knight, throwing in his +clutch. The car skidded slightly on the arch of the pavement, but ran +smooth and straight, as the engine, in the street-centre, picked up +speed. Jimmy's gloved finger mechanically "gave her gas" or advanced the +spark, as occasion required. Outside, the rain poured steadily, misting +the mica peep-holes in the storm-curtains and half-blinding the +windshield. The car stopped frequently for additional passengers; and +soon the tonneau was filled with dour figures in wet raincoats that +rustled shrilly as the owners moved, watching in a fidget for home +streets.</p> + +<p>Said one of the passengers, a girl, as, leaning back in her seat after +glancing around the edge of the storm-curtain, her eyes fell on Daisy's +fashionably-clad figure:</p> + +<p>"Some swell jane in the front seat with the driver, Lil."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>The remark was made with unmannerly distinctness; and the speaker's +companion, another girl of the same commonplace city type, made answer, +also in a tone purposely raised to reach Daisy's ear:</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we all know what them dolled-up kind is."</p> + +<p>"Hey!" Jimmy Knight's head jerked around, and a glinting iris swam into +that corner of his eye-socket next the last speaker, "do you skirts want +to get out o' this car head-first? If not, shut up!"</p> + +<p>The second girl looked at the first one.</p> + +<p>"Well, the <i>very</i> idea!" she said audibly, after a second or two.</p> + +<p>"The idosity of him!" commented Girl Number One, also in a loud tone; +"some friend, I guess. They all have their friends."</p> + +<p>Jimmy turned toward the curb, and threw on the brake. As the car skidded +to a standstill, he banged open the tonneau door.</p> + +<p>"Get out!" he said. "Go on—the both of you! Get to hell out of here! +Keep your darned fares."</p> + +<p>There was that in Jimmy's tone and look which caused the two to act +promptly.</p> + +<p>"Some gentleman!" remarked Girl Number Two, as she descended on the wet +street.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," fired back Number<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> One, as they walked away, +heads up, "we live on the next street, anyway."</p> + +<p>"That's ten cents I owe you," said Daisy to Jimmy Knight, dimpling.</p> + +<p>Jimmy did not answer—at least, not in words. He put his lips together, +slammed home the clutch and the car leaped forward.</p> + +<p>By the end of another ten minutes the last two of the passengers in the +back portion of the jitney had reached their home corner, and the car +was empty except for Daisy and Jimmy.</p> + +<p>"I'll take y' home, lady," he said, brusquely; "no coat—get wet to the +skin—this here rain."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," aped Daisy, formally. Then she put her chin in the air, and +silence reigned.</p> + +<p>"What <i>you</i> mad at?" came Jimmy's voice, presently. "Who said they +didn't 'feel like' marryin', and then went straight off and married +money? Not me. You ain't got a thing in the world to be sore at: I have, +an' I'm darned good and sore. I didn't think it was in you, Kid—honest, +I didn't.... Here we are at your door. Get out! don't set there, with +the servants maybe lookin' out of the windows."</p> + +<p>Daisy's face was red as she dismounted. She made a step away, then came +back.</p> + +<p>"I'm—I'm—", she began, the color on her cheeks deepening.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are," said Jimmy Knight, dryly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> "good an' plenty. No use o' +standin' there and chewin' the fat now. Get into the house, and get them +wet duds off. You give me a pain, you do!"</p> + +<p>The car, with a scornful roar, shot off along the driveway of the Ware +grounds, and Daisy was alone. Presently something rolled down her cheek +and ran into the corner of her mouth. It had a salt taste. It was a +tear.</p> + +<p>"Some folk wad still be findin' something tae greet about, even if they +had the warld with a wire dike aboot it," remarked Jean, who was now +chief (under Lady Frances, of course) in the Ware kitchen; regarding +Daisy in her keen and kind scrutinizing way, as the latter, entering the +room, sat down moodily in a chair, dropped her hands into her lap, and +stared before her with pensive wet lashes lowered; "Man! lassie, but +ye're ill tae suit!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Bleak Two.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The November draught swept frostily down from the tracks to the station +subway where Daisy, in her smart furs, stood, some three months later, +waiting for the passengers from the train which had just roared into the +great iron-ceiled shed overhead. She could not help thinking of the day +when, gazing wonderingly about her, she had trotted alongside the +self-assured and patronising Fred Beatty through this very +way—forgetting, on that occasion, her travel-soiled blouse, in her +wonder and rapture as the city rose about her like a warm sun-glowing +tide. Only six months ago!</p> + +<p>As the passengers from the newly-arrived train commenced to file along +the corridor, Daisy, watching from her place in line, found her interest +centred almost as much in looking for some forlorn and eager little +person like that self of her present memory, as in "keeping her eye +peeled" (in accordance with the request contained in a recently-received +letter) for John and Lovina Nixon. But the travellers on this train were +nearly all either blase souls of the "drummer" type, who have no wonder +left for anything <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>beneath the sun, or badger-gray country people who +looked as though they were on a business trip and were doing mental +arithmetic relating to hotel-bills as they stumped along. All bored, +dull, worried or indifferent. No gay, no dancing, no holiday souls in +the whole drab-faced file—at almost the end of which came stony-faced +John Nixon with his square beard, dingy skin, harshly-drawn brows and +mouth, and small suspicious eyes; and thin, stooped, fault-finding +Lovina, with her sharp nose, her glance of ill-surmise, and bonnet +pinned teeteringly on her top-knot.</p> + +<p>Recollection blew on Daisy like a cold wave with her first view of them; +but the feeling passed, and she found herself waiting mischievously to +see if they would recognize her.</p> + +<p>John Nixon passed dourly on; but Lovina's hawklike eyes, as she drew +opposite to where Daisy stood, found her daughter instantly.</p> + +<p>"Well, mother," Daisy drew her cape of sables about her shoulders and, +moulding her features into a welcoming smile—which, when facing Lovina +Nixon, required an effort—stepped forward.</p> + +<p>The mother's chin came out. Her eyes drew to button-like points. There +was nothing maternal about the look. It was merely a glance which +bespoke ill-expectation gratified.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>"John!" she chirped, to the stepfather, who had meandered on, "here!"</p> + +<p>John Nixon turned and came back. His brows knitted as he glanced from +his wife to the girl in her splendid furs; then, as his eyes travelled +to Daisy's face, he gave vent to an expression which sounded like, +"Ur-rh!"</p> + +<p>"Look at this!" said Lovina Nixon; catching an end of the sable cape, +holding it up for her husband's scrutiny, and then tossing it from her +and making a motion of dusting off her hands; "You know what that means, +I s'pose, John?"</p> + +<p>"Ay," said John Nixon, "ay-hay."</p> + +<p>"Disgraced!" said Lovina Nixon; "Disgraced! Oh, you—you thing! Just +wait till I get you home! Just you wait!"</p> + +<p>Daisy's cheeks warmed at this. But, a moment after, her indignation +changed to an impulse of roguery: she would let these two, for the +present, believe the things they thought!</p> + +<p>"I s'pose you can show us a respectable hotel," said her mother. "But +remember—you don't get out of my sight again. You stay right with me in +the hotel, till we leave town. Carry this valise for me."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled with devilment as she obeyed this refreshingly familiar +instruction; and, accentuating her figure-lines as she walked, for the +especial benefit of the furtively-watching couple,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> she led the way to +where Tim Davitt, the Wares' chauffeur, waited outside the depot with +the limousine.</p> + +<p>"What's this?" demanded Lovina Nixon, surveying the vehicle, "a livery +rig?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, mother," said Daisy, smiling aside at the chauffeur, as Davitt, +touching his hat, held the door open. The mother, knocking her bonnet +askew against the top of the car, blundered to the farther end of a +seat. John Nixon lumbered in after her. Then Daisy, after a low-toned +"Home, Timmy," hopped in and snuggled mischievously against her +stepfather, who was in the centre of the seat.</p> + +<p>"Don't ye be 'fraid," he leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, in her +ear, "I'll not let yur Moh whup ye."</p> + +<p>Turning street-corners smoothly and swiftly, the limousine soon reached +the home grounds and was brought by Tim Davitt, deftest of chauffeurs, +to a soft gliding halt before the long front veranda of the Ware house.</p> + +<p>"Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and +her husband followed Daisy up the steps.</p> + +<p>"Oh—not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered +her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, +polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the right led into the +library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in +the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady +Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the +supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office.</p> + +<p>"Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter +suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive +volume with brass binding and buckle.</p> + +<p>"Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer +expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the +sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing +as live fire.</p> + +<p>Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; +and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record +of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Choice of the Dray.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon.</p> + +<p>As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him, +Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a +chair and cocked <i>his</i> feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon +might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only +one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace, +Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that +locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware; +but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned, +in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling +with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his +chair.</p> + +<p>As far, however, as putting Nixon at his ease was concerned, Sir William +need not have troubled. It was an oft-enunciated maxim of John Nixon's +that whatever he did was right, if he did it. "Do's you wanter," was the +way Nixon put it; "dun't ast nobuddy fur nawthun."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>Presently, noting that the moistened area in front of the fireplace +threatened to overflow and inundate the flooring about the tiles, Sir +William jumped up, as though with a sudden inspiration and said, smiting +Nixon playfully on his tree-stump shoulder:</p> + +<p>"Take you on at billiards upstairs, old chap!"</p> + +<p>"Ur-rh?" Another salivation dampened the tiling as Nixon twisted his +stocky torso about.</p> + +<p>"I was about to say," Sir William pursued—having gathered from his +guest's tone and attitude that John Nixon did not know anything about +playing billiards—"that I would take you on at a game of billiards, +only it's so jolly uninteresting. Shall we stroll out and see the deer?"</p> + +<p>"Ain't interested in deers," said Nixon, "'n I wun't budge a step to see +nawthun I dun't want for to see. Never <i>would</i>."</p> + +<p>"You're jolly well right," agreed Sir William; "I can thoroughly +sympathize with you, Nixon, old man.... Silly things, deer, after +all—aren't they?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you, though," Nixon arose, grunted, stretched, scratched, shook +his legs, and, with a certain awesome gapping sound and a gust of fetid +breath, yawned in his host's face, "what I <i>will</i> do, English. Take me +somewhurs whurr I ken git a schooner o' beer—thuh drinks on you, mind, +fur I ain't got a cent to spare—an' I'll go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> along, every steppuh the +way. How des that ketch you?"</p> + +<p>"Happy thought!" Sir William clapped his guest heartily on the back. +"Bright idea! Nixon, you're a man after my own heart. Half a jiff, till +I bring our hats and coats."</p> + +<p>The two left the house by the side door; but, as they reached the gate +of the grounds, Sir William on the excuse that he had forgotten his +pocket-book, requested Nixon to walk on slowly, and himself hurried back +to the house.</p> + +<p>"Was you tannin' thuh leather furr a new bill-book, er whutt?" demanded +John Nixon, testily, as his host, after quite a lapse of time, rejoined +him.</p> + +<p>"I really must apologise, old chap—I really must. Shan't let it occur +again," Sir William said, good-humoredly. He could not very well tell +Nixon that he had spent the interval in personally cleaning up with +pieces of newspaper the mess by the fireplace, for fear Lady Frances +should happen in and see it while they were away.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, in Lady Frances' own sitting-room—a big, airy apartment, in +which, on quiet afternoons, she read or sewed or knitted, or napped in +the old arm-chair she had brought with her from overseas—the venerable +lady of the house had set herself the task of entertaining the mother of +her son's wife.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"Ineffably, innately common and nasty-natured," had been her inward +pronouncement when first she faced Lovina Nixon; but there had been no +outward sign, although one who knew the old gentlewoman's ways might +have discerned a more careful and precise politeness in her attitude. +Now, on this afternoon of the last day of the Nixons' stay, which had +endured, for what Lady Frances had termed, in a matin soliloquy, "three +dreadful days", she had steeled herself to the duty of making the time +pass agreeably until evening and train-time should bring deliverance.</p> + +<p>Ada, the maid, had brought the tea-urn and "curate"; and now the three +women—Lady Frances in her big chair; Mrs. John Nixon dangling one of +the fine china tea-cups, which she had drained at a draught, from her +forefinger, and eating cake with her elbow on the table and the cake +scattering crumbs as she gesticulated with the hand that held it; and +Daisy holding a skein of yarn, from which Lady Frances was winding a +ball—sat ill-assorted in the large room.</p> + +<p>"Do have some more tea, Mrs. Nixon, won't you?" invited Lady Frances, +eyeing the suspended teacup nervously. "Daisy, dear, give your mother +some more tea."</p> + +<p>But, as Mrs. Nixon had already had three cups, the urn was empty. Daisy +hopped up and carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> the shapely silver receptacle to the kitchen, to +get some more hot water from Jean's kettle. As the door closed after her +daughter, Mrs. Lovina Nixon leaned over toward Lady Frances with a +greenish light in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I s'pose it ain't no use o' tellin' you, Mam, now," she said; "I mean, +now that your son's tight married to her and can't get loose, that yen +girl run away from us. Yes, sir—run away with a feller. Never seen +nawthun like it in all m' born days. Never did." And Mrs. Lovina +nid-nodded and sowed caraway seed on the carpet in showers as she +vibrated the cake.</p> + +<p>"Just like'r, though," she supplemented, after a moment, "so it was. +'Xpected somethin' like it, all along. Warn't s'prised one iota."</p> + +<p>"Your daughter," Lady Frances said—very slowly, and governing her voice +with difficulty—"has quite voluntarily told us all the circumstances +you mention. I—I really do not think," the old gentlewoman could barely +keep the frost out of her tone, "that we should discuss her in her +absence. I really don't think we should."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well," Mrs. John Nixon's radial arm described a flying circle of +cake-crumbs about her chair as she indicated, with a sweeping gesture, +that she washed her hands of the matter, "if you're satisfied, we are."</p> + +<p>"Daisy," Lady Frances said, levelly, "has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> proved a very fine and frank +and sweet young woman. Her adaptability, too, has been most +satisfactory. I have become very much attached to her—and I really +cannot listen, nor will I listen, to anything against my son's wife."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right, all—right," Lovina Nixon smacked her cup down. "I +wish't you'd had a siege of her like I've had, so I do. You'd talk +different."</p> + +<p>"I think," Lady Frances Ware rose out of her chair with remarkable vigor +for eighty-two, "that you have probably taken a wrong course with +her—in fact, I feel quite sure you must have taken a wrong course with +her. Now, as I proposed before, we will change the subject. Would you +care to go for a motor ride? I shall tell Davitt, the chauffeur, to have +you back here in time for a leisurely and comfortable meal before your +train."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Lovina Nixon shrugged. "Might's well do that as anything else, I +s'pose."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances rang the bell. "Telephone Davitt," she said, to Ada the +maid, "to bring around the larger car. Then tell Lady Ware her mother +would like to do a little shopping, and wishes her to go as well. Take +my hand-bag with you, and tell Lady Ware she may use what money she +likes from my purse, if she is short."</p> + +<p>A quarter of an hour later, Lady Frances, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>having seen the motor car off +down the drive, returned to her sanctum, sat down quietly in her big +chair, and took up her sewing. Presently, however, her needle paused, +and she found herself, after a habit she had, drifting off into +half-audible soliloquy.</p> + +<p>"William said," she murmured musingly, "that he thought the man a fair +masculine type, who might have developed well, with proper opportunity. +But that woman! Thoroughly nasty, ingrate, underhand. An improvement in +manners would only be a hopelessly inadequate veneer. A nature such as +she has would not be mended by the opportunities of three generations +and more. I do hope William does <i>not</i> intend to take those people in +tow, for I am really not equal to it."</p> + +<p>A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later, +pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her +lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the +hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked +down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a +crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance.</p> + +<p>Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an +unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"—a word that with him, +meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> had, in spite of +Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits: +dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon +him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying +for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of +buying any more for him.</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken +only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at +last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It +was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware +had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last +half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the +latter had not received so much as a scratch.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">John Nixon's Invitation.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool +beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a +position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has +jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am +what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss—aren't you +sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering +idiot."</p> + +<p>"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?"</p> + +<p>"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded +the girl with a bright and tender approval.</p> + +<p>"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the +bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice."</p> + +<p>"For the third and last time—no!" Sir William responded, flipping her +ear; "this ice is cold enough: it has clotted every vein in my bally +forehead. I say, kitten, isn't that somebody knocking?"</p> + +<p>The knock which sounded on the door—that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the small sitting-room of +Sir William's bedroom suite—was clumsily-knuckled and hesitating. It +sounded once, audibly—then a second time, feebly—and, after the second +knock, the scuffle of a heavy foot receding indicated that the knocker +was going away without entering. Daisy went quickly and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Come on, Dad," she said.</p> + +<p>Nixon stopped in the hall, his back half-turned, and spoke to his +foster-daughter over-shoulder.</p> + +<p>"You go on about your business a while," he said, gruffly, "I want to +talk to the boss."</p> + +<p>Ware, hearing this dialogue from his chair, smiled queerly to himself.</p> + +<p>"Right-O," he called, "run along, my dear, for a jiffy; see if Mother +has any messages for us. Come on, Nixon, old chap!"</p> + +<p>Reddening in an odd way at the cordial tone, John Nixon, his hands +hanging awkwardly and his beard canted aside in a sheepish attitude, +came in, pushing the door shut behind him. He lowered himself into the +nearest chair.</p> + +<p>"How are <i>you</i>?" said Sir William, humorously and companionably, "I +say—that <i>was</i> a jolly cataclysm! Lucky to get off with our lives, +what?" Nixon, sheepish but still characteristically blunt, came straight +to his point.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have got off with no life," he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> "if you hadn't slung +me out o' the way and got stepped on yourself."</p> + +<p>"Rubbish!" said Ware, briefly; "all the same, it's good of you to put it +that way, old chap. Makes me feel less mortified at my stupidity in +standing there like a post and getting knocked down. Let's jolly well +talk of something else."</p> + +<p>John Nixon's head came up and back. He put his right hand down on his +knee-cap with a slap that could be heard across the room.</p> + +<p>"Don't you go tryin' for to head me off, English," he said, "I done +wrong and I'm a-goin' to own up to it. Here, I been walkin' around your +nice house here, a-spittin' all over the floor as if it was a hotel—it +kind of seems like that to me, because we don't sling on no style out +west here—and all because I never did like an Englishman. They always +make me contrairy. When I'm with an Englishman, I talk rough and go +bullin' around, just to be the opposite to what I think he is—"</p> + +<p>Sir William leaned out over the arm of his chair and extended his +uninjured hand toward Nixon.</p> + +<p>"Put her there, as you say in Canada," he said, beamingly, "Nixon, +you're a brick. And if we English make you Canadians feel contrary, I'll +admit we bring it on ourselves. We, too, are a contrary people; and the +more you try to put on this roughness of manner, which is not your own,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +the more we try to put on this finicky niceness, which so rubs you the +wrong way. Just because we desire to rub you the wrong way. And so we +see-saw, back and forth, until eventually we come to fisticuffs, or +worse. Nixon, I believe you've hit the peg on which hangs the whole +difficulty between England and Canada. Now that we two understand each +other, let's set an example to our peoples: let's be natural. Put her +there, I say."</p> + +<p>John Nixon put her there, and the two shook hands—an inter-imperial +handshake.</p> + +<p>"How would you like for to come out to my place a while, English?" he +said, after a moment. "As I said, we don't sling on no style nor +nothin', but we never know what it is to go hungry. The roof don't let +in no rain, neither; and you can't sleep on nothin' more comfortable +than a bedtick stuffed with prairie hay."</p> + +<p>"Ripping!" Sir William, "knocked about" as he was, all but hoisted +himself to his feet in his enthusiasm; "I say, Nixon, when shall we +start?"</p> + +<p>"Next train, if you say so. Anyway," John Nixon rubbed an eyebrow with +his gray-bristled forefinger, "I'm worryin' about the stock, and I want +to get back home. Got any drinkin-water around, English?"</p> + +<p>Sir William was about to touch the bell, when Nixon, glancing toward the +bathroom, saw basin, tap and tumbler.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p><p>"Don't ring, for me," he said, getting up, "I can work the fasset +myself, without no help botherin' around."</p> + +<p>As his guest returned from the bathroom, sweeping the water-drops from +his beard by drawing his hand down over it, Sir William said:</p> + +<p>"Will you be offended if I ask you a question—a straight +question—Nixon, old chap?"</p> + +<p>"You couldn't offend me now, English," said John Nixon, "anyhow straight +questions goes, between us, after this. That's our agreement, ain't it?"</p> + +<p>"That's it, exactly," said Ware, "so my question is this: Why do you +persist in calling me 'English'? It sounds a bit like some sort of an +imputation. Do you see my point?"</p> + +<p>"I don't foller you," said John Nixon, as he laid his hand on the +door-knob; "the only reason I call you 'English' is because your reel +name keeps slippin' my mind."</p> + +<p>"It shouldn't be hard to remember," said Ware.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" queried Nixon.</p> + +<p>"To you, henceforth," said the baronet, "it is—Bill."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's you, all over again," said Lovina Nixon, late that evening, +as she thrust into her iron-gray hair two or three matutinal hairpins, +in places where they would not jab her, and clambered into bed, "astin' +these tony English people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> out to the farm, to turn up their noses at +everything. Well, Daise'll have to look after them, for I got enough to +do with the housework and the milkin'. Is the old woman coming along, +too?"</p> + +<p>John Nixon yawned, turned his back to her, and wrapped around himself +two-thirds of the bed-clothes.</p> + +<p>"You go on to sleep," he said, "you'll feel better in the mornin'."</p> + +<p>Lovina, however, continued on rebelliously, although the rest of her +grumbling was sunk to a smothered monotone by her nightly habit of +sleeping with the blankets over her head; but her last thought before +she dropped off to sleep was that now at last she would have a chance to +bring from the back of the farmhouse cupboard the "weddin' set" of neat +china that had been waiting there during nearly a quarter of a century +for an appropriate guest.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think I shall go, William," said Lady Frances, adjusting +the cushion at the back of her son's head and handing him the evening +newspaper, "this northwest winter is here now—don't forget that it's +November, not May, outside—and the plan sounds to me rather too much +like Polar exploration. You say you intend to go out for the winter. +Well, if you survive the experience, perhaps I shall join you in the +spring. But surely you're not going to start on this wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> expedition +the way you are. I am told it is difficult to go on snowshoes with a +crutch. Those people, too! William, you are insane."</p> + +<p>"Mother, dear," Ware patted the capable old hand that rested on his +chair-arm, "you said that once before, you remember. And that reminds +me—we haven't discussed this with Daisy. Let's have her in now, if +she's about."</p> + +<p>"She's about," rejoined Lady Frances—a little sarcastically, but with +an unconcealed accent of motherly affection—, "she's having tea with +McTavish, the cook."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">In the Blizzard.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Shove on all the clothes you can get on to you, Eng—Bill," counselled +John Nixon, sucking his teeth shrilly as he donned a lupine-looking +wombat coat and reached for his mittens, "and after that put on an extry +sweater, as they say. She's a-going to blow."</p> + +<p>The place was the Toddburn hotel, where Sir William and John Nixon, left +there by the warm and friendly train at 11 a.m., had now, an hour and a +half later, come out of the dining-room with a good meal "under their belts".</p> + +<p>"You don't need to hurry, gettin' your duds on, Bill," John Nixon said, +as he went out, "the Missis will be pokin' around the store down there +for an hour yet, and Jim's buyin' himself a new suit, to have for when +Daise gets here. I've told him she's married now, but it don't seem to +sink in.... You better stay here and keep warm till we fetch the team +round to the door."</p> + +<p>Sir William stayed—not to keep warm, but to look about him, like a boy +at a circus. Somehow, the effect of the cold dry tingling air that +resided in the streets of this prairie hamlet seemed to percolate in +from outside, in spite of storm <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>window and door, striking upon the +nostrils bracingly and making one "feel good" in spite of the blue fog +of tobacco-smoke and the odor of wet leather and fur. The effects of +Ware's accident, now a week old, had pretty well passed, and the +hereditary health of the Wares glowed in his face again and sparkled in +his eyes.</p> + +<p>He stood with his back toward the window, his hands tucked into the +side-pockets of his Norfolk coat, his attitude the Englishman's +inimitable easy and negligent one which imparts to the stiffest suit the +comfortable effect of flannels, and glanced down the short perspective +of the Toddburn hotel sitting room and bar, which were in a kind of +suite, with a swinging-door between.</p> + +<p>The roof of this place was very low, and the walls were very near one, +and after the spacious places in which Ware had lived his life, it was a +bit like standing in a piano-box. If the situation of this hotel had +been a narrow byway in a city, it would have been a slum, a locality of +death, a room of hollow coughings and faces dreary with debility and +gloom. But here, on the wide prairie it was in effect a sanitarium, if +one might judge by the figures that breezed about, the harsh but +deep-lunged voices that came out of the midst of steam-clouds made when +the outside door opened, the faces glowing and tanned by gale and +snow-shine.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p><p>One only needed to listen a moment to the hearty laughing and the +sentences detached at random from the blend of cheery, companionable +greeting and rallying, to know that the minds of these western men were +as healthy as their bodies.</p> + +<p>"No, sir—I'd never go back on him. Bob an' me was neighbors +a-homesteadin'. It ain't his fault if he had to give up farmin' and get +a job in Jim McMillan's livery stable. His health give out—that's all."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, boy—she's a-goin' to blow up some harricane before dark. +This reminds me of yon day, four years ago—yous'll all remember the +time—when Elleck Hamilton an' me started out for home on the +bob-sleighs, pickled up to the eyebrows. Elleck, he was worse than me +when we started; but Elleck's as strong as a horse, and when she started +to blow, he slung off the effects of the licker like tossin' off a hat. +But the stuff had got a kind of a holt on me; I got cold and started for +to go to sleep. However, Elleck he seen me home safe. My face was froze +a little, that's all—but Elleck, he'd had to get out of his bob-sleigh +so many times to look after my team, that he'd froze both legs, one as +fur as the ankle and the other clare up to the knee. Had to have her +taken off. Never was any good after that, Elleck. He was worth about ten +thousand dollars when that happened; and to-day he's buyin' grain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> for +an elevator company, at seventy-five dollars a month. But I've done +pretty well myself, an' old Elleck knows this—that whenever his +pride'll let him quit work, he can come over to my place, and set down +by the stove, and put his bad leg up on a chair an' keep her there, for +life, even if he lives to be a hundred and fifty."</p> + +<p>Exclamation and anecdote rattled on; fog of tobacco-smoke and stench of +snow melting on fur filled the air; free grammar and the broad "a" had +unchecked currency in this organ-box of a western railway-hamlet hotel: +but Sir William Ware, standing by the iron-rodded window with +philosophic hands in his coat-pockets, had only one distinguishable +impression—that he was being educated, that this west was giving him +something denied by the university.</p> + +<p>This was Western Canada—blunt, gruff, western Canada. Not too forward +in making one's acquaintance; not too stiff and "standoffish". Not +caring sixpence—so long as you yourself were "all right"—who your +father was, nor how much money you were worth. Western Canada, where +nobody who works—or, if he can't or won't work, can tell a good +yarn—is allowed to starve. Western Canada, which never "picks" a fight, +but—well, just try to "run on" her!</p> + +<p>A raucous "hey!" brought Sir William about. Glancing out through the +window, in the direction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of the hall, he saw John Nixon signalling to +him from the seat of a bob-sleigh. Hurrying on scarf and coat, Ware +hastened out, creaked across the sidewalk and smilingly awaited +instructions as to boarding this western vehicle of the long trail. It +had a high, green-painted double box. The front and rear seats were two +boards laid across the box and draped with gunny-sacks. The front seat +was occupied by John Nixon and Jim Burns, the hired man who had brought +the equipage in to meet the train. On the hind seat Lovina Nixon +perched, nothing of her visible except one stoical pioneer-woman eye +which looked out unwinkingly at Ware through a crack between folds of +gray shawl.</p> + +<p>"Climb in alongside the Missis, Bill," directed John Nixon, who had made +no special preparation for extreme weather conditions, other than to +pull his corduroy cap down over his ears, "We'll need to get a-goin', if +we're intendin' to strike home before we get blew off the trail. All set?"</p> + +<p>"All set, old chap," Sir William responded, as he tucked his end of the +goatskin robe around his knees and, in response to Lovina's mumbled +recommendation, felt with his toes for the extra brick which Nixon had +heated for him on the top of the livery stable stove; "it's a jolly good +thing Daisy decided to do as Mother wanted and stay in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> town for a week. +Perhaps we shall have a better day, to bring her out."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the gal wouldn't mind this," Nixon rejoined, casually, after he had +"clucked" the horses into a trot down the drifted street; "no, sir, +Bill; she'd have got you off that seat, a-runnin' behind in the +sleigh-track, as soon as your toes would start for to feel nippy. It +would take a mighty high wind to chase Daise into the house in the +winter-time, except when dinner is ready. Her and the dog is about even, +when it comes to standin' the cold. Ain't that so mother?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, it's so," Lovina's voice, muffled but still recognizable in +its sharpness, said through the swathes of shawl, "except when I ust to +want her to fetch in an armful o' wood or a pail of water. Then you +couldn't budge her from behint the stove."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on," Nixon, happy to be on the way home to the "stock" again, +swung his whip jovially but harmlessly over the backs of the horses. +"Wait till you see the happy reunion between her and Rove, Bill, when +she gets here next week. It'll prove what I say about them bein' chums. +Rove, he would have no use for a girl that stayed in the house: you +couldn't coax him any closer to in-doors than the chip-pile, not if it +was sixty below zero."</p> + +<p>The two bay sleigh-ponies—a light team had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> been chosen, as they could +stand quick travel over difficult roads better than the heavy-fetlocked, +big-haunched, working horses—trotted along sure-footed on the hard +ridge of the trail. The last house on Toddburn's one short street was +soon passed. Turning out at a wide angle from the railroad, at a point +where Ware saw one of the country's tall red elevators, with staccato +explosion of gasoline engine, pouring wheat into a freight-car, the +prairie road set off alone across the white country.</p> + +<p>The snowfall had been unseasonably heavy this autumn; and Sir William, +looking over the side of the sleigh-box at a point where some passing +horse had accidentally inched out into the soft snow and put down a leg, +saw a hole nearly fifty inches deep. Plainly, if the bob-sleigh should +slip off the packed hard ridge of the road, it meant a wholesale +"spill", a floundering of horses, a chilling to the marrow of all +concerned, and much delay. If it happened after dark, with the +blizzard—the effect of which Ware had often watched from the study +window of his city home—at its height, it <i>would</i> be a bit awkward.</p> + +<p>"Was you ever out in a blizzard?" said John Nixon, suddenly: as though +the thought, like that of a group of castaways in an open boat under +squall-clouds, had become by sympathy communal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> "No? Well, you're +a-goin' to be out in one to-night, English—"</p> + +<p>"Come, come, now, old chap," reminded Ware, "no national imputations, +remember. I thought it was to be 'Bill'—wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, Bill," conceded Nixon, "as I was about to say, you're goin' to be +out to-night in the finest whoopin' he-blizzard since '97. I can smell +her a-comin'—all through me."</p> + +<p>From the sleigh—which now, with the village in the distance behind and +a wholly roofless horizon-line before, was the sole, small centre of +life and companionship in the midst of a snowy waste—Ware looked across +the drifts toward the west, where the sun of the short, late-November +afternoon was trending low. The trail ran almost due north, to where the +white line of the horizon met the pale blue of that part of the sky +distant from the transfiguring sun. Between these two cardinal +points—north and west—the voice of winter megaphoned from +northwestward that bitter weather was at hand.</p> + +<p>The distant groves roared softly, like surf heard against the wind. +Afar, the sound had the similitude of hoarse, enormous exhalation; near +at hand, it was like the wash and hiss of water. The whole surface of +the prairie that had been fixed and frozen, now took on an aspect of +life, of ceaseless scintillation and quivering like ripples<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> in the sun. +Ware, looking along the bright faces of the drifts, saw that this +phenomenon was caused by multitudinous lines of hurrying snow-grains, +serpentining over those white billows in the track of the wind, building +with a wondrous rapidity little ribs and ridges of snow in the lee of +every bump and projection in their path.</p> + +<p>In the early afternoon, it had been warm, even to thawing-point. But +now, as the wind rose, it shuttled with a sharp cold the woof of the +air. Earlier, the air had been clear and speckless as the void above +quiet water, and bland in its touch upon the skin. Now, it was clouded +with gathering snow-atoms, hard as sand, whose impact upon face and +hands was needle-sharp and whose irritation of the eyeballs blinded the +vision with rheum. Earlier, the sky had been bright-blue from horizon to +zenith. Now, it was half-fogged with a kind of smoke-blue mist, that was +nothing other than the first draft of a trillion-atomed host of +snow-motes drawn up to their unfriendly function by the cold whirlwind +that should general their attack upon the prairie's winter peace.</p> + +<p>The blizzard is like, and yet contrary to, the thunderstorm that is the +crowning phenomenon of summer. It is like, in that it is preceded by a +"weather-breeding" twelve hours or so of undue heat; it is like, in the +effect of its attack; it is like, in its whipping of the outcast, its +lashing of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> earth; it is somewhat like in its roar, although there +is no thunder to diapason the storm of mid-winter. But it is contrary in +color, and in duration, and in direction—or rather, lack of direction. +For the color of a blizzard is not a definite black, but a blinding +white; its duration is not a few moments, but long hours of terrific, +unabated wind-energy; its direction is everywhere—that is to say, you +can turn your back to a thunderstorm, but you cannot turn your back to a +blizzard. If you face to windward, you get the volley of the "spindrift" +direct; if you face leeward, you get it round a corner, just as +stingingly. To the wanderer, a blizzard is a succession of intersecting +whirlwinds, not a direct blast from a definite point in the compass.</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware, in this sleigh that was inching its course—at least, +so it seemed—across the long ten miles that separated Toddburn village +from the Nixon farm, felt an odd sense of dependence as he watched the +gathering of the storm. There was in his whole fine body and brain no +fibre of fear, as far as personal danger was concerned—for, besides the +heritage of his family and race, he was too much the philosopher to +regard the chance of death with anything but curiosity. But he felt awed +by the cold, the great white vastness, the thrilling mighty wind—not +yet at anything like its crescendo, either—and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> feeling that his +sole link with safety, this bluff Canadian pioneer who held the destiny +of that sleighful in his rough-mittened hands that held the horses' +reins and his wonderful, but not infallible, pioneer's sense of +direction, was plainly a bit anxious in spite of all his experience.</p> + +<p>"Suppose we have a song, old chap," he leaned forward and shouted in +Nixon's ear; "start up something you know, and we'll all join in the chorus."</p> + +<p>But John Nixon shook a diffident head. "I got all I can do, handlin' the +team, Bill," he said—in his Canadian way avoiding by the excuse the +admission that he could not sing. "Try Jim, here—he's the singin' bird +out on our ranch. Let's have that there about the 'Mistle-tree Bough', +Jim—you ain't got nothin' on your mind just now."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns, a man of few words and short, cleared his throat and, without +preamble, started "The Mistletoe Bough":</p> + +<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,</div> +<div>The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,</div> +<div>The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ay</div> +<div>A-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;</div> +<div class="i5">O Mistletoe Bough!</div> +<div class="i5">O Mistletoe Bough!</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>There is something "catchy" about the words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and the tune of this old +song of a famous tragedy, whose human interest has carried it as far +around the world as "Home, Sweet Home". Ware had heard it in his nursery +when it was reasonably new. He joined in it now, with a vigor that +fended off the dolor of the stormy sunset and the inching sleigh on its +high lonely trail. Nixon swung his whip in time; even a diffident +humming came from the shawl that wrapped the head of Mrs. Lovina Nixon.</p> + +<p>After the refrain following the last stanza was concluded, Jim Burns, on +his own initiative, started his favorite, the "Blizzard Song of +Meadowlea." It is a characteristic of prairie people to sing or to talk +about an especially gloomy phase of a present situation. The person who +has newly contracted rheumatism, for instance, is told glowingly by a +sympathetic visitor that, "Hank McCaffrey, he took it in the knee—just +where you got it, Joe—an' he's a-settin' on the same chair yit, an' +that's ten years ago." And if Mrs. Pelkey, on the northwest quarter of +Section Twenty-three, sneezes after peppering the meat in the +frying-pan, Mrs. Mair, over from the northeast quarter to borrow flour +for a baking of bread, remarks, "This is a bad season for to catch a +cold, Bella—right in the spring o' the year. I never saw a person yet +that tot'ly threw off a cold they caught in the month of Ape-rile."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>It was this prairie characteristic that possessed Jim Burns, when he +struck up the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea" in the face of a gathering +blizzard. This melody is a versified account of an actual happening, in +which a farmhouse in the School District of Meadowlea caught fire during +a blizzard and the family lost their lives in the storm.</p> + +<p>"I say, old son," Ware leaned and tapped the singer on the shoulder at +the conclusion of a line running: 'An' here an' there, in drifts of +snow, a frozen corpse they found', "that <i>is</i> a piquant tune, you know, +and you're in splendid voice—but shall we try something we all +know—something comic, for instance?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns paused reluctantly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, after a +moment; "how about 'The Dying Cowboy'?"</p> + +<p>"Splendid!" assented Sir William, "is that comic?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns rubbed his head ponderingly.</p> + +<p>"It ain't very comic, Bill," John Nixon explained, "but—I begin to see +your point—there ain't nothin' about blizzards in it. Let her go, Jim."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ware, "let her go, Burns, old chap. Majority vote for 'The +Dying Cowboy'. What do <i>you</i> say, Mrs. Nixon?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't bother to ast the weemen folk, out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> in this country," Lovina +Nixon's voice came, muffled and sarcastic, from the depths of her shawl, +"we ain't got no say, even when it comes to invitin' pernicketty people +out to a house that ain't been swept nor dusted for two weeks."</p> + +<p>"I took and scrubbed the whole floor, Mam, two days ago," said Jim +Burns, in an injured voice. "The minute I got your letter that you was +comin' home, I peeled off and went to her, with snow-water an' soap." +Jim Burns did not add that he had scrubbed the farmhouse because he had +expected Daisy with the party.</p> + +<p>"Snow-water, eh?" Lovina's tone was half-hopeful, "well, Jim, you got +more sense than I thought you had. Did you scrub behind the stove?"</p> + +<p>"I scrubbed everywhere <i>but</i> there, Mam," said Jim Burns, a little +sheepishly.</p> + +<p>"Everywhere but where the most grease-spots is," Lovina threw up her +hands and lapsed again into brooding silence, "that's a man, all over +again; so it is."</p> + +<p>The last verse of "The Dying Cowboy" was snatched out of the mouths of +its singers by a great gust of wind and snow, scattering over the sleigh +like a wave breaking over a boat. Ware, concentrated on keeping the +sleighful "in good spirits", had for the moment almost forgotten the +storm; but now, rudely reminded of it by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>bitter, stinging +snow-grains that assailed his face and drove deep between scarf and +neck, he drew tight the collar of his top-coat and looked up and about.</p> + +<p>The blizzard had not yet closed about them. But in the far and hither +distance it had thickened, blotting out the sun, that must now be almost +at the horizon. Above, one could catch faint passing glimpses of the +sky, beneath which the hurricane was throwing a dim-white canopy of +upblown snow. About and about, the prairie and the air were a uniform +quivering white. For perhaps a quarter-mile radius, one could still see +definitely the drifts and the half-buried willow and poplar scrub; but +beyond this the storm had built a superstructure, that was in opacity +like a wall, but bellied and blew like a curtain under the huge +inconstant impulse of the gale. Only in one respect was the motion of +this rampart steady and uniform. That was in respect to its gradual, +sure, terrific closing-in about the sleigh and its human handful. Ware, +watching it fascinated, thought of the cell in the famous tale of "The +Pit and the Pendulum", with its contracting circular wall that +precipitated the prisoner into a central abyss.</p> + +<p>No abyss yawned beneath the feet of the laboring horses nor the runners +of the creaking, inching sleigh. But that road they trod was like the +narrow path over a morass: all about it the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>footing was soft, deep, +delaying. If iron-shod hoof or steel-shod runner slipped, it meant loss +of time, lowering of precious bodily heat, fatigue, failing of the +heart—all preparations for that slowing-down of the restless +body-molecules to the final stoppage which should mark the cold triumph +of the frost:</p> + +<p>"And here and there, in drifts of snow—"</p> + +<p>"Ugh!" said Ware, humorously.</p> + +<p>But there was nothing comic in that nearing wall, whose base crept over +the drifts like the edge of a tide at flow.</p> + +<p>It might have been midnight, or a little before, when the Galician girl +whose function it had been to keep the fire going in the Nixon farmhouse +stove, saw a face move by the window outside, on the way to the door. +Mary had plenty of time to see it, for the face moved very slowly beyond +the frost-edged pane; and she noted that it was not the face of John +Nixon, with his corduroy cap, nor the red face under a "dogskin" cap, of +Jim Burns. Nor was the knock, which presently sounded faint and erratic +on the door-panel—like the chance rap of a frozen branch on a +window—recognizable as that of anybody she knew.</p> + +<p>She was a little afraid, as she listened to that rap which sounded as +though the visitor were half-asleep; but Mary knew enough about the +northwest not to keep a man standing outside on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> a night like this, no +matter who he might be. Accordingly, she ran and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"G'd ev'ng," said the blue lips of Sir William Ware, as he fumbled his +way across the doorjamb. Mary, glancing at his face, saw that uncanny +white patches covered his cheeks and that his nose was whitened to the +bridge. His feet, on the floor, dragged and scuffled like the ends of +cordwood sticks.</p> + +<p>Mary knew: she had spent five winters in the west.</p> + +<p>"You stay there," she said, backing Sir William out of the doorway with +a vigorous palm, "till I big pail ice-water bring. I fix you."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but—stop a bit," Ware spoke thickly; "your master—and +mistress—far along the trail—need help. We—Burns and I—followed the +horses here. Nixon stayed—with wife—she wouldn't leave the sleigh." He +stopped and leaned heavily back against the door frame. Mary saw that +his eyes were closing.</p> + +<p>"I fix you first," she said, snatching up an enormous wooden bucket, +throwing her apron over her head, and rushing out to the well. About her +the huge veil-ends of the storm swirled as, racing down the track of +light from the open doorway, she disappeared a moment into the roaring +dark; then, presently, came into view again, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>running, with the +newly-pumped icy water splashing over the edge of the bucket.</p> + +<p>Ware, his initiative suspended and the world appearing to race about him +in a dizzy flicker of white and glare and black, leaned upon the door. +He felt his legs giving way, but could not stiffen them; and presently +he fell into a sitting posture on the door-sill, with the wild night on +his right hand, and on his left the homely interior of the farmhouse +with its coal-oil lamp flaring frantically in the draught from the open +door.</p> + +<p>In this position, and with his eyes closed, Sir William felt a hand come +up to his face and rub so vigorously that the back of his head bumped +the door-panel with a jolt.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what's happening," was Sir William's vague thought, "but +let it happen, whatever it is. Let anything happen—now."</p> + +<p>The rubbing continued, with an occasional pause by the aggressor—that +might have been for more or less malicious scrutiny of his or her +work—and presently Sir William became aware of a slight tingling in a +face that up till now had been wholly without sensation. The tingling +grew to a glow; and with the glow came a bracing mental effect that +brought Ware's eyes open.</p> + +<p>"See—I fix your face," said the voice of Mary, the Galician girl, in a +self-congratulatory way, "now I take me your boots off." And, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +waiting for the word of consent, she ripped open the laces and drew off +Ware's boots and socks. After which Sir William, watching with a curious +half-interest, beheld her scoop up liberal handfuls of snow and commence +to rub the bared feet from toe to ankle, as she had rubbed the face.</p> + +<p>In the midst of this operation, a peal of bells sounded; and around the +corner of the house came Jim Burns, with a fresh team hitched to the +"jumper". Burns, a tough westerner, had been barely affected by the +storm, except for frozen cheeks and nose, which he had rubbed out down +at the stable. His feet, clad in thick felt "duffels", had escaped +freezing.</p> + +<p>"Hey-o;" he said, unconcernedly; "gittin' thawed out all right? Mary, I +got to go back for Jack and the Missis—the sleigh's stuck in a drift, +about two mile back along the trail. We cut the ponies loose, an' they +led us home, right up to the stable door. Jack, he was a-goin' to come +along too, at first, and fetch the Missis on his back—him and me would +have took turns carryin' her. But she wouldn't hear of it, so Jack he +told us to go on ahead. Said the ponies would take us home, all right, +and I could come back in the jumper when I got warmed up. But," Jim +Burns could not help a bit of western swagger, "I'm all right—I don't +need no warmin' up. Rustle me a couple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> more blankets, Mary. I'll finish +rubbin' them feet out."</p> + +<p>"Aa, you go on, Jeem Burns," Mary, interested in this tall, +pleasant-faced man the storm had brought her, pushed Burns away; "You +know you where yon blankets is. You get them yourself—see!"</p> + +<p>"A-all right," the hired man, swinging his shoulders, stepped into the +farmhouse living-room, gathered up a pair of heavy gray blankets from +the rail bunk in a corner, brought the coal-oil can and refilled the +lantern he was to take with him, and then lighted the lantern.</p> + +<p>"I guess I can keep the trail all right, goin' out," he said, as he +stepped outside, "the wind, she'll be behind me. Comin' home, the +horses'll face it all right, they'll be that keen to get back into the +stable again. Well, so-long, yous; keep a good fire on, Mary."</p> + +<p>With this, Jim Burns tossed the blankets into the jumper, hopped in +after them and, standing up in the vehicle as though it was a +bob-sleigh, this conscious master of the northwest blizzard took off his +dogskin cap, whirled it jovially around his head, and whooped to the +horses. They broke into a trot, receding down the lee of the grove where +the snow came tumbling over the tree-tops in vaporous clouds, like smoke +from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> huge smoke-stack; and in a trice the night had swallowed them.</p> + +<p>"You come in now," said Mary, finally; "wait, I help you." And Sir +William Ware felt an arm, strong as the coil of a pythoness, constrict +his waist and lift him bodily to his now sore and burning feet. +Sensitive as they were, however, Sir William, putting away gentle Mary's +supporting arm, stood his full weight on those restored feet, rose on +his toes, turned them from side to side, and otherwise moved them to +bring back circulation and pliancy.</p> + +<p>"The doctor, he no cut them off now, eh?" commented Mary, glancing down +at the healthily-reddened members in a satisfied way. Ware turned toward +her instantly; stepped over; grasped her hand; shook it warmly.</p> + +<p>"Thanks, so much," he said, with a shining gratitude, "and I wish there +was a more expressive word I might use, Mary. We are, some of us," he +eyed her thoughtfully, "so used to having these things done for us as a +matter of course by those who are really our fellow-beings, that we +often omit the 'thank you'—taking the often vital service rendered as +our due, just because the good Samaritan happens to be a maid or valet. +But here in Canada we're all fellow-citizens, aren't we?"</p> + +<p>"I get you some supper," said Mary, "and fetch you a pair of the boss's socks."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">In the Drifted Sleigh.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The Nixon sleigh stood in the drifts, tilted end up in the attitude of a +sinking boat. There were no billows to rock it, and the place where it +stuck was solid enough. There was no danger of the sleigh being covered +by submersion, either sudden or gradual; but the prairie winter tempest +has another way of achieving burial of derelict craft and spent crews, +when the travelling foot slows to a halt and the numbed brain yields to +the coaxing of sleep.</p> + +<p>There are beautiful things done between October and April by the +northwest frost and sun—pattern on pane, transformation of twig, +fashion of flake, aurora, twin "dogs" of the spectral sun-bow—but +nothing more marvellous and swift than the building, over fallen body or +stopped vehicle, of the white and wonderful sepulchre of the snow.</p> + +<p>Out from the back of the sleigh as it stood, there tailed an +indescribable drift, geometrically proportioned, beautiful beyond words. +Fifteen full feet it extended, from the high sleigh-box windward, to the +low drift-surface a-lee. In shape it was like the back of a saurian—one +of those ruder, hardier things generationed before the earth was +tempered by the Creator to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>habitation of man. Within the sleigh-box +another drift had formed, extending similarly from the wind-breaking +frontboard along the floor to the back end. On the high seat above the +central point of this latter drift, her feet buried in it, her upper +body mummied in sacks and every loose thing the sleigh had held, froze +and mumbled Lovina Nixon. Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but +uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon +stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward +side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a +vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals +paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement +to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in +horse-blankets and gunny-sacks.</p> + +<p>"How's them feet, Lovina-girl?" would come the question—raised to a +whoop in order to out-crow the hurricane and penetrate the hempen +coccoon. After due pause, the response would come, querulous, monotoned +and faint as a voice heard through a wall:</p> + +<p>"Ain't I said it often, that you'd—be the death of me—Jack Nixon. +Why-for did you—let them team go? Just to save your tony +friends—that's all. O-o-oh!"</p> + +<p>And John Nixon—though, with his own feet aching and his finger-ends +tingling, he would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> tempted to retort, "How about me?"—would +respond, bracingly, "Never mind, girl—there, I think I hear Jim +a-comin' now. Listen!"</p> + +<p>But the moments passed; the half-hours grew to hours; and out of the +quivering white, with its perpetual hiss and whistle, its under-roar of +distant wind-shaken groves, came no companionable jangle of bells. It +was not until the hot bricks under Lovina's toes had lost their heat and +she had commenced to cry and to labor against the creeping ache of cold +by beating her feet with a dismal weak "tap-tap" against the bottom of +the sleigh-box—not until stout John Nixon, aching from shoulder to +waist with flailing his arms about his body, felt a cold doubt begin to +rise even in the face of his confidence in hardy Jim Burns—that the +shape and the sound of deliverance bulged and tinkled out through the +texture of the storm-curtain, just ahead of the sleigh.</p> + +<p>"Now, see here, you Mary," the voice was that of Lovina Nixon as, +something over three-quarters of an hour later, she sat, feet in oven +and tea-cup and saucer in lap, in the centre of the reassembled family +group of the Nixon farmhouse; "I don't mind you helpin' yourself to +Nixon's socks, when people is in need—but why don't you give 'em +something to put on over the top of them, so's they won't walk the heels +through," the reference was to Ware who, after an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>unconscious habit, +developed by the usage of almost a lifetime, was pacing thoughtfully up +and down the creaky floor overhead, where the spare bed was; "I got to +darn them socks, not you."</p> + +<p>"Jim," said John Nixon, as he propped a piece of pine board on the +stove-pan and commenced to whittle kindlings for the morning fire, +"don't forget to remind me, tomorrow, that we got to sharpen up the +corks (caulks) of all them horses' shoes. I noticed yon Prince-horse +kind of gruntin' as I led him into the stable, there, to-night. You +ain't been loadin' them team too heavy while I been away?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns paused in the winding of a heavy nickel watch and glanced at +his employer.</p> + +<p>"Aw, now, Jack," he remonstrated, "don't you know no better than for to +ask me a question like that? You'd think I was some green Englishman, or +somethin'."</p> + +<p>Ware, to whom this dialogue came up freely through the cracks between +the warped floor-boards, smiled to himself as he sat down on the edge of +the spare bed and slipped off the enormous gray socks borrowed from the +wardrobe of his host.</p> + +<p>"We do so like to be each other's critics," he murmured, with a half-sad +cadence; "but I suppose it's the same, the world over.... If we could +only get away from that, we children of this planet might win back what +we lost at Bab-el."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Daisy's Home Coming.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well, Jim," Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the +passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware +called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting +the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a +recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the +ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three +of us altogether. How's <i>your</i>self?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, not too bad," Daisy, answering in the old phrase, caught up her +"kit-bag" and stepped briskly along beside her escort; "what did you +bring, Jim—the jumper?"</p> + +<p>"What did you think I was a-goin' to bring," retorted her former +playfellow, "the high-box wagon?"</p> + +<p>They reached the end of the station platform. Down on the snow +alongside, that homely but comfortable vehicle called a "jumper", full +of warm-looking blankets, topped with the gray goatskin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> robe, slid to +and fro as Prince the colt, secured to the hitching-ring by his +halter-rope, rocked spiritedly from foot to foot and pawed the snow up +in clouds.</p> + +<p>"Whoa, you!" directed Jim Burns, as he untied the haltershank. Daisy +pushed her grip under the seat, looked at the blankets, and then looked +at Burns.</p> + +<p>"What have you got all these things for?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I thought you'd be a soft city-bug by now," said Jim Burns, as he +came around with the reins in his hand, "and would want every rug I +could find. Jump in, an' we'll drive around to the Toddburn House. +Dinner's on."</p> + +<p>The sleigh, at a trot, crossed toward the main street, half-way down +which was the Toddburn hotel, with its stable just beyond.</p> + +<p>"Where's that Beatty?" said Jim Burns, as the two heads rocked together +to the plunging of the "jumper".</p> + +<p>"Beatty?" Daisy had been looking half-dreamily around her at the +familiar little frame houses and black-lettered store-fronts, "oh—him! +You better ask somebody that knows, Jimmy."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to break his neck," said Jim Burns.</p> + +<p>"You'd be wasting your time, Jim," Daisy returned, half-absently, as the +sleigh pulled up in front of the Toddburn House. "Don't be long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> putting +the horses away. I'll go on into the dining-room and order your dinner +too. I know what you like. Turnips, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Turnips!" whooped Jim Burns; "say, if we was out where nobody was +lookin', I'd wash your face in the snow for that, Miss!"</p> + +<p>"You'd try to, you mean," Daisy flung back, as she ran virilely up the +steps to the hotel veranda; "hurry in, Jim."</p> + +<p>Daisy had left her hat and furs in the "ladies' parlor" upstairs and was +just coming out of the door of that apartment, when a diffident but +somewhat sweet voice said, "Hello, Daisy."</p> + +<p>Spinning about in her vigorous way, Daisy Ware looked into the mild blue +eyes of a girl who had just come out of a room across the hall. In the +girl's arms was a tiny baby.</p> + +<p>"Why, Pearlie Brodie!"</p> + +<p>"Not Pearlie Brodie now," said the fair-haired girl who had been a +waitress in the Toddburn House when Mr. Frederick Beatty used to come +there for his meals; "Pearlie Halliday now. Ed's buying here for the +Northern Elevator Company, and we stay at the hotel."</p> + +<p>She looked shyly down at the baby, and then added, giving the confidence +of one girl to another, "Ed says the baby here will get used just the +same as one of his own, and that if he ever hears of anybody saying a +word to me about it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> he'll knock their heads off. We were married just +a little while after you went away."</p> + +<p>"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring +up a little.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get +ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I +wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy."</p> + +<p>"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, +Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl +in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes +you best."</p> + +<p>"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, +a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be +'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes +better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no +good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married +you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going +to call him, Pearlie—or is it a him?"</p> + +<p>"I—I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes +dreamily on the infant, "but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> of course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't +be any Freddies in our family now, can there."</p> + +<p>"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you +better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a +<i>man</i>. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses +away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with +Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the +long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and +approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin.</p> + +<p>In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, +and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the +dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be +treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or +she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) +own fault; for the country—unlike the city—is quick to see and ready +to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and +honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her +critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married +Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>grain-grower, who had never taken +any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator.</p> + +<p>"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had +remarked; but—he slapped Ed on the shoulder—"a man that's helped that +poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to +get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here +in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy—an' watch them +grain checks."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the +infant—who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat +surlily—he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment:</p> + +<p>"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of +steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain."</p> + +<p>"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with +Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You +seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was +through the Third Reader."</p> + +<p>"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather +feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to +conversation.</p> + +<p>The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilarating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> way out to the Nixon farm, +had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of +tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay +nearest his heart:</p> + +<p>"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back +married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up +my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, +Daise?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the +corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you +were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have +been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me."</p> + +<p>"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at +her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?"</p> + +<p>"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her +effort to keep a straight face.</p> + +<p>The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her +dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and +made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team.</p> + +<p>"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, get <i>epp</i>!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin +you alive!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>The horses obligingly, but without any manifestation of alarm, +quickened their stride for perhaps ten paces. Then they looked at each +other—seemed mutually to smile—and dropped easily back to their normal +trotting-gait. In the interval, Daisy had slipped a piece of ice off the +dash-board of the "jumper" down the back of Jim Burns' neck.</p> + +<p>It was a different day from that upon which John Nixon, his wife, and +Ware had driven out of Toddburn. Overhead, there was neither wind nor +cloud. The wonderful sky stretched blue and bright from the black and +stark groves on the east to the long expanse of snow-waves that planed +away treeless to westward, meeting in a rippling line the point where +earth and firmament parted on their clean, splendid and vast ways.</p> + +<p>Daisy presently ceased from play and, under the sway of a wave of +recollection, leaned back and looked about her. The sundance of her +spirits, that in the old days had made summer of every season, had not +been able to thaw the frost of surliness about the Nixon home. Not then; +but now, it seemed, things were different. Ever since that understanding +which had been arrived at in the Ware library, between Sir William and +John Nixon, the farmer seemed to have opened out, changed—ratchetted +back, as it were, to play over again his tune of life with a merrier +lilt. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> young wife had often sensed vaguely the power which proceeded +from this friendly philosophy which was at the root of, and gave point +and purpose to, all her husband's thoughts, words and actions; but the +change in her fosterfather gave her the first striking and definite +illustration of its effect.</p> + +<p>"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of +these is charity."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Western Wild Man.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Now, what do you suppose that is?" Sir William Ware remarked, cocking +his head a little as, stepping alongside John Nixon up Toddburn's main +street, he approached the hotel door. The two had come into town with a +load of wheat, which had been duly hoppered and weighed at the elevator. +The team had been put in the livery stable, and the bell of the Toddburn +House had just given intimation that dinner was "on".</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothin'," replied John Nixon, although he smiled a little, "nothin' +at all, Eng—Bill."</p> + +<p>"Quite so," Ware commented, glancing at something long which moved and +vociferated inside the hotel window, "but don't you think, Nixon, that +it's a bit loud for nothing at all?"</p> + +<p>"Well," conceded Nixon, as they went up the steps, "when I say 'nothin' +at all', Bill, I mean it's something special. You ain't got used to us +Canadians yet, I see. In other words, the occasion of yon rumpus is Long +Tom Mewha. He's gittin' tanked up."</p> + +<p>"Yeow-e-wow-e-yippyhoo!" Mr. Mewha was remarking, his arm rib-crackingly +about a less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> tall friend, as Nixon and Ware entered the hall of the +Toddburn House, "Rip, slam, razzaberry jam! We don't care—do we, Joe. +Whoa, you son of a moose, whoa!" This last as Joe coyly but vigorously +endeavored to twist himself loose from the sociable arm.</p> + +<p>"I'll turn you over my knee, an' spank you, Joe," Mr. Mewha reproved, +pointing his words with a mighty slap that lifted Joe off his feet, "if +you don't set still. We-e-ell—look who's with us!"</p> + +<p>Long Tom—flinging away the unsteady Joe, who fetched up against the +wall, eight feet away, with a window-rattling bang—turned to face Ware, +who had just come through the hall door into the room.</p> + +<p>"English!" he half-sung, "English, frum his scalp-lock to his +moccasin-toes. Come here to me, English!"</p> + +<p>Sir William's eye, gray, unwavering, infinitely friendly, met steadily +the red-lidded glare of Long Tom Mewha—who emphasized his loud-toned +invitation by rocking the upper part of his body from side to side, +punctuating this movement with beckoning backward jerks of his head and +crookings of a strong black-nailed forefinger.</p> + +<p>"Come here to me," repeated Mr. Mewha, making a sound-box of his +nostrils, "and do it sudden!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>He was a mighty man, in build, this Tom Mewha. Tough, long-sinewed, +panther-shouldered, the seams of his buckskin coat straining under the +twisting of a torso, muscle-flexed with the excitation of alcohol. He +had a black moustache that swept below his chin on either side; a blunt +nose skinned with frostbite; eyes aglow with virility and physical +well-being; a forehead that just now was, from shaggy eyebrows to +hair-roots, dotted and beaded with sweat. The incarnation of physical +force; spurred to height of power by the liquor that had wakened every +healthy artery to racing-pace: Long Tom could have taken any two of +those who stood about him and without undue effort dashed their heads +together. They all knew it, and stood back: all but Ware, the calm +new-comer.</p> + +<p>"Better give him his way, Bill," advised Nixon sotto voce, behind Ware's +shoulder, "he's one bad-actor when he's pickled, if you go to cross +him."</p> + +<p>"I shan't cross him, old chap," Ware responded, a little drily, +"nothing, in fact, was farther from my thoughts. How are you, Mr. +Mewha?" He stepped forward, and held out a friendly hand.</p> + +<p>"What do you-u mean," Mr. Mewha demanded, "by standin' in your tracks, +like a bump on a log, after I holler 'come'. Do you know that I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +bust you right in two?" Ignoring Sir William's hand, the speaker inched +close, scuffing his feet ominously over the creaking boards, thrusting +his chin out, glaring like a stiffened and challenging beast.</p> + +<p>"Exactly," the word came briefly, distinctly, clear-cut as a knuckle-tap +on glass. "Will you shake hands."</p> + +<p>Often, in the days that followed, John Nixon, thoughtful in his evening +chair, reflected on those four words and the way Ware said them. The +inflexion was smooth and even; the tone hardly more than gentle; the +expression pleasant. But the effect—which Nixon and all those who stood +about felt equally with the one to whom the words were addressed—was +that of a mandate. Not a foolish command, proceeding from the habit of +authority, without present power to exact obedience; but the serene, +confident, all-potent fiat of brotherhood. Long Tom, at the moment the +sentence was uttered, was in the attitude of a great animal about to +spring. His face, shining with perspiration, was pushed close to Ware's; +his hands, the fingers tensed and crooked, were raised to the level of +the baronet's shoulders, preparatory to gripping. The great muscles were +heaved up in a mound between his shoulders, giving him a stooping +aspect. His eyes held shining points, like fire-sparks.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p><p>But the effect of the words was instantaneous. Nixon nor none of those +about knew why nor how. All they knew was that Tom Mewha relaxed his +threatening attitude; straightened to his full magnificent six feet +four; swung up a hand.</p> + +<p>"Put it there," he said: this Peril of the west.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Why?</span></span></h2> + +<p>Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive +than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March +drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old +wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair +was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; +her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance.</p> + +<p>"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got +married up, Daise?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her +questioner teasingly. Rover waited, wagging from neck to tail like a +young pup.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you mean that you'd have been about ready to say something +then, eh?" she remarked, putting her head on one side.</p> + +<p>"No," said Jim Burns, a little shortly; "what I mean is, that you ought +to be goin' to school instead of bein' married."</p> + +<p>"Would you object to me being married, if I was married to you?" was +Daisy's response, as she tweaked Rover's tail.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p><p>"Say, Daise," Jim Burns blurted out headlong a query he had carried +around in his brain for some days, "why did you marry that old fellow? +Wasn't there no young ones handy? I know you didn't marry him for his +money: you ain't that kind. I can't figure the thing out nohow, Daise."</p> + +<p>Daisy Ware's eyes, as she looked at her questioner silently for a +moment, did not see him. Neither did they see the farm barn, the +straw-bucks in the distance, the thawing ice at the cattle-trough, the +drifts reduced to liquefying ice by the spring sun. For the girl was +back in a massive ugly upstairs hall, with broom and dustpan, facing the +son of a pile-driving millionaire who was trying to, after the pattern +of his parent, "put her where she belonged;" in her memory again, as +there had been on that occasion, a certain man equal in fortune but very +different otherwise, who had in spite of his apparent fifty or so years, +made her a boyish and eager proposal of marriage.</p> + +<p>"Because," Daisy, this picture out of the past in her mind, answered Jim +Burns unconsciously, by what was really a sentence thought aloud, "I +wanted to show some people where they got off at."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns' legs went numb at the vigor with which she said this. His +hands opened loosely, and his pitchfork slid out of them.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"Well," he gulped, presently, "you needn't have went and did a trick +like that. Why couldn't you have given me a hint, Daise?"</p> + +<p>At this, Daisy came out of her reverie and stared.</p> + +<p>"Given you a hint?" she repeated, "wha—o-oh I see. Well, that's what +you get by being slow, Mr. Man. See!"</p> + +<p>She caught Rover's tail, and raced away with him over the big drift that +ran up to the top of the snow-flattened haystack. Jim Burns took off his +hat and rubbed the back of his head till it tingled.</p> + +<p>"Can't make head or tail of that'n," he said finally, replacing the +weathered "dogskin" cap; "But I might ast <i>him</i>. Say—I <i>will</i> ast him! +I b'en a kind of a brother to the girl, and I got a right to know, ain't +I?"</p> + +<p>The chance to ask Ware, who had gone for a stroll about the farm with +Nixon, did not present itself till toward evening. Then Burns, returning +with the horse from the trough, met Sir William, thoughtfully inspecting +the architecture of an old log wing of the stable.</p> + +<p>"Clever work, that dovetailing, Burns," Ware said casually; then, as he +noted that Jim Burns had halted and fixed him with a glance conveying +what seemed to be determination, the baronet, said, briskly,</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>"Well, old chap? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I got something to say to you, sir," Jim Burns responded, setting his +feet a little apart and squaring his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Say on," Ware invited, dropping his hands in his pockets, and regarding +his catechist pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"It's about Daise," Jim Burns went on, "I've knew her since she was a +kid. We went to school together, and we was pretty good chums them days, +and in fact right up to the time she skinned out with yon Beatty. I was +figurin' I'd marry her some time (she claims I never said nothin', but I +wouldn't have got no satisfaction anyway, if I <i>had</i> ast her, which I +guess after all I didn't, but she might have knew, for I didn't try to +cover it up none). Well, now she comes back married up to you. O' +course, the girl's her own boss, I know that. But—if you don't like me +talkin' to you this way, sir, you'll have for to lump it; I never was +one to hold back anything I got to say, not for no man—there seems to +me to be somethin' queer, mighty queer, about the way you an' her yips +along. You go out with Jack for a walk, or for a load o' hay, or off to +town; and she hurrays around with the dog or me. Yous never seem to be +together, nor neither one of you to care one rip what the other's doin'. +And—now here's the place where maybe there's an apology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> comin' to you +for what I'm going to say, so I'm going to apologise first, and then go +ahead—"</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Sir William, gravely.</p> + +<p>"I been brought up out here in the country," Jim Burns continued, a +little more slowly, "and I don't know what they do in town, or over +there where you come from; but out in this country, when two people are +married, they're married. It don't matter whether he's old and she's +young, or whether she's old and he's young. They're married, and they +act married, and they stay married, or they don't get the respect of the +settlement—and if they don't get that, they might as well be dead."</p> + +<p>"Do go on," said Ware, his eyes alight. "I'm vastly interested, Burns. I +am, really. What is your point?"</p> + +<p>"The point," Daisy's schoolmate pursued, stoutly, "is just this. You +sleep upstairs there, in the spare bed; and Daise, she still climbs into +her old bunk downstairs, where she slept when she was a kid. Now," Jim's +voice broke a little, "that suits me fine, for I'm sure I don't want to +think of her as a married woman, married to somebody else. But it ain't +right, and you know it ain't right. Yous two are married, and you ought +to act married. First thing you know, some neighbor woman will notice +it—one of the talky ones—and she'll put it around the whole district."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>The speaker paused; cleared his throat; and went on:</p> + +<p>"I know it ain't Daise's fault; for she was born in this country and she +knows what's right; and whatever bargain she made, she'd stick to it. So +I blame it onto you. Now, what's the matter? Ain't she good enough for +you? If you didn't intend to treat her like a wife, why did you marry +her? That's my point! I can't very well speak to Daise about it; so, as +man to man, I put it up to you."</p> + +<p>There were a few moments of silence after Jim Burns finished speaking. +Something sincere and high in the quiet gray eyes across from him +quelled his bristling earnestness.</p> + +<p>"Dear old chap," said Sir William, dropping his hand on the other's +shoulder, "first, don't think I wish any apology for what you have said. +Secondly, be patient. That is all I may say in words, by way of reply to +what I believe you have said in thorough sincerity: be patient, as I +myself am patient. You will see that all will be well. Now—shall we +speak of something else?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A New Settler.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Why don't His Nobs go home out of the slush, and come back here when +it's dry, if he wants to?" demanded, one night, Lovina Nixon of her +husband, as he performed the ultimate evening ceremonial of whittling +kindlings for the morning fire. "There's no sense of him and Daise +wading around here through the mud, making four more feet to track my +floor up, when they've got a comfortable home, with a dry sidewalk to +it, laying idle in town. Now, is there?"</p> + +<p>John Nixon, his sock-feet propped on the stove-pan, pushed hard with his +jack-knife against a tough shaving, and allowed the usual interval to +elapse before he made response.</p> + +<p>"You claim to see everything," he remarked, finally, as the shaving +split off and fell to the floor, "an' I guess you do. Like most of the +weemen, there ain't much you miss. Ain't you noticed nothing about +Bill's actions lately that might tell you why he stays around?"</p> + +<p>Lovina came to attention, her hands at her hips.</p> + +<p>"Why, no," she said, "I ain't. How could I?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> He spends most of his time +out o' doors with you."</p> + +<p>"Well," said her husband, "you can gener'ly take in things without +lookin'—through the pores of your skin, like. Hasn't your sense of +feelin' told you before now, that Bill's been bit by the farmin' +bug?—bit hard, too!"</p> + +<p>"What!" Lovina smiled incredulously; "why, he don't know a plow from a +set of harrows. Have some sense, man."</p> + +<p>"Don't he?" Nixon applied his knife again to the edge of the piece of +pine board; "maybe he didn't when he first come out here, but there +ain't much now he don't know. He's watched me blue-stonin' the seed +wheat; he's had me take the fannin' mill apart to see what makes it go; +and I guess I've plowed pretty near thirty acres for him, in pantomime, +with the old breakin' plow, out there in the snow. No hired farmin' for +Bill—he's a-goin' to do all the work himself."</p> + +<p>"I pity his hands," Lovina Nixon observed, her knuckles at her chin +reflectively. "Where's he gettin' his farm? Not going to buy us out, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we're fixin' that part of it," John Nixon, having finished the +kindlings, folded his knife and returned it to his hip-pocket. "To keep +you from gettin' any wrong notions into your head, I might say that he +ain't goin' to buy <i>us</i> out,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> however. It's Jimmy Tomlinson's place he's +gettin'. We're going over to see Jimmy to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, standing in the doorway of his bachelor cabin across +the road-allowance from the Nixon farm, next morning welcomed glowingly +the tall man in gray and the short broad man in overalls who drove up to +his door in a muddy-spoke blackboard.</p> + +<p>"Spring-like weather, Jim," said John Nixon, quizzically, as he pulled +up the bay horse in the lee of the house bluff, "why ain't you down't +the granary, picklin' up your seed?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson merely grinned. He was uncommunicative and small and +somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. To his gray flannel shirt +he had this morning buttoned the celluloid collar which was always added +to his attire when receiving callers or when working in his front field, +which adjoined the Toddburn road. He had a little sandy moustache and a +rather delicately-tipped chin which, as a cut in its cleft attested, had +just been shaven.</p> + +<p>"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie +him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, +upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson—who wanted $20,000, for his +half-section—were fixed in timid appraisal.</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> bachelor for over half a +century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two +things—to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out +in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the +house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a +sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his +fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years +"above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty +farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 +which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If +no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000—even though +slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced—then +the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there +was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if—as said a certain +beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of +toilet soap—massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with +the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the +door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain +youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, +and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p><p>Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with +a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the +corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger +than himself.</p> + +<p>Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a +single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the +central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with +home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp +and—their titled backs turned outward—a little pile of paper-bound +books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all +was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's +attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old +upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his +guest.</p> + +<p>"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in +the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there +must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open +all winter?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the +simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time."</p> + +<p>With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread +his hands upon them; and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no +more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the +stable.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up +a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business—eh, boys? Jim +here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty +foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers +just commencin' to make a little money."</p> + +<p>"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice.</p> + +<p>"You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, +and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the +knee; "ain't that it, Jim?"</p> + +<p>"I—I—yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he +continued—haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with +the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in +his mind that every detail of it was complete—"in storm and sunshine, +neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured +on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a +civilized man—"</p> + +<p>"Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out +of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> +him, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over +his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, +and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and +then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of +a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?"</p> + +<p>"Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, +Tomlinson."</p> + +<p>"——like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, +resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of +town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world +we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this +settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller——"</p> + +<p>"I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim——"</p> + +<p>"Do shut-up, Nixon. You <i>are</i> an incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind +him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am—that is +to say, vastly. Please go on.</p> + +<p>"——or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and +unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, +"and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you——"</p> + +<p>"Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> you hear that, Bill—he wants +them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you +listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, +Jimmy—at fifty-six."</p> + +<p>"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his +thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man +to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see +nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, +he married late in life—you know that, Jack—an' when I was born, my +parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had +nobody to talk to—no brothers n'r sisters—so it's natural, ain't it, +that I grew up kind of backward.</p> + +<p>"Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the +kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd +stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my +way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell +out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or +more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm +kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets +older—not that I'm anyways old yet, you know——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy—that's all."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p><p>"——and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, +Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good +now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have +considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," +Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his +farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung +his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining +briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty +thousand, cash down, takes this place—buildin's, stock, implements, +what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it +all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is +to hitch up my team—his team, it will be then—and drive me and my +trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand—no +notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I +thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide +world. Well, sir?"</p> + +<p>"Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to +accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the +table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth.</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this +climactic moment of his whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> life, brought an old stone ink-bottle and +a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote.</p> + +<p>An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges +tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at +last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled +emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four +tardy-marrying generations.</p> + +<p>It was a final instinct of caution that made the vendor, a few moments +later, as Nixon returned from the hitched buckboard for the leather +mittens he had accidentally left on the window-sill, whisper hoarsely, +"Is he good for it, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"Good for it!" Nixon, drawing on the mittens, dealt Jimmy Tomlinson such +a congratulatory whack on the shoulder that the latter took two +involuntary steps forward; "good for it, Jimmy! Why, Bill yonder could +buy up the whole settlement, with Toddburn throwed in for good measure, +if he had any use for it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I s'pose it's so, if you say it is, neighbor. He's your girl's +man, and you ought to know, if anybody does. But somebody, I forget just +who, was tellin' me he heard this Ware was goin' to run the farm +himself, without hirin' any help. So naturally I figured, if that was +so, he hadn't the money to pay a man."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p><p>"No, it ain't that," said John Nixon, as he turned toward the door; +"it's true that he don't intend to hire any more men than he has to, and +it's true that he's going to work right along with the ones he does +hire. But when you say why—I don't know. All I know is, Bill's just +a-pawin' the air to get to a pitchfork. Ain't that always the way, +Jim?—ain't it, now? Nobody satisfied. Them that has to buck wood, like +you an' me, don't want to. Them that don't have to, is fairly bawlin' +and pawin' up the sod, to get to a sawhorse."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Sewing Machine Lovemaker.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Here's somebody you ought to know, Daise," remarked Lovina Nixon, +coming in from feeding the calves: "Look down the road there."</p> + +<p>Daisy turned from her ironing and crossed to the window.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's Dex," she said, coolly, as she looked out, "I can see the +sewing-machine in the back of the rig, as plain as anything. Who would +that be, with him, Mother? Oh, yes, I see—it's that Mrs. Rourke. Is she +as flirty as ever?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she just <i>acts</i> flirty," Lovina answered, sticking up for her old +crony, "nothin' wrong about Jen. She likes the men, an' she's full of +the ol' Nick. But it's just fun, with her—that's all."</p> + +<p>Presently the buggy of Dex Coleman, the agent who was responsible for +district sewing machine sales, drew up in the yard. On the seat of it +were two persons—a young man with a smooth face and red lips, and his +hat a little to one side, and a buxom woman of about forty-five, with a +color like a girl and a hand that slapped her knee as she tilted back +her head and laughed. <i>Her</i> hat was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> also a little on one side—pushed +into that position by a playful attempt of Mr. Coleman to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry the drive is ended," the latter was saying, as, having +jumped out of the buggy, he reached up a chivalrous hand to assist down +the healthy weight of Mrs. Jenny Rourke.</p> + +<p>"Oh, indade," observed that lady, her head on one side and her foot on +the step. "Well," she added, coquettishly, as she stepped lightly out, +executed a little jig, clicked her heels together, stood up straight, +and made a face at Mr. Coleman, "I'm to be the wan that's <i>not</i> sorry, +then—is that it. You're a divil, Dexie!"</p> + +<p>"Your sayin' that don't make it so-o, sweetheart," returned the sewing +machine man, pleasantly; "kee-wick!" (This last a curious squirting +sound, produced with tongue and cheek, as Mr. Coleman aimed an intimate +jab at Mrs. Jenny Rourke's ribs.)</p> + +<p>"Lave alone what don't concern you," was the advice this feat elicited +from his driving companion, as she wrinkled an eye-corner at him over +her shoulder, and vibrated (there is no other word that exactly +describes the brisk teetering walk of Mrs. Jenny Rourke) off toward the +house; "you sassy brat!"</p> + +<p>The sedate and somewhat sour-faced Lovina was grabbed and all but lifted +off her feet by the embrace of her friend, as the latter breezed into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +the farm kitchen. Then Mrs. Rourke turned and saw Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Well, well, we-ell, an' how's the little squiress!" she roared, as she +made for the girl; "come here, me darlin', and give me the feel of your +pretty face. M-m-m!" and Mrs. Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion +of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips.</p> + +<p>"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country, +alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile +palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope +he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I +love Canadians—especially young ones, whether they're he's or +she's—but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to +his name. What's like flannel pants an a negligee shirt to an +Englishman, makes a Canadian look like a tailor's dummy. Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"He's gone over with Jack to the new farm," Lovina put in, somewhat +grumblingly, "they spend all their time over there, when Jack ought to +be attendin' to his own work, if he expects to get his seedin' done in +anyways decent time this spring."</p> + +<p>At this, Mrs. Rourke let go of Daisy, bounced over, grabbed Lovina Nixon +around the waist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> threw her into a chair, and sat down plumply on her +knee.</p> + +<p>"Aw, Jen!" her friend protested, diffident and red, but cracking a +shadowy smile for the first time that afternoon; "my hands is all +dishwatery. Set down here yourself, n' let me work while we talk."</p> + +<p>"You stay where you are, an' let the work go for an hour. Then I'll let +you up, an' we'll both fall to; an' when the men comes in t'l their +supper, there'll not be a pin out of place," rippled Mrs. Jenny Rourke; +then she turned to Daisy and waved the hand of dismissal.</p> + +<p>"Run on an' see your Dexie that used to be," she said, lowering her +voice to a mischievous cooing, "sure, we'll not tell, if your husband's +the jealous-minded kind. Dex knows you're here, the divil—that's why +he's waitin' outside."</p> + +<p>Daisy, conceding a smile and a little toss of her head, went out. As she +passed through the door, the Irishwoman murmured, half to herself, her +voice warm with approval: "Straight as a string, the dear, an' able to +take care of herself, right from the time she first knew a boy was a +boy. Sure, if I didn't know that, do ye think I'd send her out with +that—that what-iver-ye-want-to-call-him. He needs managin', the worst +way. There's not half enough discipline and reshtraint in the sewing +machine business, Lovina darlin'."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Dex Coleman left the wheel of his buggy, upon which he had been +draped gracefully, and came to meet Daisy, extending both hands.</p> + +<p>"Well, look who's he-ere!" he fluted, melodiously, "little one, little +one! there <i>has</i> been a pain where my heart is, you kno-ow, since some +lying son of a seacook told me you were married. What, oh, what could +you have been thinking about. Why-ee, I ain't slept a wink, not for +days—not for da-ays, Dear."</p> + +<p>Daisy, looking at him, blushed a little. She blushed because she +remembered that, not so very long ago, when the method of his approach +was new to her, her heart <i>had</i> fluttered a little in response to the +addresses of this late-unripened, yodling, golden-noted, social +abortion. But, now that she had become habituated to men, the blush was +accompanied by a smile—a smile that wrinkled her nose a little, as the +eau-de-cologned Coleman floated close.</p> + +<p>"Does the heart still beat true?" enquired Mr. Dexter Coleman, +"crushing" her hands in fingers that were a workless white, except where +cigarettes had stained them yellow, "does it—little one?" Studying the +slight blush on Daisy's cheeks, Mr. Coleman missed those danger-lights, +her eyes.</p> + +<p>For the imp of mischief had sprung up in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> girl like a kindled flame, +in which danced the two-horned and tridented devil of daring.</p> + +<p>"Shall we—s-shall we go for a little drive, Dexie?" she said, making +her voice low, and leaning her head for a second against the lapel of +the Coleman coat.</p> + +<p>"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a +spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way +in, an' that way out—huh?"</p> + +<p>So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy +into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail.</p> + +<p>"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart +driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey—shake +yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it +stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked +out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside +and the white of an eye showing.</p> + +<p>"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently, +his whip poised for another cut.</p> + +<p>"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out +of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she +caught the reins from her companion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> then pulled the whip out of his +hand and dropped it into the holster.</p> + +<p>Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased +soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his +eye.</p> + +<p>"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on +Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you—all up to you, boy."</p> + +<p>"This sure is the life—ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with +which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept +along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her +waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep.</p> + +<p>It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry; +but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where +the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary +to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance +was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened +panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an +unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire +rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house +threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of +"pliers" out of the question. Here there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> nothing for it but to +drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of +paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels.</p> + +<p>"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own +hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved +down until it now lightly touched her waist.</p> + +<p>"I can't do nothin' with it, you see," he complained, a moment later, as +the recalcitrant arm settled itself snugly about his companion; "just +look at it now, Precious!"</p> + +<p>"I see it," Daisy responded, looking straight before her; "looks kind of +becoming, doesn't it, Dexie?"</p> + +<p>"Mighty becomin', if you ask me," corroborated the arm's proprietor, +warmly "I think it ought to stay right there, now I notice how it +looks."</p> + +<p>Following this remark, Mr. Coleman stole a glance at the cheek that was +turned his way. The glance intoxicated him. He tightened his grip, edged +close, and dropped suddenly from jest to earnestness.</p> + +<p>"Say!" he breathed into her ear, "let's just keep on goin', little +girl."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Right on to town. Train comes in at six pee-ex. Little supper in the +hotel here, an' then board her. What do we care?"</p> + +<p>"Aw, but, Dexie, what will people say?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p><p>"I don't give a whoop what they say—why should you mind? I can take a +chance, if you can, Sweetheart. Come on: be a sport!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, Dexie!"</p> + +<p>"That's m'little girl. I knew you was game. Give us a sweet kiss +now—come awn. Whass matter?"</p> + +<p>"The wind's pulling my hat loose," said Daisy, "I'll take it off."</p> + +<p>"That's th' idea," approved Mr. Coleman, reining his impatience.</p> + +<p>They were descending a hill, at the bottom of which a slough crossed the +trail. Fences to right and left forbade a detour.</p> + +<p>"I guess we'll have to drive right through it," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"How about the hat?" demanded Mr. Coleman, who was now so close that his +companion could barely move her elbow, "can't you get it off?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," Daisy looked up innocently, "I forgot about the hat. All +right—there, it's off."</p> + +<p>She took off the hat and laid it in her lap. They had now reached the +edge of the shallow slough in the valley-bottom, into which the livery +horse waded, gingerly and slow.</p> + +<p>"Maybe he wants a drink," said Daisy; "whoa, pettie! Thirsty?"</p> + +<p>The horse halted and lowered his head to the water-level.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p><p>"Poor fellow!" Daisy commented, as he drank in great famished gulps, +"don't you ever water him, Dex? Aw, quit! Aw-w—you're mean! There, +now—see what you've done," and, as Coleman, red and hot-eyed, drew back +from kissing her, Daisy pointed to her hat, afloat on the slough.</p> + +<p>"That's nothin'," said Coleman, regarding the hat as it slowly floated +away from the side of the buggy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Daisy, with sarcasm, "it just means I've got to go home +and get another hat, before we start on this trip you were speaking of. +I won't go into Toddburn bareheaded—not even for you."</p> + +<p>Coleman rose from his seat. "I'll sure get it for you, right now, +Sweetness," he said, "if that's how you feel about it."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'd better hurry, for it's sailing away," Daisy advised; "no, +you can't reach it over the wheel. You'll have to stand out on the +step."</p> + +<p>Mr. Dexie Coleman, who believed in doing everything with grace and ease, +scorned to grip the honest buggy-top for sensible support, as he poised +himself on the iron step, like Hermes, tiptoe for flight, and extended +an arm out over the water. He calculated, and rightly, that he could +just reach the hat and keep his balance.</p> + +<p>But he had not reckoned with a gathering force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> behind him; and perhaps +there was no more surprised man in Toddburn than this cavalier of the +sewing machine when, a second or two later, just as his fingers closed +upon the hat, a strong push from rearward propelled him sprawlingly into +the slough. The water was only three feet deep; but, as he fell +horizontally, he went right under.</p> + +<p>Mr. Coleman's astonishment at the turn events had taken was so intense +that he, as one might say, reclined for a moment in the bottom of the +slough, with the water roaring in his ears and choking in his throat, +before he gathered his wits together sufficiently to grope to his feet. +By the time he had regained a wet uprightness, sputtered the muddy water +out of his mouth, and blinked his eyes till vision returned, he found +that he was alone in the slough. Daisy had driven the horse out on the +farther shore, and was just getting out of the buggy. Mr. Coleman, +watching in a fascinated way, with too much water still in his windpipe +to speak, saw his late companion loop up the horse's lines in the +backhand ring, knotting them so they would not fall and tangle the +animal; then give the beast a smart little slap on the flank that +started it off at a brisk trot down the trail.</p> + +<p>"Whoa, there!" Mr. Coleman found breath to exclaim, in a thin aqueous +squeal, as he paddled splashingly and frantically toward land. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> the +horse, headed toward its evening meal of loft-dried hay and oats in the +Toddburn livery stable, exchanged its trot for a canter, and kept on +going.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to go some, to catch him," said Daisy, levelly and +unsmiling; "he knows when he's well off." She kept her eyes steadily on +Coleman, tightening her grip on the handle of the horsewhip which she +had retained.</p> + +<p>"Ha-agh!"</p> + +<p>This is the nearest possible phonetic representation of the sound which +came from the man's throat, as he jumped at her. But Daisy was alert and +strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The +sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's +right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the +left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped, +straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was +running.</p> + +<p>"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and +sparkling. "You're <i>some</i> man!"</p> + +<p>There is something salutary and restorative about the rod—that +corrective instrument recommended by Solomon the Wise. Perhaps it is +less the sting than the shame—although one must admit that both must go +together, to produce the effect.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>Dexie Coleman, all the bad humor gone out of him, sat down dejectedly +on a boulder. For the moment, he forgot pose,—forgot that his face was +muddy and bleeding, his hair rumpled, his clothes soaked and +dripping—forgot himself altogether.</p> + +<p>"I'm a mean son of a gun, ain't I?" he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither +flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on." +The girl's face softened a little.</p> + +<p>"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; +"talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the +girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to +'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. +You're just an honest farm boy—why don't you be one? Get out and do +some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white +hands on a pitchfork-handle."</p> + +<p>Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very +well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights, +showed it.</p> + +<p>"I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here."</p> + +<p>He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye, +stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed +to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> of himself. A young +man shows shame by rudeness.</p> + +<p>"Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy +called.</p> + +<p>"Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder; +then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long—Kid."</p> + +<p>The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy +reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the +oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes +and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in +contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a +department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he +had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light +the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered.</p> + +<p>As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to +right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms +up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips.</p> + +<p>"I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby—bestest in the world!"</p> + +<p>Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p><p>Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he +approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. +Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back +toward the barn.</p> + +<p>"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the +matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Coming of the Mother.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness +of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind +her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, +took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady +Frances Ware's train.</p> + +<p>For half a mile, the road led past Sir William's fields, in which the +wheat was now its full ripe harvest yellow. Around one of these fields, +a binder hummed, and the shirt-sleeved man on the seat of it flung a +kiss to Daisy from afar. That shirt-sleeved man was Sir William Ware, +Baronet. The man who was stooking behind the binder also lifted his hand +to his lips, though in <i>his</i> case the salute was not a kiss but a +friendly hail; for the stooker was he who had been yodling, artificial, +"city-bug"-imitating Dexie Coleman. He had callouses on his palms now +that it would be hard to get through with a chisel, and on each arm a +biceps that would burst an iron ring.</p> + +<p>Daisy herself was changed in some indefinable way. Her mouth was +softened, her eyes had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>become forward-looking and dreamy, her color +more delicate. Her attitude was not now tensed, aggressive, a-jump with +schoolgirlish spirit; but gentle, relaxed, restful. One could not on +this day imagine her with the horsewhip of punishment in her hand.</p> + +<p>There were no pools on the Toddburn highway to impede this August drive. +The breath of autumn was soft in the air, and the summer's work of the +sun was over. The ruts of the trail were cushioned with soft dust, the +uplands ripe green, the trees full-sapped and thriving, every twig +deciduously ready for the going of the leaves. The prairie plants had +long ago sent the last of their pollen abroad by wind and voyaging bee. +There were red berries on the rose-bushes, and white on the wolf-willow. +The house of the world was swept and garnished for the fall.</p> + +<p>The thoughts of the young woman who sat, with that quiescent and settled +look in her eyes, on the seat of the tranquilly-travelling buggy, moved +to her beginning of life and ratchetted slowly up the years to the now; +and it came to Daisy Ware, as it has come to many another who thinks +more abstrusely, that consummated marriage is, and properly, the climax +of womanhood. Every growing thing about her whispered it to-day. The +message received definiteness and point as there blew across her lap a +fragment of fertile fluff that had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> in its heyday and its summer +nodding-time been part of a maiden dandelion-blossom.</p> + +<p>In the light of this flash of truth from exemplary Nature, the young +wife saw in its true light the "board and lodging" marriage in which she +might have continued unawakened—continued, perhaps, until she was old +and blase and "set" and sterile—if it had not been for the potent +something, salutarily born, both to her and to her husband, by the airs +that move among the hills and groves of God. She saw why a "little chum" +is not a wife.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances had been held, partly by her years and partly by the +prejudices which fixedly inhabit the old, from exploring far this +northwest of her son's adoption. Among people not socially en rapport +with her, she had long ago decided she was too advanced in years to +commence to mingle. She had found few enough intimates in the cities of +this colonial dominion; she anticipated there would be in the country no +"nice people" at all.</p> + +<p>She had at last consented to come out to the farm, less because she had +been assured that now suitable and comfortable accommodation awaited +her, than because her heart contained a vague hunger. When she had +started on her journey, she had thought it was her son she wanted to +see. But now, as she sat reflectively in the coach that—after +travelling what had seemed to her an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>interminable stretch of +country—was at last approaching the place Toddburn, Lady Frances Ware +discovered that the one she most looked forward to meeting was, not her +son, but her young daughter-in-law.</p> + +<p>This was not wholly because of regard for Daisy herself—although the +young wife, with her frank and clean girlishness, had won the warmest +possible place in the old lady's affections—but because Daisy was +linked with a hope and a dream that now abode daily with the mother of +the last male of the ancient lineage of Ware.</p> + +<p>Daisy had, by letting the bronco take its own gait, occupied a little +too much time on the trip to the village—a thing her alert and +practical former self would never have done—and, as she rose to the +crest of the last hill outside Toddburn, she saw the passenger train +just leaving the station, from which she was still separated by about +half a mile. This meant that Lady Frances, if she had come—which was +certain, for she was always punctual—was waiting alone at the little +depot. Daisy sat up straight, rousing the little bronco to its best +speed with voice and driving-reins.</p> + +<p>"My dear, it's quite immaterial," was the response of the old +gentlewoman to her apology, as the two embraced—not in the little depot +waiting-room, but out on the end of the platform, where Daisy had found +Lady Frances, standing by her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> luggage and looking about her. The old +lady had on a simple black travelling dress and a light wrap, rather +Victorian in pattern. Neither glasses nor any substitute were in view. +Lady Frances could see "her way about" quite easily without them, and +never carried anything as a concession to mode, or for pose or show.</p> + +<p>"I have been enjoying myself immensely during the interval," she said, +as the two proceeded to the sloping end of the platform, at the foot of +which stood the buggy; "this is an enormous country—simply enormous, my +dear. No, you needn't help me in."</p> + +<p>Putting one gloved hand on the brace of the buggy-top, Lady Frances, +from the slight eminence of the platform-end, reached handily the iron +step of the buggy and raised herself halely to the cushioned seat.</p> + +<p>"No, no, child—I should much prefer to wait till we are home—that is +to say, unless you are hungry," she said, as Daisy started the pony in +the direction of the Toddburn House.</p> + +<p>"I'm not hungry, Mother. Billy said——"</p> + +<p>"Billy?" Lady Frances made the interruption in a tone of pleasant +interrogation.</p> + +<p>"Will," Daisy substituted, with a little blush (Lady Frances, of course, +could not know that she was a real wife now), "said that he thought you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> +would rather lunch at home, so I had a little something just before I +left."</p> + +<p>"Billy—Billy," Lady Frances, in mental enquiry, repeated the nickname, +which had at first grated her a bit. Then her heart gave a great leap. +She turned and looked closely at Daisy. One glance at the softened eyes, +the delicate-hued and somewhat pale cheeks, the dreamy lips, the relaxed +and restful lines of neck and bosom—and the old gentlewoman and mother, +warmth of joy flooding all her arteries, reached out her hand, covered +Daisy's with it, and held the young girl's fingers in a close and long +caress.</p> + +<p>"My darling, my darling!" she murmured, with a thrilling tenderness, +"oh, we <i>will</i> have to take such care of you. Does William know?"</p> + +<p>Daisy answered with her frank and matter-of-fact affirmative nod.</p> + +<p>The drive home was a very quiet one. Daisy's new habit of +forward-looking occupied her. Lady Frances Ware was wrapped in an +ecstasy of that kind and depth which one does not want to break or to +have broken by the paltry sound of the spoken word.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Bud.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"That high-priced doctor from the city fired me out," said Dex Coleman, +coming down to the barn where Jim Burns sat on the oat-box, behind the +stall where the newly-arrived Toddburn livery horse munched hungrily at +a fresh feed of hay, "and Bill's upstairs, so I couldn't ast him what it +is. If it's a boy, the old lady will go crazy—that's one thing sure. +Milt Hayes says he'll find out, as soon as he gets warmed up, and come +down here and let us know."</p> + +<p>Milt Hayes was the Toddburn liveryman's son, who had brought out the +doctor to the Ware farm over roads crisped and snowbound by February, +and had been given license to remain by the stove in the bustling and +anxious house, until he "got thawed out".</p> + +<p>"Ain't it queer, when you come to think of it, Dex?" remarked Jim Burns, +as the other sat down beside him on the oat-box.</p> + +<p>"Ain't what queer, Jim?" said Dex Coleman.</p> + +<p>"Her," said Jim Burns, "goin' to school with us about five years ago, +an' now—"</p> + +<p>"It's queer, all right," agreed Dex Coleman.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p><p>"I wonder what she could have saw in him," pursued Jim Burns, following +the groove of an old problem.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I dunno," Dex Coleman set his hat to the back of his head and spat +down between his hands in a thoughtful way, "Bill ain't a bad head, Jim, +when you get to know him. I never worked for a better boss, nor for +higher wages. He pays me every cent I'm worth an' a little more."</p> + +<p>"Maybe so," said Jim Burns, "I ain't got nothin' against him personally. +But—"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—nothin'," said Jim Burns.</p> + +<p>"Come on, now, Jim,—tell us. What's wrong with Bill?"</p> + +<p>"Well," Jim Burns flung out an expressive hand, "I could have had Daise +myself, if he hadn't took her."</p> + +<p>Dex Coleman tilted back his head and laughed till the barn rang. Jim +Burns got up slowly off the oat-box and commenced to take off his coat.</p> + +<p>"Come on," he said, "if you want a fight. I'll push your nose out +through the back of your head, if you laugh at me that way, Coleman."</p> + +<p>Coleman sobered, and slapped the other on the back.</p> + +<p>"I ain't laughin' at you, boy," he said; "don't you ever think it. It +was myself I was laughin' at. I wanted her too, Jim, them days. But we +both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> went at it the wrong way. You said nothin' at all to her, and I +said too much. Bill goes about it in the right way, and he gets the +girl. Bill's a gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Well," demanded Burns, "ain't we gentlemen, too? I am, anyway, and I +have a poke in the jaw for any man that says I ain't."</p> + +<p>"That," rejoined Dex Coleman, "is one son of a moose of a way to prove +to a man that you're a <i>gentleman</i>. The trouble with us out in this +section of the country, Jim, is that, some way, we seem to have the idea +in the back of our heads that a gentleman is a man who's got either +money enough or nerve enough to sport around in a tailor-made suit and +not do any work. That's the reason each of us is so sensitive about his +claim to the title: because we think the man who says 'you're no +gentleman' sees us as day-laborers and himself as our wealthy or nervy +neighbor who don't have to work. Jim, this gentleman thing is inside of +you—not outside. I've learned that much from workin' alongside of Bill, +anyway.... Here comes Milt. Well, Milt, did they let you see it?"</p> + +<p>"It ain't a 'it', boys," said Milt Hayes, "it's a him."</p> + +<p>"Three cheers!" shouted Dex Coleman; "how did the old lady take it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, carried it kind of easy, in a shawl so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>clean-white it pretty near +blinded you," replied Milt Hayes, staring; "why, how did you suppose +she'd take it? By the scruff of the neck?"</p> + +<p>"I don't mean the baby," explained Dex Coleman, "I mean the news."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't no news to her," responded the other vaguely, "she brung him +downstairs herself, I'm tellin' you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, go to blazes!" exclaimed Dex Coleman, jumping off the oat-box, +"boys, I'm goin' up to the house. I'll get in, sir, if I have to +massacree that city doctor to do it."</p> + +<p>"Ast how Daise is," called Jim Burns after Coleman as he went out, "we +don't care about whether the old lady likes the baby or lumps it."</p> + +<p>It was not long till tall, good-looking and still somewhat "nervy" Dex +Coleman came whooping back to the barn with the word, "I bunted past the +doctor, fellows—never even let on I knew he was there—and spoke right +up to Lady Frances herself. She says all you boys may come right up and +have a look at the baby."</p> + +<p>"I guess we <i>may</i>," said Jim Burns, as he followed the speaker out +through the door; "it's Daise's baby, not hers."</p> + +<p>"I had one look at him," commented Milt Hayes, as he brought up the rear +of the procession, "but I guess I can stand another."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances, as the three young men entered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> was sitting in the big +upholstered chair in the centre of the farmhouse living-room. Her eyes +were shining, and her whole figure radiated an extraordinary animation. +In her lap lay something in shawls—something that waved tiny red +antennæ in a futile way, and emitted a series of unclassifiable sounds.</p> + +<p>"He sounds like a crow," Milt Hayes said, sotto voce, to Jim Burns, +"don't he?"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't know a crow from a cowbird, Hayes," Jim Burns muttered; +"talk sense, or keep still."</p> + +<p>The three approached on tiptoe. Lady Frances looked up and smiled.</p> + +<p>"You may walk briskly, young men," she said, "the child is quite wide +awake, and not at all nervous, I think."</p> + +<p>The three came on abreast, a little sheepishly; but when they were about +five feet away, Jim Burns, with an air of proprietorship, elbowed the +other two aside and stepped to the front. Arriving at Lady Frances' +chair, he leaned over and took a lengthy and critical survey of the +infant.</p> + +<p>"Well, ma'am," he said, "I been like a brother to Daise, and I've give +Bill a talkin'-to, more than the once: so I can speak my mind plain-out +about this baby. It's pretty fair-looking, and I guess by the way it +slings its hands around and hollers, it'll live—but I don't think it +does entire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> justice to Daise's looks and Bill's style. I certainly +don't. Come on, boys: yous can take a peek, but don't touch it with your +big clumsy hands. You first, Dex, and then Milt. Don't breathe in his +face, Coleman, you galoot!"</p> + +<p>Here obviously ends the book of Daisy the Girl, but not the story of +Daisy. For as Daisy—or, more briefly, "Daise"—she still lives in the +Toddburn district of Plowland. If you are ever that way along, you may +call—any hour of any day, for there are no receiving days in Plowland. +In asking your direction of those along the trail, do not enquire for +the "estate of Sir William Ware". Nobody would know whom you meant. Just +say, "Where does Bill Ware live?"</p> + +<p>For the ancient title has fallen into disuse, and the big house in the +city has been sold, and Lady Frances does not wince when little Billie +Ware, jumping up and down ecstatically at the window, shouts across to +her, "Oh, Gamma, see <i>zem</i> horses wun!"</p> + +<p class="center">—THE END—</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 49188 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/49188-h/images/cover.jpg b/49188-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..621f066 --- /dev/null +++ b/49188-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/49188-h/images/logo.jpg b/49188-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..79a02bf --- /dev/null +++ b/49188-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d90ce3 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #49188 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49188) diff --git a/old/49188-8.txt b/old/49188-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..613e25a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/49188-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8363 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: Daisy Herself + +Author: Will E. Ingersoll + +Release Date: June 10, 2015 [EBook #49188] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAISY HERSELF *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + ++-------------------------------------------------+ +|Transcriber's note: | +| | +|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | +| | ++-------------------------------------------------+ + + + + +DAISY HERSELF + +By + +WILL E. INGERSOLL + +_Author of "The Road that led Home", "The Centenarian" etc._ + +[Illustration: Logo] + +TORONTO +THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY +LIMITED + + +Copyright, Canada, 1920 + +THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED +PUBLISHERS TORONTO + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAPTER PAGE + I A Two Hundred Mile Dash 1 + + II The City Swallows Daisy 6 + + III The Maid and the Clerk 19 + + IV A "Steer" 29 + + V A Job 35 + + VI The Plebeian 50 + + VII A Human Horticulturist 62 + + VIII A Knight in the Kitchen 86 + + IX A Dance and an Invitation 96 + + X The Boxing Match and Afterward 116 + + XI The Face Behind the Mask 152 + + XII Sawn Off the Old Block 156 + + XIII A Plot that Miscarried 161 + + XIV The Golden Stair 175 + + XV The Lady of the House 187 + + XVI Taking a Rest 198 + + XVII A Raincloud 206 + + XVIII The Bleak Two 216 + + XIX The Choice of the Dray 221 + + XX John Nixon's Invitation 229 + + XXI In the Blizzard 236 + + XXII In the Drifted Sleigh 257 + + XXIII Daisy's Home Coming 261 + + XXIV A Western Wild Man 270 + + XXV Why? 275 + + XXVI A New Settler 281 + + XXVII The Sewing Machine Lovemaker 292 + +XXVIII The Coming of the Mother 307 + + XXIX The Bud 313 + + + + +DAISY HERSELF + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +A TWO HUNDRED MILE DASH. + + +Daisy had run away from her home on the farm outside Toddburn village +with this young store clerk, Beatty, who now sat holding her hand in the +moonlight "flyer" of the M. & N. Beatty, who came originally from the +city, was a bad young rascal; and Daisy--who, neglected and exposed to +temptation since her earliest girlhood, had developed an innate +awareness of "fellows"--knew it. None of her several reasons for this +escapade had been the usual one--love. It suited her, however, to let +Beatty think that she had come prepared to follow him to the world's +end--a lengthy journey, upon which the railway ticket Beatty had bought +for her was only good for the first two hundred miles. + +Daisy was proceeding daringly, easily, without pause or regret, toward +whatever lay in store for her along the path she had taken. Her +locomotion was that of a thing which is both propelled and drawn. The +propulsive force was her hatred of the farm where she had drudged for +all the workable years of her seventeen under that plebeian taskmaster, +stolid, selfish John Nixon, her stepfather, and that unmaternal mother +whose forename, by some perpetuated sarcasm, was Lovina. The drawing +force was Daisy's own eager, vigorous, intrepid spirit of +adventure--green maidenhood's hunger for the sensational new. + +The car in which the two sat was not a "sleeper," but an ordinary +red-upholstered day coach. The two had boarded the train at Oak Lake, +the first station east of Toddburn (where neither of them were known by +the new station agent) at a little after midnight. They were due to +reach the city between six and seven o'clock in the morning. + +Even if the car had been a berth coach, and there had been opportunity +for retirement, Daisy could not have slept. The hour, the situation, the +novelty of the rushing, lamplit train (she had never been on a train +before), kept every faculty ablaze and awake in a pleasant intoxication +of excitement. Elbow on window-sill and chin in palm, the girl sat, +glancing now out at the flying moonlit telegraph posts, now about the +interior of the dingy branch-line passenger coach. All seemed fairylike +to her eyes habituated only to prairie fallow and lea. + +Young Beatty, holding her hand and thrilling in a delightful though less +spiritual than fleshly way, at the occasional glances with which Daisy +baited him, looked out of the corner of his eye at her and felt very +much pleased, indeed, with himself. First, she had a glorious color, the +like of which one could not buy for money, nor yet for love--a color +that resided comely and rich in her cheeks, even at feeling's lowest +tide, but which now, in the high tide of her adventure, overflowed down +in a bonny estuary toward the milk-warm curve of her chin. Then, there +were the features, each with its peculiar likability or lure--lips made +and eager for enjoyment, yet with something in their set and pose that +was constant and fine--a nose humorous and short, tiltable to every +gradation of coquetry--eyes with dancing irises, soft baffling shadows, +and brows that trended downward at the outer ends. Lastly, the +hair--brown, with a wave that made it comely in any coiffure; coiled +carelessly under a hasty pin or two at temple, crown, and white nape of +neck where a curl caressed--had a piquancy even in its disarray. Beatty +cuddled his head back against the red upholstery of the seat in +luxurious contemplation, and again expressively squeezed the fingers he +held. + +Beatty himself was a slim, white-handed youth whose abundant blond hair +and smooth "way" had made the world, for him, a kind of garden of the +Hesperides--the fault with this simile being that he was no Hercules, +except in his vanity. In this, his strength was as the strength of ten, +though not because his heart was pure. If you had taxed him with that +characteristic in which Beatty was eminently taxable--his attitude +toward girls--he would have regarded you indulgently a moment, and would +then have explained that it was not his fault if "Janes fell for him" +and "fooled with the band-wagon" to their own undoing. Surely it was a +"free country." + +In spite, however, of the fact that the country was a free one, the +special thing which had sent Beatty out of the city "for his health" was +the quest after him by a two-hundred-pound brother of a sister some +ninety pounds lighter. The brother, who carried a professional "haymaker +in either mitt" for even those of his own gender who could use their +fists with fair ability, was as sincere in his desire to interview +Beatty as Beatty was considerate in his desire to save the brother the +embarrassment of such an interview. A recently-received picture postcard +from a friend of Beatty's had, however, intimated that the family of +which the brother and sister in question were members had since "gone to +the coast," and that Beatty's home city had therefore become again for +Beatty a consistent metropolis of a free country, if he wished to return +to it. + +Beatty did wish to return to it; and, returning with round and pretty +Daisy Nixon as a travelling companion--made, Beatty felt assured, wholly +and dependently his by the manner of her home-leaving--he felt that the +several months of his exile had not been wasted. + +"The boys", so Beatty reflected complacently, as he leaned back on the +car-cushion, "will cert'n'ee set up an 'take notice w'en they see this +w'at I got here. They cert'n'ee will." + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +THE CITY SWALLOWS DAISY. + + +The summer dawn came with a warm melting of the dark and a running out +over the sky-floor of spilled light from under the edge of the world. +Daisy, her nerves thrilling like the nerves of one drunken with wine, +leaned untired on the varnished window-sill; looking, with all her young +vitality gathered into shine of eyes and beat of heart, for her first +view of the city. + +The shadow of the express, as the early sun came up, coursed like a +hound along the barrow-pits of the right-of-way, and quivered, as it +were, in noiseless impact against the stolid cedar fence-posts that +stood still and were whipped by in the guise of staring bumpkins as the +smart, swift train hummed on its way. + +Daisy saw these effects at the edge of her travel-picture out of the +corner of her eye merely. Her attention was concentrated +forward--forward, to watch for the first white trimming of roof-tops on +the dewy green fabric of the prairie-rim. Hateful to her were the square +fields by the track, where phlegmatic men and teams moved up and down +the black fallow; hateful the whitewashed houses, the homely +poplar-clumps, the stacks of straw. Appurtenances, all, of the life +with which she had been surfeited (she thought): reminding her of cows +to be milked, of barnyard drudgery, of gawky, red-visaged, wholly +unpiquant boys, of men content to smoke and drawl away their rare hours +of ease. + +Hateful! The term is too mild to express the immense energy of the +girl's distaste for the life she had, with youth's dash, pushed behind +her in one reckless thrust. + +She was done with it. For good or for ill, she was done with it all, or +thought so, in these kinetic and dancing moments, as new leagues of her +unexplored earth uprolled along the endless ribbon of this two-railed +track of dreams. New leagues, yes--but, so far, no new scenery. The +stations she had passed, and continued to pass, were nothing but an +endless chain of Toddburns; the intervening reaches of farm land, no +more than linked replicas without number or variation, of the Nixon +farm. In spite of the "flyer" and its obvious achievement over distance, +Daisy Nixon at moments had the odd sensation that the track was +revolving beneath the car-wheels, treadmill-style, and the train merely +standing maddeningly still amid the old locale. + +But there--there! A quick hypodermic needle of joy pricked her throat, +and Daisy caught her breath as the strong keen drug of excitement +tingled out to all her nerve-ends. A white kite-tail of houses seemed to +drop down and flicker, half in the air, at the point where the uprolling +earth revolved against the broad-open casement of the morning sky. +Appearing for a moment as a fantasy, it soon settled into a lengthening +white saw-blade of joined buildings, low in the distance, dividing the +solid green world from the dreamy firmament of a June dawn. Straight +toward it rushed the cleaving bullet of the train. + +Her head out beneath the raised window-sash, her companion forgotten as +though he had never existed, Daisy wrapped herself in the joy of the +hour. The white house-line, advancing along the angle of its +perspective, broadened and took form and character, split into rays of +streets, discovered great chimneys with smoke-plumes, unveiled square +buildings in a caparison of glittering windows, began to live and move +and give forth human signs. The first workers were already in the +streets, for a goose-herd of city whistles was croaking out seven, vying +therein with the warning blast of the "flyer's" engine as, barely +slackening speed, it rushed along the cobweb of tracks, arrogant and +favored possessor, for the time being, of the right of way to the great +urban station in the heart of all. + +"Well, kid," said the voice of Beatty, "how d'ye like it?" + +"Fine, Freddie," Daisy replied, blithely. The comment was plain and +simple enough; but her eyes and cheeks told the rest, without need of +words. + +Beatty stuck on his hat, tilting it a little. + +"It ain't so bad, either," he conceded, grinning to himself, as he +picked up his smart leather suitcase and Daisy's battered telescope +grip, "not so bad, at that, kiddo." + +With a hollow, drumlike roar, the train drew to a halt beneath a dome of +glass and iron; and Daisy and her companion, inching along behind the +file of passengers, at length emerged upon a cement walk, walled in on +either side by the bulk of varnished railway coaches. Passing along +this, descending a stair with an iron balustrade, and proceeding through +a great, busy, and echoing rotunda with a ceiling almost as far away as +a sky, Daisy and her companion emerged upon a stretch of granolithic +pavement. + +Beyond the curb, a bevy of bus-drivers from city hotels crowed like a +flock of roosters--the surmounting voice in this bedlam being that of a +sandy-mustached old-timer, whose vehicle was labelled "Imperial Hotel." +By his hind-wheel he stood, moving nothing but the hinges of his jaws; +and to see his mouth open to its red limit was to be filled with +consternation. + +"Imm-Peary-ail Hoat'l!" he sang, his eyes looking nonchalantly up and +away, with something of the expression he used to wear when scouting the +sky for signs of rain, in the old farming days before he became poet +laureate of the city's pioneer hotel. + +"Why--look who's here, will you!" The exclamation was Beatty's, as he +stopped alongside the scratched old bus. "This is him, Mrs. Beatty--old +Jim-Jam Hogle. Can you take a passenger, J. J.?" + +Mr. Hogle, without ceasing his vocal offices for so much as the fraction +of a moment, let his eyes flicker down over Beatty with no sign of +recognition, returned his gaze again to its former direction above the +depot roof, and jerked his thumb casually toward the interior of his +craft. Beatty handed the girl in, climbed in after her, and set down the +suitcase and grip. No others entered; and presently Mr. Hogle, turning +from his post by the wheel-rim and glancing inscrutably in at Daisy as +he passed the glass panel behind where his two passengers sat, unsnapped +and threw in his iron hitching-weight, climbed to his high seat, and +rattled away. + +Daisy Nixon had never before seen such crowds nor such coachmanship. +With the horses trotting at a good speed, the old teamster wound in and +out by motor-trucks, autos, street-cars, horse-drays, and thronging +pedestrians, as smoothly, swiftly and carelessly as though he had the +whole street to himself. The traffic grew less dense as they passed out +of the vicinity of the depot, crossed a corner where the car-tracks met +at right angles, and, after bowling for a block or two down the city's +main thoroughfare, turned down a side street and drew up at the door of +a hoary frame hotel, its white-painted two-tier piazza weathered to a +dingy gray. + +Beatty and Daisy descended; and the old bus-driver, after first hitching +the team to the weight, followed with the grips. + +"You wait in the hall here, while I go an' dicker with the clerk, dear," +said Beatty, ostentatiously, "I'll be right back." + +Daisy, looking about her curiously, encountered suddenly the eye of Mr. +Hogle, standing up the hall, out of sight of the hotel office. The eye +had been trying for some moments to catch hers; and, now that it had +succeeded, Mr. Hogle raised a huge forefinger, stained indelibly with +harness-oil, and beckoned. Daisy went over briskly. + +"_Missis_ Beatty, hey?" said Mr. Hogle, toning his great voice to a low +interrogative rumble. + +Daisy nodded a careless affirmative. It was none of his business. She +felt able to take care of this point herself, when the time should +arrive. + +"Like hell you are," said the unmincing Mr. Hogle, "ner wun't be. Break +away from him as soon's as you can--that's if it ain't too late already. +I know _him_." + +Daisy dimpled; raising her chin challengingly, after a manner she had. +But she did not answer. + +"I guess you're all right yet," said Mr. Hogle, after a shrewd fatherly +glance, "an' I see you're one of them confident kind. Them's the ones +that gets ketched easiest. Now you'll mind what I told you--won't you, +Missie?" + +Daisy, regarding her adviser with dancing eyes, bobbed her chin up and +down in mock docility; and Mr. Hogle, shaking his head pessimistically, +went out to put away his team. + +"What was that old geezer saying?" said Beatty, coming out of the office +as the old man went outside. + +"I--I'm sure I don't know," said Daisy, gravely, "I think he was trying +to make love to me, Freddie." + +"Wants to get his can beat off, eh?" remarked Beatty, carelessly; "well, +what-oh-what does my little girlie want worst, right now?" + +"Breakfast," replied Daisy, plumply; ducking roguishly to avoid the +caress her questioner, imagining _that_ was the thing she "wanted +worst," sought to bestow. + +"A-all right," said Beatty, swallowing his pique; "we'll go and see if +they can scare us up some poached-two-on, right now. Then 'm going to +take my baby out an' show her the best time _she_ ever had, in all her +young life--eh?" + +"M'h'm," murmured Daisy, smiling to herself, as she followed her +companion into the dining-room. + +Breakfast that morning was a notable affair, a milestone in Daisy +Nixon's days. Not because there was anything novel or striking about the +garniture of the Imperial Hotel dining-room, which was a plain homely +place, differing little from the eating-room of the Jubilee House in +Toddburn--but because there hummed, and called, and clanged, and +whistled through the open windows the multitudinous sounds of this new +urban life into which she had, as it were, plunged headlong. Daisy +listened absently to Beatty's chatter, conceding him an occasional +dimple or smile; but otherwise almost forgot him until, as the meal +ended, he laid his hand, hot and moist, over hers, and said: + +"Well, how does my little-one feel about it now?" + +Daisy glanced down at his white-pored hand, with its cigarette-yellowed +finger-tips and outstanding blue veins. Then she looked up at him, and +leaned one pretty cheek coaxingly close. + +"You's baby feels ashamed in this old waist and skirt and hat," she +said, softly; "ain't you going to get her some nice things to be +married in?" + +Beatty's hand squeezed hers. + +"Your Freddie sure will do that for you," he said. "Let's go upstairs +now, and figure out what we'll need." + +Daisy suffered him to pull her out of her chair by the hand he held. +Still retaining it, he led her out of the dining-room, along the hall, +and up the stairway. At the top, she halted--fetching her companion, who +had kept right on going, to a standstill with a jerk. + +"Come on, come on," he said, making his tone matter-of-course, "the room +is No. 19." + +"What's the number of _my_ room?" said Daisy, regarding him pleasantly +but with a kind of odd under-gleam in her eyes. + +"Y--your room!" Even Beatty, the inured, was embarrassed by that +searching, direct look. "Why, I--I--darned if I remember the number." + +Daisy continued to look at him a moment; then the shine in her eyes was +succeeded by a twinkle, and this by a promising, coaxing side-glance. + +"Well, then, let's go into the women's sitting-room, Freddie--this +time." + +Beatty knew when to yield a point--so he flattered himself. + +"All right, Sweetest," he said, "you're the doctor--always." + +They passed into the "ladies' parlor," which was empty, except for a +few articles of faded furniture, among which a new red settee in one +corner glowed with a preternatural brilliance. Beatty sat on the red +settee and drew the girl down beside him. + +"Somebody got a kiss for her Freddie?" he said, his lips loosely apart +and wrinkles springing into view at the sides of his nostrils. + +"Oh, I--do' know," Daisy dropped her head a little; "let's just talk. +It's nice to sit together an' talk, when we love each other so, isn't +it?" + +Beatty's answer to this was to thrust his arm about her waist, push his +palm beneath her chin, and pull up her face toward his. The girl +resisted at first; then, with a motion of yielding, laid her head back +on his shoulder and raised her lips. Beatty kissed her, not reverently +but roughly; then kissed her again; then again and again: burying his +mouth into hers. A little hand came up and caressed his neck; then +slipped down within his coat and rested as it were, upon his +heart--moving softly, as though feeling for its beats. + +Then hand and girl and all tore suddenly and strongly away--and Daisy +Nixon was upon her feet, her cheeks glowing like fire, laughing as she +held up the leather purse she had taken from his pocket. + +"It was the only way!" she cried, breathlessly and sparklingly, as he +sat agape; "the only way to get out of you what you owe to me, for the +things I have let you think about me, Mr. Fred Beatty. You thought I +didn't know all about you--what you did to poor Pearlie Brodie, making +her the talk of Toddburn, with worse to come yet--a poor motherless +girl, who was given up by a decent fellow that would have married her, +if it hadn't been for you. You thought I didn't know. Yes: you thought I +'fell for you', as you'd call it. But I'll tell you what I did, an' you +can put it in your pipe an' smoke it, and I hope it'll do you good. I +needed you. I needed to get away from that place where I was wasting my +life, and I had no money--so I used you. I've met ginks like you before. +I could see through you from the first like a pane of glass--you poor, +miserable imitation of a man! + +"Now, I'm going to take this money and use it, to keep me till I get a +job somewhere. Then I'm going to pay it back. But not to you--don't you +ever think it. I'm going to send it to Pearlie Brodie. She'll need it +badly enough, in a few months from now. She'd never have got it from you +straight--never in this world--so she'll get it through me. Now, you get +out of here! I've wasted too much breath talking to you. And keep this +in your memory-box: _I don't know you_! So don't speak to me, if I ever +have the bad luck to meet you again!" + +The girl had barely finished speaking, when Beatty leaped at her, +grabbing for the purse which she held. But she stepped quickly +back--and, as he pressed in, gave him, with all the strength of her +virile young body, a push that sent him sprawling. + +"You give me that money," Beatty said, his face pasty and mean with +fury, as he climbed to his feet and stood, slowly dusting off his +clothes; "that's all I want out o' you. Hand it over, or I'll go down +and phone for a constable, and have you taken to the police station. + +"Yes--you will!" Daisy challenged. "I suppose you think no person around +Toddburn ever reads the city papers and notices what the law does to a +fellow that brings a girl sixteen years old to a hotel. Go down and +phone for the police, if you feel like it! I know who they'll take back +with them when they come, and it won't be me. And I'll tell you +something more, Mr. Smart Man: If you're not out of here in the next +three minutes or less, _I'll_ phone for the constable. It makes me sick +to look at you. I want to go and wash my mouth, too. It'll take a good +many washings to make it feel as clean as it did before _you_ touched +it. Get away from here!" + +"Well," Beatty growled, after a moment, as a distant step down the hall +portended the coming of one of the hotel staff, probably attracted by +the sound of the raised voices and scuffling, "keep the money, then, you +blamed nickel's worth o' nothing. I'll get the worth of it out o' you +some other way, yet--you watch me! There's goin' to come a time when +you'll need me, an' you'd better fasten onto this," he took a card from +his pocket and tossed it down on the settee. "Till then, I'll bid you +'good-day'." + +Therewith--in his intense self-reverence, half-expecting to be called +back before he reached the street-door--Mr. Frederick S. Beatty turned +on his heel and stalked out. + +But Daisy did not call him back. Neither, be it said, did she hasten to +wash her mouth. As the slam of the door downstairs gave ostentatious +notice of Beatty's exit, she moved to the window, watching him up the +sidewalk with an odd, half-maternal look. + +"That call-down may do you some good, Mr. Naughty man," she murmured; +"you've had too easy a time with girls--that's what ails you, +principally." + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +THE MAID AND THE CLERK. + + +"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and +shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had +been sitting. "So they har." + +The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to +confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a +hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair +of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At +the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a +saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like +exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a +skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly +reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were +pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette. + +"Ar, ee--yes--s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a +hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an +ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to attention, with her head on one +side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed +themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet +of gold. + +"'Usbands _har_ queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp +sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't +they?" + +Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and +was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the +feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously, +and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded: + +"Are they?" + +"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never +say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance +from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back +to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four +times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though +she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy +noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white. + +There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall. +Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of +her hips that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable, +serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said: + +"Bob--er--Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway, +'e says." + +Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs. +She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the +counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the +register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys +on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled, +and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was +newly-barbered--shaved to the blood. + +He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from +sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words +out of the corner of his mouth: + +"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?" + +Daisy looked a little puzzled. + +"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?" + +"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips." + +"Just the _one_ grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching +up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this--see?" + +Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently. + +"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for +your board bill. You pay in advance--see?" + +Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little +flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her +blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and, +with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had +brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested +it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic. + +As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot +round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he +leaned close. + +"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie +forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, +yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and +paddled hers. + +Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the +counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his +pocket. + +"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the +little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him +when he went out." + +Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his +palms--a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very +quintessence of humor--the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face +of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his +fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, +shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, +and exclaimed: + +"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!" + +"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of +deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned--and looked +into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the +bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within +the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his +jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek. + +"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his +paternal way. + +"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. +Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?" + +Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon +other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy. +His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as a nutmeg-grater, closed +about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made +the girl wince a little. + +Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor +daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her +mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse--less because of +its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey +score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr. +Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes, +therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little +affirmative nod. + +"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the +side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus _here_? Has this lad +been sassin' ye?" + +Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added, +contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my +money in it, so he did." + +"Took your _what_?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward +Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!" + +"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to +Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You +get to hell out o' here, and get your team out. You got to meet that +south train in fifteen minutes". + +Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver +watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on +the counter. + +"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in +fifteen _seconds_. If ye don't--I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what +that means, Markey." + +Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow +bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and +slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth. + +Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He +waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around +its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his +vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on +the numbered rack behind the counter. Then--he sprang into action! + +So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm +shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he +had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was +for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was +dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the counter. Then +the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this +Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had +temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles +as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked +furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out +of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide. + +"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and +I'll kill yeh." + +"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip +holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the +latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and +shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of +Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old +Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide-- + +"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll +give the jane her purse." + +"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin' +here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let +up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the +language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a +crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl standin' here--or +have ye no shame _to_ ye? Dry up, now!" + +This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated +Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his +breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down +viciously, fell with a slap. + +"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a +little as he glanced down at it. + +Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face +which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's +collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black +and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for +a throw. + +Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his +back carelessly on Markey and missile. + +"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once +before, an' we had a--a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his +palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness, +"about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all +right for a man when he's grew up; but _some_ men never outgrows the +tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense +he's got, this world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your +eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that +midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now." + +He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked +around. + +"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and +Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r +sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob +Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out +'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty +o' time, too." + +With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across +the rotunda--the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the +cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins--and +made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"--this +being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda +of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy--glad enough to do it, too, for +her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness--took the key Markey +sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +A "STEER". + + +It might have been about four o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. +Room No. 19 looked westward--not over green swells of grass and grazing +cattle, and a wind swinging as a censer in the sky-temple, but over a +hot gravelled roof, parapetted with brick and crossed by three radial +clotheslines, upon which human garments jiggled grotesquely, like +scissored paper men. The only jig-makers extant, these, on that busy +midweek afternoon. + +At one end of this low one-story level of roof, a brick rear-wall rose, +with a row of doors that opened out upon those merry clothes-lines. +Through one of these doors, as Daisy looked, came a young girl of about +her own age. Plainly soon to become a mother, the girl's eyes had that +mild, pondering look characteristic of her condition. She dragged over +the gravel a basket of clothes; and, when she had reached an unoccupied +part of one of the clotheslines, commenced to pin the washed things +up--a mechanic's moleskin shirt, a cheap, print house-dress, a limp, +lacy blouse, a little frilled dust-cap, and other little sartorial +coquetries that told their tale of a marriage less than a year old. + +Daisy was taking her first look at "light housekeeping"; and, as she was +new from the country, with all her distaste of fields and cows and +"chores" uppermost, this back-roof prospect held her, as the new always +holds. To her, it was not sordid, but sunny and cosy, with the wonderful +city-sounds rising all about. She could almost have leaped across to the +brick parapet, which was just below the level of her window; and for one +gay adventurous moment, she came nearly doing it. She wanted to look in +those doors; to see how people lived, in the city; to talk to the young +urban housewife. She wanted to explore endlessly, to feed her boundless +and exuberant youth's appetite of the eye. + +A knock came at the door. Daisy felt a little anxious as she thought of +old Jim Hogle. He had served her turn--secured her purse for her from +Markey, toward whom she bore no grudge but felt instead a mischievous +desire to "tame down" into a wooer--and she did not want any meddling, +old, self-appointed foster-father handicapping her movements here in +town. She must let the old man, who reminded her distastefully of the +farm, know, once and for all, that her plans were "none of his +business". Perhaps, though, he would not be put aside so easily. With +this last thought in her mind, it was a very cold and hostile face that +Daisy presented, as she unlocked the door and opened it. + +"Oh-h! Woo-oo!" exclaimed a voice, with a burlesque of shivering. The +sylph of the blond coiffure skipped in, shrinking away playfully as she +closed the door. "I say--you do chill one, you know!" + +Daisy relaxed her face. + +"I thought it was that old What's-his-name," she said. + +"Ar, yes", the sylph had bobbed over, and was poking at her hair with a +forefinger, canting and turning her head before the looking +glass--trying, doubtless, to reduce her order to some semblance of +Daisy's pretty disorder; "ar, yes--'e _is_ a bit of an old nuisance, 'e +is. You carn't guess what 'e's up to now". + +"What?" Daisy's eyes widened. + +"Arskin' the boss to take you on 'ere, as a dinin'-room girl. The boss, +'e'll do it, too. 'Im and Jim-jam's old pals--'old-timers' they calls +it, among the colownials--and the 'Ogle person 'e can have any think 'e +wants for the arskin'. D'you know, I shouldn't take it, if I were you". + +"I'm not going to take it," said Daisy, with considerable fervor. + +The sylph, pulling herself away at length from the glass, came over and +sat down on the side of the bed--dangling her high heels kittenishly +and eyeing Daisy up and down. + +"Do you know what I should do, if I were in your boots?" she said. + +Daisy's eyes came up interrogatively. + +"I should go into service," pursued the sylph; "like as not, you'll 'ave +a charnce at some rich young man, that way, sooner or later. 'Ousemaids +have done that, by good management, even owver in the Old Country. Out +'ere, it's a--a caution, 'ow often it happens". + +"I don't want to marry anybody, rich or poor, just now", said Daisy; +"but how do you get into 'service', and what is it? What do you have to +do?" + +"Oh, down't you know what service is?" her companion simulated surprise +broadly; then, looking a little aside, as though addressing a third +party, the sylph murmured: "Ow, the denseniss of the mahsses! It's a +cortion, it is!" + +After this soliloquy, she faced Daisy again, looking the girl up and +down as through the mistress' lorgnette. "W'y", she said, "domestic +service, I mean--service: I carn't use any other word--in some big +'ouse, with your two evenin's off a week, if you're a good bargainer, +an' a charnce to have your comp'ny in the kitchin, when the Missis isn't +abaout--she carn't always be on 'and, can she?" + +Daisy was so attracted--not by the "company" aspect of the suggested +vocation, as by the thought that she might not only view, but actually +dwell in, some of the rich and romantic interiors she had seen in +photoplays at Thompson's Hall in Toddburn, and perhaps have an adventure +of her own in a "big 'ouse"--that she forgot to ask her companion the +obvious question: why she herself was not 'in service'. + +"I know a girl as is just leavin' her place," the sylph pursued; "I +shall give you the address, if you wish, and phone her to be on the +lookout, so you'll 'ave no trouble a-findin' the servants' entrance. +'Ave you a bit of pyper abaout you?" + +Daisy fumbled in her telescope grip and brought out an old letter, from +which she tore off the blank sheet. The sylph drew out of her coiffure a +thin pencil that had been skewered there. In a leaning, long-lettered +hand, she wrote a street name and number. + +"There", she said, as she handed the scrap of paper to Daisy, "take a +taxi--that's quickest, and it will save you arskin' your way. You'll do +withaout references--the Missis in this place I'm sendin' you to is a +bit of a soft un, and Annie will see to that paht of it. I say, I should +nip out naow, if I were you," the sylph glanced at her wrist-watch, +"while 'Ogle's away at the station with 'is bus. 'E just left as I came +up. I shan't tell him where you've gone." + +Daisy, her heart dancing with the spirit of adventure, went over to the +looking-glass to do up her hair. After a glance into the mirror, she +turned. + +"I ought to have a clean blouse," she said; then in her spirit of blunt, +brisk self-advantage, she added: "If you could lend me one, it would +help, perhaps, to make sure I get the job." + +The sylph's head came up with a snap. + +"I shouldn't be surprised if it did 'elp," she fluted, "but I sharn't do +it, just the same. W'y don't you arsk for the loan of my Sunday frock, +and 'ave done with it? Arn't I helping you enough, as it is?" + +Daisy, unabashed and with a little shrug, donned her slightly soiled +waist and brushed the worst of the lint from her travel-wrinkled skirt. +Then she picked up her telescope grip, and swung it gaily. + +"Well, I'm off," was the verbal fashion of her parting, as she skipped +down the stairs. + +In spite of the sylph's assiduity of helpfulness, the latter made no +particular demonstration of partiality as, from the head of the +stairway, she watched the girl descend. + +"Ee-yes," she murmured to herself, "they _would_ put that saucy miss +waitin' at table, in 'ere where my Bob is clerkin'. 'E's a bit rough at +the start-off with the gels, Bob is--but 'e's dreadful soft-'artid when +a gel once gets 'im gowing." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +A JOB. + + +Daisy Nixon flung out of the door of the Imperial Hotel into an +afternoon world of dust and din and ecstasy. It was the hour when +stenographers, in offices, whose high open windows command the streets +with their emancipated pedestrians, begin to rubber over-shoulder at the +clock, and to make excursions into washrooms to veneer the fresh color +of cheek and chin and forehead with cadaverous conventional powder. The +"boys" have been educated to look for this make-up (it takes an educated +taste to appreciate it!) and a girl would as soon think of leaving the +office in her stocking-feet, as without a blue-white effect on chin and +nose and forehead, and a smudge of strangulation purple blotting the +cheek's own inimitable rose. + +Six o'clock would blow shortly from a hundred sirens; and the thrill of +"quittin'-time" could already be discerned in the air. Down the street +from the direction of the big transcontinental depot came a 'bus, three +or four blocks away; and Daisy, with a habit of the countryside, +identified this vehicle instantly by the team, whose markings she had +instinctively remembered. It was the Imperial Hotel rig, returning from +the station. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if she was to evade her +self-appointed guardian, old Jim Hogle. + +A rank of jitneys was parked along the curb. Daisy approached a driver +with a mop of black curly hair so abundant that it pushed his cap to one +side. This driver half-turned his head in a formal "straight business, +and don't waste my time" way; but the corners of mouth and eye twinkled +companionably and humorously. + +"Could you", Daisy's eyes twinkled back, too, in spite of her trace of +country-girl diffidence, "could you--" + +"I should say I _could_," the chauffeur's face was expressionless, but +his accent was merry. + +"Could you", Daisy dimpled as she went on, "take me to here--see?" + +The young man hitched his chin forward in ostentatious scrutiny. Then, +in a matter-of-course way, he took the scrap of paper from Daisy's +fingers, brought it to his lips, handed it back, clicked open the +tonneau door, and motioned inward with hospitable palm. + +"Thank a-you," he said, elaborately, as Daisy stepped in; then, without +opening the fore-door, he vaulted into his own seat. There was the usual +preliminary roar, proceeding by staccato jet and pit-a-pat to smooth +pulsing motion, as the jitney glided out handily into the multifarious +traffic of the street. + +No river-ravine of Wheat-Land on a June Sunday had ever stirred Daisy +Nixon to an atom of the ecstasy that champagned her as she sailed down +that traffic-current between its Saguenay-banks of masonry, whose uneven +summits, high above her, scissored the blue silk of the sky. Forward, +upward to right, upward to left, the girl's glance travelled; then came +down to the sidewalk, no square yard of which escaped for one clear +moment from servitude to the thousand thousand tramping feet, following +at a slower pace the drift of the traffic in the hundred-foot driving +way. + +No electric welcome blazed from the front of the city hall, with its +coal-darkened brickwork and broad steps. No welcome, nor any sound but a +mighty hammer-stroke from the tall clock, telling Daisy that Time was +moving as well as she. No welcome--but Daisy Nixon felt that there could +not help be a quickening of the city's pulse at the notability of this +day, with its every moment so rare and thrilling to her. + +The pulse of the motor throbbed as, coursing in the pack of its kind, it +nosed from side to side or held a true-running swift pace astride a +tram-rail. The chauffeur, with an air of profound abstraction made +comical by his tilted cap and sportive half-presented profile, gave +"her" spark or "juice" as the occasion demanded, with a casual motion +of his gloved thumb. At a corner where two broad streets met, the +taxi-cab turned aside. Proceeding a little way down the second main +artery of traffic, it rounded a corner under a brass-grilled jeweler's +window and entered a labyrinth of side-streets in which Daisy soon lost +her sense of direction so completely that the sun, after what seemed +like an excursion into the little-visited due-north sector of the +horizon, appeared to move around to the east, and forthwith to commence +another day without pausing for the customary night-interval. + +It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the +morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly +between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved +driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and +ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to +look at it. + +This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not +the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had +set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect +would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once +been plain--very plain--Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +the chief seats in synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the +fittest--the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. +He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for +three reasons--for display, for business reasons, and to parade his +dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special +supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the +policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the +band-wagon--not because he always understood these policies and +sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em. + +The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and +if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen--we will say +for the sake of present illustration--to go, as the sylph of the +Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to +have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir +Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious +politeness Sir Thomas--at state receptions and so forth, where he was +well-watched--used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married +before he made his money--or rather, before the natural growth of the +country made his money for him. + +The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and +solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a +rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a +huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and +mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his +name--if it had not come by the political route, that is to say--had +come through connection with the building of some railroad or government +building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had +benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison. + +Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every +dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let +him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed. + +The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. +Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, +"telescope" grip in hand. + +"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not +pay for a "lift" on one's way. + +"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The +features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but +eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched. + +"What's that?" she said. + +"Your fare--one dollar." + +"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in--and was +presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the +dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed +the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes. + +"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, +don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the +mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to +find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it." + +Daisy dimpled and turned off again. + +"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." +Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps. + +"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door +is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm +only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring +the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a +green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after." + +Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have +a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not look +back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see +whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the +horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street. + +Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking +out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her +housemaid friend to be "on the lookout". + +"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a +thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as +the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out +with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely +necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could--which +was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as +she was--that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because +otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter. + +Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as +soon's I could. It's a long way." + +"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the +present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison +kitchen. + +If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it +undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in +the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the +farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it +for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. +It was great and clean and shining. + +Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain +but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of +cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong +white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk. + +"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter +with a powerful, brisk movement. + +"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I +shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets +here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and +had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her. + +"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, +clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously +against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a +canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. +"You'll come too, Allie." + +Daisy, who scented future advantage in an alliance with the hospitable +Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at +the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and +leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, +but well-worn--evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make +room for the latest and newest guest-room equipment in the apartments +the family occupied. Picture post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on +the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and +cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed +palatial. + +"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy. + +"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad +it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat. + +"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the +Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, +'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I +down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell +you." + +"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her +with considerable interest, "well, well." + +"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, cautiously, as the thought +crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back +out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, +an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle +so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we +go to see the Missis ... Ar--'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab +in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the +Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me +straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend +it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the +Manor to my Jawge." + +Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose +and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was +superbly "full" where Alice was flat. + +"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was +voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now--we sharn't have any bother. +She'll tieke you, straight off--I know she will." + +Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for +tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. +Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments +of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an +immediate curious warming of the heart--curious, because Daisy usually +faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while +the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, +and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any +eventuality. Lady Harrison--without knowing it, however--disarmed Daisy +Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely +shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she +got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this +woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, +guarded, combative sixteen and a half years. + +Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or +marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home +to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it +was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his +self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in +the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the +smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in +"getting" him--a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had +performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, +paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie +and slept in a bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. +Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a +home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other +Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention. + +"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice. + +"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table +and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very +nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady +Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the +besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a +stranger. + +"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to +conceal her impatience to be gone. + +"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's--very +nice--very nice indeed." + +"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, +"I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'." + +"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's--that's very +nice--quite." + +Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet +collected her wages, or she would have banged the door--as a parting +sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully +saucy and flopping. + +Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant +note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely +natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once +mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or +whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness +as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made +communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as +soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so +easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled +down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose. +As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more +homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased +proportionately. + +"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and +rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a +pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the +kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of +her large wandering hands. + +"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response. + +"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs +stood sociably together. + +"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down, +cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward, +beneath her chin. + +"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around. + +"Have you--have you references?" + +"What?" said Daisy. + +"A--references--letters from somebody for whom you have worked for," +Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction, +occasionally used a preposition too many. + +"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I--but I--," it was an effort +for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as +well as I can--for _you_." + +"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time, +in its proper place. "But my hus-- but Sir Thomas Harrison may require +references. He generally does." + +Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little. +She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house. + +"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she +noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to +get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy--as +I'm sure you will--that he--ur, that Sir Thomas--will give you a trial." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +THE PLEBEIAN. + + +Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and +broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly +as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes +pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A +great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun +found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with +light. + +"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent +joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the +window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been +an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had +glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had +previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun +that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing. + +"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking +his swivel chair in a way that made Evans--a nervous father of five, who +sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m., three nights a week, +minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish, +"took in" all the dances--writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't +you, for once." + +"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He +was a very rapid stenographer--he had to be, or he wouldn't have been +long with Sir Thomas Harrison--and the keys of his machine, on its +noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane. + +Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and +embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the +concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down +nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his +"pur-rsonal power, sir". + +"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir, +not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time." + +In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His +stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful +lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair +was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at +least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a +bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff, +close-cropped moustache; a month that blathered redly when he +conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy, +and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas. + +Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped +briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust +it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At +the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a +mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on +reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would +conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would +commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir +Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen +poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had +reached up to the hook behind him for his hat. + +Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He +dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that +he broke the pen-nib off short. + +"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue +blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put +commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they +learn y' no grammar at th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat--'n +git out y'r machine--'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r +job, or what, Evans?" + +"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a +fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right +away." + +"Oh-h--y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on +his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at +himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to +do it, Evans. I guess yeh _will_ do it over agen--an' ten times over +agen, if I say so." + +By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself +about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the +letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it--he was growing +hungry, for it was 6.15--dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a +flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror. + +Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language +that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. +Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, +showing up disastrously on their gray background--the result of that +pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen. + +A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in +front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established +dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on +arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself +another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power." + +In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what +he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger +beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another +customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: +Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, +after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, +adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for +the first time that moment, came over briskly. + +"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to +tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his +bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman +who faced him across the counter. + +"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a +customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth, +adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can take those +out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat +sir--fine material." + +Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter, +lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat. + +"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a +stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?" + +"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done +before Wednesday--the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind +this week, owing to press of work." + +"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half +an hour off, an' fix that coat--to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine +o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go. + +"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our +fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must +take its turn." + +"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time." + +"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this +house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never +shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness +and courtesy; but it has paid, as well." + +"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on the counter, and drove out the words, +"it's a ba-ad rule"--the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective +with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible, +flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth--"a bad +rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to +summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th' +jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars--get me-e?" + +"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell. + +"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a +step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up +on the Crescent. Yoe know that"--the contractor's head oscillated +laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this +forth--"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same +Crescent street. You won't get none of it--none that I ken ketch an' +head off. Understand!" + +Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the +door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas +Harrison pleasantly. + +"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. +Good evening." + +Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out. + +"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper, +whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above +Benwell's ledger. + +The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat--not +his--which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its +hook. + +"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the +hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great +credit for his energy and push--even though sometimes that energy may be +a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary--especially +about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us +instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to." + +Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused +cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but +audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation: + +"Shoelaces, sir?" + +The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from +across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, +stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat +across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his +pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting +the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the +"greenback" he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar +note. + +"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the +spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours, +an' keep the shoelaces." + +Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in +the lower part of the leather face--a slit whose corners curled slowly +upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up +the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his +pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was +folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of +his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view, +it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim +McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on +the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar +bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his +vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled +and knotted pair of shoelaces. + +"Brah-_vo_!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter; +"Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know." + +The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the +street-side, with gloved hands resting on the tonneau door and cane +hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware, +Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank +and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for +membership was even now awaiting consideration. + +Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace +man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength, +had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial +investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue. + +"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me--hey!" He +crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its +winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and +gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around +upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda. + +"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home +to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the +night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?" + +Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully, +fought back a smile. + +"Why,--er--," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment; +looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening; +then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation; +"I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir +Thomas." + +It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing +he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had +tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor--but +the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of +his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his +interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an +anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's +auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a +pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that +the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see +the beast in its native haunts--to note how it lived, and what it ate. + +Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging +like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion, +Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians +and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir +William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate +hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced +around, Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If +the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted, +there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison, +engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware. + +"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone, +through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?" + +And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back +humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!" + +Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep +in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his +presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it +progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact, +engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after +entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered +note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible, +Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The +word was "Bohunk." + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +A HUMAN HORTICULTURIST. + + +"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from +the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, +the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very +well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the +things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, +you see, since Alice has left us." + +"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the +soup-tureen--watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious +to please her mistress--the first disinterestedly kind person she had +met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her +great adventure--kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it +cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye +needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when +they're set doon. There--listen!" + +Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room +swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots +dried by the sun of the street was smothered in soft carpeting as the +tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. +A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The +feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and +a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill. + +"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment +with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; +"look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll +'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is +face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an +upraw, 'e down't." + +Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she +spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed +through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held +open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered +soup-tureen and warm plates. + +"Hey--bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, +crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier +coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; +"what do we pay you for?" + +Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, +in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting +awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the +soup-dish. + +There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward--his +"pur-rsonal power" must be kept active--which Sir Thomas always +delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of +many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, +had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point +of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to +avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying +to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His +jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it +a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into +his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around +with the usual glare upward. + +A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here +at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the +greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side +of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, +knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he +saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and +dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen. + +What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your +sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire +you ..." etc., etc.--making each sentence hurt as much as possible, +according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities. + +What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the +new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty +good!" + +And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of +the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a +little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of +her eye. His face changed ever so little--just a slight lowering of the +eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip--but enough to let +Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison +except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal +with--that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy +Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures. + + * * * * * + +Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda +of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the +position, even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave +him as little work or concern as his several other business connections +of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the +money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large +unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal +thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago +"quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper." + +Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his +seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself +was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two +things most people want most--money, and social prestige and power--and +has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and +wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is +apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as +interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his +experience of the real thing. + +Ware had the highest social status, both by birth--which counts for +little in the West--and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere +in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a +gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born +wealthy. Sir William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or +wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a +friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to +have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He +wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see +everybody a friend to everybody else. + +Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved +had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate +harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, +immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had +never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that +there would some day be a Lady Ware--the kind he wanted. + +These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: +Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have +an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She +must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. +She must, above all, be new material--that is, young enough not to be +hardened against impress. + +In his quest for a wife--or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present +matrimonial vigilance--Sir William had followed a course exactly +opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of seeking out some +woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then +analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, +he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, +and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his +brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and +feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir +William Ware proposed to discover and marry. + +When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had +been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry +her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The +chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in +another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered. + + * * * * * + +Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, +Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached +out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the +doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy. + +"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a +word', as he calls it, wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of +his head. + +"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin +and making a mouth at the messenger. + +"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, +ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it +swung in his direction. + +"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, +after a rap like that. Skedaddle!" + +The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy +table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and +sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a +little poke with her forefinger and thumb. + +"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the +mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this +minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's." + +"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource +and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next +time, and send him off home." + +"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm +on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no +snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me." + +Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement +driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the +big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were +great maples, with mysterious darkness between--thickening into a group +with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked +the junction of driveway and street. + +Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty--although how he had +found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the +Imperial Hotel--for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had +estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, +might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, +the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling +for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride." + +Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees +might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each +was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to +trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to +know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the +chance to tell him, "plump and plain" and finally, that she was quite +capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She +hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about +that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning +about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he +might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men +were of only two classes--those who were "forward" and "had fun in +them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" +to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a +girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and +secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got +them started, and could not be handled at all. + +She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so--for +the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle +shaped for adventure--when there stepped out from under the foliage a +tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good +evening"--not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and +hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something +faintly familiar about his voice. + +"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he +said. + +Daisy, withholding speech--she had found out by experience that it was +a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for +the first few moments--let her companion precede her through the gate. + +In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane +on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the +big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a +certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the +pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest. + +She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized +that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"--his quiet clothes, +worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, +either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing +figure--because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the +polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with +pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray +showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed +him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of +enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in +a companionable sense, at once. + +Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and dimpling, perusing him with +eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness--armed cap-a-pie +in every virile nerve and muscle--not a bit timorous, but flashingly on +guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes +twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against +the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and +poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor +that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses +of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped--in short, +susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground. + +"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more +preface than the friendliest of all smiles. + +There! It was out--said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say +it--without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that +had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it. + +Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity--his glance steady, but +so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl +looked back at him--her face first shortening and dimpling to a +half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling +again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's natural +expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew +was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed--to +put it the way it presented itself to her--as though she had stepped +into a book or a moving-picture or a dream. + +Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it. + +"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll +answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?" + +Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins--one twin +going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's +side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see +how the adventure was going to turn out--was conscious of a short walk +under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of +a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained +alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly +behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast +face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the +quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin +of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant. + +Sir William, without looking at the menu the waiter held before him, +gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, +Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with +ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy. + +"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy--at +least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the +table--seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and +sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into +one a moment, and the whole Daisy said: + +"Who's Lady Ware?" + +Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her +with a kind of pondering exaltation--a deep but self-contained joy. + +"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long +time, my dear. But she's here at last." + +"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively. + +"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall +manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both +try hard, and try together." + +"Well--Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some +more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman." + +"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out a strong white hand and put +it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am +infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that--infinitely rejoiced. The way +you said it, too! My word!" + +His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the +air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is +surprised to find that it knows some tricks already. + +"What's your name?" said Daisy. + +Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of +his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. +Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand! + +"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, +common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have +to learn to be-Ware, you see." + +The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he +brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in +like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and +silver--and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a +neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, +bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a +coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little +cubes of cheese. + +Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, +with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter +of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their +saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream. + +"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you +don't like it, we'll have in some cream." + +Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly +lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it. + +"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some +cre-eam, quick." + +Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of +his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It +was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this +tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was +passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. +If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost +spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage +ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if +_she_ was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, +the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon +herself the bloom and body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on +his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any +sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his +half-century and more. + +"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially. + +Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her +saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and +out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness. + +"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting +her head a little on one side. + +"I say--stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt +upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know--don't flirt, +please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?" + +"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes +twinkled. + +"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir +William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't +you?" + +Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the +proffered cup. + +"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone +like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening, +covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think +about our--our plan, as it were?" + +The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something +about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from +Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with +brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and +trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which +Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its +profundity. + +Daisy cleared her throat a little--a habit she had when about to speak +seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of +the western farm country. + +"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you +anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped +beneath her chin. + +"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand +under his. + +"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I +guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and +I like all the boys the same--just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty +rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and +gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along with. But--but when +a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her +cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have +to--have to--oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know +how--they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't +want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way +I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help +it." + +Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling--as though she would +like to recall what she had just "come out with"--possessed her for a +moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen +years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and +freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, +with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite +of herself. + +Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his +eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of +several emotions. + +"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest +at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever +do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. +Boys are pretty near all alike--you go out with them a couple of times, +and you know all about them. They're all right to play with--but when a +girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way +it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as +hens' teeth." + +Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that +Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its +customary dimpling. + +"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, +putting her head on one side. + +Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to +the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with +her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she +stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his +chin. + +"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly +well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe +that I don't intend to forget you--in fact, haven't the slightest +intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do +you think, in your present position?" + +"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house." + +"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very fine, indeed.... Now, I +shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He +relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and +cane. + +Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the +way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had +drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll +keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You +won't let the city spoil you, I mean--it has a tendency that way, you +know." + +Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, +"I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this. + +"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he +said. + +"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and +gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most +previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye +moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at +the good-bye moment. + +"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his +previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean +on a cane--almost as though it were a part of him--and, just as she was +about to reply, interjected, "wait a bit, though. I believe I should +like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, +guessing. Nineteen?" + +"Seventeen," said Daisy. + +"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and +crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased +more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is +only seventeen--the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name--do you +realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate +way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I +should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean." + +"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy." + +"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I +knew--that is, I almost knew--it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, +little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his +hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright +vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye +time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what +we've been talking about--shall you?" + +If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an +attempt to take her hand, Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no +such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the +arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket +of his coat. + +Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the +light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each +of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her +cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little +hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind +her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused +there, then was extended toward Sir William. + +The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, +however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the +tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way. + +"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were +less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing +overpower you." + +With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and +flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement. + +"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had +extended toward him. With this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned +and walked away. + +Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and +humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively. + +"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well--he'll be back, if," she +flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +A KNIGHT IN THE KITCHEN. + + +Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to +the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to +certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge--the cafe, +with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on +its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight +before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the +presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply +and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had +unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole +city yet new to her--new and unexplored and fascinating--the experience +through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or +a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy +was most amazed at her own part in it--at the strong and sane impulse +which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt, +if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift +unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story. + +"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned +softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance. +He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old +enough to know his own mind." + +A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door +showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad +Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the +bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, +on this her first unfamiliar night in it. + +She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on +linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of +the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in +his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir +Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight +sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his +shirt-sleeves. + +"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of +water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from +keepin' the little date, hey?--he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us +none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have +one, on me. _Suddown!_" + +This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger--his +thick, blunt forefinger--toward one of the two chairs that stood by the +table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a +celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat +down obediently and demurely in the chair. + +Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of +water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other +glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet +in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking +vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and +the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty +chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it. + +"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are--just the two of us, hey? +Everybody else in bed, but--we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a +little drink. C'm on!" + +Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her +glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of +light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass +joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and +coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. +Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood +untouched. + +"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. +Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I +know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you _sassy_ babee--come on +to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his +new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee. + +"There," he said,--in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the +incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, +"how's that--better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist. + +Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as +she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away +from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling. + +"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't +you? Is this why the last girl left?" + +"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a +momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that +sour-mugged English rake-handle! I--I couldn't love a girl with a face +like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about +Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on--give us a little baby kiss." + +"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful +points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's +answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the +table and place it about her. + +Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the +red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places +like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond +speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, +making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be +a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness +had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and +succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, +watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a +doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis. + +At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning +flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest. + +"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for +nothing." + +Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his +pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off. + +"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, +where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering. + +"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in +oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that +bunch!" + +"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go." + +Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the +saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand. + +"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all +his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, +half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning +movement off his knee and away. + +"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to +try to get this money back, and I'll _yell_. Jean the cook is sleeping +just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack +Robi'son'." + +At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh +that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the +encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew +that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man +need only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering +passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the +gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, +finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, +elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a +sneer--such a sneer!--Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look +so ugly! + +"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words +came easily enough now. "But don't think you win--oh, no-o! D'ye know +what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?" + +"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money +is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going +to say you were sorry." + +"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in +your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're +going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye +hear!" + +"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show _you_ something now. +Here's all I care for your dirty money." + +With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, +realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big +kitchen gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, +and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame +leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's +coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as +he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless +ashes. + +"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I _am_ goin' to +fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' +over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to +lay information against you for stealin' that money--see? I'm a-goin to +have you arrested--see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town +for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his +vest, "and you--who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with +you yet, if--" + +"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from +Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the +bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas +Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an' +I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist +tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed--that's what you'll do!" + +"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, had recovered himself and +had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish +speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll +clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we +have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help. +Neither of you's worth a hurra----" + +"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not +inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide +here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an' +keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to +y'r bed, lassie." + +Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust +forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She +returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch +eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a +cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel. + +"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he +passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning." + +"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the +door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a +man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled her through the stair-door +and up the steps to the bedroom. + +"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom +door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's +folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o' +bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge +you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back--he's that kind, +ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word, +after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht', +as oor Bawby Burrns has it--is he no?" + +"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so +bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before +I'm through." + +"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers, +thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest +broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her +head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd +mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers--any mischief, I +mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye--I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn. +Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's +house-cleanin' day." + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +A DANCE AND AN INVITATION. + + +"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the +delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in +the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said +naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep +it in if she was worried." + +Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the +healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of +speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the +sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each +of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon +the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out +somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which +Lady Harrison--who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and +would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her +trips downtown--paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly +in its place. + +"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy. + +"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding the younger girl's curves and +color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She +disna like it, though. She's a plain woman--a richt leddy, though she +was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken." + +"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy. + +"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were +electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough +to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey--whiles +I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should +walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every +family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae +be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see--but I'd want tae be +mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle +o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some +man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and +heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration, +"how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye +were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye +an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye." + +Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile +and untired as though it were morning and she just up. Then she paused +a moment, and her face fell a little. + +"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist." + +Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo. + +"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said. + +"Thirty-eight." + +"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a +bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide +across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. +Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk." + +A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,--her serge skirt brushed +by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing +a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and +there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso--came +dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison +drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled +with the zest of life. + +As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in +the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the +driver came to a halt. + +"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going." + +Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," assumed an expression which, +just fitted the occasion. + +"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her +creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but +continued to look straight before him in his characteristic, +businesslike way--showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an +eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was +obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all. + +Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at +the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for--for +street-car fare." + +"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly. + +"Nowhere," said Daisy. + +"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?" + +"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the +corner of her eye. + +"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car +and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to +city park." + +"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest, +"I couldn't do-oo that." + +"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief +study of her face. "Got to report to mother?" + +"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?" + +"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as +I got the gasoline. Hop in!" + +The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it +off, and backed away. + +"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one--two--three--go!" + +"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy. + +"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was +you never out to a park?" + +"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry +equivocation. + +"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur +remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the +longer you wait." + +"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all +you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to +the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an' +girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run. +I'll come out to the park again for you, about eleven o'clock, and +bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?" + +"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do +I have to come home with you?" + +"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He +reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a +dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her. + +"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you +feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I--I've got +carfare--ten cents carfare--if I should take a notion to go." + +"How you goin' to find your way?" + +"Where?" + +"Park." + +"How d'you know I'd go to the park?" + +"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told +you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind +o' farmers was your people?" + +"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of +her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City +Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park, +I'll pick up some _nice_ fellow uptown and get him to take me. Some +_nice_ fellow!" + +"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this +car, you--you--" + +Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about +to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned. + +"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling +all over as she wrestled with her merriment. + +"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the +Devil, if you like. Come on--get in! Don't keep me here all night, +waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on." + +Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside +him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself. + +"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed +mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead +through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother +aspect--the look of a man to be trusted. + +"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away +down-street--the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only +being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? +S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!" + +"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him. + +"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I +said--this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump +you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed." + +It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the +promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," +enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. +Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, +exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with +either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of +pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for +purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she +was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or +beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the +street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually +more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and +drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the +skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded +road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet +bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns +interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began to bubble and +sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the +same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted +to let the crowd of passengers--many-hued in their summer dresses as +though one were looking at them through a prism--dance and chatter and +giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, +until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his +steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing +down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting +them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the +walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in +their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, +racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in +spring. + +Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park +like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns, +and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the +evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet. + +"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a +long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now, +ain't you? Yes, you are--not! Hey, don't knock a hole in the hood of my +rig, just because you think you're done with me." + +Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head +against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that, +in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and +wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned. + +"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling +and his shoulders shaking a little--his way of expressing merriment. + +"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in +the mechanism. "Get this thing open!" + +"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set +here. We don't want to--hi, there!" + +For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing +this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as +she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open +under her hand. + +"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this +town, we open the door _before_ we get out--not after. Come on, then, +friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?" + +"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, looking about her delightedly as they +ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion. + +"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was +the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner." + +Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The +two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat +down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable, +iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating +ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws. + +Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see +couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the +conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood. + +"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the +last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you +take me out there." + +"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I +don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this +apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments +impossible to find in one and the same person. + +In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nod for everybody and from +everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced +up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of +seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him--just +according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in +an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention +from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at +a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the +benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample +opportunity for a few introductions. + +"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the +waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red--naturally +red--that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend +of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with +staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to +go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've +changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a +careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with +her new friend, the red-necked Colossus. + +"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking +largely down at her, "the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't +tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie." + +Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed +in the scene before her. + +"Yon Jamie," said her companion--nudging her lightly this time, to +attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the +lass." + +"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly. + +"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the +name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way, +waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and +beamed on the big Scot. + +"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to +talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?" + +"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the +name of that boy who brought me here?" + +Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee. + +"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give +ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's +Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a +dance, lassie." + +As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time, +she heard a girl with a humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just +behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange +girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at +the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to +her Jock, on the way home to-night!" + +"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down +twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the +company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. +D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple +to the right from us?" + +"Who's he?" + +"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, +the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I +stand in the dancin'--ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor +neighbor, behind here, say--but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. +He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next +dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be +down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor." + +"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy. + +"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock, evasively, as the +dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!" + +A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up +from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, +came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, +Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as +though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He +had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and +cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of +index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, +deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly +forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, +merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the +transverse wrinkles across his forehead. + +"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at +Daisy, "what d'ye know!" + +"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' +partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to +my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon +which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin +to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love. + +A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick Cluett, champion pugilist, +was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about +to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor. + +"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy. + +Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an +angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers. + +"Want to try me?" he jetted. + +"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely. + +"Do anything once?--eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm +in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her +down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given +the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you +can be a life-saver, if you like, see?" + +"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise. + +"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the +uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard +bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman--he's the fellow +looks after my business--is getting up a little party after the boxin' +show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to +come as _my_ partner? Eh, little sporto?" + +"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?" + +"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper--game o' +cards--any old thing to kill time. Bob!" + +A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by. + +"Bob, Miss--what's this your name is, again?--Miss Nixon here's to have +first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night. +She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come." + +"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's +hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll +come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one +side. + +"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed, +glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined +his group. + +The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and +were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was +ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic +girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a +beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher +could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her +mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the two footed it in +a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be +told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, +slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at +the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued +without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as +boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as +she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his +arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been +surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat +and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in +Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had +heard of her talk, that his relish awoke. + +"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat +at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An +attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly. + +"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett. + +"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the +name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines +and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr. +Cluett." + +"Nut sundae--twice," her companion directed, briefly, with a sidewise +jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of +the realm. + +"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied +themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?" + +"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure. + +"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?" + +"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly. + +"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought +it over yet?" + +Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of +cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded. + +"Maybe," she murmured. + +"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go +at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for +a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had +another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and +he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system". + +"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr. +Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing +him any more than once in an evening." + +Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to +take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very +strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'--eh, little +one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me +down." + +Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The +trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at +the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself +t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have--I see it in +your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?" + +Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big +stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully, +moving her toe in the gravel. + +"I'm--oh, I'm just--just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright +as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy +Knight--and thanks for the 'lift'." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +THE BOXING MATCH AND AFTERWARD. + + +Daisy stood before her mirror, "fixing" her hair. Whether it was Daisy's +native knack of coiffure, or whether it was that her hair was of that +wavy kind which "fixes" becomingly almost by itself, she secured the +effect she wanted without much trouble. The dark-blue dress she had +bought with fifteen dollars borrowed from Jean, and to which she had +pinned a lace collar, set off her neck well. She made a little face at +herself in the looking-glass and turned about, just in time to face +Jean, who had entered quietly, shutting the door behind her. + +"What like o' company is yon ye're keepin', lassie?" Jean, as she spoke, +sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading out her strong digits over +her knees in a masculine attitude. + +"What company?" said Daisy, a little puzzled. She had made no mention of +her party to Jean. + +"Yon two bidin' down in the kitchen the now," Jean replied, regarding +Daisy in a slow speculative way, as though searching for some +characteristic she had perchance overlooked in forming her estimate of +the girl; "a mon wha's breath smells of thae lozenges, and a +thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes aboot. They askit for you, by +your ain name, too. Did ye tell them to ca', or," Jean's tone grew +sternly hopeful, "shall I send them packin'?" + +"I guess it's me they want," said Daisy, recognizing Masterman in Jean's +description of the man. Then she added, meeting the elder woman's glance +challengingly, "I'm going to a boxing-match, and to a--a little +party--afterwards, with Nick Cluett the fighter." + +Somewhat to Daisy's surprise, Jean seemed to look less severe as she +heard the host of the "little party" named. + +"Well," she said, after a moment, "I was just twa minds about lockin' ye +in, lassie, and sending they people aboot their business; but if it's +Nicky Cluett ye're gaun with, ye'll tak' no harm--that is, unless ye +encourage him, an' then ye'll tak' no end o' harm, and it'll serve ye +right. My cousin Jock Lauder--Baby Jock, they call him--kens Nick weel." + +"Is Baby Jock your cousin?" said Daisy, "why, I had a dance with him +last night, out at the park. + +"Is that so, then?" Jean leaned forward with interest. "Jock's a fighter +too, although he'd never let on, withoot ye speir him direct.... Well, +gae along, then, to your pairty--but keep a sharp eye on yon person with +the scentit breath. I'd no trust _him_ as far as I could cast him." + +The long red automobile that had been waiting near the sidewalk outside +the Harrison gateway, answered to the electric starter with a tigerish +snore and, as the clutch was thrown on, bore out the feline similitude +with a four-yard leap that brought it diagonally out into rapid motion +down the street. + +"Any good with the mitts?" asked Mr. Masterman jocularly, turning toward +Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible +lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of +the faculty of speech. + +"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley--she whom +Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes +aboot"--"Miss Nixon's a _lady_--can't you see! A perfect lady--huh?" +And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman +was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her +front hair, winked at Daisy. + +Daisy responded with a twinkling, half-smiling, non-committal look, and +then turned her face streetward. The sensation of the swift ride along +the thoroughfare, with its glittering electric lamps, its traffic roar, +and its trampling--these influences, and the anticipation of risk in the +coming "little party" at an unnamed place, with men of untested +tendencies, had strung the girl's nerves to a pleasant tension of +excitement. Talk would interfere with her enjoyment of the feeling +which thrilled her. Besides, Mr. Masterman's face pained Daisy. These +were the reasons she chose to watch the sights of the street in +preference to talking. + +Cutting corners with a lawless brevity after he past the last point +policeman, Mr. Masterman finally brought his car to an adroit and easy +halt in a line of others before the door of a big theatre. Dismounting, +he swung Miss Yockley to the curb. Daisy hopped out of the tonneau +without aid. The three passed through the vestibule; and, as they +confronted the ticket-taker, Mr. Masterman said, tersely, "Girls is with +me, Harry", and the official ogling Daisy a little, stood docilely +aside. + +A few moments later, Daisy Nixon, entering a curtained way and sitting +down alongside Miss Yockley on green plush seats in the lower right-hand +box, had her first look at a stage set for a boxing match. + +"What are the ropes for?" she said to Miss Yockley, as she stared across +the bare stage floor, with its Spartan garniture--the hempen square, the +backless wooden stools facing each other diagonally, the battered +water-buckets, each with its bobbing sponge. + +"You can search me, honey," absently returned Miss Stella; who was too +busy searching, with the eyes that "rolled aboot", for acquaintances +among the audience, to pay much attention, either to her "kid" companion +or to the squared "ring" which she had, as it were, seen a hundred times +but never looked at. Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with +observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the +paraphernalia. + +Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, +Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a +slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, +and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the +surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs +at the ringside. Among this crowd, which included newspaper reporters, +moneyed patrons of the boxing bouts, and near friends or relatives of +those who were to take part in the matches of the evening, Daisy soon +picked out the large ingratiating face of Mr. Masterman. + +When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two +youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes +and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at +diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young +man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, +lifting to the audience a face on which the nose had been, by some +mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it +seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud: + +"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it +will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz--on my +right--and Younk Kelly--on my left." + +Spider Clausewitz--he on the speaker's right--did not hear the +announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the +pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of +eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet +the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare +back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least +see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation +sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy. + +So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, +half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an +attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so +aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and +unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as +it were, just waiting to be turned loose. + +It seemed but a moment after the announcer--who was also the +referee--finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of +the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other +in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience +shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving +every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting +back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful +in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides +with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she +saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's +arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his +glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped. + +Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, +with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from +some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made +Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads +showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled. + +Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his +opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a win +would gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious +to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and +practically defenceless. + +It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to +the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about +Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the +roped square. Again the audience cheered. + +"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators +as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all." + +"He's one wise kid," said Miss Stella, yawning. "I wish they's quit +killin' time with stuff like that, though, an' call on the big bout. +Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett +at work! He's offering a thousand dollars to-night to anybody that will +out-point him in four rounds. This is one time, honey, when you and I +are billed to see some fun--more farce-comedy than fightin' though--when +these half-baked fighters comes after Nick's money." + +Miss Yockley's wish was not long in being gratified. The second +"preliminary" was less than one round in duration, and afforded Daisy, +for the first time in her life, that rather sickening spectacle of a +strong man sprawled half-unconscious over the straining ropes of a ring, +trying vainly to rise to his feet, while another waited with tensed +body to strike him down again as soon as his weak knees left the sawdust +floor in their slow painful uprising. + +"Aw, get the ambulance," fanned Miss Yockley loudly, chewing gum. "That +referee can't count past 8." + +"What's the matter with that poor man?" said Daisy, all sympathy. + +"Oh, nothin'," said Miss Stella. "Wants to have a little sleep, I guess. +Oh--at last!" + +For the referee, concluding his measured count to 10 while the fallen +man still rested on hand and knee, had turned brusquely, caught the +gloved hand of the other fighter, and thrust it up in the air in token +of a win. + +"O' course he's the winner," snorted Miss Daisy's companion; "they +should never have took that other fellow away from his sandwich job. He +can't stand up without he's got a couple of sign-boards to brace him.... +But look, honey; here's our Nicky. Always inspects the ring like that, +so's the boy that goes down in front of him within the first ten seconds +after Nick gets in action, can't claim he slipped on a banana peel." + +Daisy withdrew her eyes from their sympathetic following of the limp +victim of the second preliminary bout, as the latter's seconds, a +shoulder under each of his armpits, escorted him wabblingly back into +the wings. + +As she looked again at the roped square, she saw that in the interval +there had hopped into the enclosure her partner of the dance in the park +pavilion, Nick Cluett, a boxer of the kind that is born and not made. +Hither and thither, slim and lithe in his gay-colored bath-robe, he +moved--stamping the floor here and there with a testing heel, trying the +tautness of the ropes, saying nothing, but noticing everything. + +"They can't never put nothin' over on Nicky," commented Miss Yockley, +more than generous with her negatives when she wanted to be emphatic. +"They used to lay traps for him, when they seen how he was comin' on in +the boxing game--for some of these here so-called 'sports' is the +meanest, trickiest skates this side of the Hot Place. But after Nick +showed up a couple o' them kind of low-down promoters, by bawling them +out right in front of the audience, so's everybody could get a line on +them, they let up on their monkey-work. They don't try nothin' now; but +Nick, he always gives everything the onct-over, to be on the safe side." + +Apparently everything was in order in the present case; for Cluett, his +hands thrust in the pockets of his bath-robe, stepped to the centre of +the roped space to speak to the referee and to Masterman, his manager. +Facing him, on the referee's left, stood the man who was to be his first +opponent--a stocky fellow, whose calves, showing underneath the frayed +edge of the old dressing-gown he wore, were more those of a +football-player than a boxer. + +"Nothin' but a big ox," said Miss Yockley, with a sniff; "Nick'll play +with him a little, and then push him over. The gink will have some +bother fallin' down, with them size feet. Maybe he'll go to sleep +standin' up. Funny things happens in the ring sometimes, kiddo." + +In a moment or two, the fighters stepped back to their corners, threw +off their wraps, and stood forth in abbreviated trunks. It was seen that +the build of Cluett's opponent bore out the promise of his calves. He +was heavy-muscled and broad of chest; thick-necked, and with a +hard-looking chin that moved to the chewing of gum. + +About the physique of Cluett himself, as he stood at ease, his arms +lightly hanging, there was nothing remarkable, except that one shoulder +seemed to be a little lower than the other. His muscles flowed along his +limbs instead of standing out in knots and ridges. Standing unposed, +with his perennial smile and his almost sleepy expression of eye, he +looked like a somewhat indolent schoolboy, about to take a dip in a +peaceful swimming-pool. + +"That big thing over in the other chair will hurt him," said Daisy, +anxiously; "why don't they make the big fellow take somebody his own +size?" + +"Don't talk," said Miss Yockley, briefly, "just sit still and watch. It +ain't our Nick that's going to get hurt, honey." + +But Daisy exclaimed aloud, and even the confident Miss Yockley herself +almost winced, as Hobday, the big man, after a bare touch of Cluett's +glove in the customary preliminary handshake, struck upward immediately +and without warning. As the quick treacherous upper-cut shot toward +Nick's chin, Bob Masterman, who could move with a marvellous quickness +for all his avoirdupois, when occasion seemed to demand speed, jumped up +from his seat and thrust his head through between the ropes, ready to +shout his protest to the referee. + +But, before Mr. Masterman made a sound, a glove, at the end of a slim +smooth-muscled arm, waved him away with a backward gesture. Nick Cluett, +untouched, slid his manager a corner of a smile as he stepped lightly +backward, just far enough to be missed by Hobday's left, which followed +that gentleman's unsuccessful right in a brisk second try for Cluett's +jaw-point. Nick's guard was languidly low, and on his face was an almost +dreamy look which a group of Hobday's backers in the front orchestra +seats evidently took for an expression of daze; for, "Finish him, Jim! +He's all yours, boy!" they yelled lustily. + +Bob Masterman stole a look at Cluett's face. In the centre of the +never-changing smile, he saw the mouth-corner drawn up in a dry, +calculating way. The manager's momentary flicker of anxiety passed. He +leaned back, folded his arms, grinned, and waited. + +Jim Hobday grew more aggressive every moment. The round was +three-quarters over, and he had practically had the ring to himself, +except for a gliding thing like a shadow, which eluded his fists by so +little each time he swung that at every lunge he grew more encouraged, +although he hit nothing. + +"Come on--fight!" he growled, bull-like. + +Mr. Cluett's smile deepened a little, and his lips moved. "Say when," +were the words they framed. + +"When?--why, right now!" roared Hobday, loud enough for the group of his +backers to hear. + +Mr. Cluett obeyed immediately. It was difficult for the eye to register +the movement he made; but to those at the vantage-point of the ringside, +it looked as though he doubled under Hobday's guard and then +straightened up, all in one movement like a snake striking. + +Hobday's knees were seen to sag. His gloves dropped on Cluett's +shoulders, half as though caressing his opponent, then slipped limply +off. His whole heavy body collapsed, like a wet mattress. + +"Ouch!" said Miss Yockley, feeling her chin. Then, glancing sidewise at +Daisy, she commented, "Well, kid, I suppose you feel easier now, eh?" + +"W-what did he do to him?" said Daisy, a little breathlessly; mixing her +pronouns, in her marvelling. + +"Oh, nothing," said Miss Yockley, ironically, "nothing at all. Only sent +that big bovalapus off to Dreamland, on a through ticket, with one +swipe. That's all!" + +After Mr. Hobday, in an only partially recovered state, had been +removed, and the hubbub of comment among his backers in the orchestra +seats had subsided, there came a lull. Mr. Cluett sat in his chair in +the corner of the ring, nodding and occasionally replying briefly to +some remark made by the chatting group that surrounded him. From back in +the wings came presently the sound of argument and protest; and, after a +moment, a hale person in striped trunks shot into view as though he had +been playfully pushed. With one sheepish glance toward the audience, +however, he turned about and beat a retreat. + +"You see," explained Miss Yockley, to Daisy, "they put their best man up +first; and now that the others has seen what Nick done to him, you +couldn't coax 'em into the ring with old cheese. It looks to me as +though everything's all over for to-night. Wait, though--here comes the +spieler. Let's hear what he has to say; then we'll go around and see how +soon Bob and Nick will be ready to come away." + +"Ladhies and gentlemen," said the announcer, coming to the edge of the +ring, "I regret to announct that, owing to the factth that we are unable +to secure anodther oppon't in answer to Champeen Cluetth's challenge to +any fighter of any weighth--" + +At this point the speaker paused. A young man, in an automobile +dust-coat, unbuttoned--showing that he was in evening dress and had +evidently just arrived from some dance or other function--had hopped +into the ring and tapped the announcer briskly on the arm to attract his +attention. For a moment, the two held rapid conversation; then the young +man in evening dress slipped under the ropes and disappeared again into +the wings. The announcer, stepping to the very front of the stage and +raising his voice so that he might be heard above the creakings of +dispersal which already sounded in galleries and pit, said: + +"If there are any presentth who may wish to remain a little longer, I am +gladdh to be able to say that a certaint young man-about-town has +agreed to meet the champeen in a boutth of four three-minutth rounts. As +the stranger wishes his identity to be concealedh--for reasons of his +own--he will appear in the ringk masked." + +"Masked!" commented Miss Stella Yockley, "now, what's this they're +trying to spring on us, I wonder. Well, anyway, they can't put nothin' +over on Nick. He's in training to-night, and the Devil himself couldn't +trim Nicky Cluett in four rounds. There ain't a fighter living could do +it--no, sir, I don't care who he is." And with these words Miss Stella +cast a devoted glance toward the corner of the ring where Mr. Cluett, +still chatting unconcernedly, had drawn his bathrobe over his shoulders +as a sign to the unknown to hurry up, if he wanted a chance to land a +"haymaker" on a fighter whose time was money. + +He had not long to wait. A young white-limbed fellow, with a pompadour +of stiff hair rising above the black mask that covered him from +mid-forehead to just above his mouth, vaulted over the ropes into the +ring, and took the stool in the opposite corner to that in which Cluett +stood. There was something about the lines of the stranger's mouth and +chin that seemed to Daisy vaguely familiar. + +After vainly trying to remember where she had seen similar features +before, the girl turned her eyes toward the corner where Cluett had +just sat down on the stool. + +The champion, his elbows on his knees and his head leaning forward in +its customary attitude, was looking at his latest opponent with a +certain interest. Whether it was that the mask piqued his curiosity, or +that there was something in the build and agility of the unknown which +indexed prowess, was not evident to Daisy; but Miss Yockley murmured, +half to herself: + +"Sa-ay! Watch Nicky prick up his ears. He sees something--I don't know +what it is, but I know he sees it." + +As the gong sounded for the first round and the two got up from their +stools, it was evident to the professional eye that Cluett's new +opponent was, at any rate, more nearly his equal than the ill-fortuned +Mr. Hobday. + +"Say!" Miss Yockley's tone thrilled with reluctant admiration, "did you +notice the footwork of that boy?... No, you don't, Mr. Mask.... Yes, you +did, too! Sa-ay, you better watch that lad, Nicky Cluett!" + +The last three ejaculations as the masked fighter tried for the head +and--marvel of marvels to Cluett's admirers!--landed. Landed lightly; +but landed, nevertheless. + +As this happened, there came a hush of conversation all over the house. +From boxes and orchestra circle, and gallery and balcony there sounded, +as it were, one simultaneous creak as the audience leaned forward in +their seats. + +Nick Cluett was still smiling the smile that had never been known to +leave his face, even in sleep. But, otherwise, his whole demeanor had +changed. His arms, instead of swinging careless and indolently +half-crooked, at his sides, were raised in his low impassable guard. His +back, straight from hips to shoulder, leaned a little forward. The head +was bent in his customary fighting pose, forehead out and chin in. + +"'Watch', was what I said," Miss Yockley, gloved hands clasped together +with feminine tenseness under her chin, breathed, to everybody in +general, "and I hope you're watching, for th' sake of what you'll miss +if you ain't." + +The champion was following the stranger around the ring. The masked man, +with light hissings of his shoes on the canvas floor, backed at exactly +the same pace, carefully avoiding corners, seeming to know where he was +by instinct and without the necessity of what would have been an +instantly-disastrous look over-shoulder. There was neither blow nor +feint. Sometimes the gloves of the fighters touched, but the impact was +feather-light and without audible sound. + +Then Cluett struck. It was not like a blow--it was more like a shot. +That is to say, one saw nothing of the travelling fist: merely noticed +the effect, in a red which grew between the stranger's lips, until it +ran down in a long thin trickle over his bulldoggy chin. + +"Gosh all jew's-harps!" monologued the tautened Miss Yockley, who did +not seem gratified, "Nick missed him. That was meant for the point of +the jaw. Would have been a K. O., too, if it had gone where it was +looking. But ou-wouch!" + +This last as the masked man's shoulders, gleaming white under the +electric arcs, see-sawed flashingly. With apparently no visible reason +for the movement, Nick Cluett's head rocked. The gong sounded, closing +Round One. + +"Jiminy!" Miss Stella said, "watch Bob!" + +For Mr. Masterman was rushing to and fro, as the saying goes, "like a +hen on a hot griddle". Talking and gesticulating to the referee--dashing +over and shaking his fist in the face of the masked man who leaned back +calmly in his stool while his seconds sponged his mouth--then hurrying +back and whispering like a soda fountain in the ear of the champion, who +reclined against the ropes that stretched behind his seat, restoring +himself by deep inhalations and smiling crookedly at his manager's +ecstasy of anxiety. + +"That mask has got to come off!" Bob Masterman yelled, dashing over +again to the referee, "or out of this comes my man. He can fight +anything with a face on, but he ain't used to pounding away at a mask." + +"Why don't you mask your man, then?" demanded one of the stranger's +seconds, who both also wore masks, one red, one black; "That will even +things." + +"Mask nothing," grunted the monosyllabic Mr. Cluett, sitting up in +preparation for the gong; "Beat it, Bob. Keep shirt on. 'M all right." + +Round Two commenced with the house, crowded from orchestra pit to +gallery, watching in a silence unbroken except for an intermittent creak +or cough. Even the light sound of the fighters' shoes on the ring-canvas +was audible in seats half-way to the back of the big auditorium. Mr. +Masterman, fists clenched in the side-pockets of his coat, feet squared +aggressively on the floor, face thrust forward, watched the movements of +both men with as much intentness as though he were a kind of auxiliary +referee. Miss Yockley, sympathetically reflecting Masterman's moods, had +lost her nonchalance. Her mouth half-open; her hands locked together and +thrust, knuckles up, under her chin; the whites of her eyes showing in a +gawky stare: she watched Cluett let the second round go by with only one +light left swing to the neck, countered immediately by the masked man +with a lightning right which made Nick shake his head and rub the thumb +of his glove across his nostrils. Neither blow did any noticeable +damage. + +Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, +Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager +and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the +shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman +was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with +something very like a smile. + +"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a +little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother." + +The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an +exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring +at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the +same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in +the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder +and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed +by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a +contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had +countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range. + +During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost +necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by +main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett by one arm, and tried, in +spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in +the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett +himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he +regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of +Nick's scalp. + +"Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his +mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on--out +you come!" + +"Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, +as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart +momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips +are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now--leggo!" + +There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, +grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes. + +"All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick." + +"There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell +you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole +time you've knew me? Have I?" + +"Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to +lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours." + +Nick Cluett merely turned away his head, having said enough--for him. +As the gong sounded for climactic Round Four, both boxers, with the +"bluff" of the ring, sprang to meet each other as though it had required +ten men apiece to hold them back till the moment came. For all this +business of haste, however, their gloves touched warily. A four-round +mill is a very short one, even for two ringmasters like Nick and his +opponent, to feel out a new antagonist in; and, though each knew points +of the other's "style" by now, each knew there was more to uncover and +that it would be uncovered in this deciding round. The bout, so far, had +been a clean and pretty one; and that the audience had developed no +partialities was made evident by the way in which both men were cheered +as they worked. + +But in this last round it was Cluett who was especially marvellous. +Right from the tap of the gong he was the aggressor. Round and round the +ring he backed his opponent; giving the stranger never the chance to +start, much less to land, a blow. But if the champion's offensive was +lightninglike and wonderful, the masked man's guard was no less so. For, +though Cluett's glove landed in each case, it landed with its force +broken by the elastic and elusive movement of the stranger's head and +torso. + +"Easy, Nick--easy," spurted Masterman, though his eyes shone; "don't +let him play you out, boy." Besides the pride he felt in his man's work, +Bob Masterman knew that if Cluett kept this overshadowing gait to the +end of the round, he would win hands down on points. + +"Soak him, Nicky!" cheered the barometric Miss Yockley, wriggling with +delight; "he's ran short o' tricks. He's all yours." + +Daisy's sympathies had swung, quite without conscious mental volition, +to the side of the masked man, as she saw that he seemed to be losing. +Her eyes never left his face, as she watched sympathetically for the +spreading red stain that should show broken skin. But, although the +stranger's cheek below the black edge of the mask, as well as the sides +and even the point of the jaw, were dull red where Cluett had +landed--but landed as on something pneumatic--there came no vivider +crimson. Instead, Daisy saw come on the lips a smile. The smile was +still there when the round ended with the masked man skilfully covering +from a shower of taps that, though his guard broke or lightened them, +landed as true as the arrows of Locksley. Nor had the smile on the +bulldoggy lips faded when, upon Cluett being declared winner of the +bout, the stranger, followed by the commending cheers of the crowd, +vaulted out of the ring over the ropes, and was gone. A moment +afterwards, there came the great, smooth snarl of a high-powered auto +springing from the curb outside. + +"Some big bug amateur," observed Miss Yockley, shrewdly, "hence the +mask. Must have slipped on his auto-coat over his fightin' togs, to get +away that quick. Them seconds with the masks on was likely college +chums, or something. But, O teaberries! didn't he cover up from our +Nicky though! I never saw a man could do like that before.... Come on, +now, kid: let's get out in our car and wait for the boys. There's +something," Miss Stella added volubly, as she rose, "that I don't quite +understand, about that last round. Didn't seem as if the other man was +trying; he never started one punch. Can't get nothin' out of Nicky on +it--he's too close-mouthed. But Bob'll tell us." + +It was not long after the two reached the automobile, standing long and +alert by the curb where Mr. Masterman and Daisy and Miss Yockley had +left it when they entered the theatre, till they saw the two men +approaching. Mr. Cluett had just had a shower-bath in one of the +dressing-rooms, and his hair showed wet and black around the edges of +his cap. He was silent, but the perennial smile was in its place. There +was not a bruise visible to Daisy, except the slight skin-break above +his eyebrow. She scrutinized the champion with a new, but not exactly +intensified interest, as he slipped into the tonneau beside her. + +"Well," he said, taking off his cap and running his fingers through his +thick damp hair; "how's our little one? All here?" + +Mr. Masterman, getting in by Miss Yockley on the front seat, swung his +head around as he took the wheel. + +"Some boy with the mitts--eh, what?" he grinned at Daisy. Miss Yockley +caught the speaker by the ear, and promptly turned him eyes front. + +"I'm _here_," she said, as she extracted a fresh piece of gum out of her +handbag, "not _there_. Now, who's this buck with the Hallowe'en fixings, +Bob?" + +"I know," said Mr. Masterman, "but I'm ferbid to say." + +"Well," observed Miss Yockley, as her teeth industriously kneaded her +new slice of gum, "he pretty near threw a monkey-wrench into our +machinery, whoever he is. Bar all masked fighters after this, is my +little word of advice to you boys. Eatin' snowballs ain't fattening, and +it wouldn't even be nice for a change.... But who was he, Bob? Come +o-on; we're all friends here." + +Mr. Masterman shook his head. But, at the same time, the eyelid next +Miss Stella, answering a brief contraction of Bob Masterman's cheek, +swiftly closed and opened in a movement that the others did not see. + +"Precisely, brother," acknowledged Miss Yockley; then, turning toward +the two in the tonneau, with her plump arm laid along the back of the +seat, she said, with a rapid change of subject; + +"Here's a couple that ain't speakin', Bob. What does a fellow do in a +case like that?" + +"Run for the Doctor," suggested Mr. Masterman, over his shoulder. "Where +do you want to go, Nick?" + +"Home, James," said Mr. Cluett. Then, as he roused himself from an +attack of pensiveness, during which he had been making little +unconscious passes with his arms, accompanied by swift light jerks of +the shoulders he added thoughtfully, "Some class to that fellow, Bob." + +"Class is right," said Mr. Masterman; "but no more masks for us, boy. +Never again." + +"Oh, I don't know," pondered Nick Cluett; "I'd fight him again, mask and +all, just to learn something about that style of guard he's got. +Fightin' them other dubs will never get me anywhere: it's too much like +bowling." + +After turning a few corners, the car was halted near a big seven-story, +midtown block, the ground floor of which was occupied by a sporting +goods store on one side, and a great bright-windowed restaurant on the +other. + +"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" said Mr. Masterman, bustlingly, +clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody +change!" + +"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick +Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, +he followed the girls to the elevator entrance. + +The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of +the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were +being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the +situation into which her daring had projected her. The rapid, virile +beat of her blood made her tingle pleasantly, and brought a color into +her cheeks that caused the ever-observant Miss Stella to remark, as they +stepped out of the elevator: + +"Say, kid, we got to get a picture of you." + +Cluett thrust a key into the shining brass lock of a door halfway along +the corridor; swung it open; and, glancing inscrutably sidewise at +Daisy, motioned inward with his hand. Daisy, following close on Miss +Yockley's heels, found herself in an apartment with two wall-beds that, +hooked up into place, showed as nothing but a pair of full-length +mirrors, with dressing-brackets at either side that served as legs when +the beds were let down. Gus, the janitor, had tidied the place. Canvas +shoes and sweaters had been gathered into the clothes-closet. The big +porcelain tub in the bathroom had been polished until it shone white and +clean. The green carpet had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner. The +"pillow" gloves of boxing practice had been arrayed in an orderly manner +on the top of the chiffonier. + +The room was a large one, with two big airy windows. On the walls, +kalsomined in light green, were pictures of fighters of all weights; a +wire card-rack with photographs of girls; and prints, some framed and +some unframed, of the "September Morn" type. An open door showed an +inner apartment, with red burlap, plate-rail, round dining-table, and +buffet; and beyond this was a small kitchen, into which Miss Yockley, +who had unpinned and tossed aside her hat, bustled, and lit the gas +under a copper water-kettle. Almost simultaneously, a bump came at the +hall-door, and a grinning restaurant-waiter entered with a huge nickeled +tray, whose savory-smelling victuals were hidden under a white linen +cover. + +"Right here, George!" sirened Miss Stella, posting herself by a +side-table in the dining-room. + +On the heels of the "little supper" came Bob Masterman, who shook a +finger playfully at Daisy as he slammed the door on the vanishing waiter +and cast his hat into a corner. + +"This way for yours, Bob," came Miss Yockley's voice, above the clatter +of silver and bump of dishes laid out on a table-cloth; "come along, and +get your coat off, and massacree these chickens. Can't you see you ain't +wanted in there? You need a house to fall on you, you do!" + +Mr. Masterman sighed like a typhoon, but obediently passed into the +dining-room: pausing, ere he closed the door after him, to stick his +face through the aperture and close an eye at Daisy. + +"Beat it, Bob," said Mr. Cluett, absently. + +"I guess I'll go and help," said Daisy, looking brightly cornerwise at +her companion, who still seemed to have the fight on his mind. Nick +Cluett at this, came out of his half-reverie and, crossing the room, sat +down beside Daisy. He looked at her a moment in a queer way; then put +out a strong hand, with black hair growing along the finger-sinews, and +laid it on hers. Daisy noticed that the middle knuckle looked purplish. + +"Well, m' little girl," he said, "how goes it?" + +"What's happened your hand?" said Daisy; putting her head on one side, +softly touching the discolored knuckle, then looking at him through +down-held lashes. + +Cluett glanced down casually. "Oh, nothing," he said, "just a little +accident. But you ain't told me how _you_ are, yet." + +"Oh, I--I'm sick in bed," said Daisy, putting her free hand up to her +face, and bringing two dancing irises to bear on Mr. Cluett through the +fingers of it. + +"You're a little devil," commented Mr. Cluett, inching over and putting +his arm around her. Daisy's eyes, fairly coruscating with coquetry and +resource, flashed down at the hand that pressed her waist. First she +pretended to look at it from one angle; then from another. + +"I don't like the looks of it," she said, "take it away." + +"Do you mean that?" said Nick Cluett. The dark face, with its queer +stationary smile and its eyes full of a warming light, came close to +hers. Daisy waited dimpling till the rough cheek, bluish with its day's +growth of stiff hair-stubble, almost touched her ear. Then, exploding +into light quick action, she cast away the encircling arm and hopped to +her feet. + +"I'm going to help get the supper," she said; and, before Nick Cluett +could stop her, whisked to the dining-room door and flung it open. + +"What's bust loose?" said Miss Yockley, who was making coffee. + +"Frisky little thing, you!" observed Mr. Masterman, rolling up his +sporting paper, and playfully threatening Daisy with it. + +"Turn off the gas, Bob," commanded Miss Stella, "and don't have so much +to say. Come along, Nicky. Supper's on." + +Mr. Cluett strolled in, and the four drew up chairs. There were three +roast chickens, hot, carved up into handy "drumsticks" and slices by Mr. +Masterman; "French fried" potatoes; a cut-glass dish of peach preserve; +fruit cake; bakers' rolls; and an electric percolator filled with savory +coffee. + +"Some little lay-out," observed Mr. Cluett, who was hungry after his +evening's "work-out". He stepped into the chair next Daisy's by tilting +it and swinging his leg over the back to the seat. + +"Yes: Bob done well, for once," said Miss Stella, "gener'ly, when he's +ordering a supper, the only thing he can think of is 'poached on' and +raisin pie." + +"What have we got to drink, Stel'?" demanded Mr. Masterman, hitching his +cuffs as he prepared to serve the chicken. + +"Coffee," returned Miss Yockley, winking at Nick Cluett and Daisy; +"we're gettin' ready for when the country goes dry." + +"Well," said Mr. Masterman, who had paused aghast, but had recommenced +to breathe freely as he had intercepted the speaker's wink; "I guess I +can stand it as long as Stella can, anyway--and that ain't very long." + +"You bet it ain't," admitted Miss Stella, going to the buffet and +bringing back three bottles of champagne; "See what the milkman left us +for the baby, this morning." + +"Let it out, then, let it out!" said Bob Masterman, laying down his +carving-fork and setting out glasses; "I'm as dry as the night before, +boys." + +Under Miss Yockley's deft offices, a cork popped promptly, and four +glasses were filled in as many seconds. + +"I guess we can let Nick off the water-wagon for to-night," said Mr. +Masterman, "while we drink confusion to the Masked Man. But what's wrong +with Prettiness here? Swore off?" This to Daisy, who had made no +movement to lift her glass. + +Daisy merely dimpled and shook her head. + +"Somebody say something," interpolated Miss Stella; "Come on, Kid--if +you knew the pain Bob's in, you wouldn't keep him waiting. Do you want +some water in it--or what?" + +"Water in it!" ejaculated Mr. Masterman, "Help!... 'Water in it?' she +says, as though she meant it." + +Nick Cluett, who, glass in hand, had been regarding Daisy narrowly, +spoke out. + +"Let up, people," he said, tersely; "she don't want it." + +"Oh, dewberries!" observed Bob Masterman, mincingly. "Well, here's to +the trimmin' our boy Nick so nearly got--may we never, never be so near +the cruel bread-line agen!" + +Supper passed amid a continual "kidding back and forth" between Miss +Yockley and Mr. Masterman, which speeded up as the champagne bottles +emptied. + +"Oo-aw!" said Miss Stella, fanning herself and rising at length, a +little unsteadily, from behind her emptied glass and coffee-cup; "I feel +like a breath of fresh air." + +"You don't _look_ like a breath o' fresh air," chortled her drinking +companion; "you look like t-ten cents' worth o' tough luck, Stel. Get on +your hat, an' I'll walk you 'round the block, little one." + +With this, the two passed into the front room. Daisy thought they were +joking about going out, till she heard the hall-door slam behind them. +Then she jumped up. + +"Wh-why--have they gone?" she said. + +"They sure have," said Mr. Cluett, leaning back lazily in his chair; +"but we should worry." + +"Will they be long?" said Daisy. + +"Search me," responded Nick Cluett; "They may go to a picture-show. +Maybe they'll slip into a vaudeville show. We don't care--eh?" + +Daisy looked out into the empty front room of the suite. A gramophone on +a small table met her eyes. + +"Let's put on some music," she said. + +Cluett got up, and came over, and stood beside her. + +"Not to-night," he said, looking down. The champagne had brought a kind +of dull color to his cheeks and forehead. "What do we want with music, +kid? Come on--let's be a little friendly, huh?" His strong lean arm slid +around her waist. + +It was then that Daisy lifted up her face, let all the coquetry pass +from it, and regarded him with eyes that were straight and sober. + +"Stop it!" she said. + +For answer, the arm tightened about her. Nick Cluett leaned to kiss her. + +"If you don't stop it," said Daisy, rigid in his arms; "you're no +gentleman." + +Cluett relaxed his arm a little. His queer-smiling face, with its keen +eyes, slanted down towards her in concentrated, silent interrogation. +Daisy's spirit of mischief tempted her to drop her eyes; but she managed +to resist the impulse and to keep her features sober-expressioned. + +"You're not goin' to be friendly, then?" he said. + +Daisy dimpled ever so slightly. "Not just now", she answered. + +"Do you mean that--or don't you?" + +"I mean it," said Daisy, simply; "not in here, anyway. Why can't we go +out, and get a breath of fresh air, too, and go to a picture-show?" + +Nick Cluett took his arm from her waist, reached for his hat, and +opened the hall-door. + +"Come on," he said, "I'll see you safe home, Kid." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK. + + +"Who's the boy?" said Daisy, over her shoulder, to Jean; as, glancing +out of the window of the big Harrison kitchen, she saw, at the front +corner of the house, a younger man get out of the car after the bulky +Sir Thomas. "I thought all the visitors here were elderly men. There's +been no young ones at all since I've been here." + +"Ey?" Jean came to "keek," resting a hand on the shoulder of the younger +girl, "why, if it's no young Harrison! Did I never tell ye Sir Thomas +had a lad? Well, well." Jean sat down again to her pea-shelling. + +"Ay," she pursued, as her rapid fingers stripped the split pods of their +green kernels, "yon's Harold Harrison. He looks like his father, an' he +talks like his father, and as to his disposeetion--well, I'm bound in +fairness-like to say he's a bittie of his good mither--just a wee wee +streak, like the lean in bacon--pinched in between thick layers of Sir +Thomas himsel'. The young-lad's no so rough-edged in manner--the college +has polished him on the ootside.... But I'll say no more: ye'll see him +juist now, when ye serve the supper." + +And when Daisy did see the young man--sitting with his knees crossed and +his elbow on the edge of the table, talking to his father but not +noticing the quiet, awkward mother at all--she almost dropped the tray +she was carrying. For Harold Harrison and the masked fighter who had +boxed four rounds with Champion Nick Cluett, were one and the same young +man. + +"I'd know that chin anywhere," said Daisy, as she confided to Jean the +discovery she had made, "it's just like his father's. And his lower lip +is burst, too, just where I saw Nick hit the masked fighter. He has a +piece of red sticking-plaster on it." + +"Mon, mon!" Jean was interested; "is that so, then? I kenned he was a +boxer; and I suppose, as the Harrisons has the name of getting what they +'go after,' its no surprisin' he's won to the top. It's aye the way. He +has everything--his money, his schooling, his place in society, his +business chances--an' yet he'll no be satisfied till he steals the +boxin' honors from a puir lad that has nothing but his gloves. Nick's a +machinist; and, up till lately, when money from his matches commenced to +come in a little, he's had to do all his training in the nicht-time; +while the Harrison lad's had all day and all night, if he needed, to +make himsel' pairfect.... Ey, ey--it's the way o' the warld, lassie." + +"He'll never beat Nick," some flash of vague enthusiasm warmed Daisy for +an instant; then she added--boxing terms and predictions coming handily +to her tongue after that chatty hour across the supper-table from the +"sporty" Miss Yockley--"he'd never last twenty rounds, or even ten, in a +finish bout. Nicky Cluett," Daisy concluded with feminine irrelevance, +"is a gentleman. The other fellow would be afraid to fight him without a +mask on." + +Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists, +lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's +seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no +that sure that they dare play tricks with it--as they wad be doing, they +think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public +theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society, +an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family +operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle +o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds +empty, as if they was through their meat." + +As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his +father, paused in his account of the boxing-match till the girl had +collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot. +But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and +caught every word with her keen young ears: + +"----And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I +went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this +fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good--and is, too, as +witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was +a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking +sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter, +glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd +have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to +me." + +"You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and +whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em! +Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en +where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe +on the jaw, when I had him goin'." + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +SAWN OFF THE OLD BLOCK. + + +The big Harrison villa,--with its broad ostentatious drive, its +unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its +elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a +dealers' reduction--soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete +cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding +of young Harold's punching bag. + +"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn +anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top +floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of +Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair +before a mirror. + +"Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully. + +"Well," said Daisy, stopping in the doorway with the roses of recent +exertion coloring her cheeks superbly, her eyes dancing in their bright +challenging way, and her plump arms displayed to fine and not +unconscious advantage as she folded them over the broom-handle which +leaned in the bend of her elbow; "one of your boxing-gloves was under +the shower-bath, with the water running on it; and your sweater was on +the floor below the punching bag, tramped in the dust----" + +"There shouldn't be any dust up there," said Harold, easily; "What do +you suppose we pay our little housemaids for? Uh?" + +"Is that so!" retorted Daisy; "well, you'd better give orders for the +wind not to blow, then; and you'd better have your father pull up that +nasty concrete drive, where all the dust comes from; and----" + +"See here! See-e here!" Sir Thomas Harrison's son jerked out, spinning +on his heel and facing her; "what do you mean by talking to me like +that? Who do you think you're speaking to--the chauffeur or the +stable-boy? Get on downstairs, or wherever you're going, and don't have +so much to say." Then, as the young heir of the place turned again to +the mirror, he added in audible soliloquy, "dashed cheek! These infernal +domestics are getting to think they can do and say what they please. +Some of these days that cook and I are going to have a rumpus too. She +chooses coolly to forget, and to keep right on forgetting, the +instructions I give her about my food.--What! you here yet?" + +"Yes!" said Daisy, looking at him with her cheeks burning redly and her +eyes fixed and bright; "I'm here yet--_Mister_ Harold!" + +"Oh, a-all right," observed the young man, sarcastically, throwing out +his palm with an elaborate motion toward a chair; "won't you have a +seat, Miss--er--er-- Miss Housemaid?" + +Daisy's long eyelashes described a flashing arc as she swept the crown +prince of the dynasty of Harrison from head to house-slippered toe. Then +she turned away. Harold Harrison, as he heard her shoe-heels tapping +smartly down the back stairs, grinned at his reflection in the +looking-glass. + +"That's putting 'em where they belong," he said; "Some kid, though, +be-lieve me--some kid!" + +Jean, at the big cooking range, heard Daisy come into the kitchen and +thrust the broom into its holder with a rap. Then there came silence, +enduring for so long that the Scotswoman glanced questioningly around. +Daisy had dropped into a chair, and was sitting in a kind of brown +study, finger at lip and eyes looking ponderingly out of window. + +"Now, now, lassie!" said the cook, kindly; "it's nae business o' mine, +likely; but this is a big hoose, an' ye canna be through reddin' up the +rooms yet, an' it's nearly eleven o'clock. Is onything amiss?" + +Daisy related her encounter with young Harrison. + +"Ey, ey," Jean smiled grimly as the girl told her what young Harold had +said about the cooking; "so he's no farin' quite as he wad at the +meal-table, and would like a bit brush with me, would he? Well, I canna +be aye getting' up special dishes for his lordship, so I may as weel +prepare to receive him. Did he tell ye of the wee bit tiff we had ance +before, him an' me? No; he didn't. Well, I'll tell ye, in a few words. +He talked wi' his tongue, and I talked with the besom; and the interview +juist lasted four minutes by the kitchen clock. He's no a bad lad +althegither, but he needs a canny bit breakin' in." + +"Well, I'm not going to bother breaking him in," said Daisy, lifting her +chin, "he's not worth it." + +Jean laughed. "Well, onyway," she said, turning again to her own work, +"don't let him start ye broodin', so the rooms'll no be done when our +good leddy goes over the huse. Ye ken weel she'd turn to and mak' up the +beds hersel', sooner than raise a fuss. Lassie, lassie, speakin' about +the Mistress, I'm sore worried. She's failed terrible this last month. I +keep tellin' her to drink milk, but she canna keep it doon. She eats nae +mair than yon dickie-bird--a great big strappin' wumman like she is--or +was--too! If onything happens to the leddy o' the hoose here--guid-bye +Harrisons! It's only for her sake I'm bidin' here, at the wage I get. +I've got a standin' offer o' half as much agen from Lady Frances +Ware--Sir William Ware's mother." + +At the mention of Ware's name, Daisy gave a little involuntary start. +But she did not tell Jean that she too had an offer of a position in the +household of Sir William Ware. + +"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding +skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, +"that the young lad here--Harold--is engaged to a girl o' what they call +the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's +way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it +brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for +puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if +onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her +long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'--her, that made +him!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +A PLOT THAT MISCARRIED. + + +"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling +cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel' +sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's +gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with +thae orders, like." + +Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had +been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the +house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged." +Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook. + +"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?" + +"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the +line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like." + +Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a +fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I +doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her +shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that +stood, larded and ready, at her right. + +"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you." + +"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver. + +Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not +of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was +plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of +the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right, +I will,--bye-bye," as she hung up the phone. + +When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter, +this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man +who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the +dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and +very often twice, each week since. + +On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy, +as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the +trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford +suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was +going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know +that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did +she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something +like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll have the chance o' your life +to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite--yes, yes, +of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean +it extra good, to-night--and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets +his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy +up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around +with me to-night--the best girl in----" + +"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go +on--shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my +ear, Jim, and listen to you rave." + +"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm +bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea. +See?--the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I +intend to spring, on the way home----" + +"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the +line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?" + +"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to +spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks. +I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some +accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments----" + +"Better wait till she says 'yes'," Mrs. Farrell had advised, as she +prepared to 'hang up', "before you start counting your chickens. She may +not care to take a chance on you. I know how I'd feel about it, if it +was me. However, I'll do my best for you." + +Jimmy, who was quite ready to admit any time that he was "no hand with +girls," shoved his hat to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets, +and spat aside as, waiting outside the Harrison gate, he saw Daisy +approach along the gravel walk. + +If he had come for her in the jitney, as usual, to take her for a +companionable hour's ride up and down his round, as a "free" and welcome +passenger, he would have felt at ease; for he had become used to that. +But this waiting, with no friendly engine pounding away in front of him +and no familiar steering-wheel to lean his hands upon, was enough out of +the ordinary to have embarrassed Jimmy anyway, even without the mental +consciousness of his deep-laid matrimonial plot, and the feeling he +could not shake off that somehow Daisy might sense it prematurely and +flee. + +"'Lo, stranger," said Daisy, softly, taking the words out of Jimmy's +mouth, as it were. She was a little shy, too; but Jimmy Knight was too +busy with his own perturbation to notice that. + +"H'lo yourself," he responded, with something like gruffness, "and see +how you like it." As they dropped into step side by side, he added, +with an inspired flash, "Lookin' kind of skookum to-night, us, Friend +Nixon." + +"I might if I had a suit on," Daisy said, in her forthright way, "but +suits cost money." + +"Never mind," Jimmy, in spite of the playful breeze abroad, strove to +pull his new straw hat down more firmly on its elastic cushion of +virile, curly hair, "you may have one, soon." + +Daisy, who had not meant this at all, cast a quick side-glance at her +companion. + +"I wouldn't take a suit from you, if that's what you mean," she said, +abruptly, flushing a little. + +"There, now," Jimmy blushed an honest, vivid red, "I've went and made a +break, first crack at the bat. Say, you do the talkin' from here on. +I'll just listen. If I don't say nothin', I can't make nobody mad, can +I?" + +Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an +apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel--that structure from +whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As +she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind +reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging +out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre +of the clothesline. + +"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of +Suite 30, as Jimmy, smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a +bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy +up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!" + +Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy, +with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her +hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short +vestibule to the living-room. + +"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of +under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I +told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him +for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get +married, Miss----" + +"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its +"surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a +wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener, +who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell +you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one." + +Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took +Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her +remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to +sleep this minute, you! The idea!" + +But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka +wa'r." + +"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're +going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim--he'll have the city +waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of, +for keepin' awake." + +Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn. +Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out. + +"Might as well talk to the wind," said Mrs. Tom Farrell, "as them two. +Well, of all----" + +This last as Jimmy reappeared, carrying a sleepy three-year-old who, +supporting the tumbler with two hands that had hollows where knuckles +should be, was quaffing with all his might. Jimmy Knight had had an +inspiration, which he was not yet sure was not a blunder, to show Daisy +how a baby "became" him. + +To Daisy, in spite of its neatness, the suite looked rather small and +dingy. This impression formed itself quite unconsciously, not as the +result of deliberate glances about. Probably it was a wholly involuntary +comparison of these small rooms to the big garish apartments of the +Harrison house, to which her eyes had grown accustomed during the past +couple of months. At any rate, the impression came and stayed. Jimmy, +however, had no means of knowing this; and, as he glanced around at his +sister's handiwork, he winked his appreciation at Mrs. Betty behind +young Tommy's head; and shaped with his lips this soundless but +energetic sentence, "You're a winner, hon'." + +Tom Farrell, Senior, came from the bathroom presently, stroking a long, +new-shaven chin. His eyes were narrowed sociably, and his mouth, as he +approached Daisy, was kinked up at the corners in what seemed to Betty +Farrell's critical regard, almost an ecstasy of friendliness. He paused, +with the hand of greeting half-outstretched; then, tetering his +shoulders a little, glanced first at his wife, and from her to Jimmy, +interrogatively. + +"Somebody introduce me," interpreted his wife, with considerable warmth +and sarcasm, "or I'll go crazy." + +"Daisy, meet Brother Tom," interposed Jimmy, diplomatically, as he saw a +flash of temper in the glance Tom Farrell darted at his wife. A husband +of four years' standing will not endure being put out of countenance +before a pretty girl. + +"Howdy," said Farrell, promptly; grabbing Daisy's hand and half for his +wife's benefit and half because of Daisy's dimples, squeezing it hard +and long; "howdy, howdy?... Say, Bet, what's that kid doing out of bed, +this time o' night? Don't you know nothing at all? Get him back between +them sheets, right away!" + +"Put him to bed yourself, if you're so keen about it," Betty Farrell +retorted, hotly; "it was Jimmy brought him out here, not me. Why don't +you take a round out of Jim?" + +"I said, put him to bed," Tom Farrell was losing his self-control as his +temper rose, "and do it quick!" + +"Come along, Boy," said Jimmy Knight, genially, speaking into the ear of +Tommy, Junior; then winking at Daisy as he jerked his head in humorous +apology toward the point where Tom and Betty Farrell glared at each +other across the centre-table, "we'll go and pound our ear, son. We +don't need a house to fall on us, to show us we ain't wanted, do we?" He +got up, young Tom in his arms, and moved toward the bedroom. + +"No, sir-ree!" Tom Farrell's long arm came out and scooped out of +Jimmy's grasp the youngster, who started to cry; "it's got to be settled +right here an' now who's boss of this establishment. I ain't goin' to +let no woman run on me. Here, Bet--take this kid, and put him to bed +like I told you!" The husband was now so far beside himself that he, for +the moment, neither knew nor cared what impression he made. As he spoke, +he held out the baby boy, who yelled and kicked vigorously. + +But Betty Farrell backed away, letting young Tommy dangle from his +father's outstretched arms. + +"I don't have to take no orders from you," she said, putting her hands +obstinately behind her back, "and I won't, not if you rave till you're +blue in the face. I'll show everybody how much authority you have over +me." + +At this, young Tom felt himself set down hard on a chair. Tom Farrell, +having thus freed his hands, hopped ragingly across the room and slapped +his wife on the side of the face. Betty, true to the color of her hair, +flared up, looked about for something to throw, and swept her hand with +temper's wastefulness toward the cut-glass vase in the centre of the +table. + +"Hey!" Jimmy Knight reached across and rescued the vase; "you ain't mad +five dollars' worth, surely, Bet." Then the brother got up and came +around the table. + +"Break away, break away," he said, casting a deprecating grin toward +Daisy as he put one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other on Tom +Farrell's chest, and pushed the two apart; "hittin' in the clinches is +barred, boys. How about a little card-game, everybody? Bet and me will +take on Daisy and you, Tom, and beat yous flat." + +"Nothing doing," Farrell nasalled, closing his eyes and rocking his head +from side to side in an obdurate negative; "this here thing's got to be +settled first. Let a woman get the upper hand of you once, an' you'll +never get her back in her place." + +"Aw, go on, Bet," Jimmy gave his sister a little coaxing nudge, "put the +kid to bed." + +Betty Farrell raised eyelids, nose, chin and right foot, and brought +them all down simultaneously. + +"I--wun't!" she said; "so there." + +This repetition of her refusal, though not this time addressed to him, +brought Tom Farrell's wrath again to boiling-point, and he reached +across and cuffed her twice more. Jimmy Knight's hand, which was still +resting against his brother-in-law's chest, pushed Farrell firmly back. + +"Don't do that no more, Tom," he said, his face and voice sobering a +little. + +"Why not?" flamed Farrell, turning on him. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "I can't stand by and see you do it--that's all." + +Farrell grew hoarse and purple. "Well, come on, then," he frogged, "I'll +take on the whole blamed family, and lick 'em with one hand tied behind +me." With this, his arm shot out; and Jimmy, taken unawares, received +the blow full in the eye. Farrell followed quickly with a second thrust; +but Jimmy was ready, and the fist glanced harmlessly. + +"I don't want to fight you, Tom," he said, guarding himself with fair +skill, as the brother-in-law, shoving the table aside with a jerk of his +hip, pursued the attack furiously; "All I say is, be reasonable." + +"Reasonable, nothin'!" croaked Farrell, as he landed again, cutting +Jimmy's cheek with his thumb-nail; "I'll learn you to keep out, next +time." + +Jimmy did not answer. His lips tightened a little. Farrell, breaking +through his guard again, struck the fast-blackening eye which had +received his opening blow. Thereat Jimmy, with a vigorous shake of his +shoulders, dived in manfully. There was a brief scuffle; then Jimmy's +sinewy fist twinkled up hard, at short range, and Tom Farrell went down +flat on the floor and lay there. + +"Now, then!" the voice was Betty Farrell's; but it was addressed to +Jimmy, not to her husband, this time; "see what you've done, with your +dirty fists and your meddling. You've knocked him out--maybe hurt him--" + +"He's all right," said Jimmy, a little sheepishly, "I--I never +meant--there, he's stirring, now. I----" + +"Well, get out, then," Betty Farrell dashed over and nervously opened +the door leading out of the suite into the corridor; "go on--get out! I +don't want no more fighting in here. Go on--you, too," this last to +Daisy who, however, was already at the door. + +Jimmy glanced at Daisy as humorously as a man might who had one +supremely black eye and a cheek all over blood. + +"I guess p'raps we might as well," he said. + +There was silence on the way down the three flights of stairs, and +comparative uncommunicativeness on Jimmy's part until the end of the +walk home was reached and the two stood under the trees just within the +Harrison drive-gate. + +Then Jimmy, clearing his throat with the air of a man who has made up +his mind to say something or die, observed, "I--I got to tell you one +blamed good joke, Friend Nixon, before you go in." + +"What?" said Daisy. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "I--gr-r-h'm--I took you over there to-night to show +you a happy little home in a three-room suite. As she turns out, +however, that'n ain't so very happy to-night, huh? All my fault, for +hikin' young Tom out of his crib." + +"Oh, well," said Daisy, "everybody fights, sometimes." + +"Yes, that's so," said Jimmy; "Yes, that's--that's so. But I--I--" + +"'M?" said Daisy, feeling something in her companion's cadence that +caused a soft little titillation of her nerves. She drew back further +into the shadow as she felt her cheeks grow involuntarily warm. + +"I know two of a kind--both of 'em easy-goin', I mean--that mightn't +fight any more than oncet a week, at the outside. Do you think you could +stand for that, Friend Nix--Friend Daisy?" + +Daisy drew a long breath, raised her face, and looked clear-eyed at her +companion. + +"I know what you mean," she said, glad that the darkness prevented +cheerful, curly-headed Jimmy Knight from seeing the shine of her glance +and the color of her cheeks, "but I can't. Not the way I feel these +days. What happened over in the suite to-night didn't make any +difference. But--well, I just can't. I'm a funny girl." + +"You sure are," agreed Jimmy Knight; "how long did you say you'd need to +think it over?" + +"Forever," said Daisy, firmly, in spite of the beating of her heart. + +"All right," responded Jimmy Knight, bravely choking down a certain +obstruction that had risen in his throat, "I'll give you a day longer +than that, so's it won't look as if I was rushin' you. Well--so-long, +kid," he held out his hand. + +"Good-bye, Jimmy Knight," Daisy gave him her hand, then drew it away +gently, and ran in-doors with tears in her eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +THE GOLDEN STAIR. + + +Sir William Ware put aside his book, covered a yawn, glanced up at the +fireplace clock, which was about to chime nine; then, taking up the +telephone which had been ringing with shrill iteration for a moment or +two, casually laid his ear to it. + +"Yes," he said. + +"Sir William Ware?" vibrated the disk. + +"Himself," responded Sir William, lightly. + +"Well," said the voice at the other end of the line, "this is me." + +"Eh?" + +"Me." + +"Ah." Sir William rubbed his chin in bewilderment; then he added, +humorously, "_Miss_ Me? Right, so far?" + +"You have a short memory," commented the voice on the phone. + +"You have chanced," said Ware, pleasantly, "upon a melancholy fact, +madam. But may I not ask the identity of--Jove! wait a bit, though! My +creaking wheels of recollection are beginning to revolve.... I have it! +I have it! Miss Nixon?" + +"Yes," said Daisy's voice, in a matter-of-fact way, "it is. I want to +see you." + +Sir William, at the speaker's naive directness, covered the transmitter +with his palm and rocked in enjoyment. + +"Bravo!" he said, then, uncovering the instrument; "the city hasn't +spoiled you yet, my dear--has it?" + +"I'm waiting near that cafe we were at before," said Daisy, "how long +will you be?" + +Something in the bare blunt words made Sir William hug himself in an +almost boyish ecstasy. "I shall come," he answered, "on the wings of +Hermes. They should bring me into your presence in from three to five +minutes, young lady." + +Daisy Nixon, after hanging up the telephone in the little candy store +across from the Cumberland Cafe, had waited barely four minutes in the +shadowed street just beyond the circle of light from the Cumberland's +windows, when she saw a tall figure, cane in hand, walk briskly into +that area of illumination. She crossed the street. + +Ware, dangling his cane and glancing about enquiringly, saw her when she +was half-way across the circle of light and facing the full blaze of it. +Her bright frank eyes; her clear girlish fresh cheeks, on which a +certain nervousness kept the tide of color changing its shape and +margin; her round maidenly lines of bust and hip and ankle: all wrought +curiously and strongly and with a united effect upon Ware, as they had +on that night in the Harrison dining-room when his attention, drawn to +her casually by the accident to the soup-tureen, had changed at once to +the heartiest interest. + +Material absolutely fresh and new! Molten and virgin gold, not yet +resistable to the stamp of the die! + +"Well," he said, stepping forward hospitably, "how are you, my dear? +Shall we go in?" + +"Yes." Daisy stepped inside, deliberately unpinned and hung up her hat, +and sat down opposite to the baronet at the table he had chosen along +the side of the room. It was the same table they had occupied on their +previous visit. + +"Don't order much," she said; "I'm not hungry. I came here to talk." + +"I think," said Sir William, "that talking will be much more enjoyable. +I dined late, myself. Suppose we have, say, a few grapes and a little +something to drink--an iced drink of some sort." + +"Anything you like," said Daisy. She laid her hands on the table, caught +her lower lip under her teeth with a shy gesture that was delicious to +Ware, and said--quite plainly, and without yielding to that impulse of +coquetry which had made him so brief with her on their previous +meeting--"Were you in earnest, that time you asked me to marry you?" + +"My dear," answered Sir William, leaning forward, and extending his hand +on the table until it was almost touching hers, "I made the proposal +quite seriously and in good faith. I should not do otherwise. If you are +still in a position to accept it, I make it again now." + +Daisy looked across at the real eagerness in the fine eyes; at the face, +with its skin cleanly and handsomely tinted under the few faint lines +that indicated the light passage of the years; at the hand, smooth, +white and gently masterful. Then she dropped her glance; but her voice +was firm and her manner direct and frank as she answered him. + +"I'll marry you," she said. + +The white hand, with a strong and gentle pressure, came over hers, until +her fingers were between the thumb and the heel of the palm. Something +great and calm and authoritative seemed communicated with that touch. +Daisy felt quelled and dutiful, but, best of all, as she lifted her eyes +to his, she knew, less by his expression than by an unexplainable +feeling within herself, that she could trust him. For in all +essentials--so she read and knew calmly and surely that she read +aright--he was, as Daisy herself would have put it, simply, "a +gentleman." + +"Thank you, my dear," he said, quietly, "I may say sincerely that I +think we shall grow very fond of one another. Waiter!--here, please." + +A dress suit glided forward and an obsequious ear leaned down. The +waiter knew quite thoroughly what was "doing", although by the +expression on his face during the conversation between Daisy and Ware, +one would have thought he was working out in his head a problem in +trigonometry. + +"May I speak to the manager?" said Ware. + +The manager, who had curly jet hair, an immense slope of white +waistcoat, and an Alice-blue chin, appeared in exactly fifteen seconds. + +"Have you," said Sir William, "a room where a marriage ceremony may be +performed?" + +The manager started a smile--but it got no further than a slight twitch +in the eye-corners before something in Sir William's expression,--though +the baronet changed not a feature nor abated anything of his +pleasantness--checked it. + +"Yes, sir," the manager answered, voice and face returning instantly to +business formality; "my office is at your service, sir, if you wish." + +"That will do nicely, thank you," said Ware, rising; then to Daisy he +said, as he offered his arm, "we will go there now--shall we?" + +Daisy nodded, without speaking. Her faith in him was as absolute as it +was instinctive and involuntary. + +As the manager bowed them into the office--a room of fair size--and, +partially closing the door, made polite exit, Ware handed Daisy to a +seat, and himself dropped into the swivel-chair before the manager's +desk and took up the telephone. + +"Hello!" he said, as he got his number; "that you, Mrs. Heathcote? Good +evening; how's your neuralgia?... Splendid, splendid--I _am_ glad to +hear that. I say, is George about?" + +Evidently George was at hand; for in a second or two the transmitter +returned to Sir William's lips. + +"That you, George? I say, are you busy?... Well, then, look here--could +you slip around to the Cumberland Cafe, Osborne Street.... No, no, +nothing about 'hay'; Cumberland Cafe, you ass.... Yes, that's it--can't +miss it--big, bright, plate-glass windows, half-way between Wardlow and +Pembina.... I say, that's very jolly of you, old man.... Yes, I--we--are +waiting.... Yes: I said 'we'.... None of your bally business--that is, +I'll explain when you get here. Make haste now, won't you?... Right-O!" +Sir William hung up the phone and turned to Daisy. + +"That was the Reverend George Heathcote, my dear," he said, "rector of +St. George's. Do you know St. George's?" + +Daisy knew it--a big Episcopal church, with beautiful chimes, that made +Sunday morning glorious. Right in the heart of the fashionable district. +Ivied to the gables, with a mighty stretch of green ground about, +bounded by a massive iron fence. And its rector was familiar "George" +and "old man" to him who was shortly to become her husband. + +Daisy Nixon's heart bounded, and the color leapt into her cheeks. Three +months ago, clad in an old smock of Jack Nixon's and with a cuff +administered by Mother Lovina smarting and tingling on her ear, she had +waded, on an evening that she remembered well,--because it was her last +on a farm--down to a miry cattle-corral to sit in the rain and milk four +cows. It was in this moment, as the recollection of that final ineffably +drab farm evening slipped into her mind, that Daisy formulated a certain +daughterly resolve with regard to her parents--a resolve she was +afterwards able to keep. + +"I should explain," said Ware, a touch of color in his cheeks and his +fingers playing a soft tattoo on the desk blotter, "why I am doing +things in this apparently hasty and stealthy manner. I have been +expecting, for the last moment or so, that you would ask me to +explain--and I may say that I consider it very sweet of you, my dear, +that you have refrained from asking." + +"Whatever _you_ do," said Daisy, "is all right. I know that." + +"Thank you, dear child. Nevertheless, I shall explain. In the first +place, I have a very headstrong old mother at home, who considers me, in +spite of my 58 years--yes, my dear, I am 58--not yet grown up. With her, +there might--I do not positively say there would, but there might--be +difficulties. In the second place, and to be quite frank with you and +with myself, this is the main reason for doing things on the dot, as it +were--I know that young people are to a certain extent impulsive and +that a great many things may happen in a short time, and I want you just +as you are now, before anything can happen to change you in any way. I +confess freely, my dear, that I really want you very much, and that it +has been harder than you may think, for me since I last talked with you +to keep my resolve to let you quite alone so that you might think this +matter out for yourself. That, having thought it out, you have not been +afraid or ashamed to voluntarily let me know your decision, is to me +convincing proof--though short-sighted people may think this +paradoxical--of that modesty which is to me your most precious quality." + +Nervousness, more than he had ever imagined his socially-inured self +could feel, was the cause of the latter half of this little speech of +Sir William's being slightly formal. This marrying of a girl "of the +people"--forty years distant from him and yet in her land of +boy-and-girl--which had been easy enough to do in theory, in his +study-chair, was a "bit of a pull" in actual execution. He had just +finished speaking, when there came a knock at the door. + +"Ah!" he said, getting up, "I shouldn't wonder if that's our friend. +That you, George?" + +"Yes--and I've jolly well run my legs off," exclaimed a voice, as a +bustling and rather stout figure in clerical coat burst cyclonically +into the room, dropped into a chair, and fanned itself with a +flat-crowned black hat. "I couldn't get it out of my head, some way, +that you are more in need of medical than spiritual attention at the +present moment, Will. Now, calm yourself, old man, and let me have the +whole story, and we'll examine the matter squarely and sensibly. I +assume," the Reverend George glanced at Daisy, whose color was rising, +"this is the young lady in the case. Jove, Will, I thought you had more +bally sense, especially at your time of life--I did, really." + +Sir William looked at his ministerial friend open-mouthed; then, as the +clergyman's meaning burst upon him, he sat up in his chair with a jerk. + +"Now, look here, George," he said, as the swivel creaked at the vigor +with which he gripped the chair-arms, "I should hate our forty-five +years of close friendship to end in fisticuffs. It will, though, I give +you fair warning, if--if--what the devil do you think I've been doing, +you ass! Must I repeat that, of our mutual choice--quite unforced by +circumstances, if I must say so baldly--Miss Daisy Nixon and I have +decided to be married." + +Reverend George Heathcote, who was smooth-faced and good-looking, except +for a few myopic wrinkles around his eyes, put on his glasses and looked +keenly at Daisy, who met his glance with nose and chin well up, and +brown eyes flashing aggressively. + +"Don't look at me like that," he said, after a moment, "please don't, +Miss Nixon. I'm a blundering idiot, but I mean well--I do, really. Can +you honestly, down in your heart of hearts, assert that you wish to +marry the shelf-worn relic in the office-chair there? Can you?" + +"Yes," said Daisy, pugnaciously. + +"Oh--very well." Rev. George Heathcote, adjusting his glasses firmly, +brought out from his pocket a black-covered book. Shuffling the leaves +till he found the desired place, he closed the book, slipping his finger +between the leaves; lowered it till it rested on his knee; and looked at +Sir William, who looked back at him a little challengingly. After a +moment of this scrutiny, the clergyman arose, went over beside his +friend, and laid a hand on Ware's shoulder. + +"Dear old man," he said, "I do want you to consider this thing very +seriously. You've always been a bit of a boy, you know. I, of course, +know the fancies you've petted about marriage--I always thought they +were merely fancies, or I should have tried harder to reason you out of +them. Now, is your mind absolutely, irrevocably, and after due +deliberation made up? By the bye, have you thought of--your mother?" + +Sir William Ware stood up, settling his coat about his fine spare +shoulders. + +"I have thought about everything--considered everything, George," he +said. "I know you mean well, old chap," Ware, in turn, put his hand on +his old schoolmate's shoulder, "but really, I don't care to discuss the +matter any further, even with you. Besides, all this is, as you must +understand, very embarrassing, for Miss Nixon." He turned to Daisy. +"Come, dear," he said. + +Daisy Nixon stood up; and, in the presence of two decorously +expressionless figures of the cafe staff--the manager and one of the +waiters--as witnesses, she was presently by brief and grave ritual +united in the bond of holy matrimony to Sir William Ware, Baronet. + +As the ceremony ended, and she stood awed and a little pale, Sir William +approached and, very softly and tenderly, put his hands upon her +shoulders and stooped to kiss her. He would have kissed her forehead; +but Daisy, lifting her face with an altogether sweet gesture of +yielding, gave him her lips. + +His countenance, upon which the girl's eyes had continued to look as it +approached near to hers for the caress, had not shown, in its nearness, +any grossness of line or texture, any twitching muscle betraying some +unexplainable dark trait. It was masculine, thoroughbred, honorable-eyed +and--clean. It was pleasant and thoughtful. Face and figure were full of +quiet mastery, yet had no outward suggestion nor pose nor plebeian +ostentation of "masterfulness." + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +THE LADY OF THE HOUSE. + + +Daisy, in whose virile young body the habit of sound and healthy sleep +was too firmly established for even an event so epochal as that of the +previous evening to break her rest, awoke next morning, after a night of +undisturbed slumber. A little clock, sounding one of the hours with +chimes instead of the ordinary striking gong, drew her notice. The dial +registered nine. + +The first use she made of her opened eyes was to glance, with a thrill, +about that beautiful pink bedchamber; a door at one end showing a little +bathroom, tiled in clean and shining white, with folded towels on a +glass roller above the long porcelain tub. The morning sun came rosily +in through a curtained bow window, that had an alcoved seat piled +comfortably with cushions. A fresh draught coming from another quarter +drew her eyes toward an open way leading to a balcony, with straw +matting, a hammock, and comfortable-looking rattan rocking-chair. + +There was some uneasy feeling in the back, as it were, of Daisy's head. +For a moment or two, she could not understand it; then, as she found +herself instinctively glancing about the apartment to see if there were +any corners hard to reach with the broom, the solution of her sensation +of unrest came. It was nine o'clock and she was still in mental habit a +housemaid at the big Harrison villa. By this hour she should have had +all the windows in the sleeping-rooms opened and the blankets and sheets +turned back to air the beds. + +Daisy laughed to herself, and snuggled back luxuriously on the deep soft +pillows. Her mind resumed its office of recollection and ratchetted on +over the events of the night before. The evening had been spent, by the +rector's invitation, at his house, adjoining massive St. George's +church. There had been a pleasant little wedding "dinner," during which +Daisy had met a Mrs. Heathcote who had afterwards taken her off by +herself and asked her a good many blunt and, as Daisy thought, rather +intimate questions. She had met one Jessica Heathcote, too, a bird of +slightly different plumage--a companionable, back-slapping girl, who sat +on the edges of tables, or put her feet up on chairs like a man, while +she conversed; haw-hawed and whacked her knee when she heard a good +joke; and was in every way a person to banish misgiving and dolor and, +unaided, to make things hum. Jess was coming over to see her early +to-day. + +"You'll need a bit of help, you know, young-un," Jessica had predicted, +"when you face 'Grandmammah'. Yes--rathah!" + +After the little family wedding-supper at the Heathcotes', Daisy had +gone home with Sir William in the rector's car. Everybody at the Ware +house had retired when they reached it, for the hour was well on toward +midnight; and Sir William, after--as he jokingly put it, to +Daisy--"smuggling" her up to this apartment, had pushed her playfully +in, and with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered "pleasant dreams," +had considerately departed to his own rooms. + +The air that entered from the balcony was very inviting. Daisy could +hear the whisper of ivy-leaves. Flower-breath came up and in from some +hidden garden below. Fitful rattlings of a mower and the hiss from a +hose-nozzle sounded on the lawn. + +Daisy's garments--the white waist, the stuff skirt, the brown stockings, +one with an incipient hole in the heel--lay over the foot of the bed, +where she had yawningly cast them when she disrobed last midnight. They +looked very cheap and poor and out of place in this lovely room; and +Daisy pursed her lips a moment, and wrinkled her brows after a way she +had, as she regarded them. But presently, with that little shrug of the +shoulders that was her customary way of casting off trouble, she hopped +out of bed, dressed up in the old clothes--which somehow, as she +fastened them about her handily, conveyed a comfortable at-home +feeling--and, sticking a pin or two in her hair, stepped out on the +balcony. Leaning her elbows on the rail, she looked down and about. + +The Ware house and grounds were very different from the Harrison house +and grounds. No concrete in evidence here--no artificial terracing--no +stone garage. No evidence of money anywhere, except such as was +incidentally shown by possession, in the costly residential section of +the city, of these great broad grounds, with their natural swell and +slope; their big trees, between which here and there a little footpath +wandered wild; their plain white street-fence, twinkling afar through +the shrubbery. The house was frame, ivied from the ground almost to the +chimney-tops (ends of the green runners, as Daisy could see on an +adjoining gable, had climbed right up on the shingles), and with +verandahs everywhere. It was a villa for people who loved fresh air; +whereas the Harrison house, for all its massive and costly ostentation, +was no more airy than a prison. The object in the case of the latter was +display, the manifestation of the Ware place, good-mannered reserve, +with reasonable provision for comfort and health. + +The Harrison house was like a striped shirt, a broad-check suit, a +scarlet tie, with a blatbump figure housed in them, thumbs in +sleeve-holes, striding toe-out, gold chain-links dangling, diamond stud +flashing, tongue blathering, along the main street. The Ware place was +like one quietly-dressed and thoughtful, strolling in a grassy lane. + +Down below Daisy was a tuft of shrubbery, and behind this the +garden-hose was going merrily, with a sound like fat frying. A spray of +water came out from a point near the base of the foliage; and, where it +fell, the grass and the scattered coin-like yellow flowers glistened in +the morning sun. These soft-petalled wild-flowers were the only manner +in which gold or its effect was displayed on the Ware grounds. + +Presently the nozzle of the hose came into view, and behind it the +rubber tube emerged until Daisy could see a black-sleeved arm, with +white cuffs turned back at the wrist. Then, following the arm, there +passed into sight a statelily-moving, moderately stout, slightly stooped +old lady, with a white lace cap pinned on her gray hair. + +Lady Frances Ware, who, for more than three-score of her eighty-two +years--ever since, in fact, she had become a member of the Ware +household--had been an absolute ruler, possessed a face in which every +lineament was almost mesmerically masterful. Beneath the silvered hair +that on either side of its straight central parting, was drawn back +smoothly under her cap, a forehead, puckered in a Frontenac-like way +between the brows, sloped up and forward. Behind her glasses her eyes, +keen, dark-blue, and eagle-like, looked out level-irised. Her mouth was +bent down at the corner, and, beneath the underthrust lower lip, the +chin was gathered tensely. + +Evidently she had that uncanny faculty, peculiar to those long +habituated to directing a household, of instantly and by instinct +detecting the irregular; for she was barely in view, before her eyes +travelled up to the balcony where Daisy leaned. Lady Frances adjusted +her glasses; looked hard at the girl a moment; then turned off the +nozzle of the garden-hose, folded her hands across one another at a +point just below her waistband, and glanced off across the lawn toward +where the mower was clattering. + +"Will," she said, "come here--at once." + +The mower stopped obediently; and Daisy, who had drawn back a little, +saw the tall figure of Sir William come into view between the trees. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and his neatly-cropped head was bare. + +"Yes, mother," he said, as deferentially as though he were ten years +old. + +"Who," said Lady Frances, "is that--up there? Or do you know?" + +Sir William, as he glanced up to the balcony and saw Daisy, gave a +little start. Then he nodded and smiled at the girl; and, appearing to +square his shoulders a little, turned again to the old lady. + +"That, mother," he said, simply and with a dignity equal to Lady +Frances' own, "is--my wife." + +The dictatress of the Ware household lifted her eyes again, and regarded +Daisy for nearly three minutes. Then she faced her son, took off her +glasses, and looked at _him_ for a short period. As, at the conclusion +of this survey, she inhaled preparatory to speaking, Sir William had an +odd sensation of tingling down the backs of his legs, as in the days +when his mother had prepared to supplement reproof with liberal +administration of the tawze. + +"Have you gone quite daft?" she demanded; then, with an imperious motion +of her finger, she said, "Now, exactly what do you mean by this, Will? +If you were not speaking seriously, I may tell you at once that I wish +no trifling on such a subject. Now, answer me immediately." + +"Well," responded Sir William, a little lamely, "we were married last +night, mother--that's all. I don't know that there is much more I can +say." + +"I differ from you on that point," Lady Frances' voice was formal; "I +think that there is a very great deal more to be said. I take it for +granted, however, that in a man of your years, this step was not +necessary, or considered so, because of previous unwise conduct. Where +did this affair take place?" + +"In the Cumberland Cafe," Sir William said, redly as a lad. + +"The Cumberland Cafe!" The old lady repeated the words slowly and with +stress. "Will, I think you should be in a sanitarium--I do, really. Now, +go up and bring that young woman downstairs at once. Meet me in the +library with her. To say that I am astounded, and disappointed in you, +would be to put it in the mildest possible way--the mildest possible +way!" + +When Sir William, his arm through Daisy's, entered the long +drawing-room, Lady Frances had taken a seat near the window. The baronet +led the girl over. + +"This," he said, "is Daisy, mother. Dear--my mother." + +"How do you do," said Lady Frances Ware, evenly. "Sit down." The words +were plain, but without any inflection to make Daisy feel ill at ease. +Lady Frances Ware, no matter what the provocation, never descended to +the plebeian level of scolding or bullying. + +As the girl took the high-backed chair by the window, a puff of the +morning breeze bulged the great lace curtain, laying a fold of it across +her knee. Bending forward to release the curtain, Daisy, in the +necessary glance toward her coarse black skirt, became for the first +time acutely conscious of her clothes. She had always moved in circles +where people thought of clothes as entirely indexing the person. If she +had had on a fine dress at that moment, Daisy could have faced a queen +unabashed. + +But Lady Frances never even glanced toward her new-made +daughter-in-law's dress. She was concerned completely with the girl's +face. Without any ostentatious flourish of lorgnette, but simply and +quietly and thoroughly, she studied it. + +"You have a frank expression, at any rate," she said, half to herself; +then, more directly, she added, "How old are you?" + +"Seventeen past," said Daisy, as though to a schoolmistress. + +"Ah!" said Lady Frances. "Very young indeed to be away from home. But +the viewpoint as to that is, I have noticed, different in this country. +Where are your parents?" + +"At--at home," said Daisy, a little confusedly. She wanted to avoid, for +the present at least, explaining that she had run away from home. + +"Quite so," commented the old lady, a little dryly; "and where is your +home?" + +"Out in the country--on a farm." + +Lady Frances seemed relieved. "That is very satisfactory," she said, +"highly so. There are--possibilities--in young people who have been +brought up out of contact with the city. And you are only--how old?" + +"Seventeen, ma'am," Daisy repeated. + +"You must not, of course, say 'ma'am'. But externals can be attended to +gradually. Do you care for your--for my son?" + +"I guess so," said Daisy. + +Lady Frances, for an instant, looked at her so freezingly that Daisy +moved her knees uncomfortably. + +"That answer," said the old gentlewoman, "pleases me less than anything +you have said, up to this point. I had hoped to find more +enthusiasm--much more enthusiasm. In fact, it will be quite necessary to +convince me that you are frankly enthusiastic in this matter before we +shall get along at all." + +"Daisy," put in Sir William, shrewdly, "is non-committal by nature, +mother. You yourself know that you prefer that to evasiveness or +untruthfulness. We shall be able to reassure you...." + +"I shall most decidedly expect to be reassured," said Lady Frances Ware. +She rose energetically to her feet. + +"You may go now," she said, glancing in Daisy's direction. "Return to +your room until I have Ada look you up something to put on. Will, I +should like to see you again before you go downtown." + +With these words, Lady Frances Ware returned to her duties among the +flowers and hedges and shrubbery, in the fresh air that had brought her +to past fourscore with full retention of middle-aged vigor in faculty +and body. As she passed down the outer hall, she instructed the maid as +to Daisy's attire. + +"I think we shall go along very finely, dear," Sir William said as he +went upstairs with an arm about Daisy's shoulder. "Now, as soon as Ada +is through with you, I shall take you out for a spin--just our two +selves. Can you drive a motor? No--then we'll have a lesson this very +morning. It will be fine sport.... And, by the way, talking of 'going +out' suggests going away. Where shall we go, for a bit of a wedding +trip?" + +"No place--not just now," Daisy looked up, then set her head on one +side, put a finger under Sir William's lapel, and dropped her lashes, "I +tell you what I _would_ like to do, though, sir." + +"Not 'sir'," put in Ware. "Say 'Will'. And don't flirt, even with your +husband. In the first place, it's bad form; in the second place, I won't +have it. Now, what's this you would like to do?" + +"I would like," said Daisy, "to go over to Harrisons' for dinner, on +Sunday, with you." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +TAKING A REST. + + +But there was no "company" invited to the Harrisons' on the following +Sunday. + +On the preceding Thursday, which was just two days after the evening she +was married, Daisy had an impulse to go and see Jean. By arrangement +with the Heathcotes, no notice of the wedding had been allowed to get to +the papers; and when Daisy, in a white dress, popped in through the +kitchen door of the Harrison house on Thursday afternoon, all Jean knew +was that she had mysteriously slipped out on Tuesday evening and had not +been seen since. + +Daisy bounced over to hug her; but the honest Scot drew herself up +sternly, and put out a hand. + +"It's no like ye," she said, "to traipze oot like yon, an' gie the good +leddy no notice--and her on the broad of her back now, at death's door, +too. I ha' made the beds mysel' and sweepit up, forbye my ain work, for +twa fu' days now, to save her the worry of havin' a stranger aboot, in +her last hours." + +"Last hours!" exclaimed Daisy, her breath catching, in the impulsive +wave of self-reproach that swept over her, "Is she--dying, then, +Jeanie? Why, I--" + +"Ay," Jean set her great knuckles against her hip as she stirred the +broth she was making for the sickroom; "ye reck of naebody so long as ye +can please yersel', an gang oot an' in, and come an' go, withoot a 'by +your leave' tae ony person.... An' how come ye tae be here, all fettled +up, in the middle of the afternoon? Are ye no workin'? An' if no, what +are ye daein'? Say!" Jean turned, gripped Daisy by the shoulders +suddenly and hard, and studied her with brows knit and eyes ablaze, +"ye'll answer me _that_ this minute--what are ye daein' for your bed an' +board? If all's no richt, man! I'll tur-rn ye across my knee an' skelp +ye, like a bairn! I'll save ye from the street, or I'll no leave a whole +inch o' hide on your back!" + +"Is the Missis dying?" Daisy repeated, tears now in her eyes. + +"Ay," said Jean, shaking her, "an' all the greetin' in the warld'll no +save her the now. But come! Aboot yersel'! Oot wi't, I say!" + +"Oh, I'm all right, Jean," said Daisy, still thinking about Lady +Harrison, "I'm married.... Say, can I go upstairs with you, when you +take up her broth, and see her?" + +"Married!" Jean sat, almost stumbled, into a chair behind her. In this +position, she stared at Daisy for a moment; then murmured, half, as it +were, to herself, "Lassie, lassie! ye're a mystery to me. I absolutely +gie ye up, as I wad a conundrum book wi' no key. Wha's the lad? Yon +jitney man?" + +"No." Daisy dimpled a little. + +"No?" Jean, her elbow on the side-table, leaned forward with renewed +interest; "I thocht, now, it could be nane other than Curly Head Jamie. +Well, then, ye've no done the impossible, I take it, and hookit Nicky +Cluett, have ye? Man! if ye ha' got him, yon's a laddie will soon gie ye +your fine hoose an' motor-car. He's drawin' in the siller with a +hand-rake, like, these days." + +"It's not Nicky," said Daisy, smoothing out her sash and putting her +head a little on one side. + +"Weel, ye micht have set your cap for him, onyway," Jean commented, as +she reached over and gave the broth a little stir to keep it from +burning; "Baby Jock tells me it's common talk ye made a hit wi' Nick, +you nicht at the dance. Wha did ye tak', then, if it wasna Nick? Oot +wi't. Ye've fair got me on pins an' needles. Do I ken him?" + +"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, protracting her mystery with a teasing +delight; "may be you do. Yes, I think you know him. It's-- it's--" Daisy +leaned over, and said the name dramatically, right in Jean's ear. + +The Scotswoman looked at her hard: sternness returning to every +feature. + +"I doubt ye been misconductin' yersel' after all," she said, levelly and +coldly, "I kenned it when ye cm' in through yon door. Tellin' me a pack +o' lies'll no improve matters--" + +"I'm telling you the truth," Daisy asseverated, warmly, "I didn't think +you'd go and insult me, Jean!" + +The other eyed her doubtfully. "I'd fair loe tae believe ye, lassie," +she breathed, "but the thing's impossible. It sounds like a story out of +a book. Why, besides his money an' his social position, he's sixty years +old, if he's a day--an' forbye, he's an ingrown bachelor. He'd ha' +wedded long or now, if it had been in him to marry. He--he hasna offered +to keep ye--that's not what ye mean, is it? But, no--I ken fine he +wouldna dae that. He's an honorable man, Sir William Ware." + +Daisy regarded Jean a second or two; then went over, sat plumply down on +the elder woman's knee, and put an arm about her neck. + +"Listen", she said, "and I'll tell you all about it, right from the +start-off, when I left here Tuesday evening." And therewith Daisy did +so. By the time she had finished, Jean's arms were about her waist, and +penitence blended with the amazed, generous, unenvying delight that +radiated from the Scotswoman's harsh-lined but kindly-expressioned +face. + +"Forgie me, bairnie," she said, as she laid her great palm around the +girl's cheek; "but I--I--why, I juist canna find the words tae say what +I think. I'm fair--fair tongue-tied. Fast married--and to a laird o' +lairds! Ey, ye bonnie wee thing, ye, bide till I buss ye," and the great +arms, tightening about Daisy's waist, hugged her ecstatically. Then Jean +set her free, rose up with vigor, and reached down a bowl, spoon and +plate of crackers. + +"Come!" she exclaimed, as she turned out the gas-jet under the broth, +poured the liquid into the bowl, and went to the cupboard for a +dessert-spoon; "if the good leddy's conscious an' no in ane of her bad +spells, we'll tell her the news. A bittie o' gossip like yon's better +than physic or food to a sick wuman.... By the bye, here's a letter cam' +for ye yesterday. Open it an' read it, if ye like, while the broth's +coolin'." + +The letter was from Mrs. Lovina Nixon, in answer to Daisy's first letter +home, written under a daughterly impulse during one of Jean's "nights +out", when Daisy was alone in the big Harrison kitchen. In her letter, +the girl had asked for forgiveness and had hoped that "You and Pa are +getting along all right, and that crops are looking good." + +Mrs. Lovina's answer was somewhat grim and ominous. "I suppose," she +wrote, "you think yourself mighty smart, taking off like that. I suppose +you think it was kind of respectable, eh, to go away like you done, +alone with a feller. I suppose you reckon your going to have high jinks +in town there while me and your Pa milks all them cows, well you ain't. +Your not of age yet understand, and your pa and me is coming right into +the city to get you, one of these days and fetch you strait home, and if +you don't get one tanning from your pa that youl remember all your days, +my name aint lovina janet nixon, so mind." + +"Bad news, bairnie?" Jean enquired; as Daisy, sobered not so much by the +letter as by momentary recollection of her past, stared down at the +floor in a grave, pondering way. + +"Oh--no," Daisy folded up the letter and slipped it into the bosom of +her dress, "not exactly. Is the broth cool now, Jean?" + +"Ay," said Jean, picking up the bowl and the plate of crackers; "Come +on. The Mistress is lyin' in Sir Thomas' room. I had him move his ugly +carcass out of it, because it's the best-ventilated room in the +hoose--the best o' the worst, like. He didna object, at least naething +to speak of. He kenned fine I'd have taken the besom tae him without +much encouragin'.... Ey, what d'ye think, now, I caught him sayin' tae +her, one time when I came in to red up the room. He was standin' by the +bedside, with his hands in his pockets and his feet spraddled out, in +yon way he has. + +"'We-ell, Marth',' he oppens up, in his big healthy blat, 'har yuh +feelin'? Uh?'. + +"'Poorly, Tom, very poorly,' says the good leddy--puir soul!--in a +faint-like voice. + +"'Thaat's ba-ad,' he says, suckin' his teeth like somebody chirpin' tae +a pair o' horses, 'but anyway, I guess, Marth', it's time you was +restin' under the sod. You've done your share o' this world's toughin' +it. You've aimed the right to rest, if anybody hezz. Ever'thin' wurks +furr th' best. Y'see that, don't yuh, Marth'-girl? Uh?' + +"Juist then I cam up and gied him a push from behind. Ey, a bonny push! +'Get oot!' I says, chokin'-like. I was sae blind mad, I could ha' +stranglit yon man, then and there, so I could. Weel, he went!" + +The great muscles on Jean's arms were knotted into ribs and ridges like +a man's; her chin was thrust out; her eyes were narrowed into shining +slits. Her whole strong frame seemed to become a banked fire of +indignation, as memory recalled that scene in the sickroom. + +The door of Lady Harrison's room was slightly open as the two reached +it. They were barely inside the chamber, when Jean, with an exclamation +thrust the broth and crackers down on a side-table and rushed over to +the bed. + +Daisy, following quickly, saw the Scotswoman, after glancing closely at +the half-open eyes and laying her ear to the gaunt sunken chest, hastily +remove the pillows from under Lady Martha Harrison's head, lay the scalp +levelly on the mattress, and press down the eyelids with her fingers. + +"Ey, puir, puir leddy," Jean, keeping finger and thumb on the dead +eyelids, turned toward Daisy with two tear-balls bowling down the rugged +field of her face; "she's gone, she's gone. Ey, gone off all her +lone--died as she lived, bairnie--while we're crackin' awa careless-like +down in yon kitchen. Stane deid, an' nigh stark against the layin'-oot." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +A RAINCLOUD. + + +"When a chap has a bit of a brain," said a voice, speaking from behind a +crinkled newspaper that was doing temporary service as a fan, "and a +habit of seeing rather far into things, if you know what I mean--it's +_such_ a jolly nuisance that he can't get it before the public without +writing it down. Isn't it, rather, don't you think, Lady Ware?" + +"I suppose it rather must be, kind of," said Daisy, who, in a smart +white skirt and blouse, and canvas shoes, occupied the other end of the +tennis-court bench on the Wares' lawn, "but you should worry about that, +Arthur. The public has enough books to read anyway." + +"Not of the kind I should write, they haven't," declared Lord Arthur +Milcourt, raising toward a green bough above them the ingenuous face of +twenty-one; "I say, can you type a bit?" + +"What?" Daisy demanded, wrinkling her brows at the speaker in a comical +way; "oh, you mean, run a typewriter. No." + +"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will +discovered--er--met you? And didn't you run--that is, operate--a typing +machine there?" + +"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and +I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay." + +"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer +sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a +moment. + +Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench. + +"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning +on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay +here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or +something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for +something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is--some of +them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars." + +"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out +luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you, +there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting. +Baldheaded men! You _are_ a rum one." + +"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly; +"who was your servant this time last year?" + +"Ah--sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the words were apologetic, but the +tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to +the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve, +but it's _wickid_--poor old Will!" + +Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She +did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh +and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when +she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped +about now with a casual and proprietary air--turning the shower on in +the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with +young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")--laying out a +simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe--shaking out a +folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end +of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring. +But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep +on in the same way. + +Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out +through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a +leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at +the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her +face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her modiste had corseted +her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not +increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk +stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her +short neat walking-skirt. + +She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line +crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon +"off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage +downtown. + +Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter +from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any +further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her +maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note, +which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of +John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability, +actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking +her back to the farm. + +She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching +this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day. + +Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and +stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed +in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina Nixon; the postmark +showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to +one of the side-tables and opened it. + +"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I +said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the +like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we +wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the +train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police +onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of +your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind, +itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to +do." + +Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the +letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon! + +When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled +the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung +javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she +leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in +her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had +been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy +clouds had come up and that, already, there showed here and there on +the glass, the splash of a raindrop. + +As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware +gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy +decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis +which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the +postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of +the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to +step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney +drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner +of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky" +hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little +to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked +soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head +passenger?" + +"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily +forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the +tonneau door. + +"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly, +then dropped them and put her head on one side. + +"You ken sit in front if you so prefer, lady," Jimmy answered, with +emphasis of politeness, as he closed the tonneau again, and opened the +fore-door. Daisy had no sooner hopped in and seated herself than the +rain came on heavily. Jimmy, reaching up, let down the storm-curtains on +both sides and buttoned them fast before he started the car. + +"Thanks so much, chauffeur," acknowledged Daisy, smiling up sidewise as +she mimicked his manner. + +"Don't mention it, madam," deprecated Jimmy Knight, throwing in his +clutch. The car skidded slightly on the arch of the pavement, but ran +smooth and straight, as the engine, in the street-centre, picked up +speed. Jimmy's gloved finger mechanically "gave her gas" or advanced the +spark, as occasion required. Outside, the rain poured steadily, misting +the mica peep-holes in the storm-curtains and half-blinding the +windshield. The car stopped frequently for additional passengers; and +soon the tonneau was filled with dour figures in wet raincoats that +rustled shrilly as the owners moved, watching in a fidget for home +streets. + +Said one of the passengers, a girl, as, leaning back in her seat after +glancing around the edge of the storm-curtain, her eyes fell on Daisy's +fashionably-clad figure: + +"Some swell jane in the front seat with the driver, Lil." + +The remark was made with unmannerly distinctness; and the speaker's +companion, another girl of the same commonplace city type, made answer, +also in a tone purposely raised to reach Daisy's ear: + +"Oh, well, we all know what them dolled-up kind is." + +"Hey!" Jimmy Knight's head jerked around, and a glinting iris swam into +that corner of his eye-socket next the last speaker, "do you skirts want +to get out o' this car head-first? If not, shut up!" + +The second girl looked at the first one. + +"Well, the _very_ idea!" she said audibly, after a second or two. + +"The idosity of him!" commented Girl Number One, also in a loud tone; +"some friend, I guess. They all have their friends." + +Jimmy turned toward the curb, and threw on the brake. As the car skidded +to a standstill, he banged open the tonneau door. + +"Get out!" he said. "Go on--the both of you! Get to hell out of here! +Keep your darned fares." + +There was that in Jimmy's tone and look which caused the two to act +promptly. + +"Some gentleman!" remarked Girl Number Two, as she descended on the wet +street. + +"Oh, it doesn't matter," fired back Number One, as they walked away, +heads up, "we live on the next street, anyway." + +"That's ten cents I owe you," said Daisy to Jimmy Knight, dimpling. + +Jimmy did not answer--at least, not in words. He put his lips together, +slammed home the clutch and the car leaped forward. + +By the end of another ten minutes the last two of the passengers in the +back portion of the jitney had reached their home corner, and the car +was empty except for Daisy and Jimmy. + +"I'll take y' home, lady," he said, brusquely; "no coat--get wet to the +skin--this here rain." + +"Thank you," aped Daisy, formally. Then she put her chin in the air, and +silence reigned. + +"What _you_ mad at?" came Jimmy's voice, presently. "Who said they +didn't 'feel like' marryin', and then went straight off and married +money? Not me. You ain't got a thing in the world to be sore at: I have, +an' I'm darned good and sore. I didn't think it was in you, Kid--honest, +I didn't.... Here we are at your door. Get out! don't set there, with +the servants maybe lookin' out of the windows." + +Daisy's face was red as she dismounted. She made a step away, then came +back. + +"I'm--I'm--", she began, the color on her cheeks deepening. + +"Yes, you are," said Jimmy Knight, dryly, "good an' plenty. No use o' +standin' there and chewin' the fat now. Get into the house, and get them +wet duds off. You give me a pain, you do!" + +The car, with a scornful roar, shot off along the driveway of the Ware +grounds, and Daisy was alone. Presently something rolled down her cheek +and ran into the corner of her mouth. It had a salt taste. It was a +tear. + +"Some folk wad still be findin' something tae greet about, even if they +had the warld with a wire dike aboot it," remarked Jean, who was now +chief (under Lady Frances, of course) in the Ware kitchen; regarding +Daisy in her keen and kind scrutinizing way, as the latter, entering the +room, sat down moodily in a chair, dropped her hands into her lap, and +stared before her with pensive wet lashes lowered; "Man! lassie, but +ye're ill tae suit!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +THE BLEAK TWO. + + +The November draught swept frostily down from the tracks to the station +subway where Daisy, in her smart furs, stood, some three months later, +waiting for the passengers from the train which had just roared into the +great iron-ceiled shed overhead. She could not help thinking of the day +when, gazing wonderingly about her, she had trotted alongside the +self-assured and patronising Fred Beatty through this very +way--forgetting, on that occasion, her travel-soiled blouse, in her +wonder and rapture as the city rose about her like a warm sun-glowing +tide. Only six months ago! + +As the passengers from the newly-arrived train commenced to file along +the corridor, Daisy, watching from her place in line, found her interest +centred almost as much in looking for some forlorn and eager little +person like that self of her present memory, as in "keeping her eye +peeled" (in accordance with the request contained in a recently-received +letter) for John and Lovina Nixon. But the travellers on this train were +nearly all either blase souls of the "drummer" type, who have no wonder +left for anything beneath the sun, or badger-gray country people who +looked as though they were on a business trip and were doing mental +arithmetic relating to hotel-bills as they stumped along. All bored, +dull, worried or indifferent. No gay, no dancing, no holiday souls in +the whole drab-faced file--at almost the end of which came stony-faced +John Nixon with his square beard, dingy skin, harshly-drawn brows and +mouth, and small suspicious eyes; and thin, stooped, fault-finding +Lovina, with her sharp nose, her glance of ill-surmise, and bonnet +pinned teeteringly on her top-knot. + +Recollection blew on Daisy like a cold wave with her first view of them; +but the feeling passed, and she found herself waiting mischievously to +see if they would recognize her. + +John Nixon passed dourly on; but Lovina's hawklike eyes, as she drew +opposite to where Daisy stood, found her daughter instantly. + +"Well, mother," Daisy drew her cape of sables about her shoulders and, +moulding her features into a welcoming smile--which, when facing Lovina +Nixon, required an effort--stepped forward. + +The mother's chin came out. Her eyes drew to button-like points. There +was nothing maternal about the look. It was merely a glance which +bespoke ill-expectation gratified. + +"John!" she chirped, to the stepfather, who had meandered on, "here!" + +John Nixon turned and came back. His brows knitted as he glanced from +his wife to the girl in her splendid furs; then, as his eyes travelled +to Daisy's face, he gave vent to an expression which sounded like, +"Ur-rh!" + +"Look at this!" said Lovina Nixon; catching an end of the sable cape, +holding it up for her husband's scrutiny, and then tossing it from her +and making a motion of dusting off her hands; "You know what that means, +I s'pose, John?" + +"Ay," said John Nixon, "ay-hay." + +"Disgraced!" said Lovina Nixon; "Disgraced! Oh, you--you thing! Just +wait till I get you home! Just you wait!" + +Daisy's cheeks warmed at this. But, a moment after, her indignation +changed to an impulse of roguery: she would let these two, for the +present, believe the things they thought! + +"I s'pose you can show us a respectable hotel," said her mother. "But +remember--you don't get out of my sight again. You stay right with me in +the hotel, till we leave town. Carry this valise for me." + +Daisy dimpled with devilment as she obeyed this refreshingly familiar +instruction; and, accentuating her figure-lines as she walked, for the +especial benefit of the furtively-watching couple, she led the way to +where Tim Davitt, the Wares' chauffeur, waited outside the depot with +the limousine. + +"What's this?" demanded Lovina Nixon, surveying the vehicle, "a livery +rig?" + +"Yes, mother," said Daisy, smiling aside at the chauffeur, as Davitt, +touching his hat, held the door open. The mother, knocking her bonnet +askew against the top of the car, blundered to the farther end of a +seat. John Nixon lumbered in after her. Then Daisy, after a low-toned +"Home, Timmy," hopped in and snuggled mischievously against her +stepfather, who was in the centre of the seat. + +"Don't ye be 'fraid," he leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, in her +ear, "I'll not let yur Moh whup ye." + +Turning street-corners smoothly and swiftly, the limousine soon reached +the home grounds and was brought by Tim Davitt, deftest of chauffeurs, +to a soft gliding halt before the long front veranda of the Ware house. + +"Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and +her husband followed Daisy up the steps. + +"Oh--not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered +her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, +polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on the right led into the +library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in +the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady +Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the +supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office. + +"Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter +suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive +volume with brass binding and buckle. + +"Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer +expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the +sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing +as live fire. + +Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; +and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record +of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +THE CHOICE OF THE DRAY. + + +Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon. + +As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him, +Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a +chair and cocked _his_ feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon +might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only +one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace, +Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that +locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware; +but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned, +in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling +with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his +chair. + +As far, however, as putting Nixon at his ease was concerned, Sir William +need not have troubled. It was an oft-enunciated maxim of John Nixon's +that whatever he did was right, if he did it. "Do's you wanter," was the +way Nixon put it; "dun't ast nobuddy fur nawthun." + +Presently, noting that the moistened area in front of the fireplace +threatened to overflow and inundate the flooring about the tiles, Sir +William jumped up, as though with a sudden inspiration and said, smiting +Nixon playfully on his tree-stump shoulder: + +"Take you on at billiards upstairs, old chap!" + +"Ur-rh?" Another salivation dampened the tiling as Nixon twisted his +stocky torso about. + +"I was about to say," Sir William pursued--having gathered from his +guest's tone and attitude that John Nixon did not know anything about +playing billiards--"that I would take you on at a game of billiards, +only it's so jolly uninteresting. Shall we stroll out and see the deer?" + +"Ain't interested in deers," said Nixon, "'n I wun't budge a step to see +nawthun I dun't want for to see. Never _would_." + +"You're jolly well right," agreed Sir William; "I can thoroughly +sympathize with you, Nixon, old man.... Silly things, deer, after +all--aren't they?" + +"I tell you, though," Nixon arose, grunted, stretched, scratched, shook +his legs, and, with a certain awesome gapping sound and a gust of fetid +breath, yawned in his host's face, "what I _will_ do, English. Take me +somewhurs whurr I ken git a schooner o' beer--thuh drinks on you, mind, +fur I ain't got a cent to spare--an' I'll go along, every steppuh the +way. How des that ketch you?" + +"Happy thought!" Sir William clapped his guest heartily on the back. +"Bright idea! Nixon, you're a man after my own heart. Half a jiff, till +I bring our hats and coats." + +The two left the house by the side door; but, as they reached the gate +of the grounds, Sir William on the excuse that he had forgotten his +pocket-book, requested Nixon to walk on slowly, and himself hurried back +to the house. + +"Was you tannin' thuh leather furr a new bill-book, er whutt?" demanded +John Nixon, testily, as his host, after quite a lapse of time, rejoined +him. + +"I really must apologise, old chap--I really must. Shan't let it occur +again," Sir William said, good-humoredly. He could not very well tell +Nixon that he had spent the interval in personally cleaning up with +pieces of newspaper the mess by the fireplace, for fear Lady Frances +should happen in and see it while they were away. + +Upstairs, in Lady Frances' own sitting-room--a big, airy apartment, in +which, on quiet afternoons, she read or sewed or knitted, or napped in +the old arm-chair she had brought with her from overseas--the venerable +lady of the house had set herself the task of entertaining the mother of +her son's wife. + +"Ineffably, innately common and nasty-natured," had been her inward +pronouncement when first she faced Lovina Nixon; but there had been no +outward sign, although one who knew the old gentlewoman's ways might +have discerned a more careful and precise politeness in her attitude. +Now, on this afternoon of the last day of the Nixons' stay, which had +endured, for what Lady Frances had termed, in a matin soliloquy, "three +dreadful days", she had steeled herself to the duty of making the time +pass agreeably until evening and train-time should bring deliverance. + +Ada, the maid, had brought the tea-urn and "curate"; and now the three +women--Lady Frances in her big chair; Mrs. John Nixon dangling one of +the fine china tea-cups, which she had drained at a draught, from her +forefinger, and eating cake with her elbow on the table and the cake +scattering crumbs as she gesticulated with the hand that held it; and +Daisy holding a skein of yarn, from which Lady Frances was winding a +ball--sat ill-assorted in the large room. + +"Do have some more tea, Mrs. Nixon, won't you?" invited Lady Frances, +eyeing the suspended teacup nervously. "Daisy, dear, give your mother +some more tea." + +But, as Mrs. Nixon had already had three cups, the urn was empty. Daisy +hopped up and carried the shapely silver receptacle to the kitchen, to +get some more hot water from Jean's kettle. As the door closed after her +daughter, Mrs. Lovina Nixon leaned over toward Lady Frances with a +greenish light in her eyes. + +"I s'pose it ain't no use o' tellin' you, Mam, now," she said; "I mean, +now that your son's tight married to her and can't get loose, that yen +girl run away from us. Yes, sir--run away with a feller. Never seen +nawthun like it in all m' born days. Never did." And Mrs. Lovina +nid-nodded and sowed caraway seed on the carpet in showers as she +vibrated the cake. + +"Just like'r, though," she supplemented, after a moment, "so it was. +'Xpected somethin' like it, all along. Warn't s'prised one iota." + +"Your daughter," Lady Frances said--very slowly, and governing her voice +with difficulty--"has quite voluntarily told us all the circumstances +you mention. I--I really do not think," the old gentlewoman could barely +keep the frost out of her tone, "that we should discuss her in her +absence. I really don't think we should." + +"Oh, well," Mrs. John Nixon's radial arm described a flying circle of +cake-crumbs about her chair as she indicated, with a sweeping gesture, +that she washed her hands of the matter, "if you're satisfied, we are." + +"Daisy," Lady Frances said, levelly, "has proved a very fine and frank +and sweet young woman. Her adaptability, too, has been most +satisfactory. I have become very much attached to her--and I really +cannot listen, nor will I listen, to anything against my son's wife." + +"Oh, all right, all--right," Lovina Nixon smacked her cup down. "I +wish't you'd had a siege of her like I've had, so I do. You'd talk +different." + +"I think," Lady Frances Ware rose out of her chair with remarkable vigor +for eighty-two, "that you have probably taken a wrong course with +her--in fact, I feel quite sure you must have taken a wrong course with +her. Now, as I proposed before, we will change the subject. Would you +care to go for a motor ride? I shall tell Davitt, the chauffeur, to have +you back here in time for a leisurely and comfortable meal before your +train." + +Mrs. Lovina Nixon shrugged. "Might's well do that as anything else, I +s'pose." + +Lady Frances rang the bell. "Telephone Davitt," she said, to Ada the +maid, "to bring around the larger car. Then tell Lady Ware her mother +would like to do a little shopping, and wishes her to go as well. Take +my hand-bag with you, and tell Lady Ware she may use what money she +likes from my purse, if she is short." + +A quarter of an hour later, Lady Frances, having seen the motor car off +down the drive, returned to her sanctum, sat down quietly in her big +chair, and took up her sewing. Presently, however, her needle paused, +and she found herself, after a habit she had, drifting off into +half-audible soliloquy. + +"William said," she murmured musingly, "that he thought the man a fair +masculine type, who might have developed well, with proper opportunity. +But that woman! Thoroughly nasty, ingrate, underhand. An improvement in +manners would only be a hopelessly inadequate veneer. A nature such as +she has would not be mended by the opportunities of three generations +and more. I do hope William does _not_ intend to take those people in +tow, for I am really not equal to it." + +A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later, +pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her +lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the +hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked +down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a +crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance. + +Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an +unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"--a word that with him, +meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line--and had, in spite of +Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits: +dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon +him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying +for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of +buying any more for him. + +"You _are_ rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken +only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at +last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It +was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware +had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last +half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the +latter had not received so much as a scratch. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +JOHN NIXON'S INVITATION. + + +"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool +beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a +position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has +jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am +what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss--aren't you +sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering +idiot." + +"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?" + +"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded +the girl with a bright and tender approval. + +"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the +bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice." + +"For the third and last time--no!" Sir William responded, flipping her +ear; "this ice is cold enough: it has clotted every vein in my bally +forehead. I say, kitten, isn't that somebody knocking?" + +The knock which sounded on the door--that of the small sitting-room of +Sir William's bedroom suite--was clumsily-knuckled and hesitating. It +sounded once, audibly--then a second time, feebly--and, after the second +knock, the scuffle of a heavy foot receding indicated that the knocker +was going away without entering. Daisy went quickly and opened the door. + +"Come on, Dad," she said. + +Nixon stopped in the hall, his back half-turned, and spoke to his +foster-daughter over-shoulder. + +"You go on about your business a while," he said, gruffly, "I want to +talk to the boss." + +Ware, hearing this dialogue from his chair, smiled queerly to himself. + +"Right-O," he called, "run along, my dear, for a jiffy; see if Mother +has any messages for us. Come on, Nixon, old chap!" + +Reddening in an odd way at the cordial tone, John Nixon, his hands +hanging awkwardly and his beard canted aside in a sheepish attitude, +came in, pushing the door shut behind him. He lowered himself into the +nearest chair. + +"How are _you_?" said Sir William, humorously and companionably, "I +say--that _was_ a jolly cataclysm! Lucky to get off with our lives, +what?" Nixon, sheepish but still characteristically blunt, came straight +to his point. + +"I wouldn't have got off with no life," he said, "if you hadn't slung +me out o' the way and got stepped on yourself." + +"Rubbish!" said Ware, briefly; "all the same, it's good of you to put it +that way, old chap. Makes me feel less mortified at my stupidity in +standing there like a post and getting knocked down. Let's jolly well +talk of something else." + +John Nixon's head came up and back. He put his right hand down on his +knee-cap with a slap that could be heard across the room. + +"Don't you go tryin' for to head me off, English," he said, "I done +wrong and I'm a-goin' to own up to it. Here, I been walkin' around your +nice house here, a-spittin' all over the floor as if it was a hotel--it +kind of seems like that to me, because we don't sling on no style out +west here--and all because I never did like an Englishman. They always +make me contrairy. When I'm with an Englishman, I talk rough and go +bullin' around, just to be the opposite to what I think he is--" + +Sir William leaned out over the arm of his chair and extended his +uninjured hand toward Nixon. + +"Put her there, as you say in Canada," he said, beamingly, "Nixon, +you're a brick. And if we English make you Canadians feel contrary, I'll +admit we bring it on ourselves. We, too, are a contrary people; and the +more you try to put on this roughness of manner, which is not your own, +the more we try to put on this finicky niceness, which so rubs you the +wrong way. Just because we desire to rub you the wrong way. And so we +see-saw, back and forth, until eventually we come to fisticuffs, or +worse. Nixon, I believe you've hit the peg on which hangs the whole +difficulty between England and Canada. Now that we two understand each +other, let's set an example to our peoples: let's be natural. Put her +there, I say." + +John Nixon put her there, and the two shook hands--an inter-imperial +handshake. + +"How would you like for to come out to my place a while, English?" he +said, after a moment. "As I said, we don't sling on no style nor +nothin', but we never know what it is to go hungry. The roof don't let +in no rain, neither; and you can't sleep on nothin' more comfortable +than a bedtick stuffed with prairie hay." + +"Ripping!" Sir William, "knocked about" as he was, all but hoisted +himself to his feet in his enthusiasm; "I say, Nixon, when shall we +start?" + +"Next train, if you say so. Anyway," John Nixon rubbed an eyebrow with +his gray-bristled forefinger, "I'm worryin' about the stock, and I want +to get back home. Got any drinkin-water around, English?" + +Sir William was about to touch the bell, when Nixon, glancing toward the +bathroom, saw basin, tap and tumbler. + +"Don't ring, for me," he said, getting up, "I can work the fasset +myself, without no help botherin' around." + +As his guest returned from the bathroom, sweeping the water-drops from +his beard by drawing his hand down over it, Sir William said: + +"Will you be offended if I ask you a question--a straight +question--Nixon, old chap?" + +"You couldn't offend me now, English," said John Nixon, "anyhow straight +questions goes, between us, after this. That's our agreement, ain't it?" + +"That's it, exactly," said Ware, "so my question is this: Why do you +persist in calling me 'English'? It sounds a bit like some sort of an +imputation. Do you see my point?" + +"I don't foller you," said John Nixon, as he laid his hand on the +door-knob; "the only reason I call you 'English' is because your reel +name keeps slippin' my mind." + +"It shouldn't be hard to remember," said Ware. + +"What is it?" queried Nixon. + +"To you, henceforth," said the baronet, "it is--Bill." + +"Yes, that's you, all over again," said Lovina Nixon, late that evening, +as she thrust into her iron-gray hair two or three matutinal hairpins, +in places where they would not jab her, and clambered into bed, "astin' +these tony English people out to the farm, to turn up their noses at +everything. Well, Daise'll have to look after them, for I got enough to +do with the housework and the milkin'. Is the old woman coming along, +too?" + +John Nixon yawned, turned his back to her, and wrapped around himself +two-thirds of the bed-clothes. + +"You go on to sleep," he said, "you'll feel better in the mornin'." + +Lovina, however, continued on rebelliously, although the rest of her +grumbling was sunk to a smothered monotone by her nightly habit of +sleeping with the blankets over her head; but her last thought before +she dropped off to sleep was that now at last she would have a chance to +bring from the back of the farmhouse cupboard the "weddin' set" of neat +china that had been waiting there during nearly a quarter of a century +for an appropriate guest. + +"No, I don't think I shall go, William," said Lady Frances, adjusting +the cushion at the back of her son's head and handing him the evening +newspaper, "this northwest winter is here now--don't forget that it's +November, not May, outside--and the plan sounds to me rather too much +like Polar exploration. You say you intend to go out for the winter. +Well, if you survive the experience, perhaps I shall join you in the +spring. But surely you're not going to start on this wild expedition +the way you are. I am told it is difficult to go on snowshoes with a +crutch. Those people, too! William, you are insane." + +"Mother, dear," Ware patted the capable old hand that rested on his +chair-arm, "you said that once before, you remember. And that reminds +me--we haven't discussed this with Daisy. Let's have her in now, if +she's about." + +"She's about," rejoined Lady Frances--a little sarcastically, but with +an unconcealed accent of motherly affection--, "she's having tea with +McTavish, the cook." + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +IN THE BLIZZARD. + + +"Shove on all the clothes you can get on to you, Eng--Bill," counselled +John Nixon, sucking his teeth shrilly as he donned a lupine-looking +wombat coat and reached for his mittens, "and after that put on an extry +sweater, as they say. She's a-going to blow." + +The place was the Toddburn hotel, where Sir William and John Nixon, left +there by the warm and friendly train at 11 a.m., had now, an hour and a +half later, come out of the dining-room with a good meal "under their +belts". + +"You don't need to hurry, gettin' your duds on, Bill," John Nixon said, +as he went out, "the Missis will be pokin' around the store down there +for an hour yet, and Jim's buyin' himself a new suit, to have for when +Daise gets here. I've told him she's married now, but it don't seem to +sink in.... You better stay here and keep warm till we fetch the team +round to the door." + +Sir William stayed--not to keep warm, but to look about him, like a boy +at a circus. Somehow, the effect of the cold dry tingling air that +resided in the streets of this prairie hamlet seemed to percolate in +from outside, in spite of storm window and door, striking upon the +nostrils bracingly and making one "feel good" in spite of the blue fog +of tobacco-smoke and the odor of wet leather and fur. The effects of +Ware's accident, now a week old, had pretty well passed, and the +hereditary health of the Wares glowed in his face again and sparkled in +his eyes. + +He stood with his back toward the window, his hands tucked into the +side-pockets of his Norfolk coat, his attitude the Englishman's +inimitable easy and negligent one which imparts to the stiffest suit the +comfortable effect of flannels, and glanced down the short perspective +of the Toddburn hotel sitting room and bar, which were in a kind of +suite, with a swinging-door between. + +The roof of this place was very low, and the walls were very near one, +and after the spacious places in which Ware had lived his life, it was a +bit like standing in a piano-box. If the situation of this hotel had +been a narrow byway in a city, it would have been a slum, a locality of +death, a room of hollow coughings and faces dreary with debility and +gloom. But here, on the wide prairie it was in effect a sanitarium, if +one might judge by the figures that breezed about, the harsh but +deep-lunged voices that came out of the midst of steam-clouds made when +the outside door opened, the faces glowing and tanned by gale and +snow-shine. + +One only needed to listen a moment to the hearty laughing and the +sentences detached at random from the blend of cheery, companionable +greeting and rallying, to know that the minds of these western men were +as healthy as their bodies. + +"No, sir--I'd never go back on him. Bob an' me was neighbors +a-homesteadin'. It ain't his fault if he had to give up farmin' and get +a job in Jim McMillan's livery stable. His health give out--that's all." + +"Yes, sir, boy--she's a-goin' to blow up some harricane before dark. +This reminds me of yon day, four years ago--yous'll all remember the +time--when Elleck Hamilton an' me started out for home on the +bob-sleighs, pickled up to the eyebrows. Elleck, he was worse than me +when we started; but Elleck's as strong as a horse, and when she started +to blow, he slung off the effects of the licker like tossin' off a hat. +But the stuff had got a kind of a holt on me; I got cold and started for +to go to sleep. However, Elleck he seen me home safe. My face was froze +a little, that's all--but Elleck, he'd had to get out of his bob-sleigh +so many times to look after my team, that he'd froze both legs, one as +fur as the ankle and the other clare up to the knee. Had to have her +taken off. Never was any good after that, Elleck. He was worth about ten +thousand dollars when that happened; and to-day he's buyin' grain for +an elevator company, at seventy-five dollars a month. But I've done +pretty well myself, an' old Elleck knows this--that whenever his +pride'll let him quit work, he can come over to my place, and set down +by the stove, and put his bad leg up on a chair an' keep her there, for +life, even if he lives to be a hundred and fifty." + +Exclamation and anecdote rattled on; fog of tobacco-smoke and stench of +snow melting on fur filled the air; free grammar and the broad "a" had +unchecked currency in this organ-box of a western railway-hamlet hotel: +but Sir William Ware, standing by the iron-rodded window with +philosophic hands in his coat-pockets, had only one distinguishable +impression--that he was being educated, that this west was giving him +something denied by the university. + +This was Western Canada--blunt, gruff, western Canada. Not too forward +in making one's acquaintance; not too stiff and "standoffish". Not +caring sixpence--so long as you yourself were "all right"--who your +father was, nor how much money you were worth. Western Canada, where +nobody who works--or, if he can't or won't work, can tell a good +yarn--is allowed to starve. Western Canada, which never "picks" a fight, +but--well, just try to "run on" her! + +A raucous "hey!" brought Sir William about. Glancing out through the +window, in the direction of the hall, he saw John Nixon signalling to +him from the seat of a bob-sleigh. Hurrying on scarf and coat, Ware +hastened out, creaked across the sidewalk and smilingly awaited +instructions as to boarding this western vehicle of the long trail. It +had a high, green-painted double box. The front and rear seats were two +boards laid across the box and draped with gunny-sacks. The front seat +was occupied by John Nixon and Jim Burns, the hired man who had brought +the equipage in to meet the train. On the hind seat Lovina Nixon +perched, nothing of her visible except one stoical pioneer-woman eye +which looked out unwinkingly at Ware through a crack between folds of +gray shawl. + +"Climb in alongside the Missis, Bill," directed John Nixon, who had made +no special preparation for extreme weather conditions, other than to +pull his corduroy cap down over his ears, "We'll need to get a-goin', if +we're intendin' to strike home before we get blew off the trail. All +set?" + +"All set, old chap," Sir William responded, as he tucked his end of the +goatskin robe around his knees and, in response to Lovina's mumbled +recommendation, felt with his toes for the extra brick which Nixon had +heated for him on the top of the livery stable stove; "it's a jolly good +thing Daisy decided to do as Mother wanted and stay in town for a week. +Perhaps we shall have a better day, to bring her out." + +"Oh, the gal wouldn't mind this," Nixon rejoined, casually, after he had +"clucked" the horses into a trot down the drifted street; "no, sir, +Bill; she'd have got you off that seat, a-runnin' behind in the +sleigh-track, as soon as your toes would start for to feel nippy. It +would take a mighty high wind to chase Daise into the house in the +winter-time, except when dinner is ready. Her and the dog is about even, +when it comes to standin' the cold. Ain't that so mother?" + +"Oh, yes, it's so," Lovina's voice, muffled but still recognizable in +its sharpness, said through the swathes of shawl, "except when I ust to +want her to fetch in an armful o' wood or a pail of water. Then you +couldn't budge her from behint the stove." + +"Aw, go on," Nixon, happy to be on the way home to the "stock" again, +swung his whip jovially but harmlessly over the backs of the horses. +"Wait till you see the happy reunion between her and Rove, Bill, when +she gets here next week. It'll prove what I say about them bein' chums. +Rove, he would have no use for a girl that stayed in the house: you +couldn't coax him any closer to in-doors than the chip-pile, not if it +was sixty below zero." + +The two bay sleigh-ponies--a light team had been chosen, as they could +stand quick travel over difficult roads better than the heavy-fetlocked, +big-haunched, working horses--trotted along sure-footed on the hard +ridge of the trail. The last house on Toddburn's one short street was +soon passed. Turning out at a wide angle from the railroad, at a point +where Ware saw one of the country's tall red elevators, with staccato +explosion of gasoline engine, pouring wheat into a freight-car, the +prairie road set off alone across the white country. + +The snowfall had been unseasonably heavy this autumn; and Sir William, +looking over the side of the sleigh-box at a point where some passing +horse had accidentally inched out into the soft snow and put down a leg, +saw a hole nearly fifty inches deep. Plainly, if the bob-sleigh should +slip off the packed hard ridge of the road, it meant a wholesale +"spill", a floundering of horses, a chilling to the marrow of all +concerned, and much delay. If it happened after dark, with the +blizzard--the effect of which Ware had often watched from the study +window of his city home--at its height, it _would_ be a bit awkward. + +"Was you ever out in a blizzard?" said John Nixon, suddenly: as though +the thought, like that of a group of castaways in an open boat under +squall-clouds, had become by sympathy communal. "No? Well, you're +a-goin' to be out in one to-night, English--" + +"Come, come, now, old chap," reminded Ware, "no national imputations, +remember. I thought it was to be 'Bill'--wasn't it?" + +"Well, Bill," conceded Nixon, "as I was about to say, you're goin' to be +out to-night in the finest whoopin' he-blizzard since '97. I can smell +her a-comin'--all through me." + +From the sleigh--which now, with the village in the distance behind and +a wholly roofless horizon-line before, was the sole, small centre of +life and companionship in the midst of a snowy waste--Ware looked across +the drifts toward the west, where the sun of the short, late-November +afternoon was trending low. The trail ran almost due north, to where the +white line of the horizon met the pale blue of that part of the sky +distant from the transfiguring sun. Between these two cardinal +points--north and west--the voice of winter megaphoned from +northwestward that bitter weather was at hand. + +The distant groves roared softly, like surf heard against the wind. +Afar, the sound had the similitude of hoarse, enormous exhalation; near +at hand, it was like the wash and hiss of water. The whole surface of +the prairie that had been fixed and frozen, now took on an aspect of +life, of ceaseless scintillation and quivering like ripples in the sun. +Ware, looking along the bright faces of the drifts, saw that this +phenomenon was caused by multitudinous lines of hurrying snow-grains, +serpentining over those white billows in the track of the wind, building +with a wondrous rapidity little ribs and ridges of snow in the lee of +every bump and projection in their path. + +In the early afternoon, it had been warm, even to thawing-point. But +now, as the wind rose, it shuttled with a sharp cold the woof of the +air. Earlier, the air had been clear and speckless as the void above +quiet water, and bland in its touch upon the skin. Now, it was clouded +with gathering snow-atoms, hard as sand, whose impact upon face and +hands was needle-sharp and whose irritation of the eyeballs blinded the +vision with rheum. Earlier, the sky had been bright-blue from horizon to +zenith. Now, it was half-fogged with a kind of smoke-blue mist, that was +nothing other than the first draft of a trillion-atomed host of +snow-motes drawn up to their unfriendly function by the cold whirlwind +that should general their attack upon the prairie's winter peace. + +The blizzard is like, and yet contrary to, the thunderstorm that is the +crowning phenomenon of summer. It is like, in that it is preceded by a +"weather-breeding" twelve hours or so of undue heat; it is like, in the +effect of its attack; it is like, in its whipping of the outcast, its +lashing of the earth; it is somewhat like in its roar, although there +is no thunder to diapason the storm of mid-winter. But it is contrary in +color, and in duration, and in direction--or rather, lack of direction. +For the color of a blizzard is not a definite black, but a blinding +white; its duration is not a few moments, but long hours of terrific, +unabated wind-energy; its direction is everywhere--that is to say, you +can turn your back to a thunderstorm, but you cannot turn your back to a +blizzard. If you face to windward, you get the volley of the "spindrift" +direct; if you face leeward, you get it round a corner, just as +stingingly. To the wanderer, a blizzard is a succession of intersecting +whirlwinds, not a direct blast from a definite point in the compass. + +Sir William Ware, in this sleigh that was inching its course--at least, +so it seemed--across the long ten miles that separated Toddburn village +from the Nixon farm, felt an odd sense of dependence as he watched the +gathering of the storm. There was in his whole fine body and brain no +fibre of fear, as far as personal danger was concerned--for, besides the +heritage of his family and race, he was too much the philosopher to +regard the chance of death with anything but curiosity. But he felt awed +by the cold, the great white vastness, the thrilling mighty wind--not +yet at anything like its crescendo, either--and the feeling that his +sole link with safety, this bluff Canadian pioneer who held the destiny +of that sleighful in his rough-mittened hands that held the horses' +reins and his wonderful, but not infallible, pioneer's sense of +direction, was plainly a bit anxious in spite of all his experience. + +"Suppose we have a song, old chap," he leaned forward and shouted in +Nixon's ear; "start up something you know, and we'll all join in the +chorus." + +But John Nixon shook a diffident head. "I got all I can do, handlin' the +team, Bill," he said--in his Canadian way avoiding by the excuse the +admission that he could not sing. "Try Jim, here--he's the singin' bird +out on our ranch. Let's have that there about the 'Mistle-tree Bough', +Jim--you ain't got nothin' on your mind just now." + +Jim Burns, a man of few words and short, cleared his throat and, without +preamble, started "The Mistletoe Bough": + + + The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall, + The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all, + The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ay + A-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday; + O Mistletoe Bough! + O Mistletoe Bough! + + +There is something "catchy" about the words and the tune of this old +song of a famous tragedy, whose human interest has carried it as far +around the world as "Home, Sweet Home". Ware had heard it in his nursery +when it was reasonably new. He joined in it now, with a vigor that +fended off the dolor of the stormy sunset and the inching sleigh on its +high lonely trail. Nixon swung his whip in time; even a diffident +humming came from the shawl that wrapped the head of Mrs. Lovina Nixon. + +After the refrain following the last stanza was concluded, Jim Burns, on +his own initiative, started his favorite, the "Blizzard Song of +Meadowlea." It is a characteristic of prairie people to sing or to talk +about an especially gloomy phase of a present situation. The person who +has newly contracted rheumatism, for instance, is told glowingly by a +sympathetic visitor that, "Hank McCaffrey, he took it in the knee--just +where you got it, Joe--an' he's a-settin' on the same chair yit, an' +that's ten years ago." And if Mrs. Pelkey, on the northwest quarter of +Section Twenty-three, sneezes after peppering the meat in the +frying-pan, Mrs. Mair, over from the northeast quarter to borrow flour +for a baking of bread, remarks, "This is a bad season for to catch a +cold, Bella--right in the spring o' the year. I never saw a person yet +that tot'ly threw off a cold they caught in the month of Ape-rile." + +It was this prairie characteristic that possessed Jim Burns, when he +struck up the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea" in the face of a gathering +blizzard. This melody is a versified account of an actual happening, in +which a farmhouse in the School District of Meadowlea caught fire during +a blizzard and the family lost their lives in the storm. + +"I say, old son," Ware leaned and tapped the singer on the shoulder at +the conclusion of a line running: 'An' here an' there, in drifts of +snow, a frozen corpse they found', "that _is_ a piquant tune, you know, +and you're in splendid voice--but shall we try something we all +know--something comic, for instance?" + +Jim Burns paused reluctantly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, after a +moment; "how about 'The Dying Cowboy'?" + +"Splendid!" assented Sir William, "is that comic?" + +Jim Burns rubbed his head ponderingly. + +"It ain't very comic, Bill," John Nixon explained, "but--I begin to see +your point--there ain't nothin' about blizzards in it. Let her go, Jim." + +"Yes," said Ware, "let her go, Burns, old chap. Majority vote for 'The +Dying Cowboy'. What do _you_ say, Mrs. Nixon?" + +"Oh, don't bother to ast the weemen folk, out in this country," Lovina +Nixon's voice came, muffled and sarcastic, from the depths of her shawl, +"we ain't got no say, even when it comes to invitin' pernicketty people +out to a house that ain't been swept nor dusted for two weeks." + +"I took and scrubbed the whole floor, Mam, two days ago," said Jim +Burns, in an injured voice. "The minute I got your letter that you was +comin' home, I peeled off and went to her, with snow-water an' soap." +Jim Burns did not add that he had scrubbed the farmhouse because he had +expected Daisy with the party. + +"Snow-water, eh?" Lovina's tone was half-hopeful, "well, Jim, you got +more sense than I thought you had. Did you scrub behind the stove?" + +"I scrubbed everywhere _but_ there, Mam," said Jim Burns, a little +sheepishly. + +"Everywhere but where the most grease-spots is," Lovina threw up her +hands and lapsed again into brooding silence, "that's a man, all over +again; so it is." + +The last verse of "The Dying Cowboy" was snatched out of the mouths of +its singers by a great gust of wind and snow, scattering over the sleigh +like a wave breaking over a boat. Ware, concentrated on keeping the +sleighful "in good spirits", had for the moment almost forgotten the +storm; but now, rudely reminded of it by the bitter, stinging +snow-grains that assailed his face and drove deep between scarf and +neck, he drew tight the collar of his top-coat and looked up and about. + +The blizzard had not yet closed about them. But in the far and hither +distance it had thickened, blotting out the sun, that must now be almost +at the horizon. Above, one could catch faint passing glimpses of the +sky, beneath which the hurricane was throwing a dim-white canopy of +upblown snow. About and about, the prairie and the air were a uniform +quivering white. For perhaps a quarter-mile radius, one could still see +definitely the drifts and the half-buried willow and poplar scrub; but +beyond this the storm had built a superstructure, that was in opacity +like a wall, but bellied and blew like a curtain under the huge +inconstant impulse of the gale. Only in one respect was the motion of +this rampart steady and uniform. That was in respect to its gradual, +sure, terrific closing-in about the sleigh and its human handful. Ware, +watching it fascinated, thought of the cell in the famous tale of "The +Pit and the Pendulum", with its contracting circular wall that +precipitated the prisoner into a central abyss. + +No abyss yawned beneath the feet of the laboring horses nor the runners +of the creaking, inching sleigh. But that road they trod was like the +narrow path over a morass: all about it the footing was soft, deep, +delaying. If iron-shod hoof or steel-shod runner slipped, it meant loss +of time, lowering of precious bodily heat, fatigue, failing of the +heart--all preparations for that slowing-down of the restless +body-molecules to the final stoppage which should mark the cold triumph +of the frost: + +"And here and there, in drifts of snow--" + +"Ugh!" said Ware, humorously. + +But there was nothing comic in that nearing wall, whose base crept over +the drifts like the edge of a tide at flow. + +It might have been midnight, or a little before, when the Galician girl +whose function it had been to keep the fire going in the Nixon farmhouse +stove, saw a face move by the window outside, on the way to the door. +Mary had plenty of time to see it, for the face moved very slowly beyond +the frost-edged pane; and she noted that it was not the face of John +Nixon, with his corduroy cap, nor the red face under a "dogskin" cap, of +Jim Burns. Nor was the knock, which presently sounded faint and erratic +on the door-panel--like the chance rap of a frozen branch on a +window--recognizable as that of anybody she knew. + +She was a little afraid, as she listened to that rap which sounded as +though the visitor were half-asleep; but Mary knew enough about the +northwest not to keep a man standing outside on a night like this, no +matter who he might be. Accordingly, she ran and opened the door. + +"G'd ev'ng," said the blue lips of Sir William Ware, as he fumbled his +way across the doorjamb. Mary, glancing at his face, saw that uncanny +white patches covered his cheeks and that his nose was whitened to the +bridge. His feet, on the floor, dragged and scuffled like the ends of +cordwood sticks. + +Mary knew: she had spent five winters in the west. + +"You stay there," she said, backing Sir William out of the doorway with +a vigorous palm, "till I big pail ice-water bring. I fix you." + +"Ah, but--stop a bit," Ware spoke thickly; "your master--and +mistress--far along the trail--need help. We--Burns and I--followed the +horses here. Nixon stayed--with wife--she wouldn't leave the sleigh." He +stopped and leaned heavily back against the door frame. Mary saw that +his eyes were closing. + +"I fix you first," she said, snatching up an enormous wooden bucket, +throwing her apron over her head, and rushing out to the well. About her +the huge veil-ends of the storm swirled as, racing down the track of +light from the open doorway, she disappeared a moment into the roaring +dark; then, presently, came into view again, running, with the +newly-pumped icy water splashing over the edge of the bucket. + +Ware, his initiative suspended and the world appearing to race about him +in a dizzy flicker of white and glare and black, leaned upon the door. +He felt his legs giving way, but could not stiffen them; and presently +he fell into a sitting posture on the door-sill, with the wild night on +his right hand, and on his left the homely interior of the farmhouse +with its coal-oil lamp flaring frantically in the draught from the open +door. + +In this position, and with his eyes closed, Sir William felt a hand come +up to his face and rub so vigorously that the back of his head bumped +the door-panel with a jolt. + +"I don't know what's happening," was Sir William's vague thought, "but +let it happen, whatever it is. Let anything happen--now." + +The rubbing continued, with an occasional pause by the aggressor--that +might have been for more or less malicious scrutiny of his or her +work--and presently Sir William became aware of a slight tingling in a +face that up till now had been wholly without sensation. The tingling +grew to a glow; and with the glow came a bracing mental effect that +brought Ware's eyes open. + +"See--I fix your face," said the voice of Mary, the Galician girl, in a +self-congratulatory way, "now I take me your boots off." And, without +waiting for the word of consent, she ripped open the laces and drew off +Ware's boots and socks. After which Sir William, watching with a curious +half-interest, beheld her scoop up liberal handfuls of snow and commence +to rub the bared feet from toe to ankle, as she had rubbed the face. + +In the midst of this operation, a peal of bells sounded; and around the +corner of the house came Jim Burns, with a fresh team hitched to the +"jumper". Burns, a tough westerner, had been barely affected by the +storm, except for frozen cheeks and nose, which he had rubbed out down +at the stable. His feet, clad in thick felt "duffels", had escaped +freezing. + +"Hey-o;" he said, unconcernedly; "gittin' thawed out all right? Mary, I +got to go back for Jack and the Missis--the sleigh's stuck in a drift, +about two mile back along the trail. We cut the ponies loose, an' they +led us home, right up to the stable door. Jack, he was a-goin' to come +along too, at first, and fetch the Missis on his back--him and me would +have took turns carryin' her. But she wouldn't hear of it, so Jack he +told us to go on ahead. Said the ponies would take us home, all right, +and I could come back in the jumper when I got warmed up. But," Jim +Burns could not help a bit of western swagger, "I'm all right--I don't +need no warmin' up. Rustle me a couple more blankets, Mary. I'll finish +rubbin' them feet out." + +"Aa, you go on, Jeem Burns," Mary, interested in this tall, +pleasant-faced man the storm had brought her, pushed Burns away; "You +know you where yon blankets is. You get them yourself--see!" + +"A-all right," the hired man, swinging his shoulders, stepped into the +farmhouse living-room, gathered up a pair of heavy gray blankets from +the rail bunk in a corner, brought the coal-oil can and refilled the +lantern he was to take with him, and then lighted the lantern. + +"I guess I can keep the trail all right, goin' out," he said, as he +stepped outside, "the wind, she'll be behind me. Comin' home, the +horses'll face it all right, they'll be that keen to get back into the +stable again. Well, so-long, yous; keep a good fire on, Mary." + +With this, Jim Burns tossed the blankets into the jumper, hopped in +after them and, standing up in the vehicle as though it was a +bob-sleigh, this conscious master of the northwest blizzard took off his +dogskin cap, whirled it jovially around his head, and whooped to the +horses. They broke into a trot, receding down the lee of the grove where +the snow came tumbling over the tree-tops in vaporous clouds, like smoke +from a huge smoke-stack; and in a trice the night had swallowed them. + +"You come in now," said Mary, finally; "wait, I help you." And Sir +William Ware felt an arm, strong as the coil of a pythoness, constrict +his waist and lift him bodily to his now sore and burning feet. +Sensitive as they were, however, Sir William, putting away gentle Mary's +supporting arm, stood his full weight on those restored feet, rose on +his toes, turned them from side to side, and otherwise moved them to +bring back circulation and pliancy. + +"The doctor, he no cut them off now, eh?" commented Mary, glancing down +at the healthily-reddened members in a satisfied way. Ware turned toward +her instantly; stepped over; grasped her hand; shook it warmly. + +"Thanks, so much," he said, with a shining gratitude, "and I wish there +was a more expressive word I might use, Mary. We are, some of us," he +eyed her thoughtfully, "so used to having these things done for us as a +matter of course by those who are really our fellow-beings, that we +often omit the 'thank you'--taking the often vital service rendered as +our due, just because the good Samaritan happens to be a maid or valet. +But here in Canada we're all fellow-citizens, aren't we?" + +"I get you some supper," said Mary, "and fetch you a pair of the boss's +socks." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +IN THE DRIFTED SLEIGH. + + +The Nixon sleigh stood in the drifts, tilted end up in the attitude of a +sinking boat. There were no billows to rock it, and the place where it +stuck was solid enough. There was no danger of the sleigh being covered +by submersion, either sudden or gradual; but the prairie winter tempest +has another way of achieving burial of derelict craft and spent crews, +when the travelling foot slows to a halt and the numbed brain yields to +the coaxing of sleep. + +There are beautiful things done between October and April by the +northwest frost and sun--pattern on pane, transformation of twig, +fashion of flake, aurora, twin "dogs" of the spectral sun-bow--but +nothing more marvellous and swift than the building, over fallen body or +stopped vehicle, of the white and wonderful sepulchre of the snow. + +Out from the back of the sleigh as it stood, there tailed an +indescribable drift, geometrically proportioned, beautiful beyond words. +Fifteen full feet it extended, from the high sleigh-box windward, to the +low drift-surface a-lee. In shape it was like the back of a saurian--one +of those ruder, hardier things generationed before the earth was +tempered by the Creator to the habitation of man. Within the sleigh-box +another drift had formed, extending similarly from the wind-breaking +frontboard along the floor to the back end. On the high seat above the +central point of this latter drift, her feet buried in it, her upper +body mummied in sacks and every loose thing the sleigh had held, froze +and mumbled Lovina Nixon. Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but +uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon +stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward +side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a +vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals +paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement +to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in +horse-blankets and gunny-sacks. + +"How's them feet, Lovina-girl?" would come the question--raised to a +whoop in order to out-crow the hurricane and penetrate the hempen +coccoon. After due pause, the response would come, querulous, monotoned +and faint as a voice heard through a wall: + +"Ain't I said it often, that you'd--be the death of me--Jack Nixon. +Why-for did you--let them team go? Just to save your tony +friends--that's all. O-o-oh!" + +And John Nixon--though, with his own feet aching and his finger-ends +tingling, he would be tempted to retort, "How about me?"--would +respond, bracingly, "Never mind, girl--there, I think I hear Jim +a-comin' now. Listen!" + +But the moments passed; the half-hours grew to hours; and out of the +quivering white, with its perpetual hiss and whistle, its under-roar of +distant wind-shaken groves, came no companionable jangle of bells. It +was not until the hot bricks under Lovina's toes had lost their heat and +she had commenced to cry and to labor against the creeping ache of cold +by beating her feet with a dismal weak "tap-tap" against the bottom of +the sleigh-box--not until stout John Nixon, aching from shoulder to +waist with flailing his arms about his body, felt a cold doubt begin to +rise even in the face of his confidence in hardy Jim Burns--that the +shape and the sound of deliverance bulged and tinkled out through the +texture of the storm-curtain, just ahead of the sleigh. + +"Now, see here, you Mary," the voice was that of Lovina Nixon as, +something over three-quarters of an hour later, she sat, feet in oven +and tea-cup and saucer in lap, in the centre of the reassembled family +group of the Nixon farmhouse; "I don't mind you helpin' yourself to +Nixon's socks, when people is in need--but why don't you give 'em +something to put on over the top of them, so's they won't walk the heels +through," the reference was to Ware who, after an unconscious habit, +developed by the usage of almost a lifetime, was pacing thoughtfully up +and down the creaky floor overhead, where the spare bed was; "I got to +darn them socks, not you." + +"Jim," said John Nixon, as he propped a piece of pine board on the +stove-pan and commenced to whittle kindlings for the morning fire, +"don't forget to remind me, tomorrow, that we got to sharpen up the +corks (caulks) of all them horses' shoes. I noticed yon Prince-horse +kind of gruntin' as I led him into the stable, there, to-night. You +ain't been loadin' them team too heavy while I been away?" + +Jim Burns paused in the winding of a heavy nickel watch and glanced at +his employer. + +"Aw, now, Jack," he remonstrated, "don't you know no better than for to +ask me a question like that? You'd think I was some green Englishman, or +somethin'." + +Ware, to whom this dialogue came up freely through the cracks between +the warped floor-boards, smiled to himself as he sat down on the edge of +the spare bed and slipped off the enormous gray socks borrowed from the +wardrobe of his host. + +"We do so like to be each other's critics," he murmured, with a half-sad +cadence; "but I suppose it's the same, the world over.... If we could +only get away from that, we children of this planet might win back what +we lost at Bab-el." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +DAISY'S HOME COMING. + + +"Well, Jim," Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the +passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware +called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting +the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a +recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the +ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?" + +"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three +of us altogether. How's _your_self?" + +"Oh, not too bad," Daisy, answering in the old phrase, caught up her +"kit-bag" and stepped briskly along beside her escort; "what did you +bring, Jim--the jumper?" + +"What did you think I was a-goin' to bring," retorted her former +playfellow, "the high-box wagon?" + +They reached the end of the station platform. Down on the snow +alongside, that homely but comfortable vehicle called a "jumper", full +of warm-looking blankets, topped with the gray goatskin robe, slid to +and fro as Prince the colt, secured to the hitching-ring by his +halter-rope, rocked spiritedly from foot to foot and pawed the snow up +in clouds. + +"Whoa, you!" directed Jim Burns, as he untied the haltershank. Daisy +pushed her grip under the seat, looked at the blankets, and then looked +at Burns. + +"What have you got all these things for?" she said. + +"Oh, I thought you'd be a soft city-bug by now," said Jim Burns, as he +came around with the reins in his hand, "and would want every rug I +could find. Jump in, an' we'll drive around to the Toddburn House. +Dinner's on." + +The sleigh, at a trot, crossed toward the main street, half-way down +which was the Toddburn hotel, with its stable just beyond. + +"Where's that Beatty?" said Jim Burns, as the two heads rocked together +to the plunging of the "jumper". + +"Beatty?" Daisy had been looking half-dreamily around her at the +familiar little frame houses and black-lettered store-fronts, "oh--him! +You better ask somebody that knows, Jimmy." + +"I'm going to break his neck," said Jim Burns. + +"You'd be wasting your time, Jim," Daisy returned, half-absently, as the +sleigh pulled up in front of the Toddburn House. "Don't be long putting +the horses away. I'll go on into the dining-room and order your dinner +too. I know what you like. Turnips, isn't it?" + +"Turnips!" whooped Jim Burns; "say, if we was out where nobody was +lookin', I'd wash your face in the snow for that, Miss!" + +"You'd try to, you mean," Daisy flung back, as she ran virilely up the +steps to the hotel veranda; "hurry in, Jim." + +Daisy had left her hat and furs in the "ladies' parlor" upstairs and was +just coming out of the door of that apartment, when a diffident but +somewhat sweet voice said, "Hello, Daisy." + +Spinning about in her vigorous way, Daisy Ware looked into the mild blue +eyes of a girl who had just come out of a room across the hall. In the +girl's arms was a tiny baby. + +"Why, Pearlie Brodie!" + +"Not Pearlie Brodie now," said the fair-haired girl who had been a +waitress in the Toddburn House when Mr. Frederick Beatty used to come +there for his meals; "Pearlie Halliday now. Ed's buying here for the +Northern Elevator Company, and we stay at the hotel." + +She looked shyly down at the baby, and then added, giving the confidence +of one girl to another, "Ed says the baby here will get used just the +same as one of his own, and that if he ever hears of anybody saying a +word to me about it, he'll knock their heads off. We were married just +a little while after you went away." + +"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring +up a little. + +"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get +ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I +wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy." + +"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, +Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl +in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes +you best." + +"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, +a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see." + +"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be +'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes +better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no +good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married +you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going +to call him, Pearlie--or is it a him?" + +"I--I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes +dreamily on the infant, "but of course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't +be any Freddies in our family now, can there." + +"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you +better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a +_man_. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred." + +Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses +away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with +Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the +long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and +approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin. + +In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, +and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the +dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be +treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or +she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) +own fault; for the country--unlike the city--is quick to see and ready +to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and +honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her +critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married +Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburn grain-grower, who had never taken +any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator. + +"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had +remarked; but--he slapped Ed on the shoulder--"a man that's helped that +poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to +get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here +in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy--an' watch them +grain checks." + +Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the +infant--who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat +surlily--he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment: + +"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of +steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain." + +"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with +Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You +seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was +through the Third Reader." + +"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather +feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to +conversation. + +The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilarating way out to the Nixon farm, +had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of +tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay +nearest his heart: + +"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back +married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up +my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, +Daise?" + +"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the +corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you +were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have +been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me." + +"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at +her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?" + +"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her +effort to keep a straight face. + +The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her +dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and +made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team. + +"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, get _epp_!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin +you alive!" + +The horses obligingly, but without any manifestation of alarm, +quickened their stride for perhaps ten paces. Then they looked at each +other--seemed mutually to smile--and dropped easily back to their normal +trotting-gait. In the interval, Daisy had slipped a piece of ice off the +dash-board of the "jumper" down the back of Jim Burns' neck. + +It was a different day from that upon which John Nixon, his wife, and +Ware had driven out of Toddburn. Overhead, there was neither wind nor +cloud. The wonderful sky stretched blue and bright from the black and +stark groves on the east to the long expanse of snow-waves that planed +away treeless to westward, meeting in a rippling line the point where +earth and firmament parted on their clean, splendid and vast ways. + +Daisy presently ceased from play and, under the sway of a wave of +recollection, leaned back and looked about her. The sundance of her +spirits, that in the old days had made summer of every season, had not +been able to thaw the frost of surliness about the Nixon home. Not then; +but now, it seemed, things were different. Ever since that understanding +which had been arrived at in the Ware library, between Sir William and +John Nixon, the farmer seemed to have opened out, changed--ratchetted +back, as it were, to play over again his tune of life with a merrier +lilt. The young wife had often sensed vaguely the power which proceeded +from this friendly philosophy which was at the root of, and gave point +and purpose to, all her husband's thoughts, words and actions; but the +change in her fosterfather gave her the first striking and definite +illustration of its effect. + +"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of +these is charity." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +A WESTERN WILD MAN. + + +"Now, what do you suppose that is?" Sir William Ware remarked, cocking +his head a little as, stepping alongside John Nixon up Toddburn's main +street, he approached the hotel door. The two had come into town with a +load of wheat, which had been duly hoppered and weighed at the elevator. +The team had been put in the livery stable, and the bell of the Toddburn +House had just given intimation that dinner was "on". + +"Oh, nothin'," replied John Nixon, although he smiled a little, "nothin' +at all, Eng--Bill." + +"Quite so," Ware commented, glancing at something long which moved and +vociferated inside the hotel window, "but don't you think, Nixon, that +it's a bit loud for nothing at all?" + +"Well," conceded Nixon, as they went up the steps, "when I say 'nothin' +at all', Bill, I mean it's something special. You ain't got used to us +Canadians yet, I see. In other words, the occasion of yon rumpus is Long +Tom Mewha. He's gittin' tanked up." + +"Yeow-e-wow-e-yippyhoo!" Mr. Mewha was remarking, his arm rib-crackingly +about a less tall friend, as Nixon and Ware entered the hall of the +Toddburn House, "Rip, slam, razzaberry jam! We don't care--do we, Joe. +Whoa, you son of a moose, whoa!" This last as Joe coyly but vigorously +endeavored to twist himself loose from the sociable arm. + +"I'll turn you over my knee, an' spank you, Joe," Mr. Mewha reproved, +pointing his words with a mighty slap that lifted Joe off his feet, "if +you don't set still. We-e-ell--look who's with us!" + +Long Tom--flinging away the unsteady Joe, who fetched up against the +wall, eight feet away, with a window-rattling bang--turned to face Ware, +who had just come through the hall door into the room. + +"English!" he half-sung, "English, frum his scalp-lock to his +moccasin-toes. Come here to me, English!" + +Sir William's eye, gray, unwavering, infinitely friendly, met steadily +the red-lidded glare of Long Tom Mewha--who emphasized his loud-toned +invitation by rocking the upper part of his body from side to side, +punctuating this movement with beckoning backward jerks of his head and +crookings of a strong black-nailed forefinger. + +"Come here to me," repeated Mr. Mewha, making a sound-box of his +nostrils, "and do it sudden!" + +He was a mighty man, in build, this Tom Mewha. Tough, long-sinewed, +panther-shouldered, the seams of his buckskin coat straining under the +twisting of a torso, muscle-flexed with the excitation of alcohol. He +had a black moustache that swept below his chin on either side; a blunt +nose skinned with frostbite; eyes aglow with virility and physical +well-being; a forehead that just now was, from shaggy eyebrows to +hair-roots, dotted and beaded with sweat. The incarnation of physical +force; spurred to height of power by the liquor that had wakened every +healthy artery to racing-pace: Long Tom could have taken any two of +those who stood about him and without undue effort dashed their heads +together. They all knew it, and stood back: all but Ware, the calm +new-comer. + +"Better give him his way, Bill," advised Nixon sotto voce, behind Ware's +shoulder, "he's one bad-actor when he's pickled, if you go to cross +him." + +"I shan't cross him, old chap," Ware responded, a little drily, +"nothing, in fact, was farther from my thoughts. How are you, Mr. +Mewha?" He stepped forward, and held out a friendly hand. + +"What do you-u mean," Mr. Mewha demanded, "by standin' in your tracks, +like a bump on a log, after I holler 'come'. Do you know that I could +bust you right in two?" Ignoring Sir William's hand, the speaker inched +close, scuffing his feet ominously over the creaking boards, thrusting +his chin out, glaring like a stiffened and challenging beast. + +"Exactly," the word came briefly, distinctly, clear-cut as a knuckle-tap +on glass. "Will you shake hands." + +Often, in the days that followed, John Nixon, thoughtful in his evening +chair, reflected on those four words and the way Ware said them. The +inflexion was smooth and even; the tone hardly more than gentle; the +expression pleasant. But the effect--which Nixon and all those who stood +about felt equally with the one to whom the words were addressed--was +that of a mandate. Not a foolish command, proceeding from the habit of +authority, without present power to exact obedience; but the serene, +confident, all-potent fiat of brotherhood. Long Tom, at the moment the +sentence was uttered, was in the attitude of a great animal about to +spring. His face, shining with perspiration, was pushed close to Ware's; +his hands, the fingers tensed and crooked, were raised to the level of +the baronet's shoulders, preparatory to gripping. The great muscles were +heaved up in a mound between his shoulders, giving him a stooping +aspect. His eyes held shining points, like fire-sparks. + +But the effect of the words was instantaneous. Nixon nor none of those +about knew why nor how. All they knew was that Tom Mewha relaxed his +threatening attitude; straightened to his full magnificent six feet +four; swung up a hand. + +"Put it there," he said: this Peril of the west. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +WHY? + + +Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive +than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March +drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old +wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair +was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; +her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance. + +"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got +married up, Daise?" + +Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her +questioner teasingly. Rover waited, wagging from neck to tail like a +young pup. + +"I suppose you mean that you'd have been about ready to say something +then, eh?" she remarked, putting her head on one side. + +"No," said Jim Burns, a little shortly; "what I mean is, that you ought +to be goin' to school instead of bein' married." + +"Would you object to me being married, if I was married to you?" was +Daisy's response, as she tweaked Rover's tail. + +"Say, Daise," Jim Burns blurted out headlong a query he had carried +around in his brain for some days, "why did you marry that old fellow? +Wasn't there no young ones handy? I know you didn't marry him for his +money: you ain't that kind. I can't figure the thing out nohow, Daise." + +Daisy Ware's eyes, as she looked at her questioner silently for a +moment, did not see him. Neither did they see the farm barn, the +straw-bucks in the distance, the thawing ice at the cattle-trough, the +drifts reduced to liquefying ice by the spring sun. For the girl was +back in a massive ugly upstairs hall, with broom and dustpan, facing the +son of a pile-driving millionaire who was trying to, after the pattern +of his parent, "put her where she belonged;" in her memory again, as +there had been on that occasion, a certain man equal in fortune but very +different otherwise, who had in spite of his apparent fifty or so years, +made her a boyish and eager proposal of marriage. + +"Because," Daisy, this picture out of the past in her mind, answered Jim +Burns unconsciously, by what was really a sentence thought aloud, "I +wanted to show some people where they got off at." + +Jim Burns' legs went numb at the vigor with which she said this. His +hands opened loosely, and his pitchfork slid out of them. + +"Well," he gulped, presently, "you needn't have went and did a trick +like that. Why couldn't you have given me a hint, Daise?" + +At this, Daisy came out of her reverie and stared. + +"Given you a hint?" she repeated, "wha--o-oh I see. Well, that's what +you get by being slow, Mr. Man. See!" + +She caught Rover's tail, and raced away with him over the big drift that +ran up to the top of the snow-flattened haystack. Jim Burns took off his +hat and rubbed the back of his head till it tingled. + +"Can't make head or tail of that'n," he said finally, replacing the +weathered "dogskin" cap; "But I might ast _him_. Say--I _will_ ast him! +I b'en a kind of a brother to the girl, and I got a right to know, ain't +I?" + +The chance to ask Ware, who had gone for a stroll about the farm with +Nixon, did not present itself till toward evening. Then Burns, returning +with the horse from the trough, met Sir William, thoughtfully inspecting +the architecture of an old log wing of the stable. + +"Clever work, that dovetailing, Burns," Ware said casually; then, as he +noted that Jim Burns had halted and fixed him with a glance conveying +what seemed to be determination, the baronet, said, briskly, + +"Well, old chap? What is it?" + +"I got something to say to you, sir," Jim Burns responded, setting his +feet a little apart and squaring his shoulders. + +"Say on," Ware invited, dropping his hands in his pockets, and regarding +his catechist pleasantly. + +"It's about Daise," Jim Burns went on, "I've knew her since she was a +kid. We went to school together, and we was pretty good chums them days, +and in fact right up to the time she skinned out with yon Beatty. I was +figurin' I'd marry her some time (she claims I never said nothin', but I +wouldn't have got no satisfaction anyway, if I _had_ ast her, which I +guess after all I didn't, but she might have knew, for I didn't try to +cover it up none). Well, now she comes back married up to you. O' +course, the girl's her own boss, I know that. But--if you don't like me +talkin' to you this way, sir, you'll have for to lump it; I never was +one to hold back anything I got to say, not for no man--there seems to +me to be somethin' queer, mighty queer, about the way you an' her yips +along. You go out with Jack for a walk, or for a load o' hay, or off to +town; and she hurrays around with the dog or me. Yous never seem to be +together, nor neither one of you to care one rip what the other's doin'. +And--now here's the place where maybe there's an apology comin' to you +for what I'm going to say, so I'm going to apologise first, and then go +ahead--" + +"Go on," said Sir William, gravely. + +"I been brought up out here in the country," Jim Burns continued, a +little more slowly, "and I don't know what they do in town, or over +there where you come from; but out in this country, when two people are +married, they're married. It don't matter whether he's old and she's +young, or whether she's old and he's young. They're married, and they +act married, and they stay married, or they don't get the respect of the +settlement--and if they don't get that, they might as well be dead." + +"Do go on," said Ware, his eyes alight. "I'm vastly interested, Burns. I +am, really. What is your point?" + +"The point," Daisy's schoolmate pursued, stoutly, "is just this. You +sleep upstairs there, in the spare bed; and Daise, she still climbs into +her old bunk downstairs, where she slept when she was a kid. Now," Jim's +voice broke a little, "that suits me fine, for I'm sure I don't want to +think of her as a married woman, married to somebody else. But it ain't +right, and you know it ain't right. Yous two are married, and you ought +to act married. First thing you know, some neighbor woman will notice +it--one of the talky ones--and she'll put it around the whole district." + +The speaker paused; cleared his throat; and went on: + +"I know it ain't Daise's fault; for she was born in this country and she +knows what's right; and whatever bargain she made, she'd stick to it. So +I blame it onto you. Now, what's the matter? Ain't she good enough for +you? If you didn't intend to treat her like a wife, why did you marry +her? That's my point! I can't very well speak to Daise about it; so, as +man to man, I put it up to you." + +There were a few moments of silence after Jim Burns finished speaking. +Something sincere and high in the quiet gray eyes across from him +quelled his bristling earnestness. + +"Dear old chap," said Sir William, dropping his hand on the other's +shoulder, "first, don't think I wish any apology for what you have said. +Secondly, be patient. That is all I may say in words, by way of reply to +what I believe you have said in thorough sincerity: be patient, as I +myself am patient. You will see that all will be well. Now--shall we +speak of something else?" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +A NEW SETTLER. + + +"Why don't His Nobs go home out of the slush, and come back here when +it's dry, if he wants to?" demanded, one night, Lovina Nixon of her +husband, as he performed the ultimate evening ceremonial of whittling +kindlings for the morning fire. "There's no sense of him and Daise +wading around here through the mud, making four more feet to track my +floor up, when they've got a comfortable home, with a dry sidewalk to +it, laying idle in town. Now, is there?" + +John Nixon, his sock-feet propped on the stove-pan, pushed hard with his +jack-knife against a tough shaving, and allowed the usual interval to +elapse before he made response. + +"You claim to see everything," he remarked, finally, as the shaving +split off and fell to the floor, "an' I guess you do. Like most of the +weemen, there ain't much you miss. Ain't you noticed nothing about +Bill's actions lately that might tell you why he stays around?" + +Lovina came to attention, her hands at her hips. + +"Why, no," she said, "I ain't. How could I? He spends most of his time +out o' doors with you." + +"Well," said her husband, "you can gener'ly take in things without +lookin'--through the pores of your skin, like. Hasn't your sense of +feelin' told you before now, that Bill's been bit by the farmin' +bug?--bit hard, too!" + +"What!" Lovina smiled incredulously; "why, he don't know a plow from a +set of harrows. Have some sense, man." + +"Don't he?" Nixon applied his knife again to the edge of the piece of +pine board; "maybe he didn't when he first come out here, but there +ain't much now he don't know. He's watched me blue-stonin' the seed +wheat; he's had me take the fannin' mill apart to see what makes it go; +and I guess I've plowed pretty near thirty acres for him, in pantomime, +with the old breakin' plow, out there in the snow. No hired farmin' for +Bill--he's a-goin' to do all the work himself." + +"I pity his hands," Lovina Nixon observed, her knuckles at her chin +reflectively. "Where's he gettin' his farm? Not going to buy us out, I +suppose." + +"Oh, we're fixin' that part of it," John Nixon, having finished the +kindlings, folded his knife and returned it to his hip-pocket. "To keep +you from gettin' any wrong notions into your head, I might say that he +ain't goin' to buy _us_ out, however. It's Jimmy Tomlinson's place he's +gettin'. We're going over to see Jimmy to-morrow." + +Jimmy Tomlinson, standing in the doorway of his bachelor cabin across +the road-allowance from the Nixon farm, next morning welcomed glowingly +the tall man in gray and the short broad man in overalls who drove up to +his door in a muddy-spoke blackboard. + +"Spring-like weather, Jim," said John Nixon, quizzically, as he pulled +up the bay horse in the lee of the house bluff, "why ain't you down't +the granary, picklin' up your seed?" + +Jimmy Tomlinson merely grinned. He was uncommunicative and small and +somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. To his gray flannel shirt +he had this morning buttoned the celluloid collar which was always added +to his attire when receiving callers or when working in his front field, +which adjoined the Toddburn road. He had a little sandy moustache and a +rather delicately-tipped chin which, as a cut in its cleft attested, had +just been shaven. + +"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie +him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, +upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson--who wanted $20,000, for his +half-section--were fixed in timid appraisal. + +Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a country bachelor for over half a +century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two +things--to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out +in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the +house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a +sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his +fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years +"above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty +farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 +which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If +no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000--even though +slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced--then +the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there +was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if--as said a certain +beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of +toilet soap--massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with +the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the +door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain +youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, +and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition. + +Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with +a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the +corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger +than himself. + +Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a +single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the +central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with +home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp +and--their titled backs turned outward--a little pile of paper-bound +books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all +was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's +attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old +upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his +guest. + +"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in +the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there +must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open +all winter?" + +"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the +simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time." + +With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread +his hands upon them; and, as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no +more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the +stable. + +"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up +a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business--eh, boys? Jim +here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty +foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers +just commencin' to make a little money." + +"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice. + +"You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, +and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the +knee; "ain't that it, Jim?" + +"I--I--yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he +continued--haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with +the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in +his mind that every detail of it was complete--"in storm and sunshine, +neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured +on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a +civilized man--" + +"Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out +of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look at +him, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over +his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, +and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and +then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of +a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?" + +"Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, +Tomlinson." + +"----like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, +resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of +town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world +we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this +settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller----" + +"I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim----" + +"Do shut-up, Nixon. You _are_ an incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind +him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am--that is +to say, vastly. Please go on. + +"----or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and +unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, +"and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you----" + +"Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Did you hear that, Bill--he wants +them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you +listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, +Jimmy--at fifty-six." + +"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his +thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man +to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see +nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, +he married late in life--you know that, Jack--an' when I was born, my +parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had +nobody to talk to--no brothers n'r sisters--so it's natural, ain't it, +that I grew up kind of backward. + +"Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the +kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd +stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my +way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell +out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or +more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm +kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets +older--not that I'm anyways old yet, you know----" + +"Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy--that's all." + +"----and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, +Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good +now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have +considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," +Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his +farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung +his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining +briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty +thousand, cash down, takes this place--buildin's, stock, implements, +what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it +all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is +to hitch up my team--his team, it will be then--and drive me and my +trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand--no +notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I +thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide +world. Well, sir?" + +"Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to +accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the +table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth. + +Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this +climactic moment of his whole life, brought an old stone ink-bottle and +a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote. + +An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges +tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at +last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled +emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four +tardy-marrying generations. + +It was a final instinct of caution that made the vendor, a few moments +later, as Nixon returned from the hitched buckboard for the leather +mittens he had accidentally left on the window-sill, whisper hoarsely, +"Is he good for it, Jack?" + +"Good for it!" Nixon, drawing on the mittens, dealt Jimmy Tomlinson such +a congratulatory whack on the shoulder that the latter took two +involuntary steps forward; "good for it, Jimmy! Why, Bill yonder could +buy up the whole settlement, with Toddburn throwed in for good measure, +if he had any use for it." + +"Well, I s'pose it's so, if you say it is, neighbor. He's your girl's +man, and you ought to know, if anybody does. But somebody, I forget just +who, was tellin' me he heard this Ware was goin' to run the farm +himself, without hirin' any help. So naturally I figured, if that was +so, he hadn't the money to pay a man." + +"No, it ain't that," said John Nixon, as he turned toward the door; +"it's true that he don't intend to hire any more men than he has to, and +it's true that he's going to work right along with the ones he does +hire. But when you say why--I don't know. All I know is, Bill's just +a-pawin' the air to get to a pitchfork. Ain't that always the way, +Jim?--ain't it, now? Nobody satisfied. Them that has to buck wood, like +you an' me, don't want to. Them that don't have to, is fairly bawlin' +and pawin' up the sod, to get to a sawhorse." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +THE SEWING MACHINE LOVEMAKER. + + +"Here's somebody you ought to know, Daise," remarked Lovina Nixon, +coming in from feeding the calves: "Look down the road there." + +Daisy turned from her ironing and crossed to the window. + +"Yes, that's Dex," she said, coolly, as she looked out, "I can see the +sewing-machine in the back of the rig, as plain as anything. Who would +that be, with him, Mother? Oh, yes, I see--it's that Mrs. Rourke. Is she +as flirty as ever?" + +"Oh, she just _acts_ flirty," Lovina answered, sticking up for her old +crony, "nothin' wrong about Jen. She likes the men, an' she's full of +the ol' Nick. But it's just fun, with her--that's all." + +Presently the buggy of Dex Coleman, the agent who was responsible for +district sewing machine sales, drew up in the yard. On the seat of it +were two persons--a young man with a smooth face and red lips, and his +hat a little to one side, and a buxom woman of about forty-five, with a +color like a girl and a hand that slapped her knee as she tilted back +her head and laughed. _Her_ hat was also a little on one side--pushed +into that position by a playful attempt of Mr. Coleman to kiss her. + +"Well, I'm sorry the drive is ended," the latter was saying, as, having +jumped out of the buggy, he reached up a chivalrous hand to assist down +the healthy weight of Mrs. Jenny Rourke. + +"Oh, indade," observed that lady, her head on one side and her foot on +the step. "Well," she added, coquettishly, as she stepped lightly out, +executed a little jig, clicked her heels together, stood up straight, +and made a face at Mr. Coleman, "I'm to be the wan that's _not_ sorry, +then--is that it. You're a divil, Dexie!" + +"Your sayin' that don't make it so-o, sweetheart," returned the sewing +machine man, pleasantly; "kee-wick!" (This last a curious squirting +sound, produced with tongue and cheek, as Mr. Coleman aimed an intimate +jab at Mrs. Jenny Rourke's ribs.) + +"Lave alone what don't concern you," was the advice this feat elicited +from his driving companion, as she wrinkled an eye-corner at him over +her shoulder, and vibrated (there is no other word that exactly +describes the brisk teetering walk of Mrs. Jenny Rourke) off toward the +house; "you sassy brat!" + +The sedate and somewhat sour-faced Lovina was grabbed and all but lifted +off her feet by the embrace of her friend, as the latter breezed into +the farm kitchen. Then Mrs. Rourke turned and saw Daisy. + +"Well, well, we-ell, an' how's the little squiress!" she roared, as she +made for the girl; "come here, me darlin', and give me the feel of your +pretty face. M-m-m!" and Mrs. Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion +of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips. + +"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country, +alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile +palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope +he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I +love Canadians--especially young ones, whether they're he's or +she's--but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to +his name. What's like flannel pants an a negligee shirt to an +Englishman, makes a Canadian look like a tailor's dummy. Where is he?" + +"He's gone over with Jack to the new farm," Lovina put in, somewhat +grumblingly, "they spend all their time over there, when Jack ought to +be attendin' to his own work, if he expects to get his seedin' done in +anyways decent time this spring." + +At this, Mrs. Rourke let go of Daisy, bounced over, grabbed Lovina Nixon +around the waist, threw her into a chair, and sat down plumply on her +knee. + +"Aw, Jen!" her friend protested, diffident and red, but cracking a +shadowy smile for the first time that afternoon; "my hands is all +dishwatery. Set down here yourself, n' let me work while we talk." + +"You stay where you are, an' let the work go for an hour. Then I'll let +you up, an' we'll both fall to; an' when the men comes in t'l their +supper, there'll not be a pin out of place," rippled Mrs. Jenny Rourke; +then she turned to Daisy and waved the hand of dismissal. + +"Run on an' see your Dexie that used to be," she said, lowering her +voice to a mischievous cooing, "sure, we'll not tell, if your husband's +the jealous-minded kind. Dex knows you're here, the divil--that's why +he's waitin' outside." + +Daisy, conceding a smile and a little toss of her head, went out. As she +passed through the door, the Irishwoman murmured, half to herself, her +voice warm with approval: "Straight as a string, the dear, an' able to +take care of herself, right from the time she first knew a boy was a +boy. Sure, if I didn't know that, do ye think I'd send her out with +that--that what-iver-ye-want-to-call-him. He needs managin', the worst +way. There's not half enough discipline and reshtraint in the sewing +machine business, Lovina darlin'." + +Mr. Dex Coleman left the wheel of his buggy, upon which he had been +draped gracefully, and came to meet Daisy, extending both hands. + +"Well, look who's he-ere!" he fluted, melodiously, "little one, little +one! there _has_ been a pain where my heart is, you kno-ow, since some +lying son of a seacook told me you were married. What, oh, what could +you have been thinking about. Why-ee, I ain't slept a wink, not for +days--not for da-ays, Dear." + +Daisy, looking at him, blushed a little. She blushed because she +remembered that, not so very long ago, when the method of his approach +was new to her, her heart _had_ fluttered a little in response to the +addresses of this late-unripened, yodling, golden-noted, social +abortion. But, now that she had become habituated to men, the blush was +accompanied by a smile--a smile that wrinkled her nose a little, as the +eau-de-cologned Coleman floated close. + +"Does the heart still beat true?" enquired Mr. Dexter Coleman, +"crushing" her hands in fingers that were a workless white, except where +cigarettes had stained them yellow, "does it--little one?" Studying the +slight blush on Daisy's cheeks, Mr. Coleman missed those danger-lights, +her eyes. + +For the imp of mischief had sprung up in the girl like a kindled flame, +in which danced the two-horned and tridented devil of daring. + +"Shall we--s-shall we go for a little drive, Dexie?" she said, making +her voice low, and leaning her head for a second against the lapel of +the Coleman coat. + +"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a +spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way +in, an' that way out--huh?" + +So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy +into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail. + +"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart +driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey--shake +yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it +stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked +out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside +and the white of an eye showing. + +"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently, +his whip poised for another cut. + +"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out +of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she +caught the reins from her companion; then pulled the whip out of his +hand and dropped it into the holster. + +Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased +soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his +eye. + +"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on +Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you--all up to you, boy." + +"This sure is the life--ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with +which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept +along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her +waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep. + +It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry; +but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where +the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary +to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance +was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened +panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an +unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire +rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house +threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of +"pliers" out of the question. Here there was nothing for it but to +drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of +paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels. + +"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own +hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved +down until it now lightly touched her waist. + +"I can't do nothin' with it, you see," he complained, a moment later, as +the recalcitrant arm settled itself snugly about his companion; "just +look at it now, Precious!" + +"I see it," Daisy responded, looking straight before her; "looks kind of +becoming, doesn't it, Dexie?" + +"Mighty becomin', if you ask me," corroborated the arm's proprietor, +warmly "I think it ought to stay right there, now I notice how it +looks." + +Following this remark, Mr. Coleman stole a glance at the cheek that was +turned his way. The glance intoxicated him. He tightened his grip, edged +close, and dropped suddenly from jest to earnestness. + +"Say!" he breathed into her ear, "let's just keep on goin', little +girl." + +"Where?" + +"Right on to town. Train comes in at six pee-ex. Little supper in the +hotel here, an' then board her. What do we care?" + +"Aw, but, Dexie, what will people say?" + +"I don't give a whoop what they say--why should you mind? I can take a +chance, if you can, Sweetheart. Come on: be a sport!" + +"Aw, Dexie!" + +"That's m'little girl. I knew you was game. Give us a sweet kiss +now--come awn. Whass matter?" + +"The wind's pulling my hat loose," said Daisy, "I'll take it off." + +"That's th' idea," approved Mr. Coleman, reining his impatience. + +They were descending a hill, at the bottom of which a slough crossed the +trail. Fences to right and left forbade a detour. + +"I guess we'll have to drive right through it," said Daisy. + +"How about the hat?" demanded Mr. Coleman, who was now so close that his +companion could barely move her elbow, "can't you get it off?" + +"Oh," Daisy looked up innocently, "I forgot about the hat. All +right--there, it's off." + +She took off the hat and laid it in her lap. They had now reached the +edge of the shallow slough in the valley-bottom, into which the livery +horse waded, gingerly and slow. + +"Maybe he wants a drink," said Daisy; "whoa, pettie! Thirsty?" + +The horse halted and lowered his head to the water-level. + +"Poor fellow!" Daisy commented, as he drank in great famished gulps, +"don't you ever water him, Dex? Aw, quit! Aw-w--you're mean! There, +now--see what you've done," and, as Coleman, red and hot-eyed, drew back +from kissing her, Daisy pointed to her hat, afloat on the slough. + +"That's nothin'," said Coleman, regarding the hat as it slowly floated +away from the side of the buggy. + +"Oh, no," said Daisy, with sarcasm, "it just means I've got to go home +and get another hat, before we start on this trip you were speaking of. +I won't go into Toddburn bareheaded--not even for you." + +Coleman rose from his seat. "I'll sure get it for you, right now, +Sweetness," he said, "if that's how you feel about it." + +"Well, you'd better hurry, for it's sailing away," Daisy advised; "no, +you can't reach it over the wheel. You'll have to stand out on the +step." + +Mr. Dexie Coleman, who believed in doing everything with grace and ease, +scorned to grip the honest buggy-top for sensible support, as he poised +himself on the iron step, like Hermes, tiptoe for flight, and extended +an arm out over the water. He calculated, and rightly, that he could +just reach the hat and keep his balance. + +But he had not reckoned with a gathering force behind him; and perhaps +there was no more surprised man in Toddburn than this cavalier of the +sewing machine when, a second or two later, just as his fingers closed +upon the hat, a strong push from rearward propelled him sprawlingly into +the slough. The water was only three feet deep; but, as he fell +horizontally, he went right under. + +Mr. Coleman's astonishment at the turn events had taken was so intense +that he, as one might say, reclined for a moment in the bottom of the +slough, with the water roaring in his ears and choking in his throat, +before he gathered his wits together sufficiently to grope to his feet. +By the time he had regained a wet uprightness, sputtered the muddy water +out of his mouth, and blinked his eyes till vision returned, he found +that he was alone in the slough. Daisy had driven the horse out on the +farther shore, and was just getting out of the buggy. Mr. Coleman, +watching in a fascinated way, with too much water still in his windpipe +to speak, saw his late companion loop up the horse's lines in the +backhand ring, knotting them so they would not fall and tangle the +animal; then give the beast a smart little slap on the flank that +started it off at a brisk trot down the trail. + +"Whoa, there!" Mr. Coleman found breath to exclaim, in a thin aqueous +squeal, as he paddled splashingly and frantically toward land. But the +horse, headed toward its evening meal of loft-dried hay and oats in the +Toddburn livery stable, exchanged its trot for a canter, and kept on +going. + +"You'll have to go some, to catch him," said Daisy, levelly and +unsmiling; "he knows when he's well off." She kept her eyes steadily on +Coleman, tightening her grip on the handle of the horsewhip which she +had retained. + +"Ha-agh!" + +This is the nearest possible phonetic representation of the sound which +came from the man's throat, as he jumped at her. But Daisy was alert and +strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The +sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's +right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the +left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped, +straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was +running. + +"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and +sparkling. "You're _some_ man!" + +There is something salutary and restorative about the rod--that +corrective instrument recommended by Solomon the Wise. Perhaps it is +less the sting than the shame--although one must admit that both must go +together, to produce the effect. + +Dexie Coleman, all the bad humor gone out of him, sat down dejectedly +on a boulder. For the moment, he forgot pose,--forgot that his face was +muddy and bleeding, his hair rumpled, his clothes soaked and +dripping--forgot himself altogether. + +"I'm a mean son of a gun, ain't I?" he said. + +Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither +flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on." +The girl's face softened a little. + +"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; +"talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the +girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to +'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. +You're just an honest farm boy--why don't you be one? Get out and do +some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white +hands on a pitchfork-handle." + +Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very +well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights, +showed it. + +"I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here." + +He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye, +stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed +to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed of himself. A young +man shows shame by rudeness. + +"Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy +called. + +"Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder; +then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long--Kid." + +The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy +reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the +oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes +and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in +contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a +department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he +had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light +the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered. + +As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to +right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms +up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips. + +"I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby--bestest in the world!" + +Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close. + +Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he +approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. +Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back +toward the barn. + +"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the +matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +THE COMING OF THE MOTHER. + + +Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness +of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind +her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, +took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady +Frances Ware's train. + +For half a mile, the road led past Sir William's fields, in which the +wheat was now its full ripe harvest yellow. Around one of these fields, +a binder hummed, and the shirt-sleeved man on the seat of it flung a +kiss to Daisy from afar. That shirt-sleeved man was Sir William Ware, +Baronet. The man who was stooking behind the binder also lifted his hand +to his lips, though in _his_ case the salute was not a kiss but a +friendly hail; for the stooker was he who had been yodling, artificial, +"city-bug"-imitating Dexie Coleman. He had callouses on his palms now +that it would be hard to get through with a chisel, and on each arm a +biceps that would burst an iron ring. + +Daisy herself was changed in some indefinable way. Her mouth was +softened, her eyes had become forward-looking and dreamy, her color +more delicate. Her attitude was not now tensed, aggressive, a-jump with +schoolgirlish spirit; but gentle, relaxed, restful. One could not on +this day imagine her with the horsewhip of punishment in her hand. + +There were no pools on the Toddburn highway to impede this August drive. +The breath of autumn was soft in the air, and the summer's work of the +sun was over. The ruts of the trail were cushioned with soft dust, the +uplands ripe green, the trees full-sapped and thriving, every twig +deciduously ready for the going of the leaves. The prairie plants had +long ago sent the last of their pollen abroad by wind and voyaging bee. +There were red berries on the rose-bushes, and white on the wolf-willow. +The house of the world was swept and garnished for the fall. + +The thoughts of the young woman who sat, with that quiescent and settled +look in her eyes, on the seat of the tranquilly-travelling buggy, moved +to her beginning of life and ratchetted slowly up the years to the now; +and it came to Daisy Ware, as it has come to many another who thinks +more abstrusely, that consummated marriage is, and properly, the climax +of womanhood. Every growing thing about her whispered it to-day. The +message received definiteness and point as there blew across her lap a +fragment of fertile fluff that had in its heyday and its summer +nodding-time been part of a maiden dandelion-blossom. + +In the light of this flash of truth from exemplary Nature, the young +wife saw in its true light the "board and lodging" marriage in which she +might have continued unawakened--continued, perhaps, until she was old +and blase and "set" and sterile--if it had not been for the potent +something, salutarily born, both to her and to her husband, by the airs +that move among the hills and groves of God. She saw why a "little chum" +is not a wife. + +Lady Frances had been held, partly by her years and partly by the +prejudices which fixedly inhabit the old, from exploring far this +northwest of her son's adoption. Among people not socially en rapport +with her, she had long ago decided she was too advanced in years to +commence to mingle. She had found few enough intimates in the cities of +this colonial dominion; she anticipated there would be in the country no +"nice people" at all. + +She had at last consented to come out to the farm, less because she had +been assured that now suitable and comfortable accommodation awaited +her, than because her heart contained a vague hunger. When she had +started on her journey, she had thought it was her son she wanted to +see. But now, as she sat reflectively in the coach that--after +travelling what had seemed to her an interminable stretch of +country--was at last approaching the place Toddburn, Lady Frances Ware +discovered that the one she most looked forward to meeting was, not her +son, but her young daughter-in-law. + +This was not wholly because of regard for Daisy herself--although the +young wife, with her frank and clean girlishness, had won the warmest +possible place in the old lady's affections--but because Daisy was +linked with a hope and a dream that now abode daily with the mother of +the last male of the ancient lineage of Ware. + +Daisy had, by letting the bronco take its own gait, occupied a little +too much time on the trip to the village--a thing her alert and +practical former self would never have done--and, as she rose to the +crest of the last hill outside Toddburn, she saw the passenger train +just leaving the station, from which she was still separated by about +half a mile. This meant that Lady Frances, if she had come--which was +certain, for she was always punctual--was waiting alone at the little +depot. Daisy sat up straight, rousing the little bronco to its best +speed with voice and driving-reins. + +"My dear, it's quite immaterial," was the response of the old +gentlewoman to her apology, as the two embraced--not in the little depot +waiting-room, but out on the end of the platform, where Daisy had found +Lady Frances, standing by her luggage and looking about her. The old +lady had on a simple black travelling dress and a light wrap, rather +Victorian in pattern. Neither glasses nor any substitute were in view. +Lady Frances could see "her way about" quite easily without them, and +never carried anything as a concession to mode, or for pose or show. + +"I have been enjoying myself immensely during the interval," she said, +as the two proceeded to the sloping end of the platform, at the foot of +which stood the buggy; "this is an enormous country--simply enormous, my +dear. No, you needn't help me in." + +Putting one gloved hand on the brace of the buggy-top, Lady Frances, +from the slight eminence of the platform-end, reached handily the iron +step of the buggy and raised herself halely to the cushioned seat. + +"No, no, child--I should much prefer to wait till we are home--that is +to say, unless you are hungry," she said, as Daisy started the pony in +the direction of the Toddburn House. + +"I'm not hungry, Mother. Billy said----" + +"Billy?" Lady Frances made the interruption in a tone of pleasant +interrogation. + +"Will," Daisy substituted, with a little blush (Lady Frances, of course, +could not know that she was a real wife now), "said that he thought you +would rather lunch at home, so I had a little something just before I +left." + +"Billy--Billy," Lady Frances, in mental enquiry, repeated the nickname, +which had at first grated her a bit. Then her heart gave a great leap. +She turned and looked closely at Daisy. One glance at the softened eyes, +the delicate-hued and somewhat pale cheeks, the dreamy lips, the relaxed +and restful lines of neck and bosom--and the old gentlewoman and mother, +warmth of joy flooding all her arteries, reached out her hand, covered +Daisy's with it, and held the young girl's fingers in a close and long +caress. + +"My darling, my darling!" she murmured, with a thrilling tenderness, +"oh, we _will_ have to take such care of you. Does William know?" + +Daisy answered with her frank and matter-of-fact affirmative nod. + +The drive home was a very quiet one. Daisy's new habit of +forward-looking occupied her. Lady Frances Ware was wrapped in an +ecstasy of that kind and depth which one does not want to break or to +have broken by the paltry sound of the spoken word. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +THE BUD. + + +"That high-priced doctor from the city fired me out," said Dex Coleman, +coming down to the barn where Jim Burns sat on the oat-box, behind the +stall where the newly-arrived Toddburn livery horse munched hungrily at +a fresh feed of hay, "and Bill's upstairs, so I couldn't ast him what it +is. If it's a boy, the old lady will go crazy--that's one thing sure. +Milt Hayes says he'll find out, as soon as he gets warmed up, and come +down here and let us know." + +Milt Hayes was the Toddburn liveryman's son, who had brought out the +doctor to the Ware farm over roads crisped and snowbound by February, +and had been given license to remain by the stove in the bustling and +anxious house, until he "got thawed out". + +"Ain't it queer, when you come to think of it, Dex?" remarked Jim Burns, +as the other sat down beside him on the oat-box. + +"Ain't what queer, Jim?" said Dex Coleman. + +"Her," said Jim Burns, "goin' to school with us about five years ago, +an' now--" + +"It's queer, all right," agreed Dex Coleman. + +"I wonder what she could have saw in him," pursued Jim Burns, following +the groove of an old problem. + +"Oh, I dunno," Dex Coleman set his hat to the back of his head and spat +down between his hands in a thoughtful way, "Bill ain't a bad head, Jim, +when you get to know him. I never worked for a better boss, nor for +higher wages. He pays me every cent I'm worth an' a little more." + +"Maybe so," said Jim Burns, "I ain't got nothin' against him personally. +But--" + +"But what?" + +"Oh--nothin'," said Jim Burns. + +"Come on, now, Jim,--tell us. What's wrong with Bill?" + +"Well," Jim Burns flung out an expressive hand, "I could have had Daise +myself, if he hadn't took her." + +Dex Coleman tilted back his head and laughed till the barn rang. Jim +Burns got up slowly off the oat-box and commenced to take off his coat. + +"Come on," he said, "if you want a fight. I'll push your nose out +through the back of your head, if you laugh at me that way, Coleman." + +Coleman sobered, and slapped the other on the back. + +"I ain't laughin' at you, boy," he said; "don't you ever think it. It +was myself I was laughin' at. I wanted her too, Jim, them days. But we +both went at it the wrong way. You said nothin' at all to her, and I +said too much. Bill goes about it in the right way, and he gets the +girl. Bill's a gentleman." + +"Well," demanded Burns, "ain't we gentlemen, too? I am, anyway, and I +have a poke in the jaw for any man that says I ain't." + +"That," rejoined Dex Coleman, "is one son of a moose of a way to prove +to a man that you're a _gentleman_. The trouble with us out in this +section of the country, Jim, is that, some way, we seem to have the idea +in the back of our heads that a gentleman is a man who's got either +money enough or nerve enough to sport around in a tailor-made suit and +not do any work. That's the reason each of us is so sensitive about his +claim to the title: because we think the man who says 'you're no +gentleman' sees us as day-laborers and himself as our wealthy or nervy +neighbor who don't have to work. Jim, this gentleman thing is inside of +you--not outside. I've learned that much from workin' alongside of Bill, +anyway.... Here comes Milt. Well, Milt, did they let you see it?" + +"It ain't a 'it', boys," said Milt Hayes, "it's a him." + +"Three cheers!" shouted Dex Coleman; "how did the old lady take it?" + +"Oh, carried it kind of easy, in a shawl so clean-white it pretty near +blinded you," replied Milt Hayes, staring; "why, how did you suppose +she'd take it? By the scruff of the neck?" + +"I don't mean the baby," explained Dex Coleman, "I mean the news." + +"It wasn't no news to her," responded the other vaguely, "she brung him +downstairs herself, I'm tellin' you." + +"Oh, go to blazes!" exclaimed Dex Coleman, jumping off the oat-box, +"boys, I'm goin' up to the house. I'll get in, sir, if I have to +massacree that city doctor to do it." + +"Ast how Daise is," called Jim Burns after Coleman as he went out, "we +don't care about whether the old lady likes the baby or lumps it." + +It was not long till tall, good-looking and still somewhat "nervy" Dex +Coleman came whooping back to the barn with the word, "I bunted past the +doctor, fellows--never even let on I knew he was there--and spoke right +up to Lady Frances herself. She says all you boys may come right up and +have a look at the baby." + +"I guess we _may_," said Jim Burns, as he followed the speaker out +through the door; "it's Daise's baby, not hers." + +"I had one look at him," commented Milt Hayes, as he brought up the rear +of the procession, "but I guess I can stand another." + +Lady Frances, as the three young men entered, was sitting in the big +upholstered chair in the centre of the farmhouse living-room. Her eyes +were shining, and her whole figure radiated an extraordinary animation. +In her lap lay something in shawls--something that waved tiny red +antennæ in a futile way, and emitted a series of unclassifiable sounds. + +"He sounds like a crow," Milt Hayes said, sotto voce, to Jim Burns, +"don't he?" + +"You wouldn't know a crow from a cowbird, Hayes," Jim Burns muttered; +"talk sense, or keep still." + +The three approached on tiptoe. Lady Frances looked up and smiled. + +"You may walk briskly, young men," she said, "the child is quite wide +awake, and not at all nervous, I think." + +The three came on abreast, a little sheepishly; but when they were about +five feet away, Jim Burns, with an air of proprietorship, elbowed the +other two aside and stepped to the front. Arriving at Lady Frances' +chair, he leaned over and took a lengthy and critical survey of the +infant. + +"Well, ma'am," he said, "I been like a brother to Daise, and I've give +Bill a talkin'-to, more than the once: so I can speak my mind plain-out +about this baby. It's pretty fair-looking, and I guess by the way it +slings its hands around and hollers, it'll live--but I don't think it +does entire justice to Daise's looks and Bill's style. I certainly +don't. Come on, boys: yous can take a peek, but don't touch it with your +big clumsy hands. You first, Dex, and then Milt. Don't breathe in his +face, Coleman, you galoot!" + +Here obviously ends the book of Daisy the Girl, but not the story of +Daisy. For as Daisy--or, more briefly, "Daise"--she still lives in the +Toddburn district of Plowland. If you are ever that way along, you may +call--any hour of any day, for there are no receiving days in Plowland. +In asking your direction of those along the trail, do not enquire for +the "estate of Sir William Ware". Nobody would know whom you meant. Just +say, "Where does Bill Ware live?" + +For the ancient title has fallen into disuse, and the big house in the +city has been sold, and Lady Frances does not wince when little Billie +Ware, jumping up and down ecstatically at the window, shouts across to +her, "Oh, Gamma, see _zem_ horses wun!" + +--THE END-- + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAISY HERSELF *** + +***** This file should be named 49188-8.txt or 49188-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/1/8/49188/ + +Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Ingersoll. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + + p.bold {text-align: center; font-weight: bold;} + p.bold2 {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 150%;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + h1 span, h2 span { display: block; text-align: center; } + #id1 { font-size: smaller } + + + hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: 33.5%; + margin-right: 33.5%; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 5px; border-collapse: collapse; border: none; text-align: right;} + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + text-indent: 0px; + } /* page numbers */ + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smaller {font-size: smaller;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .mynote { background-color: #DDE; color: black; padding: .5em; margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; } /* colored box for notes at beginning of file */ + .space-above {margin-top: 3em;} + .left {text-align: left;} + .s3 {display: inline; margin-left: 3em;} + + .poem {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem div {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem div.i5 {margin-left: 5em;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license + + +Title: Daisy Herself + +Author: Will E. Ingersoll + +Release Date: June 10, 2015 [EBook #49188] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAISY HERSELF *** + + + + +Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class = "mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br /> +Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.<br /></p></div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="center"><a name="cover.jpg" id="cover.jpg"></a><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /></div> + +<hr /> + +<h1>DAISY HERSELF</h1> + +<p class="bold space-above">By</p> + +<p class="bold2">WILL E. INGERSOLL</p> + +<p class="bold"><i>Author of "The Road that led Home", "The Centenarian" etc.</i></p> + +<div class="center space-above"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div> + +<p class="bold space-above">TORONTO<br />THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY<br />LIMITED</p> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center">Copyright, Canada, 1920<br />THE MUSSON BOOK CO., LIMITED<br /> +PUBLISHERS<span class="s3"> </span>TORONTO</p> + +<hr /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="CONTENTS"> + <tr> + <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td> + <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>I</td> + <td class="left"> A Two Hundred Mile Dash</td> + <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>II</td> + <td class="left"> The City Swallows Daisy</td> + <td><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>III</td> + <td class="left"> The Maid and the Clerk</td> + <td><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IV</td> + <td class="left"> A "Steer"</td> + <td><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>V</td> + <td class="left"> A Job</td> + <td><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VI</td> + <td class="left"> The Plebeian</td> + <td><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VII</td> + <td class="left"> A Human Horticulturist</td> + <td><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>VIII</td> + <td class="left"> A Knight in the Kitchen</td> + <td><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>IX</td> + <td class="left"> A Dance and an Invitation</td> + <td><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>X</td> + <td class="left"> The Boxing Match and Afterward</td> + <td><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XI</td> + <td class="left"> The Face Behind the Mask</td> + <td><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XII</td> + <td class="left"> Sawn Off the Old Block</td> + <td><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIII</td> + <td class="left"> A Plot that Miscarried</td> + <td><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIV</td> + <td class="left"> The Golden Stair</td> + <td><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XV</td> + <td class="left"> The Lady of the House</td> + <td><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVI</td> + <td class="left"> Taking a Rest</td> + <td><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVII</td> + <td class="left"> A Raincloud</td> + <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XVIII</td> + <td class="left"> The Bleak Two</td> + <td><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XIX</td> + <td class="left"> The Choice of the Dray</td> + <td><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XX</td> + <td class="left"> John Nixon's Invitation</td> + <td><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXI</td> + <td class="left"> In the Blizzard</td> + <td><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXII</td> + <td class="left"> In the Drifted Sleigh</td> + <td><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIII</td> + <td class="left"> Daisy's Home Coming</td> + <td><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIV</td> + <td class="left"> A Western Wild Man</td> + <td><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXV</td> + <td class="left"> Why?</td> + <td><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVI</td> + <td class="left"> A New Settler</td> + <td><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVII</td> + <td class="left"> The Sewing Machine Lovemaker</td> + <td><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXVIII</td> + <td class="left"> The Coming of the Mother</td> + <td><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td>XXIX</td> + <td class="left"> The Bud</td> + <td><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td> + </tr> +</table> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + +<p class="bold2">DAISY HERSELF</p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER I.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Two Hundred Mile Dash.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy had run away from her home on the farm outside Toddburn village +with this young store clerk, Beatty, who now sat holding her hand in the +moonlight "flyer" of the M. & N. Beatty, who came originally from the +city, was a bad young rascal; and Daisy—who, neglected and exposed to +temptation since her earliest girlhood, had developed an innate +awareness of "fellows"—knew it. None of her several reasons for this +escapade had been the usual one—love. It suited her, however, to let +Beatty think that she had come prepared to follow him to the world's +end—a lengthy journey, upon which the railway ticket Beatty had bought +for her was only good for the first two hundred miles.</p> + +<p>Daisy was proceeding daringly, easily, without pause or regret, toward +whatever lay in store for her along the path she had taken. Her +locomotion was that of a thing which is both propelled and drawn. The +propulsive force was her hatred of the farm where she had drudged for +all the workable years of her seventeen under that plebeian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> taskmaster, +stolid, selfish John Nixon, her stepfather, and that unmaternal mother +whose forename, by some perpetuated sarcasm, was Lovina. The drawing +force was Daisy's own eager, vigorous, intrepid spirit of +adventure—green maidenhood's hunger for the sensational new.</p> + +<p>The car in which the two sat was not a "sleeper," but an ordinary +red-upholstered day coach. The two had boarded the train at Oak Lake, +the first station east of Toddburn (where neither of them were known by +the new station agent) at a little after midnight. They were due to +reach the city between six and seven o'clock in the morning.</p> + +<p>Even if the car had been a berth coach, and there had been opportunity +for retirement, Daisy could not have slept. The hour, the situation, the +novelty of the rushing, lamplit train (she had never been on a train +before), kept every faculty ablaze and awake in a pleasant intoxication +of excitement. Elbow on window-sill and chin in palm, the girl sat, +glancing now out at the flying moonlit telegraph posts, now about the +interior of the dingy branch-line passenger coach. All seemed fairylike +to her eyes habituated only to prairie fallow and lea.</p> + +<p>Young Beatty, holding her hand and thrilling in a delightful though less +spiritual than fleshly way, at the occasional glances with which Daisy +baited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> him, looked out of the corner of his eye at her and felt very +much pleased, indeed, with himself. First, she had a glorious color, the +like of which one could not buy for money, nor yet for love—a color +that resided comely and rich in her cheeks, even at feeling's lowest +tide, but which now, in the high tide of her adventure, overflowed down +in a bonny estuary toward the milk-warm curve of her chin. Then, there +were the features, each with its peculiar likability or lure—lips made +and eager for enjoyment, yet with something in their set and pose that +was constant and fine—a nose humorous and short, tiltable to every +gradation of coquetry—eyes with dancing irises, soft baffling shadows, +and brows that trended downward at the outer ends. Lastly, the +hair—brown, with a wave that made it comely in any coiffure; coiled +carelessly under a hasty pin or two at temple, crown, and white nape of +neck where a curl caressed—had a piquancy even in its disarray. Beatty +cuddled his head back against the red upholstery of the seat in +luxurious contemplation, and again expressively squeezed the fingers he held.</p> + +<p>Beatty himself was a slim, white-handed youth whose abundant blond hair +and smooth "way" had made the world, for him, a kind of garden of the +Hesperides—the fault with this simile being that he was no Hercules, +except in his vanity. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> this, his strength was as the strength of ten, +though not because his heart was pure. If you had taxed him with that +characteristic in which Beatty was eminently taxable—his attitude +toward girls—he would have regarded you indulgently a moment, and would +then have explained that it was not his fault if "Janes fell for him" +and "fooled with the band-wagon" to their own undoing. Surely it was a +"free country."</p> + +<p>In spite, however, of the fact that the country was a free one, the +special thing which had sent Beatty out of the city "for his health" was +the quest after him by a two-hundred-pound brother of a sister some +ninety pounds lighter. The brother, who carried a professional "haymaker +in either mitt" for even those of his own gender who could use their +fists with fair ability, was as sincere in his desire to interview +Beatty as Beatty was considerate in his desire to save the brother the +embarrassment of such an interview. A recently-received picture postcard +from a friend of Beatty's had, however, intimated that the family of +which the brother and sister in question were members had since "gone to +the coast," and that Beatty's home city had therefore become again for +Beatty a consistent metropolis of a free country, if he wished to return to it.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>Beatty did wish to return to it; and, returning with round and pretty +Daisy Nixon as a travelling companion—made, Beatty felt assured, wholly +and dependently his by the manner of her home-leaving—he felt that the +several months of his exile had not been wasted.</p> + +<p>"The boys", so Beatty reflected complacently, as he leaned back on the +car-cushion, "will cert'n'ee set up an 'take notice w'en they see this +w'at I got here. They cert'n'ee will."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER II.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The City Swallows Daisy.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The summer dawn came with a warm melting of the dark and a running out +over the sky-floor of spilled light from under the edge of the world. +Daisy, her nerves thrilling like the nerves of one drunken with wine, +leaned untired on the varnished window-sill; looking, with all her young +vitality gathered into shine of eyes and beat of heart, for her first +view of the city.</p> + +<p>The shadow of the express, as the early sun came up, coursed like a +hound along the barrow-pits of the right-of-way, and quivered, as it +were, in noiseless impact against the stolid cedar fence-posts that +stood still and were whipped by in the guise of staring bumpkins as the +smart, swift train hummed on its way.</p> + +<p>Daisy saw these effects at the edge of her travel-picture out of the +corner of her eye merely. Her attention was concentrated +forward—forward, to watch for the first white trimming of roof-tops on +the dewy green fabric of the prairie-rim. Hateful to her were the square +fields by the track, where phlegmatic men and teams moved up and down +the black fallow; hateful the whitewashed houses, the homely +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>poplar-clumps, the stacks of straw. Appurtenances, all, of the life +with which she had been surfeited (she thought): reminding her of cows +to be milked, of barnyard drudgery, of gawky, red-visaged, wholly +unpiquant boys, of men content to smoke and drawl away their rare hours +of ease.</p> + +<p>Hateful! The term is too mild to express the immense energy of the +girl's distaste for the life she had, with youth's dash, pushed behind +her in one reckless thrust.</p> + +<p>She was done with it. For good or for ill, she was done with it all, or +thought so, in these kinetic and dancing moments, as new leagues of her +unexplored earth uprolled along the endless ribbon of this two-railed +track of dreams. New leagues, yes—but, so far, no new scenery. The +stations she had passed, and continued to pass, were nothing but an +endless chain of Toddburns; the intervening reaches of farm land, no +more than linked replicas without number or variation, of the Nixon +farm. In spite of the "flyer" and its obvious achievement over distance, +Daisy Nixon at moments had the odd sensation that the track was +revolving beneath the car-wheels, treadmill-style, and the train merely +standing maddeningly still amid the old locale.</p> + +<p>But there—there! A quick hypodermic needle of joy pricked her throat, +and Daisy caught her breath as the strong keen drug of excitement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +tingled out to all her nerve-ends. A white kite-tail of houses seemed to +drop down and flicker, half in the air, at the point where the uprolling +earth revolved against the broad-open casement of the morning sky. +Appearing for a moment as a fantasy, it soon settled into a lengthening +white saw-blade of joined buildings, low in the distance, dividing the +solid green world from the dreamy firmament of a June dawn. Straight +toward it rushed the cleaving bullet of the train.</p> + +<p>Her head out beneath the raised window-sash, her companion forgotten as +though he had never existed, Daisy wrapped herself in the joy of the +hour. The white house-line, advancing along the angle of its +perspective, broadened and took form and character, split into rays of +streets, discovered great chimneys with smoke-plumes, unveiled square +buildings in a caparison of glittering windows, began to live and move +and give forth human signs. The first workers were already in the +streets, for a goose-herd of city whistles was croaking out seven, vying +therein with the warning blast of the "flyer's" engine as, barely +slackening speed, it rushed along the cobweb of tracks, arrogant and +favored possessor, for the time being, of the right of way to the great +urban station in the heart of all.</p> + +<p>"Well, kid," said the voice of Beatty, "how d'ye like it?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p><p>"Fine, Freddie," Daisy replied, blithely. The comment was plain and +simple enough; but her eyes and cheeks told the rest, without need of +words.</p> + +<p>Beatty stuck on his hat, tilting it a little.</p> + +<p>"It ain't so bad, either," he conceded, grinning to himself, as he +picked up his smart leather suitcase and Daisy's battered telescope +grip, "not so bad, at that, kiddo."</p> + +<p>With a hollow, drumlike roar, the train drew to a halt beneath a dome of +glass and iron; and Daisy and her companion, inching along behind the +file of passengers, at length emerged upon a cement walk, walled in on +either side by the bulk of varnished railway coaches. Passing along +this, descending a stair with an iron balustrade, and proceeding through +a great, busy, and echoing rotunda with a ceiling almost as far away as +a sky, Daisy and her companion emerged upon a stretch of granolithic +pavement.</p> + +<p>Beyond the curb, a bevy of bus-drivers from city hotels crowed like a +flock of roosters—the surmounting voice in this bedlam being that of a +sandy-mustached old-timer, whose vehicle was labelled "Imperial Hotel." +By his hind-wheel he stood, moving nothing but the hinges of his jaws; +and to see his mouth open to its red limit was to be filled with +consternation.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p><p>"Imm-Peary-ail Hoat'l!" he sang, his eyes looking nonchalantly up and +away, with something of the expression he used to wear when scouting the +sky for signs of rain, in the old farming days before he became poet +laureate of the city's pioneer hotel.</p> + +<p>"Why—look who's here, will you!" The exclamation was Beatty's, as he +stopped alongside the scratched old bus. "This is him, Mrs. Beatty—old +Jim-Jam Hogle. Can you take a passenger, J. J.?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Hogle, without ceasing his vocal offices for so much as the fraction +of a moment, let his eyes flicker down over Beatty with no sign of +recognition, returned his gaze again to its former direction above the +depot roof, and jerked his thumb casually toward the interior of his +craft. Beatty handed the girl in, climbed in after her, and set down the +suitcase and grip. No others entered; and presently Mr. Hogle, turning +from his post by the wheel-rim and glancing inscrutably in at Daisy as +he passed the glass panel behind where his two passengers sat, unsnapped +and threw in his iron hitching-weight, climbed to his high seat, and +rattled away.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon had never before seen such crowds nor such coachmanship. +With the horses trotting at a good speed, the old teamster wound in and +out by motor-trucks, autos, street-cars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> horse-drays, and thronging +pedestrians, as smoothly, swiftly and carelessly as though he had the +whole street to himself. The traffic grew less dense as they passed out +of the vicinity of the depot, crossed a corner where the car-tracks met +at right angles, and, after bowling for a block or two down the city's +main thoroughfare, turned down a side street and drew up at the door of +a hoary frame hotel, its white-painted two-tier piazza weathered to a +dingy gray.</p> + +<p>Beatty and Daisy descended; and the old bus-driver, after first hitching +the team to the weight, followed with the grips.</p> + +<p>"You wait in the hall here, while I go an' dicker with the clerk, dear," +said Beatty, ostentatiously, "I'll be right back."</p> + +<p>Daisy, looking about her curiously, encountered suddenly the eye of Mr. +Hogle, standing up the hall, out of sight of the hotel office. The eye +had been trying for some moments to catch hers; and, now that it had +succeeded, Mr. Hogle raised a huge forefinger, stained indelibly with +harness-oil, and beckoned. Daisy went over briskly.</p> + +<p>"<i>Missis</i> Beatty, hey?" said Mr. Hogle, toning his great voice to a low +interrogative rumble.</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded a careless affirmative. It was none of his business. She +felt able to take care of this point herself, when the time should +arrive.</p> + +<p>"Like hell you are," said the unmincing Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> Hogle, "ner wun't be. Break +away from him as soon's as you can—that's if it ain't too late already. +I know <i>him</i>."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled; raising her chin challengingly, after a manner she had. +But she did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I guess you're all right yet," said Mr. Hogle, after a shrewd fatherly +glance, "an' I see you're one of them confident kind. Them's the ones +that gets ketched easiest. Now you'll mind what I told you—won't you, +Missie?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, regarding her adviser with dancing eyes, bobbed her chin up and +down in mock docility; and Mr. Hogle, shaking his head pessimistically, +went out to put away his team.</p> + +<p>"What was that old geezer saying?" said Beatty, coming out of the office +as the old man went outside.</p> + +<p>"I—I'm sure I don't know," said Daisy, gravely, "I think he was trying +to make love to me, Freddie."</p> + +<p>"Wants to get his can beat off, eh?" remarked Beatty, carelessly; "well, +what-oh-what does my little girlie want worst, right now?"</p> + +<p>"Breakfast," replied Daisy, plumply; ducking roguishly to avoid the +caress her questioner, imagining <i>that</i> was the thing she "wanted +worst," sought to bestow.</p> + +<p>"A-all right," said Beatty, swallowing his pique; "we'll go and see if +they can scare us up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> some poached-two-on, right now. Then 'm going to +take my baby out an' show her the best time <i>she</i> ever had, in all her +young life—eh?"</p> + +<p>"M'h'm," murmured Daisy, smiling to herself, as she followed her +companion into the dining-room.</p> + +<p>Breakfast that morning was a notable affair, a milestone in Daisy +Nixon's days. Not because there was anything novel or striking about the +garniture of the Imperial Hotel dining-room, which was a plain homely +place, differing little from the eating-room of the Jubilee House in +Toddburn—but because there hummed, and called, and clanged, and +whistled through the open windows the multitudinous sounds of this new +urban life into which she had, as it were, plunged headlong. Daisy +listened absently to Beatty's chatter, conceding him an occasional +dimple or smile; but otherwise almost forgot him until, as the meal +ended, he laid his hand, hot and moist, over hers, and said:</p> + +<p>"Well, how does my little-one feel about it now?"</p> + +<p>Daisy glanced down at his white-pored hand, with its cigarette-yellowed +finger-tips and outstanding blue veins. Then she looked up at him, and +leaned one pretty cheek coaxingly close.</p> + +<p>"You's baby feels ashamed in this old waist and skirt and hat," she +said, softly; "ain't you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>going to get her some nice things to be +married in?"</p> + +<p>Beatty's hand squeezed hers.</p> + +<p>"Your Freddie sure will do that for you," he said. "Let's go upstairs +now, and figure out what we'll need."</p> + +<p>Daisy suffered him to pull her out of her chair by the hand he held. +Still retaining it, he led her out of the dining-room, along the hall, +and up the stairway. At the top, she halted—fetching her companion, who +had kept right on going, to a standstill with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"Come on, come on," he said, making his tone matter-of-course, "the room +is No. 19."</p> + +<p>"What's the number of <i>my</i> room?" said Daisy, regarding him pleasantly +but with a kind of odd under-gleam in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Y—your room!" Even Beatty, the inured, was embarrassed by that +searching, direct look. "Why, I—I—darned if I remember the number."</p> + +<p>Daisy continued to look at him a moment; then the shine in her eyes was +succeeded by a twinkle, and this by a promising, coaxing side-glance.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, let's go into the women's sitting-room, Freddie—this +time."</p> + +<p>Beatty knew when to yield a point—so he flattered himself.</p> + +<p>"All right, Sweetest," he said, "you're the doctor—always."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p><p>They passed into the "ladies' parlor," which was empty, except for a +few articles of faded furniture, among which a new red settee in one +corner glowed with a preternatural brilliance. Beatty sat on the red +settee and drew the girl down beside him.</p> + +<p>"Somebody got a kiss for her Freddie?" he said, his lips loosely apart +and wrinkles springing into view at the sides of his nostrils.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I—do' know," Daisy dropped her head a little; "let's just talk. +It's nice to sit together an' talk, when we love each other so, isn't +it?"</p> + +<p>Beatty's answer to this was to thrust his arm about her waist, push his +palm beneath her chin, and pull up her face toward his. The girl +resisted at first; then, with a motion of yielding, laid her head back +on his shoulder and raised her lips. Beatty kissed her, not reverently +but roughly; then kissed her again; then again and again: burying his +mouth into hers. A little hand came up and caressed his neck; then +slipped down within his coat and rested as it were, upon his +heart—moving softly, as though feeling for its beats.</p> + +<p>Then hand and girl and all tore suddenly and strongly away—and Daisy +Nixon was upon her feet, her cheeks glowing like fire, laughing as she +held up the leather purse she had taken from his pocket.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p><p>"It was the only way!" she cried, breathlessly and sparklingly, as he +sat agape; "the only way to get out of you what you owe to me, for the +things I have let you think about me, Mr. Fred Beatty. You thought I +didn't know all about you—what you did to poor Pearlie Brodie, making +her the talk of Toddburn, with worse to come yet—a poor motherless +girl, who was given up by a decent fellow that would have married her, +if it hadn't been for you. You thought I didn't know. Yes: you thought I +'fell for you', as you'd call it. But I'll tell you what I did, an' you +can put it in your pipe an' smoke it, and I hope it'll do you good. I +needed you. I needed to get away from that place where I was wasting my +life, and I had no money—so I used you. I've met ginks like you before. +I could see through you from the first like a pane of glass—you poor, +miserable imitation of a man!</p> + +<p>"Now, I'm going to take this money and use it, to keep me till I get a +job somewhere. Then I'm going to pay it back. But not to you—don't you +ever think it. I'm going to send it to Pearlie Brodie. She'll need it +badly enough, in a few months from now. She'd never have got it from you +straight—never in this world—so she'll get it through me. Now, you get +out of here! I've wasted too much breath talking to you. And keep this +in your memory-box: <i>I don't know you</i>! So<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> don't speak to me, if I ever +have the bad luck to meet you again!"</p> + +<p>The girl had barely finished speaking, when Beatty leaped at her, +grabbing for the purse which she held. But she stepped quickly +back—and, as he pressed in, gave him, with all the strength of her +virile young body, a push that sent him sprawling.</p> + +<p>"You give me that money," Beatty said, his face pasty and mean with +fury, as he climbed to his feet and stood, slowly dusting off his +clothes; "that's all I want out o' you. Hand it over, or I'll go down +and phone for a constable, and have you taken to the police station.</p> + +<p>"Yes—you will!" Daisy challenged. "I suppose you think no person around +Toddburn ever reads the city papers and notices what the law does to a +fellow that brings a girl sixteen years old to a hotel. Go down and +phone for the police, if you feel like it! I know who they'll take back +with them when they come, and it won't be me. And I'll tell you +something more, Mr. Smart Man: If you're not out of here in the next +three minutes or less, <i>I'll</i> phone for the constable. It makes me sick +to look at you. I want to go and wash my mouth, too. It'll take a good +many washings to make it feel as clean as it did before <i>you</i> touched +it. Get away from here!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p><p>"Well," Beatty growled, after a moment, as a distant step down the hall +portended the coming of one of the hotel staff, probably attracted by +the sound of the raised voices and scuffling, "keep the money, then, you +blamed nickel's worth o' nothing. I'll get the worth of it out o' you +some other way, yet—you watch me! There's goin' to come a time when +you'll need me, an' you'd better fasten onto this," he took a card from +his pocket and tossed it down on the settee. "Till then, I'll bid you +'good-day'."</p> + +<p>Therewith—in his intense self-reverence, half-expecting to be called +back before he reached the street-door—Mr. Frederick S. Beatty turned +on his heel and stalked out.</p> + +<p>But Daisy did not call him back. Neither, be it said, did she hasten to +wash her mouth. As the slam of the door downstairs gave ostentatious +notice of Beatty's exit, she moved to the window, watching him up the +sidewalk with an odd, half-maternal look.</p> + +<p>"That call-down may do you some good, Mr. Naughty man," she murmured; +"you've had too easy a time with girls—that's what ails you, +principally."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER III.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Maid and the Clerk.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"'Usbands are hodd duckies," said a voice, accompanying the pat and +shake of one of the cushions on the settee where Beatty and Daisy had +been sitting. "So they har."</p> + +<p>The remark suggested experience, and contained an obvious invitation to +confidences. Daisy, her eyes still thoughtful, turned and beheld a +hectic sylph, with an insinuating expression and a feather-duster. Hair +of an elusive hue was gathered into a cone at the back of her head. At +the base of this cone, a piece of white cambric was pinned like a +saddle. Frank lengths of mature, brown-stockinged leg, in contour like +exclamation-marks, rushed upward, as it were, in hot pursuit of a +skirt-hem which they did not succeed in overtaking until it had nearly +reached the sylph's knee. She had a long chin, and lips that were +pursed, not into a line, but into a kind of mincing rosette.</p> + +<p>"Ar, ee—yes—s", she pursued. The way she held her mouth made "yes" a +hard word to get through that puckered aperture. She undulated like an +ostrich-neck for a moment, then came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> attention, with her head on one +side, and a hand primping cautiously at her coiffure. Her eyes had fixed +themselves on Daisy's "ring-finger", innocent of any certifying circlet +of gold.</p> + +<p>"'Usbands <i>har</i> queer," she repeated; her glance, after a short sharp +sketch of Daisy's figure, coming to rest on the girl's face, "arn't +they?"</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon had knocked around quite a little in Toddburn district, and +was familiar with most local types of both sexes; but the bearer of the +feather-duster refused to be classified offhand in her mind. Cautiously, +and with the feeling of one patting a strange dog, she responded:</p> + +<p>"Are they?"</p> + +<p>"Maybe, an' maybe not," said the other, enigmatically, "you carn't never +say. Arsk them as knows." With this, the sylph transferred her glance +from Daisy's face to Daisy's finger; then from finger to face; then back +to finger; then back to face; and so on, ostentatiously, three or four +times. Her cheeks, that, when she came into the room looked as though +she had been running hard, gave still the same impression; though Daisy +noticed that the rest of her face was a cool and floury white.</p> + +<p>There came a ring, at this moment, from the telephone in the hall. +Duster and all, Daisy's vis-a-vis, moving with a queer lateral toss of +her hips<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> that made their obvious breadth more than ever noticeable, +serpentined to answer the call. Returning after a moment, she said:</p> + +<p>"Bob—er—Mr. Markey, 'e wants to see you, in the office. Straightaway, +'e says."</p> + +<p>Wondering a little at this peremptory summons, Daisy went downstairs. +She stepped a little diffidently across the dingy rotunda to the +counter. There she found, leaning with an elbow on the edge of the +register, a man slightly older than Beatty. He had a vest with do-funnys +on the pockets; a coat broad-striped, snug at the waist, sharp-lapelled, +and tight-shouldered. He had a face dappled with red. He was +newly-barbered—shaved to the blood.</p> + +<p>He did not turn broadside-on as Daisy drew near, but spoke to her from +sidewise, sliding his glances out of the corner of his eye and his words +out of the corner of his mouth:</p> + +<p>"Got nothin' except hand-luggage, lady, huh?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked a little puzzled.</p> + +<p>"Naw trunks, I mean," elucidated Mr. Markey, nasally; "get me?"</p> + +<p>"N-no, there's no trunks; just the two grips."</p> + +<p>"Just the <i>one</i> grip," corrected her catechist, dramatically, fetching +up Daisy's old telescope-bag from under the counter; "just this—see?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked at it: Mr. Markey eyed her, tangently.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p><p>"Ketch the point?" he said, after a moment, "we got no secur'tee for +your board bill. You pay in advance—see?"</p> + +<p>Remembering Beatty's purse, still in her possession, Daisy, a little +flustered by Mr. Markey's abruptness, reached into the front of her +blouse. The purse was still there, nestling against her waist-band; and, +with a little thrill of self-congratulation at the initiative that had +brought the pocket-book into her possession, Daisy drew it out, rested +it on the counter, and made to slip off the elastic.</p> + +<p>As she did this, she felt Markey's eyes on her, and saw him slowly pivot +round. She got a gust of stale cigar-breath and a smell of bay rum as he +leaned close.</p> + +<p>"Where's the little weddin'-ring, honey?" he said, softly; "did Freddie +forget? Naughtee, naugh-tee?" His hand, the finger-ends, like Beatty's, +yellowed with cigarette-stains, came over, moist and disgusting, and +paddled hers.</p> + +<p>Daisy jerked her hands away, leaving Beatty's purse momentarily on the +counter-edge. Markey coolly picked up the purse and slipped it into his +pocket.</p> + +<p>"Yoi, yoi!" he mocked, shrugging, with spread palms, "Freddie gets the +little purse back, after all. 'Leave it to Brother Bobby', I says to him +when he went out."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p><p>Leaning forward on his elbows, and continuing inanely to flap his +palms—a performance in which Mr. Markey evidently imagined lay the very +quintessence of humor—the hotel clerk grinned his relish into the face +of Daisy Nixon. Then, suddenly changing his expression, he brought his +fists down on the counter with a bang, thrust his chin out toward her, +shot out an arm, with forefinger extended, in the direction of the door, +and exclaimed:</p> + +<p>"Now beat it! Beat it, before I call a cop!"</p> + +<p>"Just half a minute". The voice, with a thunderous under-purr of +deep-lunged power, spoke up from behind Daisy. She turned—and looked +into the keen old eyes, blue as a morning sky, of Jim Hogle, the +bus-driver. His chin, with its sandy stubble, moved up and down within +the sweeping triangle of his moustache, and the leathery muscles of his +jaw rippled as he rolled his tobacco in his cheek.</p> + +<p>"What's amiss?" he said, taking Daisy's two hands in his, in his +paternal way.</p> + +<p>"Hey, what's the idea, what's th' idea?" the voice was that of Mr. +Robert Markey; "who the hell told you to horn in?"</p> + +<p>Old Man Hogle did not even look toward the speaker. "Did ye give yon +other feller his walkin'-ticket, like I told y'?" he enquired, of Daisy. +His broad, team-curbing hand, the palm rough as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> a nutmeg-grater, closed +about her fingers with an unconscious strength of constriction that made +the girl wince a little.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon was thinking rapidly. She had been neither humbled nor +daunted by Mr. Markey's attitude. In fact, the point uppermost in her +mind, at the moment, was how to get back Beatty's purse—less because of +its contents than for the reason that she did not want to let Markey +score. However, there was no need of appearing too spunky, now that Mr. +Hogle had appointed himself her ally. Daisy cast down her eyes, +therefore, and merely answered the old man's query with a meek little +affirmative nod.</p> + +<p>"That's my girl!" said Old Man Hogle, approvingly, patting her on the +side of the shoulder; "and now, what's the rumpus <i>here</i>? Has this lad +been sassin' ye?"</p> + +<p>Again Daisy bobbed her head without speaking. After a moment she added, +contriving a little catch in her voice, "He took my purse, with all my +money in it, so he did."</p> + +<p>"Took your <i>what</i>?" roared her champion. Then he swung around toward +Markey. "You give that up," he said, "and do it quick!"</p> + +<p>"The blame little skirt lies," spit out Markey; "that purse belongs to +Fred. She grabbed it off o' him. Anyway, it's none o' your business. You +get to hell out o' here, and get your team out.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> You got to meet that +south train in fifteen minutes".</p> + +<p>Old Man Hogle, with great deliberation, pulled out an immense old silver +watch, rubbed his thumb-ball over the crystal, and set the timepiece on +the counter.</p> + +<p>"An' you," he said, "have got to give this little gal's purse up in +fifteen <i>seconds</i>. If ye don't—I'll take a hand in it. Ye know what +that means, Markey."</p> + +<p>Markey stared, his eyeball in the corner of his eye and his elbow +bracing him laterally. Then he canted his head across the counter and +slid an epithet out of the side of his mouth.</p> + +<p>Old Jim Hogle did not even raise his eyes from the face of the watch. He +waited till the second-hand had travelled one-quarter of the way around +its dial. Then, in a leisurely way, he slipped the watch into his +vest-pocket, glancing casually over Markey's head at the keys hanging on +the numbered rack behind the counter. Then—he sprang into action!</p> + +<p>So swiftly, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement, his arm +shot out, then jerked back toward him; bringing with it Markey, whom he +had secured by the coat-collar. Taken so much by surprise that he was +for the moment speechless, the clerk, helpless as a fish on a hook, was +dragged by that one strong arm until he lay across the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> counter. Then +the ex-father and farmer who was now the driver of the omnibus of this +Wheat-Land city's pioneer hotel, caught up from the chair where he had +temporarily laid it down, a corrective device known in country circles +as a "rawhide". Markey, recovering from his astonishment, jerked +furiously about as he sprawled, scrabbling for some missile. Then, out +of the corner of his eye, he saw the rawhide.</p> + +<p>"Yeh touch me with that," he said, in his cat-like nasal snarl, "and +I'll kill yeh."</p> + +<p>"Hand over yon purse, then," said the old farmer; his calm iron grip +holding the clerk to the counter without visible effort, in spite of the +latter's wildest squirming. Markey felt the power of that arm and +shoulder, nurtured healthily by the long, clean-living, open days of +Plow-Land. It was as though he were pinned down by an oak beam. If Old +Man Hogle chose to use the rawhide—</p> + +<p>"Let me up, then!" he flamed, sweating with his struggles, "an' I'll +give the jane her purse."</p> + +<p>"You give it up now," directed Old Man Hogle "or, as sure as 'm standin' +here, I'll tan ye with this rawhide till ye can't see.... An' ye can let +up on the talk, too, whenever ye like," this in reference to the +language which mingled with Markey's contortions, "or maybe ye'll get a +crack or two anyway. Ain't ye ashamed, with the girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> standin' here—or +have ye no shame <i>to</i> ye? Dry up, now!"</p> + +<p>This last adjuration, accompanied by a shake which all but dislocated +Markey's neck, decided that young man. His hand went to his +breast-pocket. Into the middle of the floor the purse, flung down +viciously, fell with a slap.</p> + +<p>"Is that the right purse, Missie?" the old man said, shifting his grip a +little as he glanced down at it.</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded gratefully; a twinkle and a dimple in that side of her face +which was turned toward Markey. The oaken hand came off the clerk's +collar. He sprang up dishevelled, caught a heavy clerical ruler, black +and round and thick, off the counter, and poised it as though aiming for +a throw.</p> + +<p>Daisy eyed this pantomime a little nervously; but Jim Hogle turned his +back carelessly on Markey and missile.</p> + +<p>"He'll not sling it," he said, "he knows better. He done that once +before, an' we had a—a little argyment. They talk," the old man ran his +palm up and down the rawhide and lapsed a moment into reflectiveness, +"about dee-mocracy, an' every man bein' his own boss. Dee-mocracy's all +right for a man when he's grew up; but <i>some</i> men never outgrows the +tawse. If they'd judge a man less by how old he is than by the sense +he's got, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> world would be ran better.... Well, little gal, your +eyes looks land of heavy. Couldn't 'a had much sleep, coming in on that +midnight local, without no sleepin' berths in it. Let's see, now."</p> + +<p>He turned to the register and ran his finger down the page; then looked +around.</p> + +<p>"You skin up to Room No. 19, the one that Beatty lad hired for 'Mr. and +Mrs. F. S. Beatty'. I'll 'see that ye ain't disturbed, while ye get y'r +sleep out; then we can talk over what ye're a-goin to do. Now, Bob +Markey," the old man glanced at the clock, "I'm goin' to get to hell out +'o this, like you said, an' meet that south train. And I'll be in plenty +o' time, too."</p> + +<p>With this, old Jim Hogle, taking his rawhide with him, passed off across +the rotunda—the picture of health, from his great shoulders to the +cat-like feet that moved as though yet in their pioneer moccasins—and +made the ceiling ring with the mighty bass of his "last ca-a-all"—this +being on the present morning a purely perfunctory office, as the rotunda +of the Imperial Hotel was empty. Daisy—glad enough to do it, too, for +her limbs were tottering under her with drowsiness—took the key Markey +sullenly flung down on the counter, and went up to bed in Room No. 19.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A "Steer".</span></span></h2> + +<p>It might have been about four o'clock in the afternoon when she awoke. +Room No. 19 looked westward—not over green swells of grass and grazing +cattle, and a wind swinging as a censer in the sky-temple, but over a +hot gravelled roof, parapetted with brick and crossed by three radial +clotheslines, upon which human garments jiggled grotesquely, like +scissored paper men. The only jig-makers extant, these, on that busy +midweek afternoon.</p> + +<p>At one end of this low one-story level of roof, a brick rear-wall rose, +with a row of doors that opened out upon those merry clothes-lines. +Through one of these doors, as Daisy looked, came a young girl of about +her own age. Plainly soon to become a mother, the girl's eyes had that +mild, pondering look characteristic of her condition. She dragged over +the gravel a basket of clothes; and, when she had reached an unoccupied +part of one of the clotheslines, commenced to pin the washed things +up—a mechanic's moleskin shirt, a cheap, print house-dress, a limp, +lacy blouse, a little frilled dust-cap, and other little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> sartorial +coquetries that told their tale of a marriage less than a year old.</p> + +<p>Daisy was taking her first look at "light housekeeping"; and, as she was +new from the country, with all her distaste of fields and cows and +"chores" uppermost, this back-roof prospect held her, as the new always +holds. To her, it was not sordid, but sunny and cosy, with the wonderful +city-sounds rising all about. She could almost have leaped across to the +brick parapet, which was just below the level of her window; and for one +gay adventurous moment, she came nearly doing it. She wanted to look in +those doors; to see how people lived, in the city; to talk to the young +urban housewife. She wanted to explore endlessly, to feed her boundless +and exuberant youth's appetite of the eye.</p> + +<p>A knock came at the door. Daisy felt a little anxious as she thought of +old Jim Hogle. He had served her turn—secured her purse for her from +Markey, toward whom she bore no grudge but felt instead a mischievous +desire to "tame down" into a wooer—and she did not want any meddling, +old, self-appointed foster-father handicapping her movements here in +town. She must let the old man, who reminded her distastefully of the +farm, know, once and for all, that her plans were "none of his +business". Perhaps, though, he would not be put aside so easily. With +this last thought in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> her mind, it was a very cold and hostile face that +Daisy presented, as she unlocked the door and opened it.</p> + +<p>"Oh-h! Woo-oo!" exclaimed a voice, with a burlesque of shivering. The +sylph of the blond coiffure skipped in, shrinking away playfully as she +closed the door. "I say—you do chill one, you know!"</p> + +<p>Daisy relaxed her face.</p> + +<p>"I thought it was that old What's-his-name," she said.</p> + +<p>"Ar, yes", the sylph had bobbed over, and was poking at her hair with a +forefinger, canting and turning her head before the looking +glass—trying, doubtless, to reduce her order to some semblance of +Daisy's pretty disorder; "ar, yes—'e <i>is</i> a bit of an old nuisance, 'e +is. You carn't guess what 'e's up to now".</p> + +<p>"What?" Daisy's eyes widened.</p> + +<p>"Arskin' the boss to take you on 'ere, as a dinin'-room girl. The boss, +'e'll do it, too. 'Im and Jim-jam's old pals—'old-timers' they calls +it, among the colownials—and the 'Ogle person 'e can have any think 'e +wants for the arskin'. D'you know, I shouldn't take it, if I were you".</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to take it," said Daisy, with considerable fervor.</p> + +<p>The sylph, pulling herself away at length from the glass, came over and +sat down on the side of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> the bed—dangling her high heels kittenishly +and eyeing Daisy up and down.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what I should do, if I were in your boots?" she said.</p> + +<p>Daisy's eyes came up interrogatively.</p> + +<p>"I should go into service," pursued the sylph; "like as not, you'll 'ave +a charnce at some rich young man, that way, sooner or later. 'Ousemaids +have done that, by good management, even owver in the Old Country. Out +'ere, it's a—a caution, 'ow often it happens".</p> + +<p>"I don't want to marry anybody, rich or poor, just now", said Daisy; +"but how do you get into 'service', and what is it? What do you have to +do?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, down't you know what service is?" her companion simulated surprise +broadly; then, looking a little aside, as though addressing a third +party, the sylph murmured: "Ow, the denseniss of the mahsses! It's a +cortion, it is!"</p> + +<p>After this soliloquy, she faced Daisy again, looking the girl up and +down as through the mistress' lorgnette. "W'y", she said, "domestic +service, I mean—service: I carn't use any other word—in some big +'ouse, with your two evenin's off a week, if you're a good bargainer, +an' a charnce to have your comp'ny in the kitchin, when the Missis isn't +abaout—she carn't always be on 'and, can she?"</p> + +<p>Daisy was so attracted—not by the "company"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> aspect of the suggested +vocation, as by the thought that she might not only view, but actually +dwell in, some of the rich and romantic interiors she had seen in +photoplays at Thompson's Hall in Toddburn, and perhaps have an adventure +of her own in a "big 'ouse"—that she forgot to ask her companion the +obvious question: why she herself was not 'in service'.</p> + +<p>"I know a girl as is just leavin' her place," the sylph pursued; "I +shall give you the address, if you wish, and phone her to be on the +lookout, so you'll 'ave no trouble a-findin' the servants' entrance. +'Ave you a bit of pyper abaout you?"</p> + +<p>Daisy fumbled in her telescope grip and brought out an old letter, from +which she tore off the blank sheet. The sylph drew out of her coiffure a +thin pencil that had been skewered there. In a leaning, long-lettered +hand, she wrote a street name and number.</p> + +<p>"There", she said, as she handed the scrap of paper to Daisy, "take a +taxi—that's quickest, and it will save you arskin' your way. You'll do +withaout references—the Missis in this place I'm sendin' you to is a +bit of a soft un, and Annie will see to that paht of it. I say, I should +nip out naow, if I were you," the sylph glanced at her wrist-watch, +"while 'Ogle's away at the station with 'is bus. 'E just left as I came +up. I shan't tell him where you've gone."</p> + +<p>Daisy, her heart dancing with the spirit of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>adventure, went over to the +looking-glass to do up her hair. After a glance into the mirror, she +turned.</p> + +<p>"I ought to have a clean blouse," she said; then in her spirit of blunt, +brisk self-advantage, she added: "If you could lend me one, it would +help, perhaps, to make sure I get the job."</p> + +<p>The sylph's head came up with a snap.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't be surprised if it did 'elp," she fluted, "but I sharn't do +it, just the same. W'y don't you arsk for the loan of my Sunday frock, +and 'ave done with it? Arn't I helping you enough, as it is?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, unabashed and with a little shrug, donned her slightly soiled +waist and brushed the worst of the lint from her travel-wrinkled skirt. +Then she picked up her telescope grip, and swung it gaily.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm off," was the verbal fashion of her parting, as she skipped +down the stairs.</p> + +<p>In spite of the sylph's assiduity of helpfulness, the latter made no +particular demonstration of partiality as, from the head of the +stairway, she watched the girl descend.</p> + +<p>"Ee-yes," she murmured to herself, "they <i>would</i> put that saucy miss +waitin' at table, in 'ere where my Bob is clerkin'. 'E's a bit rough at +the start-off with the gels, Bob is—but 'e's dreadful soft-'artid when +a gel once gets 'im gowing."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER V.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Job.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy Nixon flung out of the door of the Imperial Hotel into an +afternoon world of dust and din and ecstasy. It was the hour when +stenographers, in offices, whose high open windows command the streets +with their emancipated pedestrians, begin to rubber over-shoulder at the +clock, and to make excursions into washrooms to veneer the fresh color +of cheek and chin and forehead with cadaverous conventional powder. The +"boys" have been educated to look for this make-up (it takes an educated +taste to appreciate it!) and a girl would as soon think of leaving the +office in her stocking-feet, as without a blue-white effect on chin and +nose and forehead, and a smudge of strangulation purple blotting the +cheek's own inimitable rose.</p> + +<p>Six o'clock would blow shortly from a hundred sirens; and the thrill of +"quittin'-time" could already be discerned in the air. Down the street +from the direction of the big transcontinental depot came a 'bus, three +or four blocks away; and Daisy, with a habit of the countryside, +identified this vehicle instantly by the team, whose markings she had +instinctively remembered. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> was the Imperial Hotel rig, returning from +the station. No time, therefore, was to be lost, if she was to evade her +self-appointed guardian, old Jim Hogle.</p> + +<p>A rank of jitneys was parked along the curb. Daisy approached a driver +with a mop of black curly hair so abundant that it pushed his cap to one +side. This driver half-turned his head in a formal "straight business, +and don't waste my time" way; but the corners of mouth and eye twinkled +companionably and humorously.</p> + +<p>"Could you", Daisy's eyes twinkled back, too, in spite of her trace of +country-girl diffidence, "could you—"</p> + +<p>"I should say I <i>could</i>," the chauffeur's face was expressionless, but +his accent was merry.</p> + +<p>"Could you", Daisy dimpled as she went on, "take me to here—see?"</p> + +<p>The young man hitched his chin forward in ostentatious scrutiny. Then, +in a matter-of-course way, he took the scrap of paper from Daisy's +fingers, brought it to his lips, handed it back, clicked open the +tonneau door, and motioned inward with hospitable palm.</p> + +<p>"Thank a-you," he said, elaborately, as Daisy stepped in; then, without +opening the fore-door, he vaulted into his own seat. There was the usual +preliminary roar, proceeding by staccato jet and pit-a-pat to smooth +pulsing motion, as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> jitney glided out handily into the multifarious +traffic of the street.</p> + +<p>No river-ravine of Wheat-Land on a June Sunday had ever stirred Daisy +Nixon to an atom of the ecstasy that champagned her as she sailed down +that traffic-current between its Saguenay-banks of masonry, whose uneven +summits, high above her, scissored the blue silk of the sky. Forward, +upward to right, upward to left, the girl's glance travelled; then came +down to the sidewalk, no square yard of which escaped for one clear +moment from servitude to the thousand thousand tramping feet, following +at a slower pace the drift of the traffic in the hundred-foot driving +way.</p> + +<p>No electric welcome blazed from the front of the city hall, with its +coal-darkened brickwork and broad steps. No welcome, nor any sound but a +mighty hammer-stroke from the tall clock, telling Daisy that Time was +moving as well as she. No welcome—but Daisy Nixon felt that there could +not help be a quickening of the city's pulse at the notability of this +day, with its every moment so rare and thrilling to her.</p> + +<p>The pulse of the motor throbbed as, coursing in the pack of its kind, it +nosed from side to side or held a true-running swift pace astride a +tram-rail. The chauffeur, with an air of profound abstraction made +comical by his tilted cap and sportive half-presented profile, gave +"her" spark or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> "juice" as the occasion demanded, with a casual motion +of his gloved thumb. At a corner where two broad streets met, the +taxi-cab turned aside. Proceeding a little way down the second main +artery of traffic, it rounded a corner under a brass-grilled jeweler's +window and entered a labyrinth of side-streets in which Daisy soon lost +her sense of direction so completely that the sun, after what seemed +like an excursion into the little-visited due-north sector of the +horizon, appeared to move around to the east, and forthwith to commence +another day without pausing for the customary night-interval.</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, according to Daisy's dial, about six-thirty in the +morning instead of that hour p.m., when the jitney, doubling adroitly +between two great gate-posts of gray masonry, spun along a paved +driveway and pulled up before a house so big and ornamental and +ostentatious that it filled Daisy with a kind of momentary awe just to +look at it.</p> + +<p>This structure would have filled an architect with awe, too, though not +the same kind. Looking at the house upon which Sir Thomas Harrison had +set the imprimatur of his taste and his predilections, the architect +would, if he were a psychologist, have said that Sir Thomas had once +been plain—very plain—Tom. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +the chief seats in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> synagogues. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +to push and shove and crowd, and believed in the survival of the +fittest—the fittest, that is to say, according to Sir Tom's standard. +He would have said that Sir Thomas gave liberally to charities, for +three reasons—for display, for business reasons, and to parade his +dollars before the needy. He would have said that Sir Thomas loved +advertisement, and paid high rates to have his "write-up" in "special +supplements". He would have said that Sir Thomas, in regard to the +policies or sentiments of the day, might always be found on the +band-wagon—not because he always understood these policies and +sentiments, but because the crowd clapped for 'em.</p> + +<p>The architect would have said, further, that if he had had a sister and +if she had been a pretty and irresolute girl and had chosen—we will say +for the sake of present illustration—to go, as the sylph of the +Imperial Hotel phrased it, "into service", he would have preferred to +have her work almost anywhere else in town than at the house of Sir +Thomas Harrison. This in spite of the deference and ostentatious +politeness Sir Thomas—at state receptions and so forth, where he was +well-watched—used toward the awkward and reticent woman he had married +before he made his money—or rather, before the natural growth of the +country made his money for him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p><p>The architect might also have premised, from the heavily-built and +solid cement bridge that was Sir Thomas Harrison's plan for bringing a +rather pretty ravine up to the level of his driveway, as well as from a +huge concrete garage and other indications of a superfluity of stone and +mortar, that Sir Tom was a contractor and that the "Sir" end of his +name—if it had not come by the political route, that is to say—had +come through connection with the building of some railroad or government +building or other public work by which, it had happened, the country had +benefited while itself benefiting Sir Thomas Harrison.</p> + +<p>Upon house and grounds, in short, was set the seal of dollars. Every +dollar that would show. "Have more dollars than the next man, and let +him know you have 'em," was Sir Thomas' social creed.</p> + +<p>The chauffeur half-turned his head, and opened the door of the tonneau. +Eye-corner and mouth-corner twinkled. Daisy jumped actively out, +"telescope" grip in hand.</p> + +<p>"Thank you", she said, and turned to go. In the country, one does not +pay for a "lift" on one's way.</p> + +<p>"One dollar, lady," came the voice of her driver. Daisy faced about. The +features, as a whole, of the chauffeur held only polite formality; but +eye-corner and mouth-corner still twinkled and twitched.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>"What's that?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Your fare—one dollar."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" Daisy's hand went to the bosom of her blouse, slipped in—and was +presently withdrawn, somewhat blankly. She had left the purse on the +dresser at the hotel. No use going back now. A little shrug dismissed +the matter. That was Daisy's way with vicissitudes.</p> + +<p>"Nothin' doin', huh?" the chauffeur's voice was humorously sharp, "Well, +don't start makin' excuses. It won't," the young man glanced up at the +mighty and singular front of the Harrison house, "it won't be hard to +find you, as long as you're at this place. I'll come back for it."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled and turned off again.</p> + +<p>"Say," commented the taxi-driver, "you better not go in th' front door." +Daisy was walking straight up to the front steps.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me for buttin' in," her adviser continued, "but the front door +is only for the people that lives here, or their dolled-up guests. I'm +only tellin' you for your own good. If you was to go up there and ring +the front door bell, like you was headed to do, they'd know you was a +green hand, see, and most likely you wouldn't get the job you're after."</p> + +<p>Daisy hadn't told her conductor she was after any job. He seemed to have +a way of knowing things. She put up her chin a little, and did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> look +back, but thought it best to follow his advice. Without waiting to see +whether she took it or not, he spun away down the other arm of the +horseshoe-shaped drive, on his return to the street.</p> + +<p>Passing down a walk at the side of the house, Daisy saw a girl looking +out through a latticed gate. Evidently the sylph had phoned her +housemaid friend to be "on the lookout".</p> + +<p>"I thort you were never a-comin', I did," said the housemaid, who was a +thin, white, dissatisfied figure, with a larynx almost as prominent as +the "Adam's-apple" of a lean man. Alice was one who had worn herself out +with the effort, first to avoid doing any more than the barely +necessary, and second, to do this as perfunctorily as she could—which +was very perfunctorily. Daisy had expected, somehow, to find her just as +she was—that is to say, homelier than the skittish sylph, because +otherwise she could not have been a friend of the latter.</p> + +<p>Brisking up to the girl, diplomatically sociable, Daisy said: "I came as +soon's I could. It's a long way."</p> + +<p>"Come in," said Alice, in her querulous voice. Daisy followed the +present incumbent of the position that was to be hers, into the Harrison +kitchen.</p> + +<p>If it had not been furnished forth with such equipment as stamped it +undeniably for what it was, Daisy, not having seen the other rooms in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +the house and judging the room she saw by the simple standards of the +farmhouses that were her only available criterion, would have taken it +for the living-room. She would not, she felt, have minded living in it. +It was great and clean and shining.</p> + +<p>Alice, however, did not linger in the kitchen, which was not her domain +but that of a tall damsel, whose tawny hair, long nose, long line of +cheek, and lower lip pushed slightly outward by the pressure of strong +white upper teeth, said "Edinbory" as plain as features could talk.</p> + +<p>"Is yon the new chambermaid, Allie?" she enquired, stirring cake-batter +with a powerful, brisk movement.</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes," responded Alice, impatiently, "don't keep us now, Jean. I +shall 'ave to be smart, you know, to have my things packed when 'E gets +here." "'E" was Alice's "company", who worked for a transfer firm and +had promised to "nip around and shift her luggage" for her.</p> + +<p>"Come awa doon an' have a bit crack, then, when ye can," said Jean, +clearing her batter off the spoon by impacting the utensil cautiously +against the edge of the bowl which contained the mixture. "We'll hae a +canny morsel cake, an' a sup o' tea forbye", she added, as a clincher. +"You'll come too, Allie."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who scented future advantage in an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>alliance with the hospitable +Scotch cook, smiled back her assent as she passed on through a door at +the further end of the kitchen. This gave to a stair carpeted neatly and +leading up to a room with two beds in it. The furniture was expensive, +but well-worn—evidently moved back to the servants' quarters to make +room for the latest and newest guest-room equipment in the apartments +the family occupied. Picture post-cards, handkerchief-holders, tidies on +the chair-backs, a window-box with flowers, gave a jointly fresh and +cosy effect to the room. To Daisy, after her loft at home, it seemed +palatial.</p> + +<p>"Who has the other bed?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Jean, o' course," said the disgruntled Alice, "'oo did you suppowse 'ad +it?" She slumped down on the end of the bed opposite to where Daisy sat.</p> + +<p>"I should 'a been aout o' here a week gorn," she harped. "I gave the +Missis 'er notice, an' thought everything was owverwith. Then the Boss, +'e up an' says if I gow without there's a gel 'andy to take my place, I +down't get no wagis. So I've stuck it aout. It's been a job, I can tell +you."</p> + +<p>"Is that so," absently commented Daisy, who had been looking around her +with considerable interest, "well, well."</p> + +<p>"It ain't the place I mind," said Alice, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>cautiously, as the thought +crossed her mind that Daisy was not yet formally engaged and might "back +out", "but Jawge, my young man, 'e gets 'is meals at the Manor 'Aouse, +an' 'e wants me where 'e can see me 'andy. But, come on, down't dordle +so. Chuck your luggage under the bed or anyw'ere you please, whilst we +go to see the Missis ... Ar—'alf a minit. Yeou do look a bit of a drab +in that waist. Put on this one of mine till arfter we've seen the +Missis. Mind and don't smudge it, faw you must give it back to me +straightaway, as soon as she says she'll take you on. I shouldn't lend +it you, only I want to make sure you're engaged, so I can be hoff to the +Manor to my Jawge."</p> + +<p>Daisy put on the flimsy but clean lawn blouse. It was fashioned loose +and low in the neck, or she would never have made it meet; for Daisy was +superbly "full" where Alice was flat.</p> + +<p>"Yeou deou look a bit staout." Stout was not the word; but Alice was +voicing envy, not admiration. "Come, now—we sharn't have any bother. +She'll tieke you, straight off—I know she will."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison's wife was in the dining-room, setting the table for +tea, as she always did on evenings when there were no guests expected. +Daisy, after a little catch of her breath at the size and appointments +of this room, turned her eyes upon her new mistress and felt an +immediate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> curious warming of the heart—curious, because Daisy usually +faced strangers with an eye that danced with aggressiveness even while +the cheek below it dimpled ingratiatingly: with speech that was chary, +and with a capering confidence in her ability to "handle" any +eventuality. Lady Harrison—without knowing it, however—disarmed Daisy +Nixon at once with her mild brown eyes, her stooped housewifely +shoulders, her mothering smile. Daisy felt that, some day soon, if she +got and kept this situation, she would find herself talking to this +woman more freely than she had ever talked to anyone in all her shrewd, +guarded, combative sixteen and a half years.</p> + +<p>Lady Harrison was diffident equally with anyone, servant-girl or +marchioness. Her people, plain-spoken folk, had early hammered it home +to her that she was all knuckles and thumbs. In these latter days, it +was a pleasant habit of Sir Tom, in those moments when his +self-complacency sat upon him most inspiringly, to stick his thumbs in +the armholes of his vest, puff regardlessly into his wife's face the +smoke from a plethoric cigar, and remind her of her good-fortune in +"getting" him—a feat she, who had been awkward Martha Andrews, had +performed quite passively, after Sir Thomas (then young Tom Harrison, +paying for "private board" at the Andrews home) had tasted her apple pie +and slept in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> bedroom she had "fixed up" for his accommodation. +Probably if she had been less shy, she would not have been so good a +home-maker. She would then have gone out with "the boys", as the other +Andrews girls did, and left the pies and bedrooms to mother's attention.</p> + +<p>"This is the new gel, ma'am," said Alice.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lady Harrison, leaning her knuckles on the edge of the table +and raising a wandering hand to the brooch at her throat, "that's very +nice." This, the only social expression that had "stuck" in Lady +Harrison's memory, was her sole verbal resource when locked in the +besetting shyness that rose up and gripped her when she first faced a +stranger.</p> + +<p>"She'll start at once, ma'am," said Alice, not trying very arduously to +conceal her impatience to be gone.</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Lady Harrison again, fingering the brooch, "that's—very +nice—very nice indeed."</p> + +<p>"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, +"I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'."</p> + +<p>"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's—that's very +nice—quite."</p> + +<p>Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet +collected her wages, or she would have banged the door—as a parting +sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully +saucy and flopping.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant +note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely +natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once +mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or +whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness +as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made +communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as +soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so +easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled +down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose. +As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more +homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased +proportionately.</p> + +<p>"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and +rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a +pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the +kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of +her large wandering hands.</p> + +<p>"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response.</p> + +<p>"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs +stood sociably together.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down, +cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward, +beneath her chin.</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around.</p> + +<p>"Have you—have you references?"</p> + +<p>"What?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"A—references—letters from somebody for whom you have worked for," +Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction, +occasionally used a preposition too many.</p> + +<p>"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I—but I—," it was an effort +for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as +well as I can—for <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time, +in its proper place. "But my hus— but Sir Thomas Harrison may require +references. He generally does."</p> + +<p>Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little. +She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house.</p> + +<p>"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she +noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to +get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy—as +I'm sure you will—that he—ur, that Sir Thomas—will give you a trial."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Plebeian.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and +broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly +as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes +pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A +great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun +found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with +light.</p> + +<p>"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent +joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the +window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been +an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had +glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had +previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun +that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing.</p> + +<p>"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking +his swivel chair in a way that made Evans—a nervous father of five, who +sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m.,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> three nights a week, +minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish, +"took in" all the dances—writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't +you, for once."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He +was a very rapid stenographer—he had to be, or he wouldn't have been +long with Sir Thomas Harrison—and the keys of his machine, on its +noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and +embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the +concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down +nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his +"pur-rsonal power, sir".</p> + +<p>"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir, +not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time."</p> + +<p>In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His +stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful +lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair +was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at +least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a +bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff, +close-cropped <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>moustache; a month that blathered redly when he +conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy, +and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas.</p> + +<p>Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped +briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust +it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At +the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a +mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on +reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would +conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would +commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir +Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen +poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had +reached up to the hook behind him for his hat.</p> + +<p>Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He +dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that +he broke the pen-nib off short.</p> + +<p>"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue +blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put +commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they +learn y' no grammar at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> th' school you went tuh? Take off that hat—'n +git out y'r machine—'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r +job, or what, Evans?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a +fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right +away."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h—y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on +his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at +himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to +do it, Evans. I guess yeh <i>will</i> do it over agen—an' ten times over +agen, if I say so."</p> + +<p>By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself +about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the +letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it—he was growing +hungry, for it was 6.15—dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a +flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror.</p> + +<p>Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language +that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. +Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, +showing up disastrously on their gray background—the result of that +pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in +front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established +dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on +arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself +another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power."</p> + +<p>In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what +he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger +beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another +customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: +Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, +after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, +adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for +the first time that moment, came over briskly.</p> + +<p>"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to +tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his +bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman +who faced him across the counter.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a +customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth, +adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> those +out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat +sir—fine material."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter, +lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat.</p> + +<p>"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a +stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?"</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done +before Wednesday—the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind +this week, owing to press of work."</p> + +<p>"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half +an hour off, an' fix that coat—to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine +o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go.</p> + +<p>"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our +fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must +take its turn."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time."</p> + +<p>"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this +house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never +shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness +and courtesy; but it has paid, as well."</p> + +<p>"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> counter, and drove out the words, +"it's a ba-ad rule"—the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective +with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible, +flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth—"a bad +rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to +summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th' +jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars—get me-e?"</p> + +<p>"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell.</p> + +<p>"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a +step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up +on the Crescent. Yoe know that"—the contractor's head oscillated +laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this +forth—"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same +Crescent street. You won't get none of it—none that I ken ketch an' +head off. Understand!"</p> + +<p>Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the +door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas +Harrison pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. +Good evening."</p> + +<p>Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out.</p> + +<p>"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Gary, the dyer's bookkeeper, +whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above +Benwell's ledger.</p> + +<p>The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat—not +his—which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its +hook.</p> + +<p>"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the +hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great +credit for his energy and push—even though sometimes that energy may be +a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary—especially +about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us +instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to."</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused +cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but +audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation:</p> + +<p>"Shoelaces, sir?"</p> + +<p>The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from +across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, +stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat +across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his +pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting +the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the +"greenback"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar +note.</p> + +<p>"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the +spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours, +an' keep the shoelaces."</p> + +<p>Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in +the lower part of the leather face—a slit whose corners curled slowly +upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up +the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his +pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was +folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of +his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view, +it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim +McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on +the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar +bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his +vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled +and knotted pair of shoelaces.</p> + +<p>"Brah-<i>vo</i>!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter; +"Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know."</p> + +<p>The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the +street-side, with gloved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> hands resting on the tonneau door and cane +hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware, +Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank +and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for +membership was even now awaiting consideration.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace +man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength, +had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial +investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue.</p> + +<p>"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me—hey!" He +crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its +winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and +gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around +upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda.</p> + +<p>"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home +to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the +night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?"</p> + +<p>Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully, +fought back a smile.</p> + +<p>"Why,—er—," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment; +looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation; +"I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir +Thomas."</p> + +<p>It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing +he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had +tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor—but +the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of +his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his +interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an +anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's +auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a +pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that +the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see +the beast in its native haunts—to note how it lived, and what it ate.</p> + +<p>Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging +like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion, +Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians +and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir +William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate +hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced +around,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If +the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted, +there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison, +engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware.</p> + +<p>"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone, +through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?"</p> + +<p>And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back +humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!"</p> + +<p>Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep +in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his +presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it +progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact, +engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after +entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered +note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible, +Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The +word was "Bohunk."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Human Horticulturist.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from +the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, +the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very +well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the +things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, +you see, since Alice has left us."</p> + +<p>"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the +soup-tureen—watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious +to please her mistress—the first disinterestedly kind person she had +met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her +great adventure—kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it +cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye +needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when +they're set doon. There—listen!"</p> + +<p>Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room +swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots +dried by the sun of the street was smothered in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> soft carpeting as the +tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. +A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The +feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and +a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill.</p> + +<p>"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment +with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; +"look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll +'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is +face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an +upraw, 'e down't."</p> + +<p>Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she +spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed +through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held +open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered +soup-tureen and warm plates.</p> + +<p>"Hey—bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, +crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier +coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; +"what do we pay you for?"</p> + +<p>Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, +in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the +soup-dish.</p> + +<p>There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward—his +"pur-rsonal power" must be kept active—which Sir Thomas always +delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of +many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, +had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point +of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to +avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying +to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His +jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it +a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into +his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around +with the usual glare upward.</p> + +<p>A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here +at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the +greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side +of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, +knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he +saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen.</p> + +<p>What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your +sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire +you ..." etc., etc.—making each sentence hurt as much as possible, +according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities.</p> + +<p>What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the +new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty +good!"</p> + +<p>And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of +the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a +little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of +her eye. His face changed ever so little—just a slight lowering of the +eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip—but enough to let +Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison +except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal +with—that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy +Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda +of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the +position,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave +him as little work or concern as his several other business connections +of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the +money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large +unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal +thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago +"quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper."</p> + +<p>Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his +seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself +was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two +things most people want most—money, and social prestige and power—and +has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and +wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is +apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as +interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his +experience of the real thing.</p> + +<p>Ware had the highest social status, both by birth—which counts for +little in the West—and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere +in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a +gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born +wealthy. Sir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or +wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a +friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to +have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He +wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see +everybody a friend to everybody else.</p> + +<p>Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved +had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate +harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, +immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had +never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that +there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted.</p> + +<p>These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: +Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have +an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She +must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. +She must, above all, be new material—that is, young enough not to be +hardened against impress.</p> + +<p>In his quest for a wife—or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present +matrimonial vigilance—Sir William had followed a course exactly +opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> seeking out some +woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then +analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, +he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, +and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his +brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and +feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir +William Ware proposed to discover and marry.</p> + +<p>When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had +been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry +her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The +chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in +another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered.</p> + +<p class="center">* * * * *</p> + +<p>Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, +Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached +out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the +doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy.</p> + +<p>"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a +word', as he calls it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of +his head.</p> + +<p>"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin +and making a mouth at the messenger.</p> + +<p>"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, +ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it +swung in his direction.</p> + +<p>"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, +after a rap like that. Skedaddle!"</p> + +<p>The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy +table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and +sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a +little poke with her forefinger and thumb.</p> + +<p>"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the +mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this +minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource +and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next +time, and send him off home."</p> + +<p>"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm +on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me."</p> + +<p>Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement +driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the +big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were +great maples, with mysterious darkness between—thickening into a group +with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked +the junction of driveway and street.</p> + +<p>Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty—although how he had +found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the +Imperial Hotel—for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had +estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, +might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, +the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling +for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride."</p> + +<p>Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees +might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each +was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to +trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to +know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the +chance to tell him, "plump and plain"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> and finally, that she was quite +capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She +hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about +that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning +about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he +might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men +were of only two classes—those who were "forward" and "had fun in +them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" +to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a +girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and +secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got +them started, and could not be handled at all.</p> + +<p>She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so—for +the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle +shaped for adventure—when there stepped out from under the foliage a +tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good +evening"—not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and +hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something +faintly familiar about his voice.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he +said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p><p>Daisy, withholding speech—she had found out by experience that it was +a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for +the first few moments—let her companion precede her through the gate.</p> + +<p>In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane +on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the +big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a +certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the +pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest.</p> + +<p>She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized +that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"—his quiet clothes, +worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, +either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing +figure—because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the +polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with +pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray +showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed +him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of +enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in +a companionable sense, at once.</p> + +<p>Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>dimpling, perusing him with +eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness—armed cap-a-pie +in every virile nerve and muscle—not a bit timorous, but flashingly on +guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes +twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against +the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and +poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor +that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses +of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped—in short, +susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more +preface than the friendliest of all smiles.</p> + +<p>There! It was out—said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say +it—without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that +had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it.</p> + +<p>Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity—his glance steady, but +so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl +looked back at him—her face first shortening and dimpling to a +half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling +again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> natural +expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew +was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed—to +put it the way it presented itself to her—as though she had stepped +into a book or a moving-picture or a dream.</p> + +<p>Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it.</p> + +<p>"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll +answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins—one twin +going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's +side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see +how the adventure was going to turn out—was conscious of a short walk +under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of +a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained +alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly +behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast +face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the +quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin +of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant.</p> + +<p>Sir William, without looking at the menu the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> waiter held before him, +gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, +Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with +ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy.</p> + +<p>"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy—at +least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the +table—seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and +sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into +one a moment, and the whole Daisy said:</p> + +<p>"Who's Lady Ware?"</p> + +<p>Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her +with a kind of pondering exaltation—a deep but self-contained joy.</p> + +<p>"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long +time, my dear. But she's here at last."</p> + +<p>"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively.</p> + +<p>"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall +manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both +try hard, and try together."</p> + +<p>"Well—Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some +more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman."</p> + +<p>"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> a strong white hand and put +it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am +infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that—infinitely rejoiced. The way +you said it, too! My word!"</p> + +<p>His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the +air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is +surprised to find that it knows some tricks already.</p> + +<p>"What's your name?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of +his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. +Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand!</p> + +<p>"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, +common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have +to learn to be-Ware, you see."</p> + +<p>The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he +brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in +like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and +silver—and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a +neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, +bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a +coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little +cubes of cheese.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, +with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter +of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their +saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream.</p> + +<p>"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you +don't like it, we'll have in some cream."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly +lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it.</p> + +<p>"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some +cre-eam, quick."</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of +his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It +was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this +tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was +passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. +If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost +spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage +ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if +<i>she</i> was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, +the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon +herself the bloom and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on +his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any +sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his +half-century and more.</p> + +<p>"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially.</p> + +<p>Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her +saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and +out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting +her head a little on one side.</p> + +<p>"I say—stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt +upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know—don't flirt, +please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?"</p> + +<p>"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes +twinkled.</p> + +<p>"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir +William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't +you?"</p> + +<p>Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the +proffered cup.</p> + +<p>"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone +like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think +about our—our plan, as it were?"</p> + +<p>The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something +about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from +Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with +brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and +trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which +Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its +profundity.</p> + +<p>Daisy cleared her throat a little—a habit she had when about to speak +seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of +the western farm country.</p> + +<p>"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you +anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped +beneath her chin.</p> + +<p>"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand +under his.</p> + +<p>"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I +guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and +I like all the boys the same—just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty +rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and +gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> with. But—but when +a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her +cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have +to—have to—oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know +how—they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't +want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way +I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help +it."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling—as though she would +like to recall what she had just "come out with"—possessed her for a +moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen +years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and +freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, +with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite +of herself.</p> + +<p>Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his +eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of +several emotions.</p> + +<p>"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest +at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever +do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. +Boys are pretty near all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> alike—you go out with them a couple of times, +and you know all about them. They're all right to play with—but when a +girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way +it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as +hens' teeth."</p> + +<p>Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that +Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its +customary dimpling.</p> + +<p>"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, +putting her head on one side.</p> + +<p>Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to +the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with +her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she +stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his +chin.</p> + +<p>"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly +well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe +that I don't intend to forget you—in fact, haven't the slightest +intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do +you think, in your present position?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house."</p> + +<p>"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> fine, indeed.... Now, I +shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He +relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and +cane.</p> + +<p>Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the +way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had +drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll +keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You +won't let the city spoil you, I mean—it has a tendency that way, you +know."</p> + +<p>Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, +"I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this.</p> + +<p>"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he +said.</p> + +<p>"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and +gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most +previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye +moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at +the good-bye moment.</p> + +<p>"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his +previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean +on a cane—almost as though it were a part of him—and, just as she was +about to reply, interjected,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> "wait a bit, though. I believe I should +like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, +guessing. Nineteen?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and +crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased +more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is +only seventeen—the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name—do you +realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate +way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I +should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean."</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy."</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I +knew—that is, I almost knew—it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, +little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his +hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright +vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye +time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what +we've been talking about—shall you?"</p> + +<p>If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an +attempt to take her hand,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no +such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the +arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket +of his coat.</p> + +<p>Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the +light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each +of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her +cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little +hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind +her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused +there, then was extended toward Sir William.</p> + +<p>The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, +however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the +tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way.</p> + +<p>"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were +less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing +overpower you."</p> + +<p>With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and +flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement.</p> + +<p>"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had +extended toward him. With<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned +and walked away.</p> + +<p>Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and +humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively.</p> + +<p>"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well—he'll be back, if," she +flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Knight in the Kitchen.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to +the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to +certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge—the cafe, +with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on +its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight +before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the +presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply +and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had +unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole +city yet new to her—new and unexplored and fascinating—the experience +through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or +a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy +was most amazed at her own part in it—at the strong and sane impulse +which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt, +if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift +unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned +softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance. +He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old +enough to know his own mind."</p> + +<p>A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door +showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad +Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the +bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, +on this her first unfamiliar night in it.</p> + +<p>She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on +linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of +the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in +his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir +Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight +sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his +shirt-sleeves.</p> + +<p>"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of +water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from +keepin' the little date, hey?—he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us +none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have +one, on me. <i>Suddown!</i>"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p><p>This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger—his +thick, blunt forefinger—toward one of the two chairs that stood by the +table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a +celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat +down obediently and demurely in the chair.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of +water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other +glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet +in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking +vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and +the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty +chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it.</p> + +<p>"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are—just the two of us, hey? +Everybody else in bed, but—we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a +little drink. C'm on!"</p> + +<p>Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her +glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of +light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass +joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and +coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. +Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood +untouched.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. +Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I +know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, you <i>sassy</i> babee—come on +to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his +new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee.</p> + +<p>"There," he said,—in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the +incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, +"how's that—better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist.</p> + +<p>Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as +she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away +from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't +you? Is this why the last girl left?"</p> + +<p>"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a +momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that +sour-mugged English rake-handle! I—I couldn't love a girl with a face +like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about +Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on—give us a little baby kiss."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p><p>"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful +points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's +answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the +table and place it about her.</p> + +<p>Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the +red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places +like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond +speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, +making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be +a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness +had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and +succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, +watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a +doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis.</p> + +<p>At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning +flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest.</p> + +<p>"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for +nothing."</p> + +<p>Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his +pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p><p>"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, +where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering.</p> + +<p>"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in +oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that +bunch!"</p> + +<p>"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go."</p> + +<p>Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the +saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand.</p> + +<p>"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all +his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, +half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning +movement off his knee and away.</p> + +<p>"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to +try to get this money back, and I'll <i>yell</i>. Jean the cook is sleeping +just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack +Robi'son'."</p> + +<p>At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh +that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the +encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew +that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man +need<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> only force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering +passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the +gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, +finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, +elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a +sneer—such a sneer!—Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look +so ugly!</p> + +<p>"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words +came easily enough now. "But don't think you win—oh, no-o! D'ye know +what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money +is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going +to say you were sorry."</p> + +<p>"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in +your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're +going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye +hear!"</p> + +<p>"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to show <i>you</i> something now. +Here's all I care for your dirty money."</p> + +<p>With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, +realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big +kitchen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> gas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, +and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame +leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's +coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as +he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless +ashes.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now I <i>am</i> goin' to +fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' +over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to +lay information against you for stealin' that money—see? I'm a-goin to +have you arrested—see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town +for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his +vest, "and you—who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with +you yet, if—"</p> + +<p>"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from +Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the +bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas +Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an' +I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist +tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed—that's what you'll do!"</p> + +<p>"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> recovered himself and +had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish +speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll +clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we +have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help. +Neither of you's worth a hurra——"</p> + +<p>"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not +inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide +here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an' +keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to +y'r bed, lassie."</p> + +<p>Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust +forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She +returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch +eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a +cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel.</p> + +<p>"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he +passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning."</p> + +<p>"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the +door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a +man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> through the stair-door +and up the steps to the bedroom.</p> + +<p>"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom +door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's +folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o' +bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge +you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back—he's that kind, +ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word, +after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht', +as oor Bawby Burrns has it—is he no?"</p> + +<p>"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so +bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before +I'm through."</p> + +<p>"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers, +thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest +broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her +head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd +mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers—any mischief, I +mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye—I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn. +Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's +house-cleanin' day."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER IX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Dance and an Invitation.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well, ye see," Jean remarked, next evening, as the two girls, in the +delicious after-supper leisure of house-cleaning day, sat together in +the kitchen, "he didna even keek in on us, all day; an' he's said +naething to the Mistress, for she's the same as ever an' couldn't keep +it in if she was worried."</p> + +<p>Daisy, her virile young self merely exhilarated, as it is with the +healthy young, after the long day of muscular labor, was barren of +speech but fruitful of glances out through the window, where the +sunlight of the long evening laid an elbow of shadow at the root of each +of the prim trees bordering Harrison's cement drive, and shone red upon +the open doorway of the garage. Harrison was spending the evening out +somewhere, and the big car was gone; but the electric brougham in which +Lady Harrison—who merely "put on style" by her husband's request, and +would really much rather have walked, or taken the trolley-car, on her +trips downtown—paid her social calls or went shopping, stood invitingly +in its place.</p> + +<p>"Can the Missis run that thing?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Ey," said Jean, who had been regarding the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> younger girl's curves and +color a little wistfully, but none the less good-heartedly, "Ou, ay. She +disna like it, though. She's a plain woman—a richt leddy, though she +was na born to it, no more than him, ye ken."</p> + +<p>"I wish she'd give that pretty car to me," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Ay," Jean smiled reflectively, "nae doubt, nae doubt. If wishes were +electric buggies, there's nane of us would tramp. She'd be daft enough +to give it to ye, too, I doubt, if it wasna for her man. Ey, ey—whiles +I wish I had him, just for a wee. I'd train him the way a mon should +walk, so I would. Still, there's got tae be a master, ye ken, in every +family. I wouldna like a man that was saft, all around. I'd want him tae +be canny in business, like Sir Thomas, ye see—but I'd want tae be +mistress at home.... But, by the bye, lassie, speakin' o' men n' cattle +o' yon kind," Jean smiled to herself as she said this, and wished some +man, for the good of his conceit, had happened along unexpectedly and +heard this comparison, slipping out, as it had, by happy inspiration, +"how wad ye like the evenin' out? The Mistress hersel' said that, as ye +were a young thing and would likely be wantin' a good time, to give ye +an evenin' to yerself whenever I could spare ye."</p> + +<p>Daisy needed no second intimation. She bounced out of her chair, agile +and untired as though it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> were morning and she just up. Then she paused +a moment, and her face fell a little.</p> + +<p>"My skirt is all right," she said, "but I have no clean waist."</p> + +<p>Jean paused; knuckles reflectively akimbo.</p> + +<p>"What's y'r size, lassie?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Thirty-eight."</p> + +<p>"Thirty-eight," Jean's eyes opened; "losh, ye're fu'-breastit for a +bairn. I doubt a waist o' mine wadna be much aboon yir fit. I'm wide +across; but ye're fair wide too, an' then ye come out in front forbye. +Gie your face a dicht off whilst I rummage my trunk."</p> + +<p>A little less than half an hour later, Daisy,—her serge skirt brushed +by Jean's friendly hand to an appearance of almost newness, and wearing +a silk waist of Miss McTavish's that, with a few shrewd tucks here and +there, had been reduced to fit Daisy's round, plump torso—came +dancingly out between the stone gateposts at the end of the Harrison +drive. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. Every nerve tingled +with the zest of life.</p> + +<p>As she reached the sidewalk, a battered auto was just about to turn in +the gateway through which she had come. At her appearance, however, the +driver came to a halt.</p> + +<p>"Hello, stranger," he said, sociably, "where d'ye think you're going."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who knew how to "use her eyes," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>assumed an expression which, +just fitted the occasion.</p> + +<p>"Got a dollar you ain't usin'?" enquired the chauffeur, who was her +creditor of the jitney fare. He did not glance at her as he spoke, but +continued to look straight before him in his characteristic, +businesslike way—showing, as formerly, a humorous profile, an +eye-corner that twinkled, and hair so thick and curly that he was +obliged to keep his peaked driver's cap sideways to keep it on at all.</p> + +<p>Daisy looked down, moving her toe with shyness, among the grass-roots at +the edge of the sidewalk. "I have ten cents," she said, "for—for +street-car fare."</p> + +<p>"Carfare where to?" enquired the taxi-driver, promptly.</p> + +<p>"Nowhere," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"They're a poor bunch there. Don't go. Stranger in town?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, not too strange, you know," said Daisy, glancing at him out of the +corner of her eye.</p> + +<p>"That's all right, then," the young man opened the fore-door of his car +and moved over a little on his seat. "Jump in. I'll whirl you out to +city park."</p> + +<p>"Oh-h, no-o-o," Daisy made her mouth into a mischevious oval of protest, +"I couldn't do-oo that."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p><p>"Why couldn't you?" the driver's head jerked half-around, in a brief +study of her face. "Got to report to mother?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't afford it," said Daisy; "I'm in debt now, ain't I?"</p> + +<p>"You're in debt," said the young man, "but your credit's good as long as +I got the gasoline. Hop in!"</p> + +<p>The girl stepped forward; set her toe on the running-board; then drew it +off, and backed away.</p> + +<p>"Try again," observed the driver, dryly; "one—two—three—go!"</p> + +<p>"What's out at this city park?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, pretty near everything. Dancing, ice-cream, trees, jollyers. Was +you never out to a park?"</p> + +<p>"Never with a fellow I didn't know," Daisy replied, in merry +equivocation.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, right here's where you make the break," the chauffeur +remarked; adding, sententiously, "it's harder to start anything, the +longer you wait."</p> + +<p>"I won't be with you long," he pursued, after a moment, "if that's all +you're worryin' about. I'm supposed to be workin'. I'll take you out to +the dance-pavilion and make you acquainted with some of the fellows an' +girls. Then I'll have to come back downtown again, and get on my run. +I'll come out to the park again for you, about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> eleven o'clock, and +bring you home. How's that get you, youngster?"</p> + +<p>"It sounds all right," said Daisy, "all except the coming-home part. Do +I have to come home with you?"</p> + +<p>"You bet you do," said the chauffeur stoutly, "or else it's all off." He +reached out and drew the auto-door half shut; his mouth tilted up in a +dry way, his eye slanted humorously upon her.</p> + +<p>"All right," Daisy countered, "it's all off, then, if that's how you +feel. I don't know as I'd have gone with you anyhow. I—I've got +carfare—ten cents carfare—if I should take a notion to go."</p> + +<p>"How you goin' to find your way?"</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Park."</p> + +<p>"How d'you know I'd go to the park?"</p> + +<p>"I know blame well you'll go there," said the chauffeur, "now I've told +you about it. Kiddo, the hay sticks out o' your hair all over. What kind +o' farmers was your people?"</p> + +<p>"The kind that minded their own business." Daisy, with a little swing of +her hips, turned away, chin and nose in the air; "Good-night, Mr. City +Bug. I'm much obliged for your offer; but if I want to go to the park, +I'll pick up some <i>nice</i> fellow uptown and get him to take me. Some +<i>nice</i> fellow!"</p> + +<p>"Here!" the chauffeur jerked out, rattling the door, "jump into this +car, you—you—"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about +to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned.</p> + +<p>"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling +all over as she wrestled with her merriment.</p> + +<p>"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the +Devil, if you like. Come on—get in! Don't keep me here all night, +waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on."</p> + +<p>Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside +him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself.</p> + +<p>"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed +mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead +through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother +aspect—the look of a man to be trusted.</p> + +<p>"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away +down-street—the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only +being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? +S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!"</p> + +<p>"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p><p>"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I +said—this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump +you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed."</p> + +<p>It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the +promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," +enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. +Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, +exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with +either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of +pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for +purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she +was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or +beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the +street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually +more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and +drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the +skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded +road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet +bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns +interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> to bubble and +sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the +same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted +to let the crowd of passengers—many-hued in their summer dresses as +though one were looking at them through a prism—dance and chatter and +giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, +until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his +steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing +down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting +them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the +walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in +their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, +racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in +spring.</p> + +<p>Everybody was "out for a good time." The air was like a tonic; the park +like a panorama. Between the capes of shrubbery and across the lawns, +and about the thronged pavilion and along the governed paths, the +evening breeze floated like a lily-breath, slow and cool and sweet.</p> + +<p>"Well, here we are," said the driver, parking his taxi at the end of a +long row of vehicles in front of the pavilion. "Sorry you come, now, +ain't you? Yes, you are—not! Hey, don't knock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> a hole in the hood of my +rig, just because you think you're done with me."</p> + +<p>Daisy had popped out of her seat so quickly that she had bumped her head +against the auto-top. Her spirits were at such a pitch of ecstasy that, +in her haste to open the fore-door, she jammed the catch. She hauled and +wrenched vainly at it, while her companion sat and grinned.</p> + +<p>"Kind of a combination lock, huh, kid?" he observed, his eyes wrinkling +and his shoulders shaking a little—his way of expressing merriment.</p> + +<p>"Don't talk crazy," Daisy sat up, sucking a finger she had pinched in +the mechanism. "Get this thing open!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, no," the chauffeur was enjoying himself hugely; "let's just set +here. We don't want to—hi, there!"</p> + +<p>For Daisy had squirmed agilely out over the top of the door. In doing +this, she had accidentally pushed the catch the right way; so that, as +she jumped down from the running-board, the door came docilely open +under her hand.</p> + +<p>"That ain't stylish," remarked the taxi-driver, climbing out. "In this +town, we open the door <i>before</i> we get out—not after. Come on, then, +friend, and buy me a drink. You said you had a dime, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Where is the dance?" said Daisy, looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> about her delightedly as they +ascended the broad flight of steps leading into the pavilion.</p> + +<p>"Nobody ever dances till after they have a nut sundae or something," was +the comment of her escort, "I'll race you upstairs, partner."</p> + +<p>Daisy accepted the gage, and reached the stair-top one step ahead. The +two followed a crowd of people through an arched double-doorway, and sat +down at a little round table with metal underbody and two companionable, +iron-spindled chairs. About them, the whole world, it seemed, was eating +ice-cream or drinking colored compounds out of glasses through straws.</p> + +<p>Through a door at the side of the ice-cream room, Daisy could see +couples, on a long perspective of shining floor, whirling by in the +conventional embrace of the dance. The thing got into her blood.</p> + +<p>"Come on," she said, a moment or so later, as she hastily spooned up the +last of her "sundae," "I'll give you the first dance, Mr. Man, if you +take me out there."</p> + +<p>"Now you got me," said the chauffeur, with a momentary sheepishness; "I +don't dance. I'm a ballplayer." The speaker's tone, as he made this +apology, would seem to indicate that the two were accomplishments +impossible to find in one and the same person.</p> + +<p>In the dancing-room, the chauffeur had a nod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> for everybody and from +everybody. The girls, especially, tilted heads on one side, or glanced +up at him through the coquettish corner of the eye, or jumped up out of +seats and buttonholed him and danced up and down in front of him—just +according as they were sly, or coquettish, or impulsive. Some glanced in +an armed way at Daisy, who seemed to be drawing a good deal of attention +from the "boys" as she entered. Miss Nixon and her escort had arrived at +a moment when the musicians were taking an intermission; and, as the +benches along the side of the dancing-hall were filled, there was ample +opportunity for a few introductions.</p> + +<p>"This," said the chauffeur, stopping and putting his arm around the +waist of a mighty man with sandy hair and a neck so red—naturally +red—that it was almost scarlet, "is Baby Jock. Jock, this is a friend +of mine from out among the homesteads. She is pretty near dead with +staying at home nights, and I want you to show her a good time. I got to +go back to my run.... Be back at closin'-time, kid, to see if you've +changed your mind about lettin' me take you home." With this, and a +careless parting salute, the taxi-driver slipped out, leaving Daisy with +her new friend, the red-necked Colossus.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Baby Jock, curving his hand around his chin and looking +largely down at her,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> "the Scots aye drifts thegither, heh?... Don't +tell me ye're no Scot, now, after that, lassie."</p> + +<p>Daisy gave her mouth a little twist in lieu of answering, being absorbed +in the scene before her.</p> + +<p>"Yon Jamie," said her companion—nudging her lightly this time, to +attract her attention, "forgot to leave me the name, when he left the +lass."</p> + +<p>"Eh?" said Daisy, a little distantly.</p> + +<p>"The name, ye ken?" repeated Jock, "juist give me the nickname, if the +name itself's too long." He continued to look at her in an amused way, +waiting patiently. Presently Daisy turned, lifted her dancing eyes, and +beamed on the big Scot.</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Baby Jock, drily, replying to the glance, "ye're ready to +talk at last, heh? 'Miss McKechnie', ye said the name was, didn't ye?"</p> + +<p>"My name?" Daisy dimpled; "oh, my name's Daisy Nixon. Say what's the +name of that boy who brought me here?"</p> + +<p>Baby Jock stared, open-mouthed. Then he doubled up and slapped his knee.</p> + +<p>"Heh, but ye're an odd buddy," he said; "but ye're canny, no to give +ha'pence for the name if the mon himself's a'richt. Yon lad's name's +Jamie Knight. Here's thae fiddles skirlin' again. Come on and have a +dance, lassie."</p> + +<p>As Daisy and her partner circled around the room for the second time, +she heard a girl with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> a humorous nasal voice, one of a couple just +behind, remark: "Say, that's like Jim Knight, ain't it. Brings a strange +girl in here, and ties up the second best dancer in the hall. Look at +the face on Leeby Cameron. Bet a quarter she has a word or two to say to +her Jock, on the way home to-night!"</p> + +<p>"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down +twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the +company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. +D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple +to the right from us?"</p> + +<p>"Who's he?"</p> + +<p>"Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, +the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I +stand in the dancin'—ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor +neighbor, behind here, say—but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. +He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next +dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be +down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor."</p> + +<p>"Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> evasively, as the +dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!"</p> + +<p>A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up +from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, +came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, +Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as +though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He +had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and +cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of +index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, +deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly +forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, +merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the +transverse wrinkles across his forehead.</p> + +<p>"Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at +Daisy, "what d'ye know!"</p> + +<p>"I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' +partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to +my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon +which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin +to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love.</p> + +<p>A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> Cluett, champion pugilist, +was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about +to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor.</p> + +<p>"He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy.</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an +angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers.</p> + +<p>"Want to try me?" he jetted.</p> + +<p>"I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely.</p> + +<p>"Do anything once?—eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm +in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her +down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given +the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you +can be a life-saver, if you like, see?"</p> + +<p>"How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise.</p> + +<p>"Why", Nick Cluett crossed his knees, dropped his elbow across the +uppermost leg, and leaned his broad shoulders forward till his hard +bulging triceps muscle touched her arm, "Bob Masterman—he's the fellow +looks after my business—is getting up a little party after the boxin' +show to-morrow night, and bringing along his girl. How would you like to +come as <i>my</i> partner? Eh, little sporto?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Daisy, guardedly. "Where's the party at?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p><p>"Our rooms, likely," said Nick Cluett, coolly; "little supper—game o' +cards—any old thing to kill time. Bob!"</p> + +<p>A plump man in a check suit detached himself from a group near by.</p> + +<p>"Bob, Miss—what's this your name is, again?—Miss Nixon here's to have +first chance to round out our little party of four to-morrow night. +She'll let you know at the end of the dance if she can come."</p> + +<p>"Sure she'll come," said Mr. Masterman, unctuously, as he held Daisy's +hand and breathed cigar-breath copiously into her face; "sure she'll +come." He pumped the hand up and down, and tilted his fat face to one +side.</p> + +<p>"Beat it," said Mr. Cluett, tersely. Mr. Masterman promptly obeyed, +glancing back coquettishly over one plethoric shoulder as he rejoined +his group.</p> + +<p>The music started again. Nick Cluett and Daisy stood up, linked, and +were off. Probably no greater sum total of sheer glowing virility was +ever contained in any couple of dancers than in the flushed ecstatic +girl and the dark puma-like man who danced, as he fought, with a +beautiful "footwork" that the eye could admire, but that the watcher +could not emulate. Daisy, who had always been a good dancer, was on her +mettle as she saw other couples stop to watch; and the two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> footed it in +a perfect accord that was a treat to see. Masterman, who never had to be +told verbally what any situation in which Cluett was concerned required, +slipped over and passed a bill and a billet to the orchestra leader at +the time when the music usually came to a pause; and the dance continued +without the usual intermission. Cluett, to whom dancing was as casual as +boxing practice, had his attention free to contemplate his partner as +she glided, warm and full of zest and delight, in the sinewy band of his +arm. What with his dancing reputation and his boxing fame, he had been +surfeited with attention from girls, until they had become a little flat +and flavorless to him; but there was something so new and natural in +Daisy's expression, and something so fresh and forthright in what he had +heard of her talk, that his relish awoke.</p> + +<p>"You're some kid," he said, squeezing her arm as he led her to the seat +at the side of the room, when the dance was done; "hey, waiter!" An +attendant with a tray came over, lithely and quickly.</p> + +<p>"Name your dope, Dimples," said Mr. Cluett.</p> + +<p>"Anything," responded Daisy, answering with all her merry might to the +name bestowed, as she beamed up into the dark face with its hard lines +and continual smile, "anything that you think's good for me, Mr. +Cluett."</p> + +<p>"Nut sundae—twice," her companion directed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> briefly, with a sidewise +jerk of his head at the tray bearer, who bowed response as to a peer of +the realm.</p> + +<p>"Well, Sweetness," Nick Cluett said, a moment later, as they applied +themselves to the refreshment, "how about it?"</p> + +<p>"How about what?" Daisy's tone was ingenuous and her look demure.</p> + +<p>"You know," said Mr. Cluett; "our little party?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," Daisy put her head on one side teasingly.</p> + +<p>"That's what you said before," observed Mr. Cluett; "ain't you thought +it over yet?"</p> + +<p>Daisy tilted her head over to the other side, displaying a round line of +cheek and one of the dimples to which Mr. Cluett had previously alluded.</p> + +<p>"Maybe," she murmured.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Cluett, "I ain't no hand at coaxin', so we'll let it go +at that. Bob'll see you, after the next two dances. I got to go now, for +a little work-out with the mitts, before bedtime. I'd like to have had +another dance." This was a long speech for the taciturn Nick Cluett; and +he breathed with relief as he got it "off his system".</p> + +<p>"I'll go to your party, I guess," said Daisy, "so you can tell that Mr. +Masterman to never mind seeing me. I'm not strong enough to stand seeing +him any more than once in an evening."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Cluett's fixed smile momentarily deepened a little, as he rose to +take his leave. "I suppose, as things is, it's lucky you don't take very +strong to Bob, or you'd have let me go away still guessin'—eh, little +one? I'll tell him it's settled, then. But don't you go and throw me +down."</p> + +<p>Jimmy Knight called with his jitney for Daisy, at about midnight. The +trip home was made in comparative silence; but, as the car stopped at +the Harrison gate, he said, "what are you goin' to do with yourself +t'mor'? Got a date, I s'pose.... Yes, of course you have—I see it in +your eye. Won't you tell Brother Jim where you're goin'?"</p> + +<p>Daisy waited till she had dismounted and stepped just within the big +stone gateposts, before she answered. Then she looked down thoughtfully, +moving her toe in the gravel.</p> + +<p>"I'm—oh, I'm just—just taking a dare," she said; then laughed outright +as she glanced up and met his mystified look. "Good-bye, Jimmy +Knight—and thanks for the 'lift'."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER X.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Boxing Match and Afterward.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy stood before her mirror, "fixing" her hair. Whether it was Daisy's +native knack of coiffure, or whether it was that her hair was of that +wavy kind which "fixes" becomingly almost by itself, she secured the +effect she wanted without much trouble. The dark-blue dress she had +bought with fifteen dollars borrowed from Jean, and to which she had +pinned a lace collar, set off her neck well. She made a little face at +herself in the looking-glass and turned about, just in time to face +Jean, who had entered quietly, shutting the door behind her.</p> + +<p>"What like o' company is yon ye're keepin', lassie?" Jean, as she spoke, +sat down on the edge of the bed, spreading out her strong digits over +her knees in a masculine attitude.</p> + +<p>"What company?" said Daisy, a little puzzled. She had made no mention of +her party to Jean.</p> + +<p>"Yon two bidin' down in the kitchen the now," Jean replied, regarding +Daisy in a slow speculative way, as though searching for some +characteristic she had perchance overlooked in forming her estimate of +the girl; "a mon wha's breath smells of thae lozenges, and a +thick-legged wench<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> that rolls her eyes aboot. They askit for you, by +your ain name, too. Did ye tell them to ca', or," Jean's tone grew +sternly hopeful, "shall I send them packin'?"</p> + +<p>"I guess it's me they want," said Daisy, recognizing Masterman in Jean's +description of the man. Then she added, meeting the elder woman's glance +challengingly, "I'm going to a boxing-match, and to a—a little +party—afterwards, with Nick Cluett the fighter."</p> + +<p>Somewhat to Daisy's surprise, Jean seemed to look less severe as she +heard the host of the "little party" named.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, after a moment, "I was just twa minds about lockin' ye +in, lassie, and sending they people aboot their business; but if it's +Nicky Cluett ye're gaun with, ye'll tak' no harm—that is, unless ye +encourage him, an' then ye'll tak' no end o' harm, and it'll serve ye +right. My cousin Jock Lauder—Baby Jock, they call him—kens Nick weel."</p> + +<p>"Is Baby Jock your cousin?" said Daisy, "why, I had a dance with him +last night, out at the park.</p> + +<p>"Is that so, then?" Jean leaned forward with interest. "Jock's a fighter +too, although he'd never let on, withoot ye speir him direct.... Well, +gae along, then, to your pairty—but keep a sharp eye on yon person with +the scentit breath. I'd no trust <i>him</i> as far as I could cast him."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p><p>The long red automobile that had been waiting near the sidewalk outside +the Harrison gateway, answered to the electric starter with a tigerish +snore and, as the clutch was thrown on, bore out the feline similitude +with a four-yard leap that brought it diagonally out into rapid motion +down the street.</p> + +<p>"Any good with the mitts?" asked Mr. Masterman jocularly, turning toward +Daisy his globular face with its lightish eyebrows and large flexible +lips, that rolled and curled like leaf-edges with perennial relish of +the faculty of speech.</p> + +<p>"Aw, talk sense, Bob," smoothly intervened Miss Stella Yockley—she whom +Jean had described as "a thick-legged wench that rolls her eyes +aboot"—"Miss Nixon's a <i>lady</i>—can't you see! A perfect lady—huh?" +And, as though to imply that this was a joke, from which Mr. Masterman +was excluded, Miss Yockley, under cover of a hand raised to dab at her +front hair, winked at Daisy.</p> + +<p>Daisy responded with a twinkling, half-smiling, non-committal look, and +then turned her face streetward. The sensation of the swift ride along +the thoroughfare, with its glittering electric lamps, its traffic roar, +and its trampling—these influences, and the anticipation of risk in the +coming "little party" at an unnamed place, with men of untested +tendencies, had strung the girl's nerves to a pleasant tension of +excitement. Talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> would interfere with her enjoyment of the feeling +which thrilled her. Besides, Mr. Masterman's face pained Daisy. These +were the reasons she chose to watch the sights of the street in +preference to talking.</p> + +<p>Cutting corners with a lawless brevity after he past the last point +policeman, Mr. Masterman finally brought his car to an adroit and easy +halt in a line of others before the door of a big theatre. Dismounting, +he swung Miss Yockley to the curb. Daisy hopped out of the tonneau +without aid. The three passed through the vestibule; and, as they +confronted the ticket-taker, Mr. Masterman said, tersely, "Girls is with +me, Harry", and the official ogling Daisy a little, stood docilely +aside.</p> + +<p>A few moments later, Daisy Nixon, entering a curtained way and sitting +down alongside Miss Yockley on green plush seats in the lower right-hand +box, had her first look at a stage set for a boxing match.</p> + +<p>"What are the ropes for?" she said to Miss Yockley, as she stared across +the bare stage floor, with its Spartan garniture—the hempen square, the +backless wooden stools facing each other diagonally, the battered +water-buckets, each with its bobbing sponge.</p> + +<p>"You can search me, honey," absently returned Miss Stella; who was too +busy searching, with the eyes that "rolled aboot", for acquaintances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +among the audience, to pay much attention, either to her "kid" companion +or to the squared "ring" which she had, as it were, seen a hundred times +but never looked at. Miss Yockley had always been too much occupied with +observing the human and masculine element in "fights", to notice the +paraphernalia.</p> + +<p>Continuing to watch the stage with a kind of unexplainable fascination, +Daisy Nixon presently had her interest rewarded by the appearance of a +slim and agile young man in a sleeveless gymnasium shirt, gray trousers, +and canvas shoes, whose coming seemed to be the signal for the +surging-in of a crowd from both wings, filling the rows of empty chairs +at the ringside. Among this crowd, which included newspaper reporters, +moneyed patrons of the boxing bouts, and near friends or relatives of +those who were to take part in the matches of the evening, Daisy soon +picked out the large ingratiating face of Mr. Masterman.</p> + +<p>When her eyes next turned toward the fighting ring, she saw that two +youths in trunk tights had in the interval wriggled through the ropes +and seated themselves on the chairs or stools that faced each other at +diagonally opposite corners of the enclosure. The gray-trousered young +man stepped to that side of the roped arena next the orchestra-pit and, +lifting to the audience a face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> on which the nose had been, by some +mishap of the near or remote past, forever pushed sidewise, so that it +seemed to recline on the left cheek, said, laconic and loud:</p> + +<p>"Ladhies and gentlemen, th' firsth bout on this evenink's programme it +will be four two-minutth rounts between Spider Clausewitz—on my +right—and Younk Kelly—on my left."</p> + +<p>Spider Clausewitz—he on the speaker's right—did not hear the +announcement. His chief interest at the moment was in sizing up the +pugilistic bargain in the opposite corner with shrewd Semitic slits of +eyes. One end of his mouth was tilted up in a calculating way to meet +the nostril. His gloves were folded across his waistband; his lean bare +back convexed in a negligent arch. If he did not win, he would at least +see that he did not lose. He knew that he was master of the situation +sufficiently to guarantee that; so Spider's mind was easy.</p> + +<p>So, too, in fact was the mind behind Young Kelly's broad-staring, +half-grinning, Hibernian countenance. His confidence was expressed in an +attitude which was the exact opposite of Spider's. He sat so +aggressively erect that his back was concave. His eyes were round and +unwinking as those of a young bantam. His pose suggested that he was, as +it were, just waiting to be turned loose.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p><p>It seemed but a moment after the announcer—who was also the +referee—finished his proclamation, till Daisy, with the excitement of +the new spectator, saw the two fighting "comers" tearing into each other +in the middle of the roped enclosure in a way that made the audience +shout with glee. Young Kelly, his black eyes like beads, was giving +every ounce of vigor he had to the combat. Clausewitz, though fighting +back smartly to avoid giving away anything on points, was more careful +in his expenditure of energy. Daisy found herself mentally taking sides +with the Irish boy; and it was therefore with delight that presently she +saw Spider's head imprisoned tightly in the robust loop of Young Kelly's +arm. But Kelly, after playfully threatening the captured head with his +glove, turned the Spider loose again. The audience whooped.</p> + +<p>Presently, however, Clausewitz also had a chance to show courtesy and, +with instinctive shrewdness seized it. A sudden nausea, resulting from +some chance blow along the nerve-centres of the spine, unexpectedly made +Kelly wilt visibly. His face turned pale-greenish. Perspiration-beads +showed across his chest and forehead. His guarding arm wabbled.</p> + +<p>Clausewitz saw the situation at a glance. He could have finished his +opponent in a second with a stiff blow to the jaw-point. But such a win<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +would gain him nothing in the goodwill of the public, for it was obvious +to all those in the seats near the ring that Kelly was sick and +practically defenceless.</p> + +<p>It is by policy as much as by prowess that the young pugilist climbs to +the top. So Spider, cautiously dropping his guard, slid an arm about +Kelly and escorted him ostentatiously to the stool in the corner of the +roped square. Again the audience cheered.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Daisy, clapping her hands with the rest of the spectators +as she turned to Miss Yockley, "the lad wasn't mean, was he, after all."</p> + +<p>"He's one wise kid," said Miss Stella, yawning. "I wish they's quit +killin' time with stuff like that, though, an' call on the big bout. +Wait till you see Nicky Cluett at work. Wait till you see Nicky Cluett +at work! He's offering a thousand dollars to-night to anybody that will +out-point him in four rounds. This is one time, honey, when you and I +are billed to see some fun—more farce-comedy than fightin' though—when +these half-baked fighters comes after Nick's money."</p> + +<p>Miss Yockley's wish was not long in being gratified. The second +"preliminary" was less than one round in duration, and afforded Daisy, +for the first time in her life, that rather sickening spectacle of a +strong man sprawled half-unconscious over the straining ropes of a ring, +trying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> vainly to rise to his feet, while another waited with tensed +body to strike him down again as soon as his weak knees left the sawdust +floor in their slow painful uprising.</p> + +<p>"Aw, get the ambulance," fanned Miss Yockley loudly, chewing gum. "That +referee can't count past 8."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with that poor man?" said Daisy, all sympathy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothin'," said Miss Stella. "Wants to have a little sleep, I guess. +Oh—at last!"</p> + +<p>For the referee, concluding his measured count to 10 while the fallen +man still rested on hand and knee, had turned brusquely, caught the +gloved hand of the other fighter, and thrust it up in the air in token +of a win.</p> + +<p>"O' course he's the winner," snorted Miss Daisy's companion; "they +should never have took that other fellow away from his sandwich job. He +can't stand up without he's got a couple of sign-boards to brace him.... +But look, honey; here's our Nicky. Always inspects the ring like that, +so's the boy that goes down in front of him within the first ten seconds +after Nick gets in action, can't claim he slipped on a banana peel."</p> + +<p>Daisy withdrew her eyes from their sympathetic following of the limp +victim of the second preliminary bout, as the latter's seconds, a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>shoulder under each of his armpits, escorted him wabblingly back into +the wings.</p> + +<p>As she looked again at the roped square, she saw that in the interval +there had hopped into the enclosure her partner of the dance in the park +pavilion, Nick Cluett, a boxer of the kind that is born and not made. +Hither and thither, slim and lithe in his gay-colored bath-robe, he +moved—stamping the floor here and there with a testing heel, trying the +tautness of the ropes, saying nothing, but noticing everything.</p> + +<p>"They can't never put nothin' over on Nicky," commented Miss Yockley, +more than generous with her negatives when she wanted to be emphatic. +"They used to lay traps for him, when they seen how he was comin' on in +the boxing game—for some of these here so-called 'sports' is the +meanest, trickiest skates this side of the Hot Place. But after Nick +showed up a couple o' them kind of low-down promoters, by bawling them +out right in front of the audience, so's everybody could get a line on +them, they let up on their monkey-work. They don't try nothin' now; but +Nick, he always gives everything the onct-over, to be on the safe side."</p> + +<p>Apparently everything was in order in the present case; for Cluett, his +hands thrust in the pockets of his bath-robe, stepped to the centre of +the roped space to speak to the referee and to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>Masterman, his manager. +Facing him, on the referee's left, stood the man who was to be his first +opponent—a stocky fellow, whose calves, showing underneath the frayed +edge of the old dressing-gown he wore, were more those of a +football-player than a boxer.</p> + +<p>"Nothin' but a big ox," said Miss Yockley, with a sniff; "Nick'll play +with him a little, and then push him over. The gink will have some +bother fallin' down, with them size feet. Maybe he'll go to sleep +standin' up. Funny things happens in the ring sometimes, kiddo."</p> + +<p>In a moment or two, the fighters stepped back to their corners, threw +off their wraps, and stood forth in abbreviated trunks. It was seen that +the build of Cluett's opponent bore out the promise of his calves. He +was heavy-muscled and broad of chest; thick-necked, and with a +hard-looking chin that moved to the chewing of gum.</p> + +<p>About the physique of Cluett himself, as he stood at ease, his arms +lightly hanging, there was nothing remarkable, except that one shoulder +seemed to be a little lower than the other. His muscles flowed along his +limbs instead of standing out in knots and ridges. Standing unposed, +with his perennial smile and his almost sleepy expression of eye, he +looked like a somewhat indolent schoolboy, about to take a dip in a +peaceful swimming-pool.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p>"That big thing over in the other chair will hurt him," said Daisy, +anxiously; "why don't they make the big fellow take somebody his own +size?"</p> + +<p>"Don't talk," said Miss Yockley, briefly, "just sit still and watch. It +ain't our Nick that's going to get hurt, honey."</p> + +<p>But Daisy exclaimed aloud, and even the confident Miss Yockley herself +almost winced, as Hobday, the big man, after a bare touch of Cluett's +glove in the customary preliminary handshake, struck upward immediately +and without warning. As the quick treacherous upper-cut shot toward +Nick's chin, Bob Masterman, who could move with a marvellous quickness +for all his avoirdupois, when occasion seemed to demand speed, jumped up +from his seat and thrust his head through between the ropes, ready to +shout his protest to the referee.</p> + +<p>But, before Mr. Masterman made a sound, a glove, at the end of a slim +smooth-muscled arm, waved him away with a backward gesture. Nick Cluett, +untouched, slid his manager a corner of a smile as he stepped lightly +backward, just far enough to be missed by Hobday's left, which followed +that gentleman's unsuccessful right in a brisk second try for Cluett's +jaw-point. Nick's guard was languidly low, and on his face was an almost +dreamy look which a group of Hobday's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> backers in the front orchestra +seats evidently took for an expression of daze; for, "Finish him, Jim! +He's all yours, boy!" they yelled lustily.</p> + +<p>Bob Masterman stole a look at Cluett's face. In the centre of the +never-changing smile, he saw the mouth-corner drawn up in a dry, +calculating way. The manager's momentary flicker of anxiety passed. He +leaned back, folded his arms, grinned, and waited.</p> + +<p>Jim Hobday grew more aggressive every moment. The round was +three-quarters over, and he had practically had the ring to himself, +except for a gliding thing like a shadow, which eluded his fists by so +little each time he swung that at every lunge he grew more encouraged, +although he hit nothing.</p> + +<p>"Come on—fight!" he growled, bull-like.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cluett's smile deepened a little, and his lips moved. "Say when," +were the words they framed.</p> + +<p>"When?—why, right now!" roared Hobday, loud enough for the group of his +backers to hear.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cluett obeyed immediately. It was difficult for the eye to register +the movement he made; but to those at the vantage-point of the ringside, +it looked as though he doubled under Hobday's guard and then +straightened up, all in one movement like a snake striking.</p> + +<p>Hobday's knees were seen to sag. His gloves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> dropped on Cluett's +shoulders, half as though caressing his opponent, then slipped limply +off. His whole heavy body collapsed, like a wet mattress.</p> + +<p>"Ouch!" said Miss Yockley, feeling her chin. Then, glancing sidewise at +Daisy, she commented, "Well, kid, I suppose you feel easier now, eh?"</p> + +<p>"W-what did he do to him?" said Daisy, a little breathlessly; mixing her +pronouns, in her marvelling.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing," said Miss Yockley, ironically, "nothing at all. Only sent +that big bovalapus off to Dreamland, on a through ticket, with one +swipe. That's all!"</p> + +<p>After Mr. Hobday, in an only partially recovered state, had been +removed, and the hubbub of comment among his backers in the orchestra +seats had subsided, there came a lull. Mr. Cluett sat in his chair in +the corner of the ring, nodding and occasionally replying briefly to +some remark made by the chatting group that surrounded him. From back in +the wings came presently the sound of argument and protest; and, after a +moment, a hale person in striped trunks shot into view as though he had +been playfully pushed. With one sheepish glance toward the audience, +however, he turned about and beat a retreat.</p> + +<p>"You see," explained Miss Yockley, to Daisy, "they put their best man up +first; and now that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the others has seen what Nick done to him, you +couldn't coax 'em into the ring with old cheese. It looks to me as +though everything's all over for to-night. Wait, though—here comes the +spieler. Let's hear what he has to say; then we'll go around and see how +soon Bob and Nick will be ready to come away."</p> + +<p>"Ladhies and gentlemen," said the announcer, coming to the edge of the +ring, "I regret to announct that, owing to the factth that we are unable +to secure anodther oppon't in answer to Champeen Cluetth's challenge to +any fighter of any weighth—"</p> + +<p>At this point the speaker paused. A young man, in an automobile +dust-coat, unbuttoned—showing that he was in evening dress and had +evidently just arrived from some dance or other function—had hopped +into the ring and tapped the announcer briskly on the arm to attract his +attention. For a moment, the two held rapid conversation; then the young +man in evening dress slipped under the ropes and disappeared again into +the wings. The announcer, stepping to the very front of the stage and +raising his voice so that he might be heard above the creakings of +dispersal which already sounded in galleries and pit, said:</p> + +<p>"If there are any presentth who may wish to remain a little longer, I am +gladdh to be able to say that a certaint young man-about-town has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +agreed to meet the champeen in a boutth of four three-minutth rounts. As +the stranger wishes his identity to be concealedh—for reasons of his +own—he will appear in the ringk masked."</p> + +<p>"Masked!" commented Miss Stella Yockley, "now, what's this they're +trying to spring on us, I wonder. Well, anyway, they can't put nothin' +over on Nick. He's in training to-night, and the Devil himself couldn't +trim Nicky Cluett in four rounds. There ain't a fighter living could do +it—no, sir, I don't care who he is." And with these words Miss Stella +cast a devoted glance toward the corner of the ring where Mr. Cluett, +still chatting unconcernedly, had drawn his bathrobe over his shoulders +as a sign to the unknown to hurry up, if he wanted a chance to land a +"haymaker" on a fighter whose time was money.</p> + +<p>He had not long to wait. A young white-limbed fellow, with a pompadour +of stiff hair rising above the black mask that covered him from +mid-forehead to just above his mouth, vaulted over the ropes into the +ring, and took the stool in the opposite corner to that in which Cluett +stood. There was something about the lines of the stranger's mouth and +chin that seemed to Daisy vaguely familiar.</p> + +<p>After vainly trying to remember where she had seen similar features +before, the girl turned her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> eyes toward the corner where Cluett had +just sat down on the stool.</p> + +<p>The champion, his elbows on his knees and his head leaning forward in +its customary attitude, was looking at his latest opponent with a +certain interest. Whether it was that the mask piqued his curiosity, or +that there was something in the build and agility of the unknown which +indexed prowess, was not evident to Daisy; but Miss Yockley murmured, +half to herself:</p> + +<p>"Sa-ay! Watch Nicky prick up his ears. He sees something—I don't know +what it is, but I know he sees it."</p> + +<p>As the gong sounded for the first round and the two got up from their +stools, it was evident to the professional eye that Cluett's new +opponent was, at any rate, more nearly his equal than the ill-fortuned +Mr. Hobday.</p> + +<p>"Say!" Miss Yockley's tone thrilled with reluctant admiration, "did you +notice the footwork of that boy?... No, you don't, Mr. Mask.... Yes, you +did, too! Sa-ay, you better watch that lad, Nicky Cluett!"</p> + +<p>The last three ejaculations as the masked fighter tried for the head +and—marvel of marvels to Cluett's admirers!—landed. Landed lightly; +but landed, nevertheless.</p> + +<p>As this happened, there came a hush of conversation all over the house. +From boxes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>orchestra circle, and gallery and balcony there sounded, +as it were, one simultaneous creak as the audience leaned forward in +their seats.</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett was still smiling the smile that had never been known to +leave his face, even in sleep. But, otherwise, his whole demeanor had +changed. His arms, instead of swinging careless and indolently +half-crooked, at his sides, were raised in his low impassable guard. His +back, straight from hips to shoulder, leaned a little forward. The head +was bent in his customary fighting pose, forehead out and chin in.</p> + +<p>"'Watch', was what I said," Miss Yockley, gloved hands clasped together +with feminine tenseness under her chin, breathed, to everybody in +general, "and I hope you're watching, for th' sake of what you'll miss +if you ain't."</p> + +<p>The champion was following the stranger around the ring. The masked man, +with light hissings of his shoes on the canvas floor, backed at exactly +the same pace, carefully avoiding corners, seeming to know where he was +by instinct and without the necessity of what would have been an +instantly-disastrous look over-shoulder. There was neither blow nor +feint. Sometimes the gloves of the fighters touched, but the impact was +feather-light and without audible sound.</p> + +<p>Then Cluett struck. It was not like a blow—it was more like a shot. +That is to say, one saw<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> nothing of the travelling fist: merely noticed +the effect, in a red which grew between the stranger's lips, until it +ran down in a long thin trickle over his bulldoggy chin.</p> + +<p>"Gosh all jew's-harps!" monologued the tautened Miss Yockley, who did +not seem gratified, "Nick missed him. That was meant for the point of +the jaw. Would have been a K. O., too, if it had gone where it was +looking. But ou-wouch!"</p> + +<p>This last as the masked man's shoulders, gleaming white under the +electric arcs, see-sawed flashingly. With apparently no visible reason +for the movement, Nick Cluett's head rocked. The gong sounded, closing +Round One.</p> + +<p>"Jiminy!" Miss Stella said, "watch Bob!"</p> + +<p>For Mr. Masterman was rushing to and fro, as the saying goes, "like a +hen on a hot griddle". Talking and gesticulating to the referee—dashing +over and shaking his fist in the face of the masked man who leaned back +calmly in his stool while his seconds sponged his mouth—then hurrying +back and whispering like a soda fountain in the ear of the champion, who +reclined against the ropes that stretched behind his seat, restoring +himself by deep inhalations and smiling crookedly at his manager's +ecstasy of anxiety.</p> + +<p>"That mask has got to come off!" Bob Masterman yelled, dashing over +again to the referee, "or out of this comes my man. He can fight +anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> with a face on, but he ain't used to pounding away at a mask."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you mask your man, then?" demanded one of the stranger's +seconds, who both also wore masks, one red, one black; "That will even +things."</p> + +<p>"Mask nothing," grunted the monosyllabic Mr. Cluett, sitting up in +preparation for the gong; "Beat it, Bob. Keep shirt on. 'M all right."</p> + +<p>Round Two commenced with the house, crowded from orchestra pit to +gallery, watching in a silence unbroken except for an intermittent creak +or cough. Even the light sound of the fighters' shoes on the ring-canvas +was audible in seats half-way to the back of the big auditorium. Mr. +Masterman, fists clenched in the side-pockets of his coat, feet squared +aggressively on the floor, face thrust forward, watched the movements of +both men with as much intentness as though he were a kind of auxiliary +referee. Miss Yockley, sympathetically reflecting Masterman's moods, had +lost her nonchalance. Her mouth half-open; her hands locked together and +thrust, knuckles up, under her chin; the whites of her eyes showing in a +gawky stare: she watched Cluett let the second round go by with only one +light left swing to the neck, countered immediately by the masked man +with a lightning right which made Nick shake his head and rub the thumb +of his glove across his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> nostrils. Neither blow did any noticeable +damage.</p> + +<p>Just before the gong called the boxers to their feet for Round Three, +Nick Cluett, leaning back from the flicking towels, beckoned his manager +and whispered in the latter's ear, afterwards giving him a whack on the +shoulder with his glove as at the conclusion of a joke. Mr. Masterman +was seen by Miss Yockley to brighten, and to resume his seat with +something very like a smile.</p> + +<p>"Clubs is trumps, huh?" Miss Stella relaxed from her nervousness a +little to remark. "Well, all hands is glad it ain't spades, brother."</p> + +<p>The climax of Round Three came just at its conclusion, after an +exhibition of "footwork" that kept the audience clapping. From sparring +at long range, the fighters, as though in simultaneous response to the +same idea, jumped in close. Their work was so rapid that only those in +the front ringside seats saw the terrific jab, all the power of shoulder +and torso behind it, with which Cluett tried for the jaw-point, missed +by a hair's-width, and stepped back with blood streaming from a +contusion, half-cut, half-bruise, above his eye, where the stranger had +countered, rapid as rifle-fire, before he could move out of range.</p> + +<p>During the rest between Rounds Three and Four, it became almost +necessary for the half-crazed Mr. Masterman to be put out of the ring by +main force, as he pushed in, caught Cluett by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> one arm, and tried, in +spite of the expostulation of the referee, the reporters, and those in +the adjoining ringside seats, and the grinning resistance of Cluett +himself, to haul from the ring the champion whose laurel crown he +regarded as now no more than perched precariously on the very edge of +Nick's scalp.</p> + +<p>"Come on!" he said, tugging redly and furiously; "he won't take off his +mask, and this bout should have b'en off two rounds ago. Come on—out +you come!"</p> + +<p>"Don't make me smile, Bob," observed Mr. Cluett, wryly but tolerantly, +as the seconds, working on the cut over his eye, made it smart +momentarily with the caustic they were using to stop the blood; "my lips +are cracked. Ta-ake it easy. Leggo now—leggo!"</p> + +<p>There was no opposing the note in the last word. Mr. Masterman, +grumblingly releasing the arm he held, stepped back through the ropes.</p> + +<p>"All right," was his final shot; "it's your funeral, Nick."</p> + +<p>"There ain't goin' to be no funeral," said Mr. Cluett, "didn't I tell +you to keep your shirt on. Have I ever fell down on a bet, th' whole +time you've knew me? Have I?"</p> + +<p>"Well," retorted his manager, "all I know is, you're pretty near due to +lose on points, unless you can make this last round all yours."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p><p>Nick Cluett merely turned away his head, having said enough—for him. +As the gong sounded for climactic Round Four, both boxers, with the +"bluff" of the ring, sprang to meet each other as though it had required +ten men apiece to hold them back till the moment came. For all this +business of haste, however, their gloves touched warily. A four-round +mill is a very short one, even for two ringmasters like Nick and his +opponent, to feel out a new antagonist in; and, though each knew points +of the other's "style" by now, each knew there was more to uncover and +that it would be uncovered in this deciding round. The bout, so far, had +been a clean and pretty one; and that the audience had developed no +partialities was made evident by the way in which both men were cheered +as they worked.</p> + +<p>But in this last round it was Cluett who was especially marvellous. +Right from the tap of the gong he was the aggressor. Round and round the +ring he backed his opponent; giving the stranger never the chance to +start, much less to land, a blow. But if the champion's offensive was +lightninglike and wonderful, the masked man's guard was no less so. For, +though Cluett's glove landed in each case, it landed with its force +broken by the elastic and elusive movement of the stranger's head and +torso.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"Easy, Nick—easy," spurted Masterman, though his eyes shone; "don't +let him play you out, boy." Besides the pride he felt in his man's work, +Bob Masterman knew that if Cluett kept this overshadowing gait to the +end of the round, he would win hands down on points.</p> + +<p>"Soak him, Nicky!" cheered the barometric Miss Yockley, wriggling with +delight; "he's ran short o' tricks. He's all yours."</p> + +<p>Daisy's sympathies had swung, quite without conscious mental volition, +to the side of the masked man, as she saw that he seemed to be losing. +Her eyes never left his face, as she watched sympathetically for the +spreading red stain that should show broken skin. But, although the +stranger's cheek below the black edge of the mask, as well as the sides +and even the point of the jaw, were dull red where Cluett had +landed—but landed as on something pneumatic—there came no vivider +crimson. Instead, Daisy saw come on the lips a smile. The smile was +still there when the round ended with the masked man skilfully covering +from a shower of taps that, though his guard broke or lightened them, +landed as true as the arrows of Locksley. Nor had the smile on the +bulldoggy lips faded when, upon Cluett being declared winner of the +bout, the stranger, followed by the commending cheers of the crowd, +vaulted out of the ring over the ropes, and was gone. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> moment +afterwards, there came the great, smooth snarl of a high-powered auto +springing from the curb outside.</p> + +<p>"Some big bug amateur," observed Miss Yockley, shrewdly, "hence the +mask. Must have slipped on his auto-coat over his fightin' togs, to get +away that quick. Them seconds with the masks on was likely college +chums, or something. But, O teaberries! didn't he cover up from our +Nicky though! I never saw a man could do like that before.... Come on, +now, kid: let's get out in our car and wait for the boys. There's +something," Miss Stella added volubly, as she rose, "that I don't quite +understand, about that last round. Didn't seem as if the other man was +trying; he never started one punch. Can't get nothin' out of Nicky on +it—he's too close-mouthed. But Bob'll tell us."</p> + +<p>It was not long after the two reached the automobile, standing long and +alert by the curb where Mr. Masterman and Daisy and Miss Yockley had +left it when they entered the theatre, till they saw the two men +approaching. Mr. Cluett had just had a shower-bath in one of the +dressing-rooms, and his hair showed wet and black around the edges of +his cap. He was silent, but the perennial smile was in its place. There +was not a bruise visible to Daisy, except the slight skin-break above +his eyebrow. She scrutinized the champion with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> a new, but not exactly +intensified interest, as he slipped into the tonneau beside her.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, taking off his cap and running his fingers through his +thick damp hair; "how's our little one? All here?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman, getting in by Miss Yockley on the front seat, swung his +head around as he took the wheel.</p> + +<p>"Some boy with the mitts—eh, what?" he grinned at Daisy. Miss Yockley +caught the speaker by the ear, and promptly turned him eyes front.</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>here</i>," she said, as she extracted a fresh piece of gum out of her +handbag, "not <i>there</i>. Now, who's this buck with the Hallowe'en fixings, +Bob?"</p> + +<p>"I know," said Mr. Masterman, "but I'm ferbid to say."</p> + +<p>"Well," observed Miss Yockley, as her teeth industriously kneaded her +new slice of gum, "he pretty near threw a monkey-wrench into our +machinery, whoever he is. Bar all masked fighters after this, is my +little word of advice to you boys. Eatin' snowballs ain't fattening, and +it wouldn't even be nice for a change.... But who was he, Bob? Come +o-on; we're all friends here."</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman shook his head. But, at the same time, the eyelid next +Miss Stella, answering a brief contraction of Bob Masterman's cheek,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +swiftly closed and opened in a movement that the others did not see.</p> + +<p>"Precisely, brother," acknowledged Miss Yockley; then, turning toward +the two in the tonneau, with her plump arm laid along the back of the +seat, she said, with a rapid change of subject;</p> + +<p>"Here's a couple that ain't speakin', Bob. What does a fellow do in a +case like that?"</p> + +<p>"Run for the Doctor," suggested Mr. Masterman, over his shoulder. "Where +do you want to go, Nick?"</p> + +<p>"Home, James," said Mr. Cluett. Then, as he roused himself from an +attack of pensiveness, during which he had been making little +unconscious passes with his arms, accompanied by swift light jerks of +the shoulders he added thoughtfully, "Some class to that fellow, Bob."</p> + +<p>"Class is right," said Mr. Masterman; "but no more masks for us, boy. +Never again."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," pondered Nick Cluett; "I'd fight him again, mask and +all, just to learn something about that style of guard he's got. +Fightin' them other dubs will never get me anywhere: it's too much like +bowling."</p> + +<p>After turning a few corners, the car was halted near a big seven-story, +midtown block, the ground floor of which was occupied by a sporting +goods store on one side, and a great bright-windowed restaurant on the +other.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p><p>"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" said Mr. Masterman, bustlingly, +clicking open the fore and tonneau doors of the automobile; "everybody +change!"</p> + +<p>"Order up a little supper, Bob, after you run the car in," said Nick +Cluett as, leaving Masterman to take the car to the garage at the back, +he followed the girls to the elevator entrance.</p> + +<p>The elevator rose slowly. Daisy, standing with her arm through that of +the nonchalant Miss Yockley, felt her nerves tauten as though they were +being wound with a key. Her wits sharpened automatically to meet the +situation into which her daring had projected her. The rapid, virile +beat of her blood made her tingle pleasantly, and brought a color into +her cheeks that caused the ever-observant Miss Stella to remark, as they +stepped out of the elevator:</p> + +<p>"Say, kid, we got to get a picture of you."</p> + +<p>Cluett thrust a key into the shining brass lock of a door halfway along +the corridor; swung it open; and, glancing inscrutably sidewise at +Daisy, motioned inward with his hand. Daisy, following close on Miss +Yockley's heels, found herself in an apartment with two wall-beds that, +hooked up into place, showed as nothing but a pair of full-length +mirrors, with dressing-brackets at either side that served as legs when +the beds were let down. Gus, the janitor, had tidied the place. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>Canvas +shoes and sweaters had been gathered into the clothes-closet. The big +porcelain tub in the bathroom had been polished until it shone white and +clean. The green carpet had been gone over with a vacuum cleaner. The +"pillow" gloves of boxing practice had been arrayed in an orderly manner +on the top of the chiffonier.</p> + +<p>The room was a large one, with two big airy windows. On the walls, +kalsomined in light green, were pictures of fighters of all weights; a +wire card-rack with photographs of girls; and prints, some framed and +some unframed, of the "September Morn" type. An open door showed an +inner apartment, with red burlap, plate-rail, round dining-table, and +buffet; and beyond this was a small kitchen, into which Miss Yockley, +who had unpinned and tossed aside her hat, bustled, and lit the gas +under a copper water-kettle. Almost simultaneously, a bump came at the +hall-door, and a grinning restaurant-waiter entered with a huge nickeled +tray, whose savory-smelling victuals were hidden under a white linen +cover.</p> + +<p>"Right here, George!" sirened Miss Stella, posting herself by a +side-table in the dining-room.</p> + +<p>On the heels of the "little supper" came Bob Masterman, who shook a +finger playfully at Daisy as he slammed the door on the vanishing waiter +and cast his hat into a corner.</p> + +<p>"This way for yours, Bob," came Miss <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>Yockley's voice, above the clatter +of silver and bump of dishes laid out on a table-cloth; "come along, and +get your coat off, and massacree these chickens. Can't you see you ain't +wanted in there? You need a house to fall on you, you do!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Masterman sighed like a typhoon, but obediently passed into the +dining-room: pausing, ere he closed the door after him, to stick his +face through the aperture and close an eye at Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Beat it, Bob," said Mr. Cluett, absently.</p> + +<p>"I guess I'll go and help," said Daisy, looking brightly cornerwise at +her companion, who still seemed to have the fight on his mind. Nick +Cluett at this, came out of his half-reverie and, crossing the room, sat +down beside Daisy. He looked at her a moment in a queer way; then put +out a strong hand, with black hair growing along the finger-sinews, and +laid it on hers. Daisy noticed that the middle knuckle looked purplish.</p> + +<p>"Well, m' little girl," he said, "how goes it?"</p> + +<p>"What's happened your hand?" said Daisy; putting her head on one side, +softly touching the discolored knuckle, then looking at him through +down-held lashes.</p> + +<p>Cluett glanced down casually. "Oh, nothing," he said, "just a little +accident. But you ain't told me how <i>you</i> are, yet."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I—I'm sick in bed," said Daisy, putting her free hand up to her +face, and bringing two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> dancing irises to bear on Mr. Cluett through the +fingers of it.</p> + +<p>"You're a little devil," commented Mr. Cluett, inching over and putting +his arm around her. Daisy's eyes, fairly coruscating with coquetry and +resource, flashed down at the hand that pressed her waist. First she +pretended to look at it from one angle; then from another.</p> + +<p>"I don't like the looks of it," she said, "take it away."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that?" said Nick Cluett. The dark face, with its queer +stationary smile and its eyes full of a warming light, came close to +hers. Daisy waited dimpling till the rough cheek, bluish with its day's +growth of stiff hair-stubble, almost touched her ear. Then, exploding +into light quick action, she cast away the encircling arm and hopped to +her feet.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to help get the supper," she said; and, before Nick Cluett +could stop her, whisked to the dining-room door and flung it open.</p> + +<p>"What's bust loose?" said Miss Yockley, who was making coffee.</p> + +<p>"Frisky little thing, you!" observed Mr. Masterman, rolling up his +sporting paper, and playfully threatening Daisy with it.</p> + +<p>"Turn off the gas, Bob," commanded Miss Stella, "and don't have so much +to say. Come along, Nicky. Supper's on."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Cluett strolled in, and the four drew up chairs. There were three +roast chickens, hot, carved up into handy "drumsticks" and slices by Mr. +Masterman; "French fried" potatoes; a cut-glass dish of peach preserve; +fruit cake; bakers' rolls; and an electric percolator filled with savory +coffee.</p> + +<p>"Some little lay-out," observed Mr. Cluett, who was hungry after his +evening's "work-out". He stepped into the chair next Daisy's by tilting +it and swinging his leg over the back to the seat.</p> + +<p>"Yes: Bob done well, for once," said Miss Stella, "gener'ly, when he's +ordering a supper, the only thing he can think of is 'poached on' and +raisin pie."</p> + +<p>"What have we got to drink, Stel'?" demanded Mr. Masterman, hitching his +cuffs as he prepared to serve the chicken.</p> + +<p>"Coffee," returned Miss Yockley, winking at Nick Cluett and Daisy; +"we're gettin' ready for when the country goes dry."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Masterman, who had paused aghast, but had recommenced +to breathe freely as he had intercepted the speaker's wink; "I guess I +can stand it as long as Stella can, anyway—and that ain't very long."</p> + +<p>"You bet it ain't," admitted Miss Stella, going to the buffet and +bringing back three bottles of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> champagne; "See what the milkman left us +for the baby, this morning."</p> + +<p>"Let it out, then, let it out!" said Bob Masterman, laying down his +carving-fork and setting out glasses; "I'm as dry as the night before, +boys."</p> + +<p>Under Miss Yockley's deft offices, a cork popped promptly, and four +glasses were filled in as many seconds.</p> + +<p>"I guess we can let Nick off the water-wagon for to-night," said Mr. +Masterman, "while we drink confusion to the Masked Man. But what's wrong +with Prettiness here? Swore off?" This to Daisy, who had made no +movement to lift her glass.</p> + +<p>Daisy merely dimpled and shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Somebody say something," interpolated Miss Stella; "Come on, Kid—if +you knew the pain Bob's in, you wouldn't keep him waiting. Do you want +some water in it—or what?"</p> + +<p>"Water in it!" ejaculated Mr. Masterman, "Help!... 'Water in it?' she +says, as though she meant it."</p> + +<p>Nick Cluett, who, glass in hand, had been regarding Daisy narrowly, +spoke out.</p> + +<p>"Let up, people," he said, tersely; "she don't want it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dewberries!" observed Bob Masterman, mincingly. "Well, here's to +the trimmin' our boy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> Nick so nearly got—may we never, never be so near +the cruel bread-line agen!"</p> + +<p>Supper passed amid a continual "kidding back and forth" between Miss +Yockley and Mr. Masterman, which speeded up as the champagne bottles +emptied.</p> + +<p>"Oo-aw!" said Miss Stella, fanning herself and rising at length, a +little unsteadily, from behind her emptied glass and coffee-cup; "I feel +like a breath of fresh air."</p> + +<p>"You don't <i>look</i> like a breath o' fresh air," chortled her drinking +companion; "you look like t-ten cents' worth o' tough luck, Stel. Get on +your hat, an' I'll walk you 'round the block, little one."</p> + +<p>With this, the two passed into the front room. Daisy thought they were +joking about going out, till she heard the hall-door slam behind them. +Then she jumped up.</p> + +<p>"Wh-why—have they gone?" she said.</p> + +<p>"They sure have," said Mr. Cluett, leaning back lazily in his chair; +"but we should worry."</p> + +<p>"Will they be long?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Search me," responded Nick Cluett; "They may go to a picture-show. +Maybe they'll slip into a vaudeville show. We don't care—eh?"</p> + +<p>Daisy looked out into the empty front room of the suite. A gramophone on +a small table met her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Let's put on some music," she said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p><p>Cluett got up, and came over, and stood beside her.</p> + +<p>"Not to-night," he said, looking down. The champagne had brought a kind +of dull color to his cheeks and forehead. "What do we want with music, +kid? Come on—let's be a little friendly, huh?" His strong lean arm slid +around her waist.</p> + +<p>It was then that Daisy lifted up her face, let all the coquetry pass +from it, and regarded him with eyes that were straight and sober.</p> + +<p>"Stop it!" she said.</p> + +<p>For answer, the arm tightened about her. Nick Cluett leaned to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"If you don't stop it," said Daisy, rigid in his arms; "you're no +gentleman."</p> + +<p>Cluett relaxed his arm a little. His queer-smiling face, with its keen +eyes, slanted down towards her in concentrated, silent interrogation. +Daisy's spirit of mischief tempted her to drop her eyes; but she managed +to resist the impulse and to keep her features sober-expressioned.</p> + +<p>"You're not goin' to be friendly, then?" he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled ever so slightly. "Not just now", she answered.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that—or don't you?"</p> + +<p>"I mean it," said Daisy, simply; "not in here, anyway. Why can't we go +out, and get a breath of fresh air, too, and go to a picture-show?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p><p>Nick Cluett took his arm from her waist, reached for his hat, and +opened the hall-door.</p> + +<p>"Come on," he said, "I'll see you safe home, Kid."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Face Behind the Mask.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Who's the boy?" said Daisy, over her shoulder, to Jean; as, glancing +out of the window of the big Harrison kitchen, she saw, at the front +corner of the house, a younger man get out of the car after the bulky +Sir Thomas. "I thought all the visitors here were elderly men. There's +been no young ones at all since I've been here."</p> + +<p>"Ey?" Jean came to "keek," resting a hand on the shoulder of the younger +girl, "why, if it's no young Harrison! Did I never tell ye Sir Thomas +had a lad? Well, well." Jean sat down again to her pea-shelling.</p> + +<p>"Ay," she pursued, as her rapid fingers stripped the split pods of their +green kernels, "yon's Harold Harrison. He looks like his father, an' he +talks like his father, and as to his disposeetion—well, I'm bound in +fairness-like to say he's a bittie of his good mither—just a wee wee +streak, like the lean in bacon—pinched in between thick layers of Sir +Thomas himsel'. The young-lad's no so rough-edged in manner—the college +has polished him on the ootside.... But I'll say no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> more: ye'll see him +juist now, when ye serve the supper."</p> + +<p>And when Daisy did see the young man—sitting with his knees crossed and +his elbow on the edge of the table, talking to his father but not +noticing the quiet, awkward mother at all—she almost dropped the tray +she was carrying. For Harold Harrison and the masked fighter who had +boxed four rounds with Champion Nick Cluett, were one and the same young +man.</p> + +<p>"I'd know that chin anywhere," said Daisy, as she confided to Jean the +discovery she had made, "it's just like his father's. And his lower lip +is burst, too, just where I saw Nick hit the masked fighter. He has a +piece of red sticking-plaster on it."</p> + +<p>"Mon, mon!" Jean was interested; "is that so, then? I kenned he was a +boxer; and I suppose, as the Harrisons has the name of getting what they +'go after,' its no surprisin' he's won to the top. It's aye the way. He +has everything—his money, his schooling, his place in society, his +business chances—an' yet he'll no be satisfied till he steals the +boxin' honors from a puir lad that has nothing but his gloves. Nick's a +machinist; and, up till lately, when money from his matches commenced to +come in a little, he's had to do all his training in the nicht-time; +while the Harrison lad's had all day and all night, if he needed, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +make himsel' pairfect.... Ey, ey—it's the way o' the warld, lassie."</p> + +<p>"He'll never beat Nick," some flash of vague enthusiasm warmed Daisy for +an instant; then she added—boxing terms and predictions coming handily +to her tongue after that chatty hour across the supper-table from the +"sporty" Miss Yockley—"he'd never last twenty rounds, or even ten, in a +finish bout. Nicky Cluett," Daisy concluded with feminine irrelevance, +"is a gentleman. The other fellow would be afraid to fight him without a +mask on."</p> + +<p>Jean laughed. "He didna wear the mask to protect himsel' from fists, +lassie. He wore it so naebody would ken him. That's why young Harrison's +seconds was masked too. Ye see, the Harrisons' footing in society is no +that sure that they dare play tricks with it—as they wad be doing, they +think, if it got oot that Harold met a professional boxer in a public +theatre. Ey, Sir Thomas has won everything now but a place in society, +an' he's bound he'll have that, even if it means havin' the whole family +operated on.... But ye'd better serve the dessert, bairnie: the rattle +o' the knives an' forks on the plates out in the dining-room sounds +empty, as if they was through their meat."</p> + +<p>As Daisy stepped into the dining-room, young Harold, at a sign from his +father, paused in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> account of the boxing-match till the girl had +collected the used dishes and withdrawn, as he thought, out of earshot. +But Daisy, on her mettle, halted just outside the swinging door, and +caught every word with her keen young ears:</p> + +<p>"——And so, Dad, I took it easy in the fourth round. The only reason I +went into the bout was, that I wanted to try myself out against this +fellow Cluett, who is supposed to be pretty good—and is, too, as +witness my lip (first time I've ever been hit since the days when I was +a learner!) I didn't want to beat him," young Harrison, as if seeking +sympathy with this un-Harrison-like sentiment in the proper quarter, +glanced at his mother, "right in front of his own crowd. Besides, he'd +have lost his deposit, which means quite a bit to him, and nothing to me."</p> + +<p>"You done wrong, son," Sir Thomas Harrison thrust out his chin, and +whacked his hand on the table; "Y' done wrong. Beat 'em! Whack 'em! +Round 'em up! Get their money. Show 'em who's boss. I'd never have b'en +where I am to-day, if I'd ever passed up a chance to hand a man a wipe +on the jaw, when I had him goin'."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Sawn off the Old Block.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The big Harrison villa,—with its broad ostentatious drive, its +unsightly smear of cement bridge spoiling the green dip in the lawn, its +elaborate superstructure which told of contractors' supplies bought at a +dealers' reduction—soon became familiar to Daisy from its concrete +cellar to its attic that resounded, mornings, with the virile thudding +of young Harold's punching bag.</p> + +<p>"Don't you ever put anything on a shelf, or hang anything up, or turn +anything off?" she demanded, one morning, as, coming down from the top +floor with her broom, she passed the door where the heir of the house of +Harrison stood in his dressing-gown, combing back his thick black hair +before a mirror.</p> + +<p>"Whence the query, fair one?" said Harold, playfully.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Daisy, stopping in the doorway with the roses of recent +exertion coloring her cheeks superbly, her eyes dancing in their bright +challenging way, and her plump arms displayed to fine and not +unconscious advantage as she folded them over the broom-handle which +leaned in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> the bend of her elbow; "one of your boxing-gloves was under +the shower-bath, with the water running on it; and your sweater was on +the floor below the punching bag, tramped in the dust——"</p> + +<p>"There shouldn't be any dust up there," said Harold, easily; "What do +you suppose we pay our little housemaids for? Uh?"</p> + +<p>"Is that so!" retorted Daisy; "well, you'd better give orders for the +wind not to blow, then; and you'd better have your father pull up that +nasty concrete drive, where all the dust comes from; and——"</p> + +<p>"See here! See-e here!" Sir Thomas Harrison's son jerked out, spinning +on his heel and facing her; "what do you mean by talking to me like +that? Who do you think you're speaking to—the chauffeur or the +stable-boy? Get on downstairs, or wherever you're going, and don't have +so much to say." Then, as the young heir of the place turned again to +the mirror, he added in audible soliloquy, "dashed cheek! These infernal +domestics are getting to think they can do and say what they please. +Some of these days that cook and I are going to have a rumpus too. She +chooses coolly to forget, and to keep right on forgetting, the +instructions I give her about my food.—What! you here yet?"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" said Daisy, looking at him with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> cheeks burning redly and her +eyes fixed and bright; "I'm here yet—<i>Mister</i> Harold!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, a-all right," observed the young man, sarcastically, throwing out +his palm with an elaborate motion toward a chair; "won't you have a +seat, Miss—er—er— Miss Housemaid?"</p> + +<p>Daisy's long eyelashes described a flashing arc as she swept the crown +prince of the dynasty of Harrison from head to house-slippered toe. Then +she turned away. Harold Harrison, as he heard her shoe-heels tapping +smartly down the back stairs, grinned at his reflection in the +looking-glass.</p> + +<p>"That's putting 'em where they belong," he said; "Some kid, though, +be-lieve me—some kid!"</p> + +<p>Jean, at the big cooking range, heard Daisy come into the kitchen and +thrust the broom into its holder with a rap. Then there came silence, +enduring for so long that the Scotswoman glanced questioningly around. +Daisy had dropped into a chair, and was sitting in a kind of brown +study, finger at lip and eyes looking ponderingly out of window.</p> + +<p>"Now, now, lassie!" said the cook, kindly; "it's nae business o' mine, +likely; but this is a big hoose, an' ye canna be through reddin' up the +rooms yet, an' it's nearly eleven o'clock. Is onything amiss?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p><p>Daisy related her encounter with young Harrison.</p> + +<p>"Ey, ey," Jean smiled grimly as the girl told her what young Harold had +said about the cooking; "so he's no farin' quite as he wad at the +meal-table, and would like a bit brush with me, would he? Well, I canna +be aye getting' up special dishes for his lordship, so I may as weel +prepare to receive him. Did he tell ye of the wee bit tiff we had ance +before, him an' me? No; he didn't. Well, I'll tell ye, in a few words. +He talked wi' his tongue, and I talked with the besom; and the interview +juist lasted four minutes by the kitchen clock. He's no a bad lad +althegither, but he needs a canny bit breakin' in."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm not going to bother breaking him in," said Daisy, lifting her +chin, "he's not worth it."</p> + +<p>Jean laughed. "Well, onyway," she said, turning again to her own work, +"don't let him start ye broodin', so the rooms'll no be done when our +good leddy goes over the huse. Ye ken weel she'd turn to and mak' up the +beds hersel', sooner than raise a fuss. Lassie, lassie, speakin' about +the Mistress, I'm sore worried. She's failed terrible this last month. I +keep tellin' her to drink milk, but she canna keep it doon. She eats nae +mair than yon dickie-bird—a great big strappin' wumman like she is—or +was—too! If onything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> happens to the leddy o' the hoose here—guid-bye +Harrisons! It's only for her sake I'm bidin' here, at the wage I get. +I've got a standin' offer o' half as much agen from Lady Frances +Ware—Sir William Ware's mother."</p> + +<p>At the mention of Ware's name, Daisy gave a little involuntary start. +But she did not tell Jean that she too had an offer of a position in the +household of Sir William Ware.</p> + +<p>"I suppose ye've no heard," said Jean, turning a protruding +skillet-handle out of her way as she reached up for the flour-shaker, +"that the young lad here—Harold—is engaged to a girl o' what they call +the smart set. He's a takin' lad in some ways; but he's got Sir Thomas's +way o' looking at marriage. It's nae good, Harrisons thinks, unless it +brings social advantage. Ey, the conquest o' society is uphill work for +puir Sir Tom.... By the bye, Sir Thomas himsel' is one person that, if +onything happened our leddy, would not miss her much nor mourn for her +long. Ey, he blames her, like, for 'keepin' him back'—her, that made him!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Plot That Miscarried.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Hae ye no mercy on yon phone, bairnie," observed Jean, rolling +cut-cakes at a side-table, an afternoon or so later, "skirlin' itsel' +sick in the corner there. If it's yon grocery-man, tell him from me he's +gone daft, an' I'll be changin' oor custom if he's no more canny with +thae orders, like."</p> + +<p>Daisy came out of one of the moods of pensiveness into which she had +been in the habit of falling, lately, since the junior master of the +house had inaugurated his policy of "putting her where she belonged." +Skipping over, she took the phone from the hook.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" she said; "Waghorn's grocery?"</p> + +<p>"Not this time, stranger," said a dry voice at the other end of the +line; "but you've got two more guesses, if you like."</p> + +<p>Two dimples sprang into view near the corners of Daisy's mouth, and a +fine blush spread right to where the receiver rested against her ear. "I +doubt it's no the grocery-man," murmured Jean, glancing over her +shoulder as she laid a wafer of light, white dough in the bake-pan that +stood, larded and ready, at her right.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you."</p> + +<p>"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver.</p> + +<p>Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not +of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was +plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of +the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right, +I will,—bye-bye," as she hung up the phone.</p> + +<p>When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter, +this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man +who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the +dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and +very often twice, each week since.</p> + +<p>On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy, +as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the +trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford +suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was +going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know +that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did +she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something +like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> have the chance o' your life +to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite—yes, yes, +of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean +it extra good, to-night—and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets +his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy +up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around +with me to-night—the best girl in——"</p> + +<p>"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go +on—shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my +ear, Jim, and listen to you rave."</p> + +<p>"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm +bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea. +See?—the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I +intend to spring, on the way home——"</p> + +<p>"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the +line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?"</p> + +<p>"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to +spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks. +I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some +accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments——"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>"Better wait till she says 'yes'," Mrs. Farrell had advised, as she +prepared to 'hang up', "before you start counting your chickens. She may +not care to take a chance on you. I know how I'd feel about it, if it +was me. However, I'll do my best for you."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, who was quite ready to admit any time that he was "no hand with +girls," shoved his hat to one side, thrust his hands into his pockets, +and spat aside as, waiting outside the Harrison gate, he saw Daisy +approach along the gravel walk.</p> + +<p>If he had come for her in the jitney, as usual, to take her for a +companionable hour's ride up and down his round, as a "free" and welcome +passenger, he would have felt at ease; for he had become used to that. +But this waiting, with no friendly engine pounding away in front of him +and no familiar steering-wheel to lean his hands upon, was enough out of +the ordinary to have embarrassed Jimmy anyway, even without the mental +consciousness of his deep-laid matrimonial plot, and the feeling he +could not shake off that somehow Daisy might sense it prematurely and +flee.</p> + +<p>"'Lo, stranger," said Daisy, softly, taking the words out of Jimmy's +mouth, as it were. She was a little shy, too; but Jimmy Knight was too +busy with his own perturbation to notice that.</p> + +<p>"H'lo yourself," he responded, with something like gruffness, "and see +how you like it." As they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> dropped into step side by side, he added, +with an inspired flash, "Lookin' kind of skookum to-night, us, Friend +Nixon."</p> + +<p>"I might if I had a suit on," Daisy said, in her forthright way, "but +suits cost money."</p> + +<p>"Never mind," Jimmy, in spite of the playful breeze abroad, strove to +pull his new straw hat down more firmly on its elastic cushion of +virile, curly hair, "you may have one, soon."</p> + +<p>Daisy, who had not meant this at all, cast a quick side-glance at her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't take a suit from you, if that's what you mean," she said, +abruptly, flushing a little.</p> + +<p>"There, now," Jimmy blushed an honest, vivid red, "I've went and made a +break, first crack at the bat. Say, you do the talkin' from here on. +I'll just listen. If I don't say nothin', I can't make nobody mad, can +I?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy Knight's married sister lived in a three-room suite, in an +apartment block not far from the Commercial Hotel—that structure from +whose windows Daisy had had her first view of the city's rooftops. As +she followed her companion up the three flights of stairs, her mind +reverted to that girl-wife she had seen from the hotel-window, hanging +out a washing for three, and pinning the tinier garments in the centre +of the clothesline.</p> + +<p>"Come right in, people," invited Mrs. Tom Farrell, opening the door of +Suite 30, as Jimmy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> smiling humorously aside at Daisy, knocked like a +bailiff; "You're as big an ike as ever, Jim. If you've waked young Tommy +up, you'll go in and put him to sleep again. Mind that!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Tom was a pleasant-looking girl, a year or so older than Daisy, +with a pretty mouth and a few freckle-dots on forehead and nose. Her +hair was as red as Jimmy's was brown. She led the way along a short +vestibule to the living-room.</p> + +<p>"Tom's in the bathroom, having a shave," she said, with a kind of +under-glance at Daisy; "I couldn't budge him out of his chair till I +told him Jim was bringing a girl around, and then you couldn't see him +for dust. All husbands is tarred with the same brush. Don't you ever get +married, Miss——"</p> + +<p>"Miss nothin'," said Jimmy, as they entered the neat room, with its +"surface oak" centre-table, and buffet adorned with a cut-glass vase (a +wedding present) filled with flowers contributed by the park gardener, +who had a suite in the basement; "friend of the family, didn't I tell +you, Bet. Name's Daisy, and she is one."</p> + +<p>Jimmy was more at ease, in this familiar precinct. As his sister took +Daisy's hat and went to put it in the bedroom, the two callers heard her +remark, vigorously, to some object in an invisible corner, "Go off to +sleep this minute, you! The idea!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p><p>But the object only responded, wakefully, "Unk Dimmy! I wanna dinka +wa'r."</p> + +<p>"You want a spankin'," said his mother, reprehensively, "and you're +going to get it. Don't bring him any water, Jim—he'll have the city +waterworks dry, if he keeps on. It's the only excuse he can think of, +for keepin' awake."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, however, was at the faucet, with a glass of water half drawn. +Carrying this, he dove into the bedroom as his sister came out.</p> + +<p>"Might as well talk to the wind," said Mrs. Tom Farrell, "as them two. +Well, of all——"</p> + +<p>This last as Jimmy reappeared, carrying a sleepy three-year-old who, +supporting the tumbler with two hands that had hollows where knuckles +should be, was quaffing with all his might. Jimmy Knight had had an +inspiration, which he was not yet sure was not a blunder, to show Daisy +how a baby "became" him.</p> + +<p>To Daisy, in spite of its neatness, the suite looked rather small and +dingy. This impression formed itself quite unconsciously, not as the +result of deliberate glances about. Probably it was a wholly involuntary +comparison of these small rooms to the big garish apartments of the +Harrison house, to which her eyes had grown accustomed during the past +couple of months. At any rate, the impression came and stayed. Jimmy, +however, had no means of knowing this; and, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> he glanced around at his +sister's handiwork, he winked his appreciation at Mrs. Betty behind +young Tommy's head; and shaped with his lips this soundless but +energetic sentence, "You're a winner, hon'."</p> + +<p>Tom Farrell, Senior, came from the bathroom presently, stroking a long, +new-shaven chin. His eyes were narrowed sociably, and his mouth, as he +approached Daisy, was kinked up at the corners in what seemed to Betty +Farrell's critical regard, almost an ecstasy of friendliness. He paused, +with the hand of greeting half-outstretched; then, tetering his +shoulders a little, glanced first at his wife, and from her to Jimmy, +interrogatively.</p> + +<p>"Somebody introduce me," interpreted his wife, with considerable warmth +and sarcasm, "or I'll go crazy."</p> + +<p>"Daisy, meet Brother Tom," interposed Jimmy, diplomatically, as he saw a +flash of temper in the glance Tom Farrell darted at his wife. A husband +of four years' standing will not endure being put out of countenance +before a pretty girl.</p> + +<p>"Howdy," said Farrell, promptly; grabbing Daisy's hand and half for his +wife's benefit and half because of Daisy's dimples, squeezing it hard +and long; "howdy, howdy?... Say, Bet, what's that kid doing out of bed, +this time o' night? Don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> you know nothing at all? Get him back between +them sheets, right away!"</p> + +<p>"Put him to bed yourself, if you're so keen about it," Betty Farrell +retorted, hotly; "it was Jimmy brought him out here, not me. Why don't +you take a round out of Jim?"</p> + +<p>"I said, put him to bed," Tom Farrell was losing his self-control as his +temper rose, "and do it quick!"</p> + +<p>"Come along, Boy," said Jimmy Knight, genially, speaking into the ear of +Tommy, Junior; then winking at Daisy as he jerked his head in humorous +apology toward the point where Tom and Betty Farrell glared at each +other across the centre-table, "we'll go and pound our ear, son. We +don't need a house to fall on us, to show us we ain't wanted, do we?" He +got up, young Tom in his arms, and moved toward the bedroom.</p> + +<p>"No, sir-ree!" Tom Farrell's long arm came out and scooped out of +Jimmy's grasp the youngster, who started to cry; "it's got to be settled +right here an' now who's boss of this establishment. I ain't goin' to +let no woman run on me. Here, Bet—take this kid, and put him to bed +like I told you!" The husband was now so far beside himself that he, for +the moment, neither knew nor cared what impression he made. As he spoke, +he held out the baby boy, who yelled and kicked vigorously.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><p>But Betty Farrell backed away, letting young Tommy dangle from his +father's outstretched arms.</p> + +<p>"I don't have to take no orders from you," she said, putting her hands +obstinately behind her back, "and I won't, not if you rave till you're +blue in the face. I'll show everybody how much authority you have over +me."</p> + +<p>At this, young Tom felt himself set down hard on a chair. Tom Farrell, +having thus freed his hands, hopped ragingly across the room and slapped +his wife on the side of the face. Betty, true to the color of her hair, +flared up, looked about for something to throw, and swept her hand with +temper's wastefulness toward the cut-glass vase in the centre of the +table.</p> + +<p>"Hey!" Jimmy Knight reached across and rescued the vase; "you ain't mad +five dollars' worth, surely, Bet." Then the brother got up and came +around the table.</p> + +<p>"Break away, break away," he said, casting a deprecating grin toward +Daisy as he put one hand on his sister's shoulder and the other on Tom +Farrell's chest, and pushed the two apart; "hittin' in the clinches is +barred, boys. How about a little card-game, everybody? Bet and me will +take on Daisy and you, Tom, and beat yous flat."</p> + +<p>"Nothing doing," Farrell nasalled, closing his eyes and rocking his head +from side to side in an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> obdurate negative; "this here thing's got to be +settled first. Let a woman get the upper hand of you once, an' you'll +never get her back in her place."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on, Bet," Jimmy gave his sister a little coaxing nudge, "put the +kid to bed."</p> + +<p>Betty Farrell raised eyelids, nose, chin and right foot, and brought +them all down simultaneously.</p> + +<p>"I—wun't!" she said; "so there."</p> + +<p>This repetition of her refusal, though not this time addressed to him, +brought Tom Farrell's wrath again to boiling-point, and he reached +across and cuffed her twice more. Jimmy Knight's hand, which was still +resting against his brother-in-law's chest, pushed Farrell firmly back.</p> + +<p>"Don't do that no more, Tom," he said, his face and voice sobering a +little.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" flamed Farrell, turning on him.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "I can't stand by and see you do it—that's all."</p> + +<p>Farrell grew hoarse and purple. "Well, come on, then," he frogged, "I'll +take on the whole blamed family, and lick 'em with one hand tied behind +me." With this, his arm shot out; and Jimmy, taken unawares, received +the blow full in the eye. Farrell followed quickly with a second thrust; +but Jimmy was ready, and the fist glanced harmlessly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p><p>"I don't want to fight you, Tom," he said, guarding himself with fair +skill, as the brother-in-law, shoving the table aside with a jerk of his +hip, pursued the attack furiously; "All I say is, be reasonable."</p> + +<p>"Reasonable, nothin'!" croaked Farrell, as he landed again, cutting +Jimmy's cheek with his thumb-nail; "I'll learn you to keep out, next +time."</p> + +<p>Jimmy did not answer. His lips tightened a little. Farrell, breaking +through his guard again, struck the fast-blackening eye which had +received his opening blow. Thereat Jimmy, with a vigorous shake of his +shoulders, dived in manfully. There was a brief scuffle; then Jimmy's +sinewy fist twinkled up hard, at short range, and Tom Farrell went down +flat on the floor and lay there.</p> + +<p>"Now, then!" the voice was Betty Farrell's; but it was addressed to +Jimmy, not to her husband, this time; "see what you've done, with your +dirty fists and your meddling. You've knocked him out—maybe hurt him—"</p> + +<p>"He's all right," said Jimmy, a little sheepishly, "I—I never +meant—there, he's stirring, now. I——"</p> + +<p>"Well, get out, then," Betty Farrell dashed over and nervously opened +the door leading out of the suite into the corridor; "go on—get out!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> I +don't want no more fighting in here. Go on—you, too," this last to +Daisy who, however, was already at the door.</p> + +<p>Jimmy glanced at Daisy as humorously as a man might who had one +supremely black eye and a cheek all over blood.</p> + +<p>"I guess p'raps we might as well," he said.</p> + +<p>There was silence on the way down the three flights of stairs, and +comparative uncommunicativeness on Jimmy's part until the end of the +walk home was reached and the two stood under the trees just within the +Harrison drive-gate.</p> + +<p>Then Jimmy, clearing his throat with the air of a man who has made up +his mind to say something or die, observed, "I—I got to tell you one +blamed good joke, Friend Nixon, before you go in."</p> + +<p>"What?" said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "I—gr-r-h'm—I took you over there to-night to show +you a happy little home in a three-room suite. As she turns out, +however, that'n ain't so very happy to-night, huh? All my fault, for +hikin' young Tom out of his crib."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well," said Daisy, "everybody fights, sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's so," said Jimmy; "Yes, that's—that's so. But I—I—"</p> + +<p>"'M?" said Daisy, feeling something in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> companion's cadence that +caused a soft little titillation of her nerves. She drew back further +into the shadow as she felt her cheeks grow involuntarily warm.</p> + +<p>"I know two of a kind—both of 'em easy-goin', I mean—that mightn't +fight any more than oncet a week, at the outside. Do you think you could +stand for that, Friend Nix—Friend Daisy?"</p> + +<p>Daisy drew a long breath, raised her face, and looked clear-eyed at her +companion.</p> + +<p>"I know what you mean," she said, glad that the darkness prevented +cheerful, curly-headed Jimmy Knight from seeing the shine of her glance +and the color of her cheeks, "but I can't. Not the way I feel these +days. What happened over in the suite to-night didn't make any +difference. But—well, I just can't. I'm a funny girl."</p> + +<p>"You sure are," agreed Jimmy Knight; "how long did you say you'd need to +think it over?"</p> + +<p>"Forever," said Daisy, firmly, in spite of the beating of her heart.</p> + +<p>"All right," responded Jimmy Knight, bravely choking down a certain +obstruction that had risen in his throat, "I'll give you a day longer +than that, so's it won't look as if I was rushin' you. Well—so-long, +kid," he held out his hand.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye, Jimmy Knight," Daisy gave him her hand, then drew it away +gently, and ran in-doors with tears in her eyes.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Golden Stair.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir William Ware put aside his book, covered a yawn, glanced up at the +fireplace clock, which was about to chime nine; then, taking up the +telephone which had been ringing with shrill iteration for a moment or +two, casually laid his ear to it.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said.</p> + +<p>"Sir William Ware?" vibrated the disk.</p> + +<p>"Himself," responded Sir William, lightly.</p> + +<p>"Well," said the voice at the other end of the line, "this is me."</p> + +<p>"Eh?"</p> + +<p>"Me."</p> + +<p>"Ah." Sir William rubbed his chin in bewilderment; then he added, +humorously, "<i>Miss</i> Me? Right, so far?"</p> + +<p>"You have a short memory," commented the voice on the phone.</p> + +<p>"You have chanced," said Ware, pleasantly, "upon a melancholy fact, +madam. But may I not ask the identity of—Jove! wait a bit, though! My +creaking wheels of recollection are beginning to revolve.... I have it! +I have it! Miss Nixon?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," said Daisy's voice, in a matter-of-fact way, "it is. I want to +see you."</p> + +<p>Sir William, at the speaker's naive directness, covered the transmitter +with his palm and rocked in enjoyment.</p> + +<p>"Bravo!" he said, then, uncovering the instrument; "the city hasn't +spoiled you yet, my dear—has it?"</p> + +<p>"I'm waiting near that cafe we were at before," said Daisy, "how long +will you be?"</p> + +<p>Something in the bare blunt words made Sir William hug himself in an +almost boyish ecstasy. "I shall come," he answered, "on the wings of +Hermes. They should bring me into your presence in from three to five +minutes, young lady."</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon, after hanging up the telephone in the little candy store +across from the Cumberland Cafe, had waited barely four minutes in the +shadowed street just beyond the circle of light from the Cumberland's +windows, when she saw a tall figure, cane in hand, walk briskly into +that area of illumination. She crossed the street.</p> + +<p>Ware, dangling his cane and glancing about enquiringly, saw her when she +was half-way across the circle of light and facing the full blaze of it. +Her bright frank eyes; her clear girlish fresh cheeks, on which a +certain nervousness kept the tide of color changing its shape and +margin; her round maidenly lines of bust and hip and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> ankle: all wrought +curiously and strongly and with a united effect upon Ware, as they had +on that night in the Harrison dining-room when his attention, drawn to +her casually by the accident to the soup-tureen, had changed at once to +the heartiest interest.</p> + +<p>Material absolutely fresh and new! Molten and virgin gold, not yet +resistable to the stamp of the die!</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, stepping forward hospitably, "how are you, my dear? +Shall we go in?"</p> + +<p>"Yes." Daisy stepped inside, deliberately unpinned and hung up her hat, +and sat down opposite to the baronet at the table he had chosen along +the side of the room. It was the same table they had occupied on their +previous visit.</p> + +<p>"Don't order much," she said; "I'm not hungry. I came here to talk."</p> + +<p>"I think," said Sir William, "that talking will be much more enjoyable. +I dined late, myself. Suppose we have, say, a few grapes and a little +something to drink—an iced drink of some sort."</p> + +<p>"Anything you like," said Daisy. She laid her hands on the table, caught +her lower lip under her teeth with a shy gesture that was delicious to +Ware, and said—quite plainly, and without yielding to that impulse of +coquetry which had made him so brief with her on their previous +meeting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>—"Were you in earnest, that time you asked me to marry you?"</p> + +<p>"My dear," answered Sir William, leaning forward, and extending his hand +on the table until it was almost touching hers, "I made the proposal +quite seriously and in good faith. I should not do otherwise. If you are +still in a position to accept it, I make it again now."</p> + +<p>Daisy looked across at the real eagerness in the fine eyes; at the face, +with its skin cleanly and handsomely tinted under the few faint lines +that indicated the light passage of the years; at the hand, smooth, +white and gently masterful. Then she dropped her glance; but her voice +was firm and her manner direct and frank as she answered him.</p> + +<p>"I'll marry you," she said.</p> + +<p>The white hand, with a strong and gentle pressure, came over hers, until +her fingers were between the thumb and the heel of the palm. Something +great and calm and authoritative seemed communicated with that touch. +Daisy felt quelled and dutiful, but, best of all, as she lifted her eyes +to his, she knew, less by his expression than by an unexplainable +feeling within herself, that she could trust him. For in all +essentials—so she read and knew calmly and surely that she read +aright—he was, as Daisy herself would have put it, simply, "a +gentleman."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"Thank you, my dear," he said, quietly, "I may say sincerely that I +think we shall grow very fond of one another. Waiter!—here, please."</p> + +<p>A dress suit glided forward and an obsequious ear leaned down. The +waiter knew quite thoroughly what was "doing", although by the +expression on his face during the conversation between Daisy and Ware, +one would have thought he was working out in his head a problem in +trigonometry.</p> + +<p>"May I speak to the manager?" said Ware.</p> + +<p>The manager, who had curly jet hair, an immense slope of white +waistcoat, and an Alice-blue chin, appeared in exactly fifteen seconds.</p> + +<p>"Have you," said Sir William, "a room where a marriage ceremony may be +performed?"</p> + +<p>The manager started a smile—but it got no further than a slight twitch +in the eye-corners before something in Sir William's expression,—though +the baronet changed not a feature nor abated anything of his +pleasantness—checked it.</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir," the manager answered, voice and face returning instantly to +business formality; "my office is at your service, sir, if you wish."</p> + +<p>"That will do nicely, thank you," said Ware, rising; then to Daisy he +said, as he offered his arm, "we will go there now—shall we?"</p> + +<p>Daisy nodded, without speaking. Her faith in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> him was as absolute as it +was instinctive and involuntary.</p> + +<p>As the manager bowed them into the office—a room of fair size—and, +partially closing the door, made polite exit, Ware handed Daisy to a +seat, and himself dropped into the swivel-chair before the manager's +desk and took up the telephone.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" he said, as he got his number; "that you, Mrs. Heathcote? Good +evening; how's your neuralgia?... Splendid, splendid—I <i>am</i> glad to +hear that. I say, is George about?"</p> + +<p>Evidently George was at hand; for in a second or two the transmitter +returned to Sir William's lips.</p> + +<p>"That you, George? I say, are you busy?... Well, then, look here—could +you slip around to the Cumberland Cafe, Osborne Street.... No, no, +nothing about 'hay'; Cumberland Cafe, you ass.... Yes, that's it—can't +miss it—big, bright, plate-glass windows, half-way between Wardlow and +Pembina.... I say, that's very jolly of you, old man.... Yes, I—we—are +waiting.... Yes: I said 'we'.... None of your bally business—that is, +I'll explain when you get here. Make haste now, won't you?... Right-O!" +Sir William hung up the phone and turned to Daisy.</p> + +<p>"That was the Reverend George Heathcote, my dear," he said, "rector of +St. George's. Do you know St. George's?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p><p>Daisy knew it—a big Episcopal church, with beautiful chimes, that made +Sunday morning glorious. Right in the heart of the fashionable district. +Ivied to the gables, with a mighty stretch of green ground about, +bounded by a massive iron fence. And its rector was familiar "George" +and "old man" to him who was shortly to become her husband.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon's heart bounded, and the color leapt into her cheeks. Three +months ago, clad in an old smock of Jack Nixon's and with a cuff +administered by Mother Lovina smarting and tingling on her ear, she had +waded, on an evening that she remembered well,—because it was her last +on a farm—down to a miry cattle-corral to sit in the rain and milk four +cows. It was in this moment, as the recollection of that final ineffably +drab farm evening slipped into her mind, that Daisy formulated a certain +daughterly resolve with regard to her parents—a resolve she was +afterwards able to keep.</p> + +<p>"I should explain," said Ware, a touch of color in his cheeks and his +fingers playing a soft tattoo on the desk blotter, "why I am doing +things in this apparently hasty and stealthy manner. I have been +expecting, for the last moment or so, that you would ask me to +explain—and I may say that I consider it very sweet of you, my dear, +that you have refrained from asking."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p><p>"Whatever <i>you</i> do," said Daisy, "is all right. I know that."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, dear child. Nevertheless, I shall explain. In the first +place, I have a very headstrong old mother at home, who considers me, in +spite of my 58 years—yes, my dear, I am 58—not yet grown up. With her, +there might—I do not positively say there would, but there might—be +difficulties. In the second place, and to be quite frank with you and +with myself, this is the main reason for doing things on the dot, as it +were—I know that young people are to a certain extent impulsive and +that a great many things may happen in a short time, and I want you just +as you are now, before anything can happen to change you in any way. I +confess freely, my dear, that I really want you very much, and that it +has been harder than you may think, for me since I last talked with you +to keep my resolve to let you quite alone so that you might think this +matter out for yourself. That, having thought it out, you have not been +afraid or ashamed to voluntarily let me know your decision, is to me +convincing proof—though short-sighted people may think this +paradoxical—of that modesty which is to me your most precious quality."</p> + +<p>Nervousness, more than he had ever imagined his socially-inured self +could feel, was the cause of the latter half of this little speech of +Sir <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>William's being slightly formal. This marrying of a girl "of the +people"—forty years distant from him and yet in her land of +boy-and-girl—which had been easy enough to do in theory, in his +study-chair, was a "bit of a pull" in actual execution. He had just +finished speaking, when there came a knock at the door.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he said, getting up, "I shouldn't wonder if that's our friend. +That you, George?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—and I've jolly well run my legs off," exclaimed a voice, as a +bustling and rather stout figure in clerical coat burst cyclonically +into the room, dropped into a chair, and fanned itself with a +flat-crowned black hat. "I couldn't get it out of my head, some way, +that you are more in need of medical than spiritual attention at the +present moment, Will. Now, calm yourself, old man, and let me have the +whole story, and we'll examine the matter squarely and sensibly. I +assume," the Reverend George glanced at Daisy, whose color was rising, +"this is the young lady in the case. Jove, Will, I thought you had more +bally sense, especially at your time of life—I did, really."</p> + +<p>Sir William looked at his ministerial friend open-mouthed; then, as the +clergyman's meaning burst upon him, he sat up in his chair with a jerk.</p> + +<p>"Now, look here, George," he said, as the swivel creaked at the vigor +with which he gripped the chair-arms, "I should hate our forty-five +years of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> close friendship to end in fisticuffs. It will, though, I give +you fair warning, if—if—what the devil do you think I've been doing, +you ass! Must I repeat that, of our mutual choice—quite unforced by +circumstances, if I must say so baldly—Miss Daisy Nixon and I have +decided to be married."</p> + +<p>Reverend George Heathcote, who was smooth-faced and good-looking, except +for a few myopic wrinkles around his eyes, put on his glasses and looked +keenly at Daisy, who met his glance with nose and chin well up, and +brown eyes flashing aggressively.</p> + +<p>"Don't look at me like that," he said, after a moment, "please don't, +Miss Nixon. I'm a blundering idiot, but I mean well—I do, really. Can +you honestly, down in your heart of hearts, assert that you wish to +marry the shelf-worn relic in the office-chair there? Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Daisy, pugnaciously.</p> + +<p>"Oh—very well." Rev. George Heathcote, adjusting his glasses firmly, +brought out from his pocket a black-covered book. Shuffling the leaves +till he found the desired place, he closed the book, slipping his finger +between the leaves; lowered it till it rested on his knee; and looked at +Sir William, who looked back at him a little challengingly. After a +moment of this scrutiny, the clergyman arose, went over beside his +friend, and laid a hand on Ware's shoulder.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p><p>"Dear old man," he said, "I do want you to consider this thing very +seriously. You've always been a bit of a boy, you know. I, of course, +know the fancies you've petted about marriage—I always thought they +were merely fancies, or I should have tried harder to reason you out of +them. Now, is your mind absolutely, irrevocably, and after due +deliberation made up? By the bye, have you thought of—your mother?"</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware stood up, settling his coat about his fine spare +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I have thought about everything—considered everything, George," he +said. "I know you mean well, old chap," Ware, in turn, put his hand on +his old schoolmate's shoulder, "but really, I don't care to discuss the +matter any further, even with you. Besides, all this is, as you must +understand, very embarrassing, for Miss Nixon." He turned to Daisy. +"Come, dear," he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy Nixon stood up; and, in the presence of two decorously +expressionless figures of the cafe staff—the manager and one of the +waiters—as witnesses, she was presently by brief and grave ritual +united in the bond of holy matrimony to Sir William Ware, Baronet.</p> + +<p>As the ceremony ended, and she stood awed and a little pale, Sir William +approached and, very softly and tenderly, put his hands upon her +shoulders and stooped to kiss her. He would have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> kissed her forehead; +but Daisy, lifting her face with an altogether sweet gesture of +yielding, gave him her lips.</p> + +<p>His countenance, upon which the girl's eyes had continued to look as it +approached near to hers for the caress, had not shown, in its nearness, +any grossness of line or texture, any twitching muscle betraying some +unexplainable dark trait. It was masculine, thoroughbred, honorable-eyed +and—clean. It was pleasant and thoughtful. Face and figure were full of +quiet mastery, yet had no outward suggestion nor pose nor plebeian +ostentation of "masterfulness."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Lady of the House.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Daisy, in whose virile young body the habit of sound and healthy sleep +was too firmly established for even an event so epochal as that of the +previous evening to break her rest, awoke next morning, after a night of +undisturbed slumber. A little clock, sounding one of the hours with +chimes instead of the ordinary striking gong, drew her notice. The dial +registered nine.</p> + +<p>The first use she made of her opened eyes was to glance, with a thrill, +about that beautiful pink bedchamber; a door at one end showing a little +bathroom, tiled in clean and shining white, with folded towels on a +glass roller above the long porcelain tub. The morning sun came rosily +in through a curtained bow window, that had an alcoved seat piled +comfortably with cushions. A fresh draught coming from another quarter +drew her eyes toward an open way leading to a balcony, with straw +matting, a hammock, and comfortable-looking rattan rocking-chair.</p> + +<p>There was some uneasy feeling in the back, as it were, of Daisy's head. +For a moment or two, she could not understand it; then, as she found +herself instinctively glancing about the apartment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> to see if there were +any corners hard to reach with the broom, the solution of her sensation +of unrest came. It was nine o'clock and she was still in mental habit a +housemaid at the big Harrison villa. By this hour she should have had +all the windows in the sleeping-rooms opened and the blankets and sheets +turned back to air the beds.</p> + +<p>Daisy laughed to herself, and snuggled back luxuriously on the deep soft +pillows. Her mind resumed its office of recollection and ratchetted on +over the events of the night before. The evening had been spent, by the +rector's invitation, at his house, adjoining massive St. George's +church. There had been a pleasant little wedding "dinner," during which +Daisy had met a Mrs. Heathcote who had afterwards taken her off by +herself and asked her a good many blunt and, as Daisy thought, rather +intimate questions. She had met one Jessica Heathcote, too, a bird of +slightly different plumage—a companionable, back-slapping girl, who sat +on the edges of tables, or put her feet up on chairs like a man, while +she conversed; haw-hawed and whacked her knee when she heard a good +joke; and was in every way a person to banish misgiving and dolor and, +unaided, to make things hum. Jess was coming over to see her early +to-day.</p> + +<p>"You'll need a bit of help, you know, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>young-un," Jessica had predicted, +"when you face 'Grandmammah'. Yes—rathah!"</p> + +<p>After the little family wedding-supper at the Heathcotes', Daisy had +gone home with Sir William in the rector's car. Everybody at the Ware +house had retired when they reached it, for the hour was well on toward +midnight; and Sir William, after—as he jokingly put it, to +Daisy—"smuggling" her up to this apartment, had pushed her playfully +in, and with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered "pleasant dreams," +had considerately departed to his own rooms.</p> + +<p>The air that entered from the balcony was very inviting. Daisy could +hear the whisper of ivy-leaves. Flower-breath came up and in from some +hidden garden below. Fitful rattlings of a mower and the hiss from a +hose-nozzle sounded on the lawn.</p> + +<p>Daisy's garments—the white waist, the stuff skirt, the brown stockings, +one with an incipient hole in the heel—lay over the foot of the bed, +where she had yawningly cast them when she disrobed last midnight. They +looked very cheap and poor and out of place in this lovely room; and +Daisy pursed her lips a moment, and wrinkled her brows after a way she +had, as she regarded them. But presently, with that little shrug of the +shoulders that was her customary way of casting off trouble, she hopped +out of bed, dressed up in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> old clothes—which somehow, as she +fastened them about her handily, conveyed a comfortable at-home +feeling—and, sticking a pin or two in her hair, stepped out on the +balcony. Leaning her elbows on the rail, she looked down and about.</p> + +<p>The Ware house and grounds were very different from the Harrison house +and grounds. No concrete in evidence here—no artificial terracing—no +stone garage. No evidence of money anywhere, except such as was +incidentally shown by possession, in the costly residential section of +the city, of these great broad grounds, with their natural swell and +slope; their big trees, between which here and there a little footpath +wandered wild; their plain white street-fence, twinkling afar through +the shrubbery. The house was frame, ivied from the ground almost to the +chimney-tops (ends of the green runners, as Daisy could see on an +adjoining gable, had climbed right up on the shingles), and with +verandahs everywhere. It was a villa for people who loved fresh air; +whereas the Harrison house, for all its massive and costly ostentation, +was no more airy than a prison. The object in the case of the latter was +display, the manifestation of the Ware place, good-mannered reserve, +with reasonable provision for comfort and health.</p> + +<p>The Harrison house was like a striped shirt, a broad-check suit, a +scarlet tie, with a blatbump<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> figure housed in them, thumbs in +sleeve-holes, striding toe-out, gold chain-links dangling, diamond stud +flashing, tongue blathering, along the main street. The Ware place was +like one quietly-dressed and thoughtful, strolling in a grassy lane.</p> + +<p>Down below Daisy was a tuft of shrubbery, and behind this the +garden-hose was going merrily, with a sound like fat frying. A spray of +water came out from a point near the base of the foliage; and, where it +fell, the grass and the scattered coin-like yellow flowers glistened in +the morning sun. These soft-petalled wild-flowers were the only manner +in which gold or its effect was displayed on the Ware grounds.</p> + +<p>Presently the nozzle of the hose came into view, and behind it the +rubber tube emerged until Daisy could see a black-sleeved arm, with +white cuffs turned back at the wrist. Then, following the arm, there +passed into sight a statelily-moving, moderately stout, slightly stooped +old lady, with a white lace cap pinned on her gray hair.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances Ware, who, for more than three-score of her eighty-two +years—ever since, in fact, she had become a member of the Ware +household—had been an absolute ruler, possessed a face in which every +lineament was almost mesmerically masterful. Beneath the silvered hair +that on either side of its straight central parting, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> drawn back +smoothly under her cap, a forehead, puckered in a Frontenac-like way +between the brows, sloped up and forward. Behind her glasses her eyes, +keen, dark-blue, and eagle-like, looked out level-irised. Her mouth was +bent down at the corner, and, beneath the underthrust lower lip, the +chin was gathered tensely.</p> + +<p>Evidently she had that uncanny faculty, peculiar to those long +habituated to directing a household, of instantly and by instinct +detecting the irregular; for she was barely in view, before her eyes +travelled up to the balcony where Daisy leaned. Lady Frances adjusted +her glasses; looked hard at the girl a moment; then turned off the +nozzle of the garden-hose, folded her hands across one another at a +point just below her waistband, and glanced off across the lawn toward +where the mower was clattering.</p> + +<p>"Will," she said, "come here—at once."</p> + +<p>The mower stopped obediently; and Daisy, who had drawn back a little, +saw the tall figure of Sir William come into view between the trees. He +was in his shirt-sleeves, and his neatly-cropped head was bare.</p> + +<p>"Yes, mother," he said, as deferentially as though he were ten years +old.</p> + +<p>"Who," said Lady Frances, "is that—up there? Or do you know?"</p> + +<p>Sir William, as he glanced up to the balcony<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> and saw Daisy, gave a +little start. Then he nodded and smiled at the girl; and, appearing to +square his shoulders a little, turned again to the old lady.</p> + +<p>"That, mother," he said, simply and with a dignity equal to Lady +Frances' own, "is—my wife."</p> + +<p>The dictatress of the Ware household lifted her eyes again, and regarded +Daisy for nearly three minutes. Then she faced her son, took off her +glasses, and looked at <i>him</i> for a short period. As, at the conclusion +of this survey, she inhaled preparatory to speaking, Sir William had an +odd sensation of tingling down the backs of his legs, as in the days +when his mother had prepared to supplement reproof with liberal +administration of the tawze.</p> + +<p>"Have you gone quite daft?" she demanded; then, with an imperious motion +of her finger, she said, "Now, exactly what do you mean by this, Will? +If you were not speaking seriously, I may tell you at once that I wish +no trifling on such a subject. Now, answer me immediately."</p> + +<p>"Well," responded Sir William, a little lamely, "we were married last +night, mother—that's all. I don't know that there is much more I can +say."</p> + +<p>"I differ from you on that point," Lady Frances' voice was formal; "I +think that there is a very great deal more to be said. I take it for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +granted, however, that in a man of your years, this step was not +necessary, or considered so, because of previous unwise conduct. Where +did this affair take place?"</p> + +<p>"In the Cumberland Cafe," Sir William said, redly as a lad.</p> + +<p>"The Cumberland Cafe!" The old lady repeated the words slowly and with +stress. "Will, I think you should be in a sanitarium—I do, really. Now, +go up and bring that young woman downstairs at once. Meet me in the +library with her. To say that I am astounded, and disappointed in you, +would be to put it in the mildest possible way—the mildest possible +way!"</p> + +<p>When Sir William, his arm through Daisy's, entered the long +drawing-room, Lady Frances had taken a seat near the window. The baronet +led the girl over.</p> + +<p>"This," he said, "is Daisy, mother. Dear—my mother."</p> + +<p>"How do you do," said Lady Frances Ware, evenly. "Sit down." The words +were plain, but without any inflection to make Daisy feel ill at ease. +Lady Frances Ware, no matter what the provocation, never descended to +the plebeian level of scolding or bullying.</p> + +<p>As the girl took the high-backed chair by the window, a puff of the +morning breeze bulged the great lace curtain, laying a fold of it across +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> knee. Bending forward to release the curtain, Daisy, in the +necessary glance toward her coarse black skirt, became for the first +time acutely conscious of her clothes. She had always moved in circles +where people thought of clothes as entirely indexing the person. If she +had had on a fine dress at that moment, Daisy could have faced a queen +unabashed.</p> + +<p>But Lady Frances never even glanced toward her new-made +daughter-in-law's dress. She was concerned completely with the girl's +face. Without any ostentatious flourish of lorgnette, but simply and +quietly and thoroughly, she studied it.</p> + +<p>"You have a frank expression, at any rate," she said, half to herself; +then, more directly, she added, "How old are you?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen past," said Daisy, as though to a schoolmistress.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Lady Frances. "Very young indeed to be away from home. But +the viewpoint as to that is, I have noticed, different in this country. +Where are your parents?"</p> + +<p>"At—at home," said Daisy, a little confusedly. She wanted to avoid, for +the present at least, explaining that she had run away from home.</p> + +<p>"Quite so," commented the old lady, a little dryly; "and where is your +home?"</p> + +<p>"Out in the country—on a farm."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances seemed relieved. "That is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> satisfactory," she said, +"highly so. There are—possibilities—in young people who have been +brought up out of contact with the city. And you are only—how old?"</p> + +<p>"Seventeen, ma'am," Daisy repeated.</p> + +<p>"You must not, of course, say 'ma'am'. But externals can be attended to +gradually. Do you care for your—for my son?"</p> + +<p>"I guess so," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances, for an instant, looked at her so freezingly that Daisy +moved her knees uncomfortably.</p> + +<p>"That answer," said the old gentlewoman, "pleases me less than anything +you have said, up to this point. I had hoped to find more +enthusiasm—much more enthusiasm. In fact, it will be quite necessary to +convince me that you are frankly enthusiastic in this matter before we +shall get along at all."</p> + +<p>"Daisy," put in Sir William, shrewdly, "is non-committal by nature, +mother. You yourself know that you prefer that to evasiveness or +untruthfulness. We shall be able to reassure you...."</p> + +<p>"I shall most decidedly expect to be reassured," said Lady Frances Ware. +She rose energetically to her feet.</p> + +<p>"You may go now," she said, glancing in Daisy's direction. "Return to +your room until I have Ada look you up something to put on.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> Will, I +should like to see you again before you go downtown."</p> + +<p>With these words, Lady Frances Ware returned to her duties among the +flowers and hedges and shrubbery, in the fresh air that had brought her +to past fourscore with full retention of middle-aged vigor in faculty +and body. As she passed down the outer hall, she instructed the maid as +to Daisy's attire.</p> + +<p>"I think we shall go along very finely, dear," Sir William said as he +went upstairs with an arm about Daisy's shoulder. "Now, as soon as Ada +is through with you, I shall take you out for a spin—just our two +selves. Can you drive a motor? No—then we'll have a lesson this very +morning. It will be fine sport.... And, by the way, talking of 'going +out' suggests going away. Where shall we go, for a bit of a wedding +trip?"</p> + +<p>"No place—not just now," Daisy looked up, then set her head on one +side, put a finger under Sir William's lapel, and dropped her lashes, "I +tell you what I <i>would</i> like to do, though, sir."</p> + +<p>"Not 'sir'," put in Ware. "Say 'Will'. And don't flirt, even with your +husband. In the first place, it's bad form; in the second place, I won't +have it. Now, what's this you would like to do?"</p> + +<p>"I would like," said Daisy, "to go over to Harrisons' for dinner, on +Sunday, with you."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Taking a Rest.</span></span></h2> + +<p>But there was no "company" invited to the Harrisons' on the following +Sunday.</p> + +<p>On the preceding Thursday, which was just two days after the evening she +was married, Daisy had an impulse to go and see Jean. By arrangement +with the Heathcotes, no notice of the wedding had been allowed to get to +the papers; and when Daisy, in a white dress, popped in through the +kitchen door of the Harrison house on Thursday afternoon, all Jean knew +was that she had mysteriously slipped out on Tuesday evening and had not +been seen since.</p> + +<p>Daisy bounced over to hug her; but the honest Scot drew herself up +sternly, and put out a hand.</p> + +<p>"It's no like ye," she said, "to traipze oot like yon, an' gie the good +leddy no notice—and her on the broad of her back now, at death's door, +too. I ha' made the beds mysel' and sweepit up, forbye my ain work, for +twa fu' days now, to save her the worry of havin' a stranger aboot, in +her last hours."</p> + +<p>"Last hours!" exclaimed Daisy, her breath catching, in the impulsive +wave of self-reproach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> that swept over her, "Is she—dying, then, +Jeanie? Why, I—"</p> + +<p>"Ay," Jean set her great knuckles against her hip as she stirred the +broth she was making for the sickroom; "ye reck of naebody so long as ye +can please yersel', an gang oot an' in, and come an' go, withoot a 'by +your leave' tae ony person.... An' how come ye tae be here, all fettled +up, in the middle of the afternoon? Are ye no workin'? An' if no, what +are ye daein'? Say!" Jean turned, gripped Daisy by the shoulders +suddenly and hard, and studied her with brows knit and eyes ablaze, +"ye'll answer me <i>that</i> this minute—what are ye daein' for your bed an' +board? If all's no richt, man! I'll tur-rn ye across my knee an' skelp +ye, like a bairn! I'll save ye from the street, or I'll no leave a whole +inch o' hide on your back!"</p> + +<p>"Is the Missis dying?" Daisy repeated, tears now in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Jean, shaking her, "an' all the greetin' in the warld'll no +save her the now. But come! Aboot yersel'! Oot wi't, I say!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm all right, Jean," said Daisy, still thinking about Lady +Harrison, "I'm married.... Say, can I go upstairs with you, when you +take up her broth, and see her?"</p> + +<p>"Married!" Jean sat, almost stumbled, into a chair behind her. In this +position, she stared at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Daisy for a moment; then murmured, half, as it +were, to herself, "Lassie, lassie! ye're a mystery to me. I absolutely +gie ye up, as I wad a conundrum book wi' no key. Wha's the lad? Yon +jitney man?"</p> + +<p>"No." Daisy dimpled a little.</p> + +<p>"No?" Jean, her elbow on the side-table, leaned forward with renewed +interest; "I thocht, now, it could be nane other than Curly Head Jamie. +Well, then, ye've no done the impossible, I take it, and hookit Nicky +Cluett, have ye? Man! if ye ha' got him, yon's a laddie will soon gie ye +your fine hoose an' motor-car. He's drawin' in the siller with a +hand-rake, like, these days."</p> + +<p>"It's not Nicky," said Daisy, smoothing out her sash and putting her +head a little on one side.</p> + +<p>"Weel, ye micht have set your cap for him, onyway," Jean commented, as +she reached over and gave the broth a little stir to keep it from +burning; "Baby Jock tells me it's common talk ye made a hit wi' Nick, +you nicht at the dance. Wha did ye tak', then, if it wasna Nick? Oot +wi't. Ye've fair got me on pins an' needles. Do I ken him?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," said Daisy, protracting her mystery with a teasing +delight; "may be you do. Yes, I think you know him. It's— it's—" Daisy +leaned over, and said the name dramatically, right in Jean's ear.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>The Scotswoman looked at her hard: sternness returning to every +feature.</p> + +<p>"I doubt ye been misconductin' yersel' after all," she said, levelly and +coldly, "I kenned it when ye cm' in through yon door. Tellin' me a pack +o' lies'll no improve matters—"</p> + +<p>"I'm telling you the truth," Daisy asseverated, warmly, "I didn't think +you'd go and insult me, Jean!"</p> + +<p>The other eyed her doubtfully. "I'd fair loe tae believe ye, lassie," +she breathed, "but the thing's impossible. It sounds like a story out of +a book. Why, besides his money an' his social position, he's sixty years +old, if he's a day—an' forbye, he's an ingrown bachelor. He'd ha' +wedded long or now, if it had been in him to marry. He—he hasna offered +to keep ye—that's not what ye mean, is it? But, no—I ken fine he +wouldna dae that. He's an honorable man, Sir William Ware."</p> + +<p>Daisy regarded Jean a second or two; then went over, sat plumply down on +the elder woman's knee, and put an arm about her neck.</p> + +<p>"Listen", she said, "and I'll tell you all about it, right from the +start-off, when I left here Tuesday evening." And therewith Daisy did +so. By the time she had finished, Jean's arms were about her waist, and +penitence blended with the amazed, generous, unenvying delight that +radiated from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> the Scotswoman's harsh-lined but kindly-expressioned +face.</p> + +<p>"Forgie me, bairnie," she said, as she laid her great palm around the +girl's cheek; "but I—I—why, I juist canna find the words tae say what +I think. I'm fair—fair tongue-tied. Fast married—and to a laird o' +lairds! Ey, ye bonnie wee thing, ye, bide till I buss ye," and the great +arms, tightening about Daisy's waist, hugged her ecstatically. Then Jean +set her free, rose up with vigor, and reached down a bowl, spoon and +plate of crackers.</p> + +<p>"Come!" she exclaimed, as she turned out the gas-jet under the broth, +poured the liquid into the bowl, and went to the cupboard for a +dessert-spoon; "if the good leddy's conscious an' no in ane of her bad +spells, we'll tell her the news. A bittie o' gossip like yon's better +than physic or food to a sick wuman.... By the bye, here's a letter cam' +for ye yesterday. Open it an' read it, if ye like, while the broth's +coolin'."</p> + +<p>The letter was from Mrs. Lovina Nixon, in answer to Daisy's first letter +home, written under a daughterly impulse during one of Jean's "nights +out", when Daisy was alone in the big Harrison kitchen. In her letter, +the girl had asked for forgiveness and had hoped that "You and Pa are +getting along all right, and that crops are looking good."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Lovina's answer was somewhat grim and ominous. "I suppose," she +wrote, "you think yourself mighty smart, taking off like that. I suppose +you think it was kind of respectable, eh, to go away like you done, +alone with a feller. I suppose you reckon your going to have high jinks +in town there while me and your Pa milks all them cows, well you ain't. +Your not of age yet understand, and your pa and me is coming right into +the city to get you, one of these days and fetch you strait home, and if +you don't get one tanning from your pa that youl remember all your days, +my name aint lovina janet nixon, so mind."</p> + +<p>"Bad news, bairnie?" Jean enquired; as Daisy, sobered not so much by the +letter as by momentary recollection of her past, stared down at the +floor in a grave, pondering way.</p> + +<p>"Oh—no," Daisy folded up the letter and slipped it into the bosom of +her dress, "not exactly. Is the broth cool now, Jean?"</p> + +<p>"Ay," said Jean, picking up the bowl and the plate of crackers; "Come +on. The Mistress is lyin' in Sir Thomas' room. I had him move his ugly +carcass out of it, because it's the best-ventilated room in the +hoose—the best o' the worst, like. He didna object, at least naething +to speak of. He kenned fine I'd have taken the besom tae him without +much encouragin'.... Ey, what d'ye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> think, now, I caught him sayin' tae +her, one time when I came in to red up the room. He was standin' by the +bedside, with his hands in his pockets and his feet spraddled out, in +yon way he has.</p> + +<p>"'We-ell, Marth',' he oppens up, in his big healthy blat, 'har yuh +feelin'? Uh?'.</p> + +<p>"'Poorly, Tom, very poorly,' says the good leddy—puir soul!—in a +faint-like voice.</p> + +<p>"'Thaat's ba-ad,' he says, suckin' his teeth like somebody chirpin' tae +a pair o' horses, 'but anyway, I guess, Marth', it's time you was +restin' under the sod. You've done your share o' this world's toughin' +it. You've aimed the right to rest, if anybody hezz. Ever'thin' wurks +furr th' best. Y'see that, don't yuh, Marth'-girl? Uh?'</p> + +<p>"Juist then I cam up and gied him a push from behind. Ey, a bonny push! +'Get oot!' I says, chokin'-like. I was sae blind mad, I could ha' +stranglit yon man, then and there, so I could. Weel, he went!"</p> + +<p>The great muscles on Jean's arms were knotted into ribs and ridges like +a man's; her chin was thrust out; her eyes were narrowed into shining +slits. Her whole strong frame seemed to become a banked fire of +indignation, as memory recalled that scene in the sickroom.</p> + +<p>The door of Lady Harrison's room was slightly open as the two reached +it. They were barely inside the chamber, when Jean, with an exclamation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +thrust the broth and crackers down on a side-table and rushed over to +the bed.</p> + +<p>Daisy, following quickly, saw the Scotswoman, after glancing closely at +the half-open eyes and laying her ear to the gaunt sunken chest, hastily +remove the pillows from under Lady Martha Harrison's head, lay the scalp +levelly on the mattress, and press down the eyelids with her fingers.</p> + +<p>"Ey, puir, puir leddy," Jean, keeping finger and thumb on the dead +eyelids, turned toward Daisy with two tear-balls bowling down the rugged +field of her face; "she's gone, she's gone. Ey, gone off all her +lone—died as she lived, bairnie—while we're crackin' awa careless-like +down in yon kitchen. Stane deid, an' nigh stark against the layin'-oot."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Raincloud.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"When a chap has a bit of a brain," said a voice, speaking from behind a +crinkled newspaper that was doing temporary service as a fan, "and a +habit of seeing rather far into things, if you know what I mean—it's +<i>such</i> a jolly nuisance that he can't get it before the public without +writing it down. Isn't it, rather, don't you think, Lady Ware?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it rather must be, kind of," said Daisy, who, in a smart +white skirt and blouse, and canvas shoes, occupied the other end of the +tennis-court bench on the Wares' lawn, "but you should worry about that, +Arthur. The public has enough books to read anyway."</p> + +<p>"Not of the kind I should write, they haven't," declared Lord Arthur +Milcourt, raising toward a green bough above them the ingenuous face of +twenty-one; "I say, can you type a bit?"</p> + +<p>"What?" Daisy demanded, wrinkling her brows at the speaker in a comical +way; "oh, you mean, run a typewriter. No."</p> + +<p>"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will +discovered—er—met you?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> And didn't you run—that is, operate—a typing +machine there?"</p> + +<p>"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and +I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer +sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a +moment.</p> + +<p>Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench.</p> + +<p>"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning +on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay +here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or +something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for +something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is—some of +them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars."</p> + +<p>"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out +luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you, +there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting. +Baldheaded men! You <i>are</i> a rum one."</p> + +<p>"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly; +"who was your servant this time last year?"</p> + +<p>"Ah—sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> words were apologetic, but the +tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to +the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve, +but it's <i>wickid</i>—poor old Will!"</p> + +<p>Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She +did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh +and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when +she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped +about now with a casual and proprietary air—turning the shower on in +the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with +young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")—laying out a +simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe—shaking out a +folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end +of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring. +But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep +on in the same way.</p> + +<p>Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out +through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a +leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at +the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her +face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>modiste had corseted +her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not +increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk +stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her +short neat walking-skirt.</p> + +<p>She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line +crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon +"off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage +downtown.</p> + +<p>Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter +from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any +further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her +maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note, +which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of +John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability, +actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking +her back to the farm.</p> + +<p>She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching +this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day.</p> + +<p>Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and +stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed +in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> Nixon; the postmark +showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to +one of the side-tables and opened it.</p> + +<p>"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I +said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the +like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we +wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the +train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police +onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of +your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind, +itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to +do."</p> + +<p>Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the +letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon!</p> + +<p>When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled +the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung +javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she +leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in +her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had +been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy +clouds had come up and that, already, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> showed here and there on +the glass, the splash of a raindrop.</p> + +<p>As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware +gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy +decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis +which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the +postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of +the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to +step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney +drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner +of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky" +hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little +to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked +soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head +passenger?"</p> + +<p>"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily +forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the +tonneau door.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly, +then dropped them and put her head on one side.</p> + +<p>"You ken sit in front if you so prefer, lady," Jimmy answered, with +emphasis of politeness, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> he closed the tonneau again, and opened the +fore-door. Daisy had no sooner hopped in and seated herself than the +rain came on heavily. Jimmy, reaching up, let down the storm-curtains on +both sides and buttoned them fast before he started the car.</p> + +<p>"Thanks so much, chauffeur," acknowledged Daisy, smiling up sidewise as +she mimicked his manner.</p> + +<p>"Don't mention it, madam," deprecated Jimmy Knight, throwing in his +clutch. The car skidded slightly on the arch of the pavement, but ran +smooth and straight, as the engine, in the street-centre, picked up +speed. Jimmy's gloved finger mechanically "gave her gas" or advanced the +spark, as occasion required. Outside, the rain poured steadily, misting +the mica peep-holes in the storm-curtains and half-blinding the +windshield. The car stopped frequently for additional passengers; and +soon the tonneau was filled with dour figures in wet raincoats that +rustled shrilly as the owners moved, watching in a fidget for home +streets.</p> + +<p>Said one of the passengers, a girl, as, leaning back in her seat after +glancing around the edge of the storm-curtain, her eyes fell on Daisy's +fashionably-clad figure:</p> + +<p>"Some swell jane in the front seat with the driver, Lil."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>The remark was made with unmannerly distinctness; and the speaker's +companion, another girl of the same commonplace city type, made answer, +also in a tone purposely raised to reach Daisy's ear:</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, we all know what them dolled-up kind is."</p> + +<p>"Hey!" Jimmy Knight's head jerked around, and a glinting iris swam into +that corner of his eye-socket next the last speaker, "do you skirts want +to get out o' this car head-first? If not, shut up!"</p> + +<p>The second girl looked at the first one.</p> + +<p>"Well, the <i>very</i> idea!" she said audibly, after a second or two.</p> + +<p>"The idosity of him!" commented Girl Number One, also in a loud tone; +"some friend, I guess. They all have their friends."</p> + +<p>Jimmy turned toward the curb, and threw on the brake. As the car skidded +to a standstill, he banged open the tonneau door.</p> + +<p>"Get out!" he said. "Go on—the both of you! Get to hell out of here! +Keep your darned fares."</p> + +<p>There was that in Jimmy's tone and look which caused the two to act +promptly.</p> + +<p>"Some gentleman!" remarked Girl Number Two, as she descended on the wet +street.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter," fired back Number<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> One, as they walked away, +heads up, "we live on the next street, anyway."</p> + +<p>"That's ten cents I owe you," said Daisy to Jimmy Knight, dimpling.</p> + +<p>Jimmy did not answer—at least, not in words. He put his lips together, +slammed home the clutch and the car leaped forward.</p> + +<p>By the end of another ten minutes the last two of the passengers in the +back portion of the jitney had reached their home corner, and the car +was empty except for Daisy and Jimmy.</p> + +<p>"I'll take y' home, lady," he said, brusquely; "no coat—get wet to the +skin—this here rain."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," aped Daisy, formally. Then she put her chin in the air, and +silence reigned.</p> + +<p>"What <i>you</i> mad at?" came Jimmy's voice, presently. "Who said they +didn't 'feel like' marryin', and then went straight off and married +money? Not me. You ain't got a thing in the world to be sore at: I have, +an' I'm darned good and sore. I didn't think it was in you, Kid—honest, +I didn't.... Here we are at your door. Get out! don't set there, with +the servants maybe lookin' out of the windows."</p> + +<p>Daisy's face was red as she dismounted. She made a step away, then came +back.</p> + +<p>"I'm—I'm—", she began, the color on her cheeks deepening.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you are," said Jimmy Knight, dryly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> "good an' plenty. No use o' +standin' there and chewin' the fat now. Get into the house, and get them +wet duds off. You give me a pain, you do!"</p> + +<p>The car, with a scornful roar, shot off along the driveway of the Ware +grounds, and Daisy was alone. Presently something rolled down her cheek +and ran into the corner of her mouth. It had a salt taste. It was a +tear.</p> + +<p>"Some folk wad still be findin' something tae greet about, even if they +had the warld with a wire dike aboot it," remarked Jean, who was now +chief (under Lady Frances, of course) in the Ware kitchen; regarding +Daisy in her keen and kind scrutinizing way, as the latter, entering the +room, sat down moodily in a chair, dropped her hands into her lap, and +stared before her with pensive wet lashes lowered; "Man! lassie, but +ye're ill tae suit!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Bleak Two.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The November draught swept frostily down from the tracks to the station +subway where Daisy, in her smart furs, stood, some three months later, +waiting for the passengers from the train which had just roared into the +great iron-ceiled shed overhead. She could not help thinking of the day +when, gazing wonderingly about her, she had trotted alongside the +self-assured and patronising Fred Beatty through this very +way—forgetting, on that occasion, her travel-soiled blouse, in her +wonder and rapture as the city rose about her like a warm sun-glowing +tide. Only six months ago!</p> + +<p>As the passengers from the newly-arrived train commenced to file along +the corridor, Daisy, watching from her place in line, found her interest +centred almost as much in looking for some forlorn and eager little +person like that self of her present memory, as in "keeping her eye +peeled" (in accordance with the request contained in a recently-received +letter) for John and Lovina Nixon. But the travellers on this train were +nearly all either blase souls of the "drummer" type, who have no wonder +left for anything <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>beneath the sun, or badger-gray country people who +looked as though they were on a business trip and were doing mental +arithmetic relating to hotel-bills as they stumped along. All bored, +dull, worried or indifferent. No gay, no dancing, no holiday souls in +the whole drab-faced file—at almost the end of which came stony-faced +John Nixon with his square beard, dingy skin, harshly-drawn brows and +mouth, and small suspicious eyes; and thin, stooped, fault-finding +Lovina, with her sharp nose, her glance of ill-surmise, and bonnet +pinned teeteringly on her top-knot.</p> + +<p>Recollection blew on Daisy like a cold wave with her first view of them; +but the feeling passed, and she found herself waiting mischievously to +see if they would recognize her.</p> + +<p>John Nixon passed dourly on; but Lovina's hawklike eyes, as she drew +opposite to where Daisy stood, found her daughter instantly.</p> + +<p>"Well, mother," Daisy drew her cape of sables about her shoulders and, +moulding her features into a welcoming smile—which, when facing Lovina +Nixon, required an effort—stepped forward.</p> + +<p>The mother's chin came out. Her eyes drew to button-like points. There +was nothing maternal about the look. It was merely a glance which +bespoke ill-expectation gratified.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>"John!" she chirped, to the stepfather, who had meandered on, "here!"</p> + +<p>John Nixon turned and came back. His brows knitted as he glanced from +his wife to the girl in her splendid furs; then, as his eyes travelled +to Daisy's face, he gave vent to an expression which sounded like, +"Ur-rh!"</p> + +<p>"Look at this!" said Lovina Nixon; catching an end of the sable cape, +holding it up for her husband's scrutiny, and then tossing it from her +and making a motion of dusting off her hands; "You know what that means, +I s'pose, John?"</p> + +<p>"Ay," said John Nixon, "ay-hay."</p> + +<p>"Disgraced!" said Lovina Nixon; "Disgraced! Oh, you—you thing! Just +wait till I get you home! Just you wait!"</p> + +<p>Daisy's cheeks warmed at this. But, a moment after, her indignation +changed to an impulse of roguery: she would let these two, for the +present, believe the things they thought!</p> + +<p>"I s'pose you can show us a respectable hotel," said her mother. "But +remember—you don't get out of my sight again. You stay right with me in +the hotel, till we leave town. Carry this valise for me."</p> + +<p>Daisy dimpled with devilment as she obeyed this refreshingly familiar +instruction; and, accentuating her figure-lines as she walked, for the +especial benefit of the furtively-watching couple,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> she led the way to +where Tim Davitt, the Wares' chauffeur, waited outside the depot with +the limousine.</p> + +<p>"What's this?" demanded Lovina Nixon, surveying the vehicle, "a livery +rig?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, mother," said Daisy, smiling aside at the chauffeur, as Davitt, +touching his hat, held the door open. The mother, knocking her bonnet +askew against the top of the car, blundered to the farther end of a +seat. John Nixon lumbered in after her. Then Daisy, after a low-toned +"Home, Timmy," hopped in and snuggled mischievously against her +stepfather, who was in the centre of the seat.</p> + +<p>"Don't ye be 'fraid," he leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, in her +ear, "I'll not let yur Moh whup ye."</p> + +<p>Turning street-corners smoothly and swiftly, the limousine soon reached +the home grounds and was brought by Tim Davitt, deftest of chauffeurs, +to a soft gliding halt before the long front veranda of the Ware house.</p> + +<p>"Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and +her husband followed Daisy up the steps.</p> + +<p>"Oh—not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered +her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, +polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> the right led into the +library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in +the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady +Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the +supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office.</p> + +<p>"Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter +suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive +volume with brass binding and buckle.</p> + +<p>"Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer +expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the +sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing +as live fire.</p> + +<p>Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; +and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record +of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Choice of the Dray.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon.</p> + +<p>As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him, +Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a +chair and cocked <i>his</i> feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon +might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only +one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace, +Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that +locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware; +but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned, +in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling +with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his +chair.</p> + +<p>As far, however, as putting Nixon at his ease was concerned, Sir William +need not have troubled. It was an oft-enunciated maxim of John Nixon's +that whatever he did was right, if he did it. "Do's you wanter," was the +way Nixon put it; "dun't ast nobuddy fur nawthun."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>Presently, noting that the moistened area in front of the fireplace +threatened to overflow and inundate the flooring about the tiles, Sir +William jumped up, as though with a sudden inspiration and said, smiting +Nixon playfully on his tree-stump shoulder:</p> + +<p>"Take you on at billiards upstairs, old chap!"</p> + +<p>"Ur-rh?" Another salivation dampened the tiling as Nixon twisted his +stocky torso about.</p> + +<p>"I was about to say," Sir William pursued—having gathered from his +guest's tone and attitude that John Nixon did not know anything about +playing billiards—"that I would take you on at a game of billiards, +only it's so jolly uninteresting. Shall we stroll out and see the deer?"</p> + +<p>"Ain't interested in deers," said Nixon, "'n I wun't budge a step to see +nawthun I dun't want for to see. Never <i>would</i>."</p> + +<p>"You're jolly well right," agreed Sir William; "I can thoroughly +sympathize with you, Nixon, old man.... Silly things, deer, after +all—aren't they?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you, though," Nixon arose, grunted, stretched, scratched, shook +his legs, and, with a certain awesome gapping sound and a gust of fetid +breath, yawned in his host's face, "what I <i>will</i> do, English. Take me +somewhurs whurr I ken git a schooner o' beer—thuh drinks on you, mind, +fur I ain't got a cent to spare—an' I'll go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> along, every steppuh the +way. How des that ketch you?"</p> + +<p>"Happy thought!" Sir William clapped his guest heartily on the back. +"Bright idea! Nixon, you're a man after my own heart. Half a jiff, till +I bring our hats and coats."</p> + +<p>The two left the house by the side door; but, as they reached the gate +of the grounds, Sir William on the excuse that he had forgotten his +pocket-book, requested Nixon to walk on slowly, and himself hurried back +to the house.</p> + +<p>"Was you tannin' thuh leather furr a new bill-book, er whutt?" demanded +John Nixon, testily, as his host, after quite a lapse of time, rejoined +him.</p> + +<p>"I really must apologise, old chap—I really must. Shan't let it occur +again," Sir William said, good-humoredly. He could not very well tell +Nixon that he had spent the interval in personally cleaning up with +pieces of newspaper the mess by the fireplace, for fear Lady Frances +should happen in and see it while they were away.</p> + +<p>Upstairs, in Lady Frances' own sitting-room—a big, airy apartment, in +which, on quiet afternoons, she read or sewed or knitted, or napped in +the old arm-chair she had brought with her from overseas—the venerable +lady of the house had set herself the task of entertaining the mother of +her son's wife.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"Ineffably, innately common and nasty-natured," had been her inward +pronouncement when first she faced Lovina Nixon; but there had been no +outward sign, although one who knew the old gentlewoman's ways might +have discerned a more careful and precise politeness in her attitude. +Now, on this afternoon of the last day of the Nixons' stay, which had +endured, for what Lady Frances had termed, in a matin soliloquy, "three +dreadful days", she had steeled herself to the duty of making the time +pass agreeably until evening and train-time should bring deliverance.</p> + +<p>Ada, the maid, had brought the tea-urn and "curate"; and now the three +women—Lady Frances in her big chair; Mrs. John Nixon dangling one of +the fine china tea-cups, which she had drained at a draught, from her +forefinger, and eating cake with her elbow on the table and the cake +scattering crumbs as she gesticulated with the hand that held it; and +Daisy holding a skein of yarn, from which Lady Frances was winding a +ball—sat ill-assorted in the large room.</p> + +<p>"Do have some more tea, Mrs. Nixon, won't you?" invited Lady Frances, +eyeing the suspended teacup nervously. "Daisy, dear, give your mother +some more tea."</p> + +<p>But, as Mrs. Nixon had already had three cups, the urn was empty. Daisy +hopped up and carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> the shapely silver receptacle to the kitchen, to +get some more hot water from Jean's kettle. As the door closed after her +daughter, Mrs. Lovina Nixon leaned over toward Lady Frances with a +greenish light in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I s'pose it ain't no use o' tellin' you, Mam, now," she said; "I mean, +now that your son's tight married to her and can't get loose, that yen +girl run away from us. Yes, sir—run away with a feller. Never seen +nawthun like it in all m' born days. Never did." And Mrs. Lovina +nid-nodded and sowed caraway seed on the carpet in showers as she +vibrated the cake.</p> + +<p>"Just like'r, though," she supplemented, after a moment, "so it was. +'Xpected somethin' like it, all along. Warn't s'prised one iota."</p> + +<p>"Your daughter," Lady Frances said—very slowly, and governing her voice +with difficulty—"has quite voluntarily told us all the circumstances +you mention. I—I really do not think," the old gentlewoman could barely +keep the frost out of her tone, "that we should discuss her in her +absence. I really don't think we should."</p> + +<p>"Oh, well," Mrs. John Nixon's radial arm described a flying circle of +cake-crumbs about her chair as she indicated, with a sweeping gesture, +that she washed her hands of the matter, "if you're satisfied, we are."</p> + +<p>"Daisy," Lady Frances said, levelly, "has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> proved a very fine and frank +and sweet young woman. Her adaptability, too, has been most +satisfactory. I have become very much attached to her—and I really +cannot listen, nor will I listen, to anything against my son's wife."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right, all—right," Lovina Nixon smacked her cup down. "I +wish't you'd had a siege of her like I've had, so I do. You'd talk +different."</p> + +<p>"I think," Lady Frances Ware rose out of her chair with remarkable vigor +for eighty-two, "that you have probably taken a wrong course with +her—in fact, I feel quite sure you must have taken a wrong course with +her. Now, as I proposed before, we will change the subject. Would you +care to go for a motor ride? I shall tell Davitt, the chauffeur, to have +you back here in time for a leisurely and comfortable meal before your +train."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Lovina Nixon shrugged. "Might's well do that as anything else, I +s'pose."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances rang the bell. "Telephone Davitt," she said, to Ada the +maid, "to bring around the larger car. Then tell Lady Ware her mother +would like to do a little shopping, and wishes her to go as well. Take +my hand-bag with you, and tell Lady Ware she may use what money she +likes from my purse, if she is short."</p> + +<p>A quarter of an hour later, Lady Frances, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>having seen the motor car off +down the drive, returned to her sanctum, sat down quietly in her big +chair, and took up her sewing. Presently, however, her needle paused, +and she found herself, after a habit she had, drifting off into +half-audible soliloquy.</p> + +<p>"William said," she murmured musingly, "that he thought the man a fair +masculine type, who might have developed well, with proper opportunity. +But that woman! Thoroughly nasty, ingrate, underhand. An improvement in +manners would only be a hopelessly inadequate veneer. A nature such as +she has would not be mended by the opportunities of three generations +and more. I do hope William does <i>not</i> intend to take those people in +tow, for I am really not equal to it."</p> + +<p>A telephone interrupted the reverie of Lady Frances. Five minutes later, +pale and anxious, but not forgetting the practicality that had been her +lifetime's habit, Lady Frances Ware was in her son's rooms across the +hall, turning down the bed for the reception of Sir William who, knocked +down by a motor dray as he was piloting the half-drunken Nixon across a +crowded street downtown was being brought home in the ambulance.</p> + +<p>Nixon, reaching the hotel bar that afternoon, had discovered an +unforeseen weakness for what he termed "beer"—a word that with him, +meant everything drinkable in the alcoholic line—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> had, in spite of +Ware's remonstrances, continued to imbibe beyond all reasonable limits: +dragging Sir William, who felt responsible and could not well abandon +him, to a big bar in the central portion of the city, and even paying +for his own drinks after Ware had flatly refused to take the risk of +buying any more for him.</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> rather a thirsty chap, you know," Ware, who had himself taken +only the original proposed glass of refreshment, had remarked, as at +last he had managed to get Nixon's wobbling head faced toward home. It +was while the two were in the act of crossing a street to a taxi Ware +had hailed, that the motor dray had run the baronet down. With a last +half-spasmodic push, he had thrust Nixon out of harm's way, and the +latter had not received so much as a scratch.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">John Nixon's Invitation.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well," said Sir William, a little feebly to Daisy, who sat on a stool +beside his chair, with her head resting on the cushioned arm in such a +position that Ware could stroke her hair with his "good" hand, "this has +jolly well taught me to look about, on street-crossings. I suppose I am +what the tram people would call a 'jay walker'. I say, Puss—aren't you +sorry you married such a silly ass. Be frank, now! Say I'm a blundering +idiot."</p> + +<p>"No, you're not," said Daisy; "how's your arm feeling?"</p> + +<p>"Tip-top," Ware, as he replied offhand about the broken limb, regarded +the girl with a bright and tender approval.</p> + +<p>"And your head?" continued Daisy, "does it ache much, there where the +bruise is? Let me get some fresh ice."</p> + +<p>"For the third and last time—no!" Sir William responded, flipping her +ear; "this ice is cold enough: it has clotted every vein in my bally +forehead. I say, kitten, isn't that somebody knocking?"</p> + +<p>The knock which sounded on the door—that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the small sitting-room of +Sir William's bedroom suite—was clumsily-knuckled and hesitating. It +sounded once, audibly—then a second time, feebly—and, after the second +knock, the scuffle of a heavy foot receding indicated that the knocker +was going away without entering. Daisy went quickly and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"Come on, Dad," she said.</p> + +<p>Nixon stopped in the hall, his back half-turned, and spoke to his +foster-daughter over-shoulder.</p> + +<p>"You go on about your business a while," he said, gruffly, "I want to +talk to the boss."</p> + +<p>Ware, hearing this dialogue from his chair, smiled queerly to himself.</p> + +<p>"Right-O," he called, "run along, my dear, for a jiffy; see if Mother +has any messages for us. Come on, Nixon, old chap!"</p> + +<p>Reddening in an odd way at the cordial tone, John Nixon, his hands +hanging awkwardly and his beard canted aside in a sheepish attitude, +came in, pushing the door shut behind him. He lowered himself into the +nearest chair.</p> + +<p>"How are <i>you</i>?" said Sir William, humorously and companionably, "I +say—that <i>was</i> a jolly cataclysm! Lucky to get off with our lives, +what?" Nixon, sheepish but still characteristically blunt, came straight +to his point.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't have got off with no life," he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> "if you hadn't slung +me out o' the way and got stepped on yourself."</p> + +<p>"Rubbish!" said Ware, briefly; "all the same, it's good of you to put it +that way, old chap. Makes me feel less mortified at my stupidity in +standing there like a post and getting knocked down. Let's jolly well +talk of something else."</p> + +<p>John Nixon's head came up and back. He put his right hand down on his +knee-cap with a slap that could be heard across the room.</p> + +<p>"Don't you go tryin' for to head me off, English," he said, "I done +wrong and I'm a-goin' to own up to it. Here, I been walkin' around your +nice house here, a-spittin' all over the floor as if it was a hotel—it +kind of seems like that to me, because we don't sling on no style out +west here—and all because I never did like an Englishman. They always +make me contrairy. When I'm with an Englishman, I talk rough and go +bullin' around, just to be the opposite to what I think he is—"</p> + +<p>Sir William leaned out over the arm of his chair and extended his +uninjured hand toward Nixon.</p> + +<p>"Put her there, as you say in Canada," he said, beamingly, "Nixon, +you're a brick. And if we English make you Canadians feel contrary, I'll +admit we bring it on ourselves. We, too, are a contrary people; and the +more you try to put on this roughness of manner, which is not your own,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +the more we try to put on this finicky niceness, which so rubs you the +wrong way. Just because we desire to rub you the wrong way. And so we +see-saw, back and forth, until eventually we come to fisticuffs, or +worse. Nixon, I believe you've hit the peg on which hangs the whole +difficulty between England and Canada. Now that we two understand each +other, let's set an example to our peoples: let's be natural. Put her +there, I say."</p> + +<p>John Nixon put her there, and the two shook hands—an inter-imperial +handshake.</p> + +<p>"How would you like for to come out to my place a while, English?" he +said, after a moment. "As I said, we don't sling on no style nor +nothin', but we never know what it is to go hungry. The roof don't let +in no rain, neither; and you can't sleep on nothin' more comfortable +than a bedtick stuffed with prairie hay."</p> + +<p>"Ripping!" Sir William, "knocked about" as he was, all but hoisted +himself to his feet in his enthusiasm; "I say, Nixon, when shall we +start?"</p> + +<p>"Next train, if you say so. Anyway," John Nixon rubbed an eyebrow with +his gray-bristled forefinger, "I'm worryin' about the stock, and I want +to get back home. Got any drinkin-water around, English?"</p> + +<p>Sir William was about to touch the bell, when Nixon, glancing toward the +bathroom, saw basin, tap and tumbler.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p><p>"Don't ring, for me," he said, getting up, "I can work the fasset +myself, without no help botherin' around."</p> + +<p>As his guest returned from the bathroom, sweeping the water-drops from +his beard by drawing his hand down over it, Sir William said:</p> + +<p>"Will you be offended if I ask you a question—a straight +question—Nixon, old chap?"</p> + +<p>"You couldn't offend me now, English," said John Nixon, "anyhow straight +questions goes, between us, after this. That's our agreement, ain't it?"</p> + +<p>"That's it, exactly," said Ware, "so my question is this: Why do you +persist in calling me 'English'? It sounds a bit like some sort of an +imputation. Do you see my point?"</p> + +<p>"I don't foller you," said John Nixon, as he laid his hand on the +door-knob; "the only reason I call you 'English' is because your reel +name keeps slippin' my mind."</p> + +<p>"It shouldn't be hard to remember," said Ware.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" queried Nixon.</p> + +<p>"To you, henceforth," said the baronet, "it is—Bill."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's you, all over again," said Lovina Nixon, late that evening, +as she thrust into her iron-gray hair two or three matutinal hairpins, +in places where they would not jab her, and clambered into bed, "astin' +these tony English people<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> out to the farm, to turn up their noses at +everything. Well, Daise'll have to look after them, for I got enough to +do with the housework and the milkin'. Is the old woman coming along, +too?"</p> + +<p>John Nixon yawned, turned his back to her, and wrapped around himself +two-thirds of the bed-clothes.</p> + +<p>"You go on to sleep," he said, "you'll feel better in the mornin'."</p> + +<p>Lovina, however, continued on rebelliously, although the rest of her +grumbling was sunk to a smothered monotone by her nightly habit of +sleeping with the blankets over her head; but her last thought before +she dropped off to sleep was that now at last she would have a chance to +bring from the back of the farmhouse cupboard the "weddin' set" of neat +china that had been waiting there during nearly a quarter of a century +for an appropriate guest.</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think I shall go, William," said Lady Frances, adjusting +the cushion at the back of her son's head and handing him the evening +newspaper, "this northwest winter is here now—don't forget that it's +November, not May, outside—and the plan sounds to me rather too much +like Polar exploration. You say you intend to go out for the winter. +Well, if you survive the experience, perhaps I shall join you in the +spring. But surely you're not going to start on this wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> expedition +the way you are. I am told it is difficult to go on snowshoes with a +crutch. Those people, too! William, you are insane."</p> + +<p>"Mother, dear," Ware patted the capable old hand that rested on his +chair-arm, "you said that once before, you remember. And that reminds +me—we haven't discussed this with Daisy. Let's have her in now, if +she's about."</p> + +<p>"She's about," rejoined Lady Frances—a little sarcastically, but with +an unconcealed accent of motherly affection—, "she's having tea with +McTavish, the cook."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">In the Blizzard.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Shove on all the clothes you can get on to you, Eng—Bill," counselled +John Nixon, sucking his teeth shrilly as he donned a lupine-looking +wombat coat and reached for his mittens, "and after that put on an extry +sweater, as they say. She's a-going to blow."</p> + +<p>The place was the Toddburn hotel, where Sir William and John Nixon, left +there by the warm and friendly train at 11 a.m., had now, an hour and a +half later, come out of the dining-room with a good meal "under their belts".</p> + +<p>"You don't need to hurry, gettin' your duds on, Bill," John Nixon said, +as he went out, "the Missis will be pokin' around the store down there +for an hour yet, and Jim's buyin' himself a new suit, to have for when +Daise gets here. I've told him she's married now, but it don't seem to +sink in.... You better stay here and keep warm till we fetch the team +round to the door."</p> + +<p>Sir William stayed—not to keep warm, but to look about him, like a boy +at a circus. Somehow, the effect of the cold dry tingling air that +resided in the streets of this prairie hamlet seemed to percolate in +from outside, in spite of storm <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>window and door, striking upon the +nostrils bracingly and making one "feel good" in spite of the blue fog +of tobacco-smoke and the odor of wet leather and fur. The effects of +Ware's accident, now a week old, had pretty well passed, and the +hereditary health of the Wares glowed in his face again and sparkled in +his eyes.</p> + +<p>He stood with his back toward the window, his hands tucked into the +side-pockets of his Norfolk coat, his attitude the Englishman's +inimitable easy and negligent one which imparts to the stiffest suit the +comfortable effect of flannels, and glanced down the short perspective +of the Toddburn hotel sitting room and bar, which were in a kind of +suite, with a swinging-door between.</p> + +<p>The roof of this place was very low, and the walls were very near one, +and after the spacious places in which Ware had lived his life, it was a +bit like standing in a piano-box. If the situation of this hotel had +been a narrow byway in a city, it would have been a slum, a locality of +death, a room of hollow coughings and faces dreary with debility and +gloom. But here, on the wide prairie it was in effect a sanitarium, if +one might judge by the figures that breezed about, the harsh but +deep-lunged voices that came out of the midst of steam-clouds made when +the outside door opened, the faces glowing and tanned by gale and +snow-shine.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p><p>One only needed to listen a moment to the hearty laughing and the +sentences detached at random from the blend of cheery, companionable +greeting and rallying, to know that the minds of these western men were +as healthy as their bodies.</p> + +<p>"No, sir—I'd never go back on him. Bob an' me was neighbors +a-homesteadin'. It ain't his fault if he had to give up farmin' and get +a job in Jim McMillan's livery stable. His health give out—that's all."</p> + +<p>"Yes, sir, boy—she's a-goin' to blow up some harricane before dark. +This reminds me of yon day, four years ago—yous'll all remember the +time—when Elleck Hamilton an' me started out for home on the +bob-sleighs, pickled up to the eyebrows. Elleck, he was worse than me +when we started; but Elleck's as strong as a horse, and when she started +to blow, he slung off the effects of the licker like tossin' off a hat. +But the stuff had got a kind of a holt on me; I got cold and started for +to go to sleep. However, Elleck he seen me home safe. My face was froze +a little, that's all—but Elleck, he'd had to get out of his bob-sleigh +so many times to look after my team, that he'd froze both legs, one as +fur as the ankle and the other clare up to the knee. Had to have her +taken off. Never was any good after that, Elleck. He was worth about ten +thousand dollars when that happened; and to-day he's buyin' grain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> for +an elevator company, at seventy-five dollars a month. But I've done +pretty well myself, an' old Elleck knows this—that whenever his +pride'll let him quit work, he can come over to my place, and set down +by the stove, and put his bad leg up on a chair an' keep her there, for +life, even if he lives to be a hundred and fifty."</p> + +<p>Exclamation and anecdote rattled on; fog of tobacco-smoke and stench of +snow melting on fur filled the air; free grammar and the broad "a" had +unchecked currency in this organ-box of a western railway-hamlet hotel: +but Sir William Ware, standing by the iron-rodded window with +philosophic hands in his coat-pockets, had only one distinguishable +impression—that he was being educated, that this west was giving him +something denied by the university.</p> + +<p>This was Western Canada—blunt, gruff, western Canada. Not too forward +in making one's acquaintance; not too stiff and "standoffish". Not +caring sixpence—so long as you yourself were "all right"—who your +father was, nor how much money you were worth. Western Canada, where +nobody who works—or, if he can't or won't work, can tell a good +yarn—is allowed to starve. Western Canada, which never "picks" a fight, +but—well, just try to "run on" her!</p> + +<p>A raucous "hey!" brought Sir William about. Glancing out through the +window, in the direction<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of the hall, he saw John Nixon signalling to +him from the seat of a bob-sleigh. Hurrying on scarf and coat, Ware +hastened out, creaked across the sidewalk and smilingly awaited +instructions as to boarding this western vehicle of the long trail. It +had a high, green-painted double box. The front and rear seats were two +boards laid across the box and draped with gunny-sacks. The front seat +was occupied by John Nixon and Jim Burns, the hired man who had brought +the equipage in to meet the train. On the hind seat Lovina Nixon +perched, nothing of her visible except one stoical pioneer-woman eye +which looked out unwinkingly at Ware through a crack between folds of +gray shawl.</p> + +<p>"Climb in alongside the Missis, Bill," directed John Nixon, who had made +no special preparation for extreme weather conditions, other than to +pull his corduroy cap down over his ears, "We'll need to get a-goin', if +we're intendin' to strike home before we get blew off the trail. All set?"</p> + +<p>"All set, old chap," Sir William responded, as he tucked his end of the +goatskin robe around his knees and, in response to Lovina's mumbled +recommendation, felt with his toes for the extra brick which Nixon had +heated for him on the top of the livery stable stove; "it's a jolly good +thing Daisy decided to do as Mother wanted and stay in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> town for a week. +Perhaps we shall have a better day, to bring her out."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the gal wouldn't mind this," Nixon rejoined, casually, after he had +"clucked" the horses into a trot down the drifted street; "no, sir, +Bill; she'd have got you off that seat, a-runnin' behind in the +sleigh-track, as soon as your toes would start for to feel nippy. It +would take a mighty high wind to chase Daise into the house in the +winter-time, except when dinner is ready. Her and the dog is about even, +when it comes to standin' the cold. Ain't that so mother?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, it's so," Lovina's voice, muffled but still recognizable in +its sharpness, said through the swathes of shawl, "except when I ust to +want her to fetch in an armful o' wood or a pail of water. Then you +couldn't budge her from behint the stove."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on," Nixon, happy to be on the way home to the "stock" again, +swung his whip jovially but harmlessly over the backs of the horses. +"Wait till you see the happy reunion between her and Rove, Bill, when +she gets here next week. It'll prove what I say about them bein' chums. +Rove, he would have no use for a girl that stayed in the house: you +couldn't coax him any closer to in-doors than the chip-pile, not if it +was sixty below zero."</p> + +<p>The two bay sleigh-ponies—a light team had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> been chosen, as they could +stand quick travel over difficult roads better than the heavy-fetlocked, +big-haunched, working horses—trotted along sure-footed on the hard +ridge of the trail. The last house on Toddburn's one short street was +soon passed. Turning out at a wide angle from the railroad, at a point +where Ware saw one of the country's tall red elevators, with staccato +explosion of gasoline engine, pouring wheat into a freight-car, the +prairie road set off alone across the white country.</p> + +<p>The snowfall had been unseasonably heavy this autumn; and Sir William, +looking over the side of the sleigh-box at a point where some passing +horse had accidentally inched out into the soft snow and put down a leg, +saw a hole nearly fifty inches deep. Plainly, if the bob-sleigh should +slip off the packed hard ridge of the road, it meant a wholesale +"spill", a floundering of horses, a chilling to the marrow of all +concerned, and much delay. If it happened after dark, with the +blizzard—the effect of which Ware had often watched from the study +window of his city home—at its height, it <i>would</i> be a bit awkward.</p> + +<p>"Was you ever out in a blizzard?" said John Nixon, suddenly: as though +the thought, like that of a group of castaways in an open boat under +squall-clouds, had become by sympathy communal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> "No? Well, you're +a-goin' to be out in one to-night, English—"</p> + +<p>"Come, come, now, old chap," reminded Ware, "no national imputations, +remember. I thought it was to be 'Bill'—wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Well, Bill," conceded Nixon, "as I was about to say, you're goin' to be +out to-night in the finest whoopin' he-blizzard since '97. I can smell +her a-comin'—all through me."</p> + +<p>From the sleigh—which now, with the village in the distance behind and +a wholly roofless horizon-line before, was the sole, small centre of +life and companionship in the midst of a snowy waste—Ware looked across +the drifts toward the west, where the sun of the short, late-November +afternoon was trending low. The trail ran almost due north, to where the +white line of the horizon met the pale blue of that part of the sky +distant from the transfiguring sun. Between these two cardinal +points—north and west—the voice of winter megaphoned from +northwestward that bitter weather was at hand.</p> + +<p>The distant groves roared softly, like surf heard against the wind. +Afar, the sound had the similitude of hoarse, enormous exhalation; near +at hand, it was like the wash and hiss of water. The whole surface of +the prairie that had been fixed and frozen, now took on an aspect of +life, of ceaseless scintillation and quivering like ripples<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> in the sun. +Ware, looking along the bright faces of the drifts, saw that this +phenomenon was caused by multitudinous lines of hurrying snow-grains, +serpentining over those white billows in the track of the wind, building +with a wondrous rapidity little ribs and ridges of snow in the lee of +every bump and projection in their path.</p> + +<p>In the early afternoon, it had been warm, even to thawing-point. But +now, as the wind rose, it shuttled with a sharp cold the woof of the +air. Earlier, the air had been clear and speckless as the void above +quiet water, and bland in its touch upon the skin. Now, it was clouded +with gathering snow-atoms, hard as sand, whose impact upon face and +hands was needle-sharp and whose irritation of the eyeballs blinded the +vision with rheum. Earlier, the sky had been bright-blue from horizon to +zenith. Now, it was half-fogged with a kind of smoke-blue mist, that was +nothing other than the first draft of a trillion-atomed host of +snow-motes drawn up to their unfriendly function by the cold whirlwind +that should general their attack upon the prairie's winter peace.</p> + +<p>The blizzard is like, and yet contrary to, the thunderstorm that is the +crowning phenomenon of summer. It is like, in that it is preceded by a +"weather-breeding" twelve hours or so of undue heat; it is like, in the +effect of its attack; it is like, in its whipping of the outcast, its +lashing of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> earth; it is somewhat like in its roar, although there +is no thunder to diapason the storm of mid-winter. But it is contrary in +color, and in duration, and in direction—or rather, lack of direction. +For the color of a blizzard is not a definite black, but a blinding +white; its duration is not a few moments, but long hours of terrific, +unabated wind-energy; its direction is everywhere—that is to say, you +can turn your back to a thunderstorm, but you cannot turn your back to a +blizzard. If you face to windward, you get the volley of the "spindrift" +direct; if you face leeward, you get it round a corner, just as +stingingly. To the wanderer, a blizzard is a succession of intersecting +whirlwinds, not a direct blast from a definite point in the compass.</p> + +<p>Sir William Ware, in this sleigh that was inching its course—at least, +so it seemed—across the long ten miles that separated Toddburn village +from the Nixon farm, felt an odd sense of dependence as he watched the +gathering of the storm. There was in his whole fine body and brain no +fibre of fear, as far as personal danger was concerned—for, besides the +heritage of his family and race, he was too much the philosopher to +regard the chance of death with anything but curiosity. But he felt awed +by the cold, the great white vastness, the thrilling mighty wind—not +yet at anything like its crescendo, either—and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> feeling that his +sole link with safety, this bluff Canadian pioneer who held the destiny +of that sleighful in his rough-mittened hands that held the horses' +reins and his wonderful, but not infallible, pioneer's sense of +direction, was plainly a bit anxious in spite of all his experience.</p> + +<p>"Suppose we have a song, old chap," he leaned forward and shouted in +Nixon's ear; "start up something you know, and we'll all join in the chorus."</p> + +<p>But John Nixon shook a diffident head. "I got all I can do, handlin' the +team, Bill," he said—in his Canadian way avoiding by the excuse the +admission that he could not sing. "Try Jim, here—he's the singin' bird +out on our ranch. Let's have that there about the 'Mistle-tree Bough', +Jim—you ain't got nothin' on your mind just now."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns, a man of few words and short, cleared his throat and, without +preamble, started "The Mistletoe Bough":</p> + +<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<div>The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,</div> +<div>The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,</div> +<div>The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ay</div> +<div>A-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;</div> +<div class="i5">O Mistletoe Bough!</div> +<div class="i5">O Mistletoe Bough!</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>There is something "catchy" about the words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and the tune of this old +song of a famous tragedy, whose human interest has carried it as far +around the world as "Home, Sweet Home". Ware had heard it in his nursery +when it was reasonably new. He joined in it now, with a vigor that +fended off the dolor of the stormy sunset and the inching sleigh on its +high lonely trail. Nixon swung his whip in time; even a diffident +humming came from the shawl that wrapped the head of Mrs. Lovina Nixon.</p> + +<p>After the refrain following the last stanza was concluded, Jim Burns, on +his own initiative, started his favorite, the "Blizzard Song of +Meadowlea." It is a characteristic of prairie people to sing or to talk +about an especially gloomy phase of a present situation. The person who +has newly contracted rheumatism, for instance, is told glowingly by a +sympathetic visitor that, "Hank McCaffrey, he took it in the knee—just +where you got it, Joe—an' he's a-settin' on the same chair yit, an' +that's ten years ago." And if Mrs. Pelkey, on the northwest quarter of +Section Twenty-three, sneezes after peppering the meat in the +frying-pan, Mrs. Mair, over from the northeast quarter to borrow flour +for a baking of bread, remarks, "This is a bad season for to catch a +cold, Bella—right in the spring o' the year. I never saw a person yet +that tot'ly threw off a cold they caught in the month of Ape-rile."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>It was this prairie characteristic that possessed Jim Burns, when he +struck up the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea" in the face of a gathering +blizzard. This melody is a versified account of an actual happening, in +which a farmhouse in the School District of Meadowlea caught fire during +a blizzard and the family lost their lives in the storm.</p> + +<p>"I say, old son," Ware leaned and tapped the singer on the shoulder at +the conclusion of a line running: 'An' here an' there, in drifts of +snow, a frozen corpse they found', "that <i>is</i> a piquant tune, you know, +and you're in splendid voice—but shall we try something we all +know—something comic, for instance?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns paused reluctantly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, after a +moment; "how about 'The Dying Cowboy'?"</p> + +<p>"Splendid!" assented Sir William, "is that comic?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns rubbed his head ponderingly.</p> + +<p>"It ain't very comic, Bill," John Nixon explained, "but—I begin to see +your point—there ain't nothin' about blizzards in it. Let her go, Jim."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Ware, "let her go, Burns, old chap. Majority vote for 'The +Dying Cowboy'. What do <i>you</i> say, Mrs. Nixon?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't bother to ast the weemen folk, out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> in this country," Lovina +Nixon's voice came, muffled and sarcastic, from the depths of her shawl, +"we ain't got no say, even when it comes to invitin' pernicketty people +out to a house that ain't been swept nor dusted for two weeks."</p> + +<p>"I took and scrubbed the whole floor, Mam, two days ago," said Jim +Burns, in an injured voice. "The minute I got your letter that you was +comin' home, I peeled off and went to her, with snow-water an' soap." +Jim Burns did not add that he had scrubbed the farmhouse because he had +expected Daisy with the party.</p> + +<p>"Snow-water, eh?" Lovina's tone was half-hopeful, "well, Jim, you got +more sense than I thought you had. Did you scrub behind the stove?"</p> + +<p>"I scrubbed everywhere <i>but</i> there, Mam," said Jim Burns, a little +sheepishly.</p> + +<p>"Everywhere but where the most grease-spots is," Lovina threw up her +hands and lapsed again into brooding silence, "that's a man, all over +again; so it is."</p> + +<p>The last verse of "The Dying Cowboy" was snatched out of the mouths of +its singers by a great gust of wind and snow, scattering over the sleigh +like a wave breaking over a boat. Ware, concentrated on keeping the +sleighful "in good spirits", had for the moment almost forgotten the +storm; but now, rudely reminded of it by the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>bitter, stinging +snow-grains that assailed his face and drove deep between scarf and +neck, he drew tight the collar of his top-coat and looked up and about.</p> + +<p>The blizzard had not yet closed about them. But in the far and hither +distance it had thickened, blotting out the sun, that must now be almost +at the horizon. Above, one could catch faint passing glimpses of the +sky, beneath which the hurricane was throwing a dim-white canopy of +upblown snow. About and about, the prairie and the air were a uniform +quivering white. For perhaps a quarter-mile radius, one could still see +definitely the drifts and the half-buried willow and poplar scrub; but +beyond this the storm had built a superstructure, that was in opacity +like a wall, but bellied and blew like a curtain under the huge +inconstant impulse of the gale. Only in one respect was the motion of +this rampart steady and uniform. That was in respect to its gradual, +sure, terrific closing-in about the sleigh and its human handful. Ware, +watching it fascinated, thought of the cell in the famous tale of "The +Pit and the Pendulum", with its contracting circular wall that +precipitated the prisoner into a central abyss.</p> + +<p>No abyss yawned beneath the feet of the laboring horses nor the runners +of the creaking, inching sleigh. But that road they trod was like the +narrow path over a morass: all about it the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>footing was soft, deep, +delaying. If iron-shod hoof or steel-shod runner slipped, it meant loss +of time, lowering of precious bodily heat, fatigue, failing of the +heart—all preparations for that slowing-down of the restless +body-molecules to the final stoppage which should mark the cold triumph +of the frost:</p> + +<p>"And here and there, in drifts of snow—"</p> + +<p>"Ugh!" said Ware, humorously.</p> + +<p>But there was nothing comic in that nearing wall, whose base crept over +the drifts like the edge of a tide at flow.</p> + +<p>It might have been midnight, or a little before, when the Galician girl +whose function it had been to keep the fire going in the Nixon farmhouse +stove, saw a face move by the window outside, on the way to the door. +Mary had plenty of time to see it, for the face moved very slowly beyond +the frost-edged pane; and she noted that it was not the face of John +Nixon, with his corduroy cap, nor the red face under a "dogskin" cap, of +Jim Burns. Nor was the knock, which presently sounded faint and erratic +on the door-panel—like the chance rap of a frozen branch on a +window—recognizable as that of anybody she knew.</p> + +<p>She was a little afraid, as she listened to that rap which sounded as +though the visitor were half-asleep; but Mary knew enough about the +northwest not to keep a man standing outside on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> a night like this, no +matter who he might be. Accordingly, she ran and opened the door.</p> + +<p>"G'd ev'ng," said the blue lips of Sir William Ware, as he fumbled his +way across the doorjamb. Mary, glancing at his face, saw that uncanny +white patches covered his cheeks and that his nose was whitened to the +bridge. His feet, on the floor, dragged and scuffled like the ends of +cordwood sticks.</p> + +<p>Mary knew: she had spent five winters in the west.</p> + +<p>"You stay there," she said, backing Sir William out of the doorway with +a vigorous palm, "till I big pail ice-water bring. I fix you."</p> + +<p>"Ah, but—stop a bit," Ware spoke thickly; "your master—and +mistress—far along the trail—need help. We—Burns and I—followed the +horses here. Nixon stayed—with wife—she wouldn't leave the sleigh." He +stopped and leaned heavily back against the door frame. Mary saw that +his eyes were closing.</p> + +<p>"I fix you first," she said, snatching up an enormous wooden bucket, +throwing her apron over her head, and rushing out to the well. About her +the huge veil-ends of the storm swirled as, racing down the track of +light from the open doorway, she disappeared a moment into the roaring +dark; then, presently, came into view again, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>running, with the +newly-pumped icy water splashing over the edge of the bucket.</p> + +<p>Ware, his initiative suspended and the world appearing to race about him +in a dizzy flicker of white and glare and black, leaned upon the door. +He felt his legs giving way, but could not stiffen them; and presently +he fell into a sitting posture on the door-sill, with the wild night on +his right hand, and on his left the homely interior of the farmhouse +with its coal-oil lamp flaring frantically in the draught from the open +door.</p> + +<p>In this position, and with his eyes closed, Sir William felt a hand come +up to his face and rub so vigorously that the back of his head bumped +the door-panel with a jolt.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what's happening," was Sir William's vague thought, "but +let it happen, whatever it is. Let anything happen—now."</p> + +<p>The rubbing continued, with an occasional pause by the aggressor—that +might have been for more or less malicious scrutiny of his or her +work—and presently Sir William became aware of a slight tingling in a +face that up till now had been wholly without sensation. The tingling +grew to a glow; and with the glow came a bracing mental effect that +brought Ware's eyes open.</p> + +<p>"See—I fix your face," said the voice of Mary, the Galician girl, in a +self-congratulatory way, "now I take me your boots off." And, without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> +waiting for the word of consent, she ripped open the laces and drew off +Ware's boots and socks. After which Sir William, watching with a curious +half-interest, beheld her scoop up liberal handfuls of snow and commence +to rub the bared feet from toe to ankle, as she had rubbed the face.</p> + +<p>In the midst of this operation, a peal of bells sounded; and around the +corner of the house came Jim Burns, with a fresh team hitched to the +"jumper". Burns, a tough westerner, had been barely affected by the +storm, except for frozen cheeks and nose, which he had rubbed out down +at the stable. His feet, clad in thick felt "duffels", had escaped +freezing.</p> + +<p>"Hey-o;" he said, unconcernedly; "gittin' thawed out all right? Mary, I +got to go back for Jack and the Missis—the sleigh's stuck in a drift, +about two mile back along the trail. We cut the ponies loose, an' they +led us home, right up to the stable door. Jack, he was a-goin' to come +along too, at first, and fetch the Missis on his back—him and me would +have took turns carryin' her. But she wouldn't hear of it, so Jack he +told us to go on ahead. Said the ponies would take us home, all right, +and I could come back in the jumper when I got warmed up. But," Jim +Burns could not help a bit of western swagger, "I'm all right—I don't +need no warmin' up. Rustle me a couple<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> more blankets, Mary. I'll finish +rubbin' them feet out."</p> + +<p>"Aa, you go on, Jeem Burns," Mary, interested in this tall, +pleasant-faced man the storm had brought her, pushed Burns away; "You +know you where yon blankets is. You get them yourself—see!"</p> + +<p>"A-all right," the hired man, swinging his shoulders, stepped into the +farmhouse living-room, gathered up a pair of heavy gray blankets from +the rail bunk in a corner, brought the coal-oil can and refilled the +lantern he was to take with him, and then lighted the lantern.</p> + +<p>"I guess I can keep the trail all right, goin' out," he said, as he +stepped outside, "the wind, she'll be behind me. Comin' home, the +horses'll face it all right, they'll be that keen to get back into the +stable again. Well, so-long, yous; keep a good fire on, Mary."</p> + +<p>With this, Jim Burns tossed the blankets into the jumper, hopped in +after them and, standing up in the vehicle as though it was a +bob-sleigh, this conscious master of the northwest blizzard took off his +dogskin cap, whirled it jovially around his head, and whooped to the +horses. They broke into a trot, receding down the lee of the grove where +the snow came tumbling over the tree-tops in vaporous clouds, like smoke +from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> huge smoke-stack; and in a trice the night had swallowed them.</p> + +<p>"You come in now," said Mary, finally; "wait, I help you." And Sir +William Ware felt an arm, strong as the coil of a pythoness, constrict +his waist and lift him bodily to his now sore and burning feet. +Sensitive as they were, however, Sir William, putting away gentle Mary's +supporting arm, stood his full weight on those restored feet, rose on +his toes, turned them from side to side, and otherwise moved them to +bring back circulation and pliancy.</p> + +<p>"The doctor, he no cut them off now, eh?" commented Mary, glancing down +at the healthily-reddened members in a satisfied way. Ware turned toward +her instantly; stepped over; grasped her hand; shook it warmly.</p> + +<p>"Thanks, so much," he said, with a shining gratitude, "and I wish there +was a more expressive word I might use, Mary. We are, some of us," he +eyed her thoughtfully, "so used to having these things done for us as a +matter of course by those who are really our fellow-beings, that we +often omit the 'thank you'—taking the often vital service rendered as +our due, just because the good Samaritan happens to be a maid or valet. +But here in Canada we're all fellow-citizens, aren't we?"</p> + +<p>"I get you some supper," said Mary, "and fetch you a pair of the boss's socks."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">In the Drifted Sleigh.</span></span></h2> + +<p>The Nixon sleigh stood in the drifts, tilted end up in the attitude of a +sinking boat. There were no billows to rock it, and the place where it +stuck was solid enough. There was no danger of the sleigh being covered +by submersion, either sudden or gradual; but the prairie winter tempest +has another way of achieving burial of derelict craft and spent crews, +when the travelling foot slows to a halt and the numbed brain yields to +the coaxing of sleep.</p> + +<p>There are beautiful things done between October and April by the +northwest frost and sun—pattern on pane, transformation of twig, +fashion of flake, aurora, twin "dogs" of the spectral sun-bow—but +nothing more marvellous and swift than the building, over fallen body or +stopped vehicle, of the white and wonderful sepulchre of the snow.</p> + +<p>Out from the back of the sleigh as it stood, there tailed an +indescribable drift, geometrically proportioned, beautiful beyond words. +Fifteen full feet it extended, from the high sleigh-box windward, to the +low drift-surface a-lee. In shape it was like the back of a saurian—one +of those ruder, hardier things generationed before the earth was +tempered by the Creator to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>habitation of man. Within the sleigh-box +another drift had formed, extending similarly from the wind-breaking +frontboard along the floor to the back end. On the high seat above the +central point of this latter drift, her feet buried in it, her upper +body mummied in sacks and every loose thing the sleigh had held, froze +and mumbled Lovina Nixon. Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but +uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon +stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward +side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a +vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals +paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement +to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in +horse-blankets and gunny-sacks.</p> + +<p>"How's them feet, Lovina-girl?" would come the question—raised to a +whoop in order to out-crow the hurricane and penetrate the hempen +coccoon. After due pause, the response would come, querulous, monotoned +and faint as a voice heard through a wall:</p> + +<p>"Ain't I said it often, that you'd—be the death of me—Jack Nixon. +Why-for did you—let them team go? Just to save your tony +friends—that's all. O-o-oh!"</p> + +<p>And John Nixon—though, with his own feet aching and his finger-ends +tingling, he would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> tempted to retort, "How about me?"—would +respond, bracingly, "Never mind, girl—there, I think I hear Jim +a-comin' now. Listen!"</p> + +<p>But the moments passed; the half-hours grew to hours; and out of the +quivering white, with its perpetual hiss and whistle, its under-roar of +distant wind-shaken groves, came no companionable jangle of bells. It +was not until the hot bricks under Lovina's toes had lost their heat and +she had commenced to cry and to labor against the creeping ache of cold +by beating her feet with a dismal weak "tap-tap" against the bottom of +the sleigh-box—not until stout John Nixon, aching from shoulder to +waist with flailing his arms about his body, felt a cold doubt begin to +rise even in the face of his confidence in hardy Jim Burns—that the +shape and the sound of deliverance bulged and tinkled out through the +texture of the storm-curtain, just ahead of the sleigh.</p> + +<p>"Now, see here, you Mary," the voice was that of Lovina Nixon as, +something over three-quarters of an hour later, she sat, feet in oven +and tea-cup and saucer in lap, in the centre of the reassembled family +group of the Nixon farmhouse; "I don't mind you helpin' yourself to +Nixon's socks, when people is in need—but why don't you give 'em +something to put on over the top of them, so's they won't walk the heels +through," the reference was to Ware who, after an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>unconscious habit, +developed by the usage of almost a lifetime, was pacing thoughtfully up +and down the creaky floor overhead, where the spare bed was; "I got to +darn them socks, not you."</p> + +<p>"Jim," said John Nixon, as he propped a piece of pine board on the +stove-pan and commenced to whittle kindlings for the morning fire, +"don't forget to remind me, tomorrow, that we got to sharpen up the +corks (caulks) of all them horses' shoes. I noticed yon Prince-horse +kind of gruntin' as I led him into the stable, there, to-night. You +ain't been loadin' them team too heavy while I been away?"</p> + +<p>Jim Burns paused in the winding of a heavy nickel watch and glanced at +his employer.</p> + +<p>"Aw, now, Jack," he remonstrated, "don't you know no better than for to +ask me a question like that? You'd think I was some green Englishman, or +somethin'."</p> + +<p>Ware, to whom this dialogue came up freely through the cracks between +the warped floor-boards, smiled to himself as he sat down on the edge of +the spare bed and slipped off the enormous gray socks borrowed from the +wardrobe of his host.</p> + +<p>"We do so like to be each other's critics," he murmured, with a half-sad +cadence; "but I suppose it's the same, the world over.... If we could +only get away from that, we children of this planet might win back what +we lost at Bab-el."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Daisy's Home Coming.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Well, Jim," Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the +passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware +called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting +the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a +recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the +ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three +of us altogether. How's <i>your</i>self?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, not too bad," Daisy, answering in the old phrase, caught up her +"kit-bag" and stepped briskly along beside her escort; "what did you +bring, Jim—the jumper?"</p> + +<p>"What did you think I was a-goin' to bring," retorted her former +playfellow, "the high-box wagon?"</p> + +<p>They reached the end of the station platform. Down on the snow +alongside, that homely but comfortable vehicle called a "jumper", full +of warm-looking blankets, topped with the gray goatskin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> robe, slid to +and fro as Prince the colt, secured to the hitching-ring by his +halter-rope, rocked spiritedly from foot to foot and pawed the snow up +in clouds.</p> + +<p>"Whoa, you!" directed Jim Burns, as he untied the haltershank. Daisy +pushed her grip under the seat, looked at the blankets, and then looked +at Burns.</p> + +<p>"What have you got all these things for?" she said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I thought you'd be a soft city-bug by now," said Jim Burns, as he +came around with the reins in his hand, "and would want every rug I +could find. Jump in, an' we'll drive around to the Toddburn House. +Dinner's on."</p> + +<p>The sleigh, at a trot, crossed toward the main street, half-way down +which was the Toddburn hotel, with its stable just beyond.</p> + +<p>"Where's that Beatty?" said Jim Burns, as the two heads rocked together +to the plunging of the "jumper".</p> + +<p>"Beatty?" Daisy had been looking half-dreamily around her at the +familiar little frame houses and black-lettered store-fronts, "oh—him! +You better ask somebody that knows, Jimmy."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to break his neck," said Jim Burns.</p> + +<p>"You'd be wasting your time, Jim," Daisy returned, half-absently, as the +sleigh pulled up in front of the Toddburn House. "Don't be long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> putting +the horses away. I'll go on into the dining-room and order your dinner +too. I know what you like. Turnips, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Turnips!" whooped Jim Burns; "say, if we was out where nobody was +lookin', I'd wash your face in the snow for that, Miss!"</p> + +<p>"You'd try to, you mean," Daisy flung back, as she ran virilely up the +steps to the hotel veranda; "hurry in, Jim."</p> + +<p>Daisy had left her hat and furs in the "ladies' parlor" upstairs and was +just coming out of the door of that apartment, when a diffident but +somewhat sweet voice said, "Hello, Daisy."</p> + +<p>Spinning about in her vigorous way, Daisy Ware looked into the mild blue +eyes of a girl who had just come out of a room across the hall. In the +girl's arms was a tiny baby.</p> + +<p>"Why, Pearlie Brodie!"</p> + +<p>"Not Pearlie Brodie now," said the fair-haired girl who had been a +waitress in the Toddburn House when Mr. Frederick Beatty used to come +there for his meals; "Pearlie Halliday now. Ed's buying here for the +Northern Elevator Company, and we stay at the hotel."</p> + +<p>She looked shyly down at the baby, and then added, giving the confidence +of one girl to another, "Ed says the baby here will get used just the +same as one of his own, and that if he ever hears of anybody saying a +word to me about it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> he'll knock their heads off. We were married just +a little while after you went away."</p> + +<p>"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring +up a little.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get +ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I +wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy."</p> + +<p>"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, +Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl +in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes +you best."</p> + +<p>"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, +a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see."</p> + +<p>"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be +'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes +better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no +good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married +you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going +to call him, Pearlie—or is it a him?"</p> + +<p>"I—I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes +dreamily on the infant, "but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> of course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't +be any Freddies in our family now, can there."</p> + +<p>"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you +better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got a +<i>man</i>. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses +away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with +Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the +long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and +approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin.</p> + +<p>In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, +and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the +dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be +treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or +she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) +own fault; for the country—unlike the city—is quick to see and ready +to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and +honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her +critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married +Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburn <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>grain-grower, who had never taken +any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator.</p> + +<p>"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had +remarked; but—he slapped Ed on the shoulder—"a man that's helped that +poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to +get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here +in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy—an' watch them +grain checks."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the +infant—who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat +surlily—he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment:</p> + +<p>"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of +steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain."</p> + +<p>"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with +Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You +seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was +through the Third Reader."</p> + +<p>"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather +feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to +conversation.</p> + +<p>The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilarating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> way out to the Nixon farm, +had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of +tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay +nearest his heart:</p> + +<p>"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back +married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up +my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, +Daise?"</p> + +<p>"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the +corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you +were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have +been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me."</p> + +<p>"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at +her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?"</p> + +<p>"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her +effort to keep a straight face.</p> + +<p>The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her +dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and +made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team.</p> + +<p>"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, get <i>epp</i>!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin +you alive!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>The horses obligingly, but without any manifestation of alarm, +quickened their stride for perhaps ten paces. Then they looked at each +other—seemed mutually to smile—and dropped easily back to their normal +trotting-gait. In the interval, Daisy had slipped a piece of ice off the +dash-board of the "jumper" down the back of Jim Burns' neck.</p> + +<p>It was a different day from that upon which John Nixon, his wife, and +Ware had driven out of Toddburn. Overhead, there was neither wind nor +cloud. The wonderful sky stretched blue and bright from the black and +stark groves on the east to the long expanse of snow-waves that planed +away treeless to westward, meeting in a rippling line the point where +earth and firmament parted on their clean, splendid and vast ways.</p> + +<p>Daisy presently ceased from play and, under the sway of a wave of +recollection, leaned back and looked about her. The sundance of her +spirits, that in the old days had made summer of every season, had not +been able to thaw the frost of surliness about the Nixon home. Not then; +but now, it seemed, things were different. Ever since that understanding +which had been arrived at in the Ware library, between Sir William and +John Nixon, the farmer seemed to have opened out, changed—ratchetted +back, as it were, to play over again his tune of life with a merrier +lilt. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> young wife had often sensed vaguely the power which proceeded +from this friendly philosophy which was at the root of, and gave point +and purpose to, all her husband's thoughts, words and actions; but the +change in her fosterfather gave her the first striking and definite +illustration of its effect.</p> + +<p>"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of +these is charity."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A Western Wild Man.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Now, what do you suppose that is?" Sir William Ware remarked, cocking +his head a little as, stepping alongside John Nixon up Toddburn's main +street, he approached the hotel door. The two had come into town with a +load of wheat, which had been duly hoppered and weighed at the elevator. +The team had been put in the livery stable, and the bell of the Toddburn +House had just given intimation that dinner was "on".</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothin'," replied John Nixon, although he smiled a little, "nothin' +at all, Eng—Bill."</p> + +<p>"Quite so," Ware commented, glancing at something long which moved and +vociferated inside the hotel window, "but don't you think, Nixon, that +it's a bit loud for nothing at all?"</p> + +<p>"Well," conceded Nixon, as they went up the steps, "when I say 'nothin' +at all', Bill, I mean it's something special. You ain't got used to us +Canadians yet, I see. In other words, the occasion of yon rumpus is Long +Tom Mewha. He's gittin' tanked up."</p> + +<p>"Yeow-e-wow-e-yippyhoo!" Mr. Mewha was remarking, his arm rib-crackingly +about a less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> tall friend, as Nixon and Ware entered the hall of the +Toddburn House, "Rip, slam, razzaberry jam! We don't care—do we, Joe. +Whoa, you son of a moose, whoa!" This last as Joe coyly but vigorously +endeavored to twist himself loose from the sociable arm.</p> + +<p>"I'll turn you over my knee, an' spank you, Joe," Mr. Mewha reproved, +pointing his words with a mighty slap that lifted Joe off his feet, "if +you don't set still. We-e-ell—look who's with us!"</p> + +<p>Long Tom—flinging away the unsteady Joe, who fetched up against the +wall, eight feet away, with a window-rattling bang—turned to face Ware, +who had just come through the hall door into the room.</p> + +<p>"English!" he half-sung, "English, frum his scalp-lock to his +moccasin-toes. Come here to me, English!"</p> + +<p>Sir William's eye, gray, unwavering, infinitely friendly, met steadily +the red-lidded glare of Long Tom Mewha—who emphasized his loud-toned +invitation by rocking the upper part of his body from side to side, +punctuating this movement with beckoning backward jerks of his head and +crookings of a strong black-nailed forefinger.</p> + +<p>"Come here to me," repeated Mr. Mewha, making a sound-box of his +nostrils, "and do it sudden!"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>He was a mighty man, in build, this Tom Mewha. Tough, long-sinewed, +panther-shouldered, the seams of his buckskin coat straining under the +twisting of a torso, muscle-flexed with the excitation of alcohol. He +had a black moustache that swept below his chin on either side; a blunt +nose skinned with frostbite; eyes aglow with virility and physical +well-being; a forehead that just now was, from shaggy eyebrows to +hair-roots, dotted and beaded with sweat. The incarnation of physical +force; spurred to height of power by the liquor that had wakened every +healthy artery to racing-pace: Long Tom could have taken any two of +those who stood about him and without undue effort dashed their heads +together. They all knew it, and stood back: all but Ware, the calm +new-comer.</p> + +<p>"Better give him his way, Bill," advised Nixon sotto voce, behind Ware's +shoulder, "he's one bad-actor when he's pickled, if you go to cross +him."</p> + +<p>"I shan't cross him, old chap," Ware responded, a little drily, +"nothing, in fact, was farther from my thoughts. How are you, Mr. +Mewha?" He stepped forward, and held out a friendly hand.</p> + +<p>"What do you-u mean," Mr. Mewha demanded, "by standin' in your tracks, +like a bump on a log, after I holler 'come'. Do you know that I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +bust you right in two?" Ignoring Sir William's hand, the speaker inched +close, scuffing his feet ominously over the creaking boards, thrusting +his chin out, glaring like a stiffened and challenging beast.</p> + +<p>"Exactly," the word came briefly, distinctly, clear-cut as a knuckle-tap +on glass. "Will you shake hands."</p> + +<p>Often, in the days that followed, John Nixon, thoughtful in his evening +chair, reflected on those four words and the way Ware said them. The +inflexion was smooth and even; the tone hardly more than gentle; the +expression pleasant. But the effect—which Nixon and all those who stood +about felt equally with the one to whom the words were addressed—was +that of a mandate. Not a foolish command, proceeding from the habit of +authority, without present power to exact obedience; but the serene, +confident, all-potent fiat of brotherhood. Long Tom, at the moment the +sentence was uttered, was in the attitude of a great animal about to +spring. His face, shining with perspiration, was pushed close to Ware's; +his hands, the fingers tensed and crooked, were raised to the level of +the baronet's shoulders, preparatory to gripping. The great muscles were +heaved up in a mound between his shoulders, giving him a stooping +aspect. His eyes held shining points, like fire-sparks.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p><p>But the effect of the words was instantaneous. Nixon nor none of those +about knew why nor how. All they knew was that Tom Mewha relaxed his +threatening attitude; straightened to his full magnificent six feet +four; swung up a hand.</p> + +<p>"Put it there," he said: this Peril of the west.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXV.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Why?</span></span></h2> + +<p>Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive +than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March +drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old +wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair +was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; +her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance.</p> + +<p>"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got +married up, Daise?"</p> + +<p>Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her +questioner teasingly. Rover waited, wagging from neck to tail like a +young pup.</p> + +<p>"I suppose you mean that you'd have been about ready to say something +then, eh?" she remarked, putting her head on one side.</p> + +<p>"No," said Jim Burns, a little shortly; "what I mean is, that you ought +to be goin' to school instead of bein' married."</p> + +<p>"Would you object to me being married, if I was married to you?" was +Daisy's response, as she tweaked Rover's tail.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p><p>"Say, Daise," Jim Burns blurted out headlong a query he had carried +around in his brain for some days, "why did you marry that old fellow? +Wasn't there no young ones handy? I know you didn't marry him for his +money: you ain't that kind. I can't figure the thing out nohow, Daise."</p> + +<p>Daisy Ware's eyes, as she looked at her questioner silently for a +moment, did not see him. Neither did they see the farm barn, the +straw-bucks in the distance, the thawing ice at the cattle-trough, the +drifts reduced to liquefying ice by the spring sun. For the girl was +back in a massive ugly upstairs hall, with broom and dustpan, facing the +son of a pile-driving millionaire who was trying to, after the pattern +of his parent, "put her where she belonged;" in her memory again, as +there had been on that occasion, a certain man equal in fortune but very +different otherwise, who had in spite of his apparent fifty or so years, +made her a boyish and eager proposal of marriage.</p> + +<p>"Because," Daisy, this picture out of the past in her mind, answered Jim +Burns unconsciously, by what was really a sentence thought aloud, "I +wanted to show some people where they got off at."</p> + +<p>Jim Burns' legs went numb at the vigor with which she said this. His +hands opened loosely, and his pitchfork slid out of them.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"Well," he gulped, presently, "you needn't have went and did a trick +like that. Why couldn't you have given me a hint, Daise?"</p> + +<p>At this, Daisy came out of her reverie and stared.</p> + +<p>"Given you a hint?" she repeated, "wha—o-oh I see. Well, that's what +you get by being slow, Mr. Man. See!"</p> + +<p>She caught Rover's tail, and raced away with him over the big drift that +ran up to the top of the snow-flattened haystack. Jim Burns took off his +hat and rubbed the back of his head till it tingled.</p> + +<p>"Can't make head or tail of that'n," he said finally, replacing the +weathered "dogskin" cap; "But I might ast <i>him</i>. Say—I <i>will</i> ast him! +I b'en a kind of a brother to the girl, and I got a right to know, ain't +I?"</p> + +<p>The chance to ask Ware, who had gone for a stroll about the farm with +Nixon, did not present itself till toward evening. Then Burns, returning +with the horse from the trough, met Sir William, thoughtfully inspecting +the architecture of an old log wing of the stable.</p> + +<p>"Clever work, that dovetailing, Burns," Ware said casually; then, as he +noted that Jim Burns had halted and fixed him with a glance conveying +what seemed to be determination, the baronet, said, briskly,</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>"Well, old chap? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I got something to say to you, sir," Jim Burns responded, setting his +feet a little apart and squaring his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Say on," Ware invited, dropping his hands in his pockets, and regarding +his catechist pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"It's about Daise," Jim Burns went on, "I've knew her since she was a +kid. We went to school together, and we was pretty good chums them days, +and in fact right up to the time she skinned out with yon Beatty. I was +figurin' I'd marry her some time (she claims I never said nothin', but I +wouldn't have got no satisfaction anyway, if I <i>had</i> ast her, which I +guess after all I didn't, but she might have knew, for I didn't try to +cover it up none). Well, now she comes back married up to you. O' +course, the girl's her own boss, I know that. But—if you don't like me +talkin' to you this way, sir, you'll have for to lump it; I never was +one to hold back anything I got to say, not for no man—there seems to +me to be somethin' queer, mighty queer, about the way you an' her yips +along. You go out with Jack for a walk, or for a load o' hay, or off to +town; and she hurrays around with the dog or me. Yous never seem to be +together, nor neither one of you to care one rip what the other's doin'. +And—now here's the place where maybe there's an apology<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> comin' to you +for what I'm going to say, so I'm going to apologise first, and then go +ahead—"</p> + +<p>"Go on," said Sir William, gravely.</p> + +<p>"I been brought up out here in the country," Jim Burns continued, a +little more slowly, "and I don't know what they do in town, or over +there where you come from; but out in this country, when two people are +married, they're married. It don't matter whether he's old and she's +young, or whether she's old and he's young. They're married, and they +act married, and they stay married, or they don't get the respect of the +settlement—and if they don't get that, they might as well be dead."</p> + +<p>"Do go on," said Ware, his eyes alight. "I'm vastly interested, Burns. I +am, really. What is your point?"</p> + +<p>"The point," Daisy's schoolmate pursued, stoutly, "is just this. You +sleep upstairs there, in the spare bed; and Daise, she still climbs into +her old bunk downstairs, where she slept when she was a kid. Now," Jim's +voice broke a little, "that suits me fine, for I'm sure I don't want to +think of her as a married woman, married to somebody else. But it ain't +right, and you know it ain't right. Yous two are married, and you ought +to act married. First thing you know, some neighbor woman will notice +it—one of the talky ones—and she'll put it around the whole district."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>The speaker paused; cleared his throat; and went on:</p> + +<p>"I know it ain't Daise's fault; for she was born in this country and she +knows what's right; and whatever bargain she made, she'd stick to it. So +I blame it onto you. Now, what's the matter? Ain't she good enough for +you? If you didn't intend to treat her like a wife, why did you marry +her? That's my point! I can't very well speak to Daise about it; so, as +man to man, I put it up to you."</p> + +<p>There were a few moments of silence after Jim Burns finished speaking. +Something sincere and high in the quiet gray eyes across from him +quelled his bristling earnestness.</p> + +<p>"Dear old chap," said Sir William, dropping his hand on the other's +shoulder, "first, don't think I wish any apology for what you have said. +Secondly, be patient. That is all I may say in words, by way of reply to +what I believe you have said in thorough sincerity: be patient, as I +myself am patient. You will see that all will be well. Now—shall we +speak of something else?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVI.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">A New Settler.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Why don't His Nobs go home out of the slush, and come back here when +it's dry, if he wants to?" demanded, one night, Lovina Nixon of her +husband, as he performed the ultimate evening ceremonial of whittling +kindlings for the morning fire. "There's no sense of him and Daise +wading around here through the mud, making four more feet to track my +floor up, when they've got a comfortable home, with a dry sidewalk to +it, laying idle in town. Now, is there?"</p> + +<p>John Nixon, his sock-feet propped on the stove-pan, pushed hard with his +jack-knife against a tough shaving, and allowed the usual interval to +elapse before he made response.</p> + +<p>"You claim to see everything," he remarked, finally, as the shaving +split off and fell to the floor, "an' I guess you do. Like most of the +weemen, there ain't much you miss. Ain't you noticed nothing about +Bill's actions lately that might tell you why he stays around?"</p> + +<p>Lovina came to attention, her hands at her hips.</p> + +<p>"Why, no," she said, "I ain't. How could I?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> He spends most of his time +out o' doors with you."</p> + +<p>"Well," said her husband, "you can gener'ly take in things without +lookin'—through the pores of your skin, like. Hasn't your sense of +feelin' told you before now, that Bill's been bit by the farmin' +bug?—bit hard, too!"</p> + +<p>"What!" Lovina smiled incredulously; "why, he don't know a plow from a +set of harrows. Have some sense, man."</p> + +<p>"Don't he?" Nixon applied his knife again to the edge of the piece of +pine board; "maybe he didn't when he first come out here, but there +ain't much now he don't know. He's watched me blue-stonin' the seed +wheat; he's had me take the fannin' mill apart to see what makes it go; +and I guess I've plowed pretty near thirty acres for him, in pantomime, +with the old breakin' plow, out there in the snow. No hired farmin' for +Bill—he's a-goin' to do all the work himself."</p> + +<p>"I pity his hands," Lovina Nixon observed, her knuckles at her chin +reflectively. "Where's he gettin' his farm? Not going to buy us out, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>"Oh, we're fixin' that part of it," John Nixon, having finished the +kindlings, folded his knife and returned it to his hip-pocket. "To keep +you from gettin' any wrong notions into your head, I might say that he +ain't goin' to buy <i>us</i> out,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> however. It's Jimmy Tomlinson's place he's +gettin'. We're going over to see Jimmy to-morrow."</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, standing in the doorway of his bachelor cabin across +the road-allowance from the Nixon farm, next morning welcomed glowingly +the tall man in gray and the short broad man in overalls who drove up to +his door in a muddy-spoke blackboard.</p> + +<p>"Spring-like weather, Jim," said John Nixon, quizzically, as he pulled +up the bay horse in the lee of the house bluff, "why ain't you down't +the granary, picklin' up your seed?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson merely grinned. He was uncommunicative and small and +somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. To his gray flannel shirt +he had this morning buttoned the celluloid collar which was always added +to his attire when receiving callers or when working in his front field, +which adjoined the Toddburn road. He had a little sandy moustache and a +rather delicately-tipped chin which, as a cut in its cleft attested, had +just been shaven.</p> + +<p>"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie +him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, +upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson—who wanted $20,000, for his +half-section—were fixed in timid appraisal.</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a country<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> bachelor for over half a +century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two +things—to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out +in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the +house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a +sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his +fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years +"above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty +farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 +which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If +no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000—even though +slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced—then +the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there +was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if—as said a certain +beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of +toilet soap—massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with +the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the +door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain +youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, +and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p><p>Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with +a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the +corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger +than himself.</p> + +<p>Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a +single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the +central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with +home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp +and—their titled backs turned outward—a little pile of paper-bound +books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all +was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's +attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old +upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his +guest.</p> + +<p>"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in +the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there +must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open +all winter?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the +simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time."</p> + +<p>With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread +his hands upon them; and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no +more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the +stable.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up +a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business—eh, boys? Jim +here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty +foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers +just commencin' to make a little money."</p> + +<p>"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice.</p> + +<p>"You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, +and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the +knee; "ain't that it, Jim?"</p> + +<p>"I—I—yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he +continued—haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with +the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in +his mind that every detail of it was complete—"in storm and sunshine, +neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured +on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a +civilized man—"</p> + +<p>"Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out +of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> +him, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over +his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, +and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and +then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of +a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?"</p> + +<p>"Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, +Tomlinson."</p> + +<p>"——like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, +resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of +town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world +we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this +settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller——"</p> + +<p>"I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim——"</p> + +<p>"Do shut-up, Nixon. You <i>are</i> an incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind +him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am—that is +to say, vastly. Please go on.</p> + +<p>"——or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and +unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, +"and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you——"</p> + +<p>"Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> you hear that, Bill—he wants +them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you +listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, +Jimmy—at fifty-six."</p> + +<p>"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his +thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man +to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see +nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, +he married late in life—you know that, Jack—an' when I was born, my +parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had +nobody to talk to—no brothers n'r sisters—so it's natural, ain't it, +that I grew up kind of backward.</p> + +<p>"Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the +kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd +stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my +way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell +out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or +more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm +kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets +older—not that I'm anyways old yet, you know——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy—that's all."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p><p>"——and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, +Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good +now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have +considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," +Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his +farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung +his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining +briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty +thousand, cash down, takes this place—buildin's, stock, implements, +what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it +all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is +to hitch up my team—his team, it will be then—and drive me and my +trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand—no +notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I +thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide +world. Well, sir?"</p> + +<p>"Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to +accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the +table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth.</p> + +<p>Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this +climactic moment of his whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> life, brought an old stone ink-bottle and +a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote.</p> + +<p>An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges +tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at +last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled +emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four +tardy-marrying generations.</p> + +<p>It was a final instinct of caution that made the vendor, a few moments +later, as Nixon returned from the hitched buckboard for the leather +mittens he had accidentally left on the window-sill, whisper hoarsely, +"Is he good for it, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"Good for it!" Nixon, drawing on the mittens, dealt Jimmy Tomlinson such +a congratulatory whack on the shoulder that the latter took two +involuntary steps forward; "good for it, Jimmy! Why, Bill yonder could +buy up the whole settlement, with Toddburn throwed in for good measure, +if he had any use for it."</p> + +<p>"Well, I s'pose it's so, if you say it is, neighbor. He's your girl's +man, and you ought to know, if anybody does. But somebody, I forget just +who, was tellin' me he heard this Ware was goin' to run the farm +himself, without hirin' any help. So naturally I figured, if that was +so, he hadn't the money to pay a man."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p><p>"No, it ain't that," said John Nixon, as he turned toward the door; +"it's true that he don't intend to hire any more men than he has to, and +it's true that he's going to work right along with the ones he does +hire. But when you say why—I don't know. All I know is, Bill's just +a-pawin' the air to get to a pitchfork. Ain't that always the way, +Jim?—ain't it, now? Nobody satisfied. Them that has to buck wood, like +you an' me, don't want to. Them that don't have to, is fairly bawlin' +and pawin' up the sod, to get to a sawhorse."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Sewing Machine Lovemaker.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"Here's somebody you ought to know, Daise," remarked Lovina Nixon, +coming in from feeding the calves: "Look down the road there."</p> + +<p>Daisy turned from her ironing and crossed to the window.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's Dex," she said, coolly, as she looked out, "I can see the +sewing-machine in the back of the rig, as plain as anything. Who would +that be, with him, Mother? Oh, yes, I see—it's that Mrs. Rourke. Is she +as flirty as ever?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, she just <i>acts</i> flirty," Lovina answered, sticking up for her old +crony, "nothin' wrong about Jen. She likes the men, an' she's full of +the ol' Nick. But it's just fun, with her—that's all."</p> + +<p>Presently the buggy of Dex Coleman, the agent who was responsible for +district sewing machine sales, drew up in the yard. On the seat of it +were two persons—a young man with a smooth face and red lips, and his +hat a little to one side, and a buxom woman of about forty-five, with a +color like a girl and a hand that slapped her knee as she tilted back +her head and laughed. <i>Her</i> hat was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> also a little on one side—pushed +into that position by a playful attempt of Mr. Coleman to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sorry the drive is ended," the latter was saying, as, having +jumped out of the buggy, he reached up a chivalrous hand to assist down +the healthy weight of Mrs. Jenny Rourke.</p> + +<p>"Oh, indade," observed that lady, her head on one side and her foot on +the step. "Well," she added, coquettishly, as she stepped lightly out, +executed a little jig, clicked her heels together, stood up straight, +and made a face at Mr. Coleman, "I'm to be the wan that's <i>not</i> sorry, +then—is that it. You're a divil, Dexie!"</p> + +<p>"Your sayin' that don't make it so-o, sweetheart," returned the sewing +machine man, pleasantly; "kee-wick!" (This last a curious squirting +sound, produced with tongue and cheek, as Mr. Coleman aimed an intimate +jab at Mrs. Jenny Rourke's ribs.)</p> + +<p>"Lave alone what don't concern you," was the advice this feat elicited +from his driving companion, as she wrinkled an eye-corner at him over +her shoulder, and vibrated (there is no other word that exactly +describes the brisk teetering walk of Mrs. Jenny Rourke) off toward the +house; "you sassy brat!"</p> + +<p>The sedate and somewhat sour-faced Lovina was grabbed and all but lifted +off her feet by the embrace of her friend, as the latter breezed into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> +the farm kitchen. Then Mrs. Rourke turned and saw Daisy.</p> + +<p>"Well, well, we-ell, an' how's the little squiress!" she roared, as she +made for the girl; "come here, me darlin', and give me the feel of your +pretty face. M-m-m!" and Mrs. Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion +of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips.</p> + +<p>"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country, +alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile +palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope +he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I +love Canadians—especially young ones, whether they're he's or +she's—but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to +his name. What's like flannel pants an a negligee shirt to an +Englishman, makes a Canadian look like a tailor's dummy. Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"He's gone over with Jack to the new farm," Lovina put in, somewhat +grumblingly, "they spend all their time over there, when Jack ought to +be attendin' to his own work, if he expects to get his seedin' done in +anyways decent time this spring."</p> + +<p>At this, Mrs. Rourke let go of Daisy, bounced over, grabbed Lovina Nixon +around the waist,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> threw her into a chair, and sat down plumply on her +knee.</p> + +<p>"Aw, Jen!" her friend protested, diffident and red, but cracking a +shadowy smile for the first time that afternoon; "my hands is all +dishwatery. Set down here yourself, n' let me work while we talk."</p> + +<p>"You stay where you are, an' let the work go for an hour. Then I'll let +you up, an' we'll both fall to; an' when the men comes in t'l their +supper, there'll not be a pin out of place," rippled Mrs. Jenny Rourke; +then she turned to Daisy and waved the hand of dismissal.</p> + +<p>"Run on an' see your Dexie that used to be," she said, lowering her +voice to a mischievous cooing, "sure, we'll not tell, if your husband's +the jealous-minded kind. Dex knows you're here, the divil—that's why +he's waitin' outside."</p> + +<p>Daisy, conceding a smile and a little toss of her head, went out. As she +passed through the door, the Irishwoman murmured, half to herself, her +voice warm with approval: "Straight as a string, the dear, an' able to +take care of herself, right from the time she first knew a boy was a +boy. Sure, if I didn't know that, do ye think I'd send her out with +that—that what-iver-ye-want-to-call-him. He needs managin', the worst +way. There's not half enough discipline and reshtraint in the sewing +machine business, Lovina darlin'."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Dex Coleman left the wheel of his buggy, upon which he had been +draped gracefully, and came to meet Daisy, extending both hands.</p> + +<p>"Well, look who's he-ere!" he fluted, melodiously, "little one, little +one! there <i>has</i> been a pain where my heart is, you kno-ow, since some +lying son of a seacook told me you were married. What, oh, what could +you have been thinking about. Why-ee, I ain't slept a wink, not for +days—not for da-ays, Dear."</p> + +<p>Daisy, looking at him, blushed a little. She blushed because she +remembered that, not so very long ago, when the method of his approach +was new to her, her heart <i>had</i> fluttered a little in response to the +addresses of this late-unripened, yodling, golden-noted, social +abortion. But, now that she had become habituated to men, the blush was +accompanied by a smile—a smile that wrinkled her nose a little, as the +eau-de-cologned Coleman floated close.</p> + +<p>"Does the heart still beat true?" enquired Mr. Dexter Coleman, +"crushing" her hands in fingers that were a workless white, except where +cigarettes had stained them yellow, "does it—little one?" Studying the +slight blush on Daisy's cheeks, Mr. Coleman missed those danger-lights, +her eyes.</p> + +<p>For the imp of mischief had sprung up in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> girl like a kindled flame, +in which danced the two-horned and tridented devil of daring.</p> + +<p>"Shall we—s-shall we go for a little drive, Dexie?" she said, making +her voice low, and leaning her head for a second against the lapel of +the Coleman coat.</p> + +<p>"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a +spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way +in, an' that way out—huh?"</p> + +<p>So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy +into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail.</p> + +<p>"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart +driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey—shake +yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it +stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked +out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside +and the white of an eye showing.</p> + +<p>"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently, +his whip poised for another cut.</p> + +<p>"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out +of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she +caught the reins from her companion;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> then pulled the whip out of his +hand and dropped it into the holster.</p> + +<p>Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased +soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his +eye.</p> + +<p>"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on +Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you—all up to you, boy."</p> + +<p>"This sure is the life—ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with +which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept +along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her +waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep.</p> + +<p>It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry; +but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where +the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary +to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance +was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened +panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an +unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire +rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house +threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of +"pliers" out of the question. Here there was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> nothing for it but to +drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of +paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels.</p> + +<p>"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own +hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved +down until it now lightly touched her waist.</p> + +<p>"I can't do nothin' with it, you see," he complained, a moment later, as +the recalcitrant arm settled itself snugly about his companion; "just +look at it now, Precious!"</p> + +<p>"I see it," Daisy responded, looking straight before her; "looks kind of +becoming, doesn't it, Dexie?"</p> + +<p>"Mighty becomin', if you ask me," corroborated the arm's proprietor, +warmly "I think it ought to stay right there, now I notice how it +looks."</p> + +<p>Following this remark, Mr. Coleman stole a glance at the cheek that was +turned his way. The glance intoxicated him. He tightened his grip, edged +close, and dropped suddenly from jest to earnestness.</p> + +<p>"Say!" he breathed into her ear, "let's just keep on goin', little +girl."</p> + +<p>"Where?"</p> + +<p>"Right on to town. Train comes in at six pee-ex. Little supper in the +hotel here, an' then board her. What do we care?"</p> + +<p>"Aw, but, Dexie, what will people say?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p><p>"I don't give a whoop what they say—why should you mind? I can take a +chance, if you can, Sweetheart. Come on: be a sport!"</p> + +<p>"Aw, Dexie!"</p> + +<p>"That's m'little girl. I knew you was game. Give us a sweet kiss +now—come awn. Whass matter?"</p> + +<p>"The wind's pulling my hat loose," said Daisy, "I'll take it off."</p> + +<p>"That's th' idea," approved Mr. Coleman, reining his impatience.</p> + +<p>They were descending a hill, at the bottom of which a slough crossed the +trail. Fences to right and left forbade a detour.</p> + +<p>"I guess we'll have to drive right through it," said Daisy.</p> + +<p>"How about the hat?" demanded Mr. Coleman, who was now so close that his +companion could barely move her elbow, "can't you get it off?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," Daisy looked up innocently, "I forgot about the hat. All +right—there, it's off."</p> + +<p>She took off the hat and laid it in her lap. They had now reached the +edge of the shallow slough in the valley-bottom, into which the livery +horse waded, gingerly and slow.</p> + +<p>"Maybe he wants a drink," said Daisy; "whoa, pettie! Thirsty?"</p> + +<p>The horse halted and lowered his head to the water-level.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p><p>"Poor fellow!" Daisy commented, as he drank in great famished gulps, +"don't you ever water him, Dex? Aw, quit! Aw-w—you're mean! There, +now—see what you've done," and, as Coleman, red and hot-eyed, drew back +from kissing her, Daisy pointed to her hat, afloat on the slough.</p> + +<p>"That's nothin'," said Coleman, regarding the hat as it slowly floated +away from the side of the buggy.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," said Daisy, with sarcasm, "it just means I've got to go home +and get another hat, before we start on this trip you were speaking of. +I won't go into Toddburn bareheaded—not even for you."</p> + +<p>Coleman rose from his seat. "I'll sure get it for you, right now, +Sweetness," he said, "if that's how you feel about it."</p> + +<p>"Well, you'd better hurry, for it's sailing away," Daisy advised; "no, +you can't reach it over the wheel. You'll have to stand out on the +step."</p> + +<p>Mr. Dexie Coleman, who believed in doing everything with grace and ease, +scorned to grip the honest buggy-top for sensible support, as he poised +himself on the iron step, like Hermes, tiptoe for flight, and extended +an arm out over the water. He calculated, and rightly, that he could +just reach the hat and keep his balance.</p> + +<p>But he had not reckoned with a gathering force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> behind him; and perhaps +there was no more surprised man in Toddburn than this cavalier of the +sewing machine when, a second or two later, just as his fingers closed +upon the hat, a strong push from rearward propelled him sprawlingly into +the slough. The water was only three feet deep; but, as he fell +horizontally, he went right under.</p> + +<p>Mr. Coleman's astonishment at the turn events had taken was so intense +that he, as one might say, reclined for a moment in the bottom of the +slough, with the water roaring in his ears and choking in his throat, +before he gathered his wits together sufficiently to grope to his feet. +By the time he had regained a wet uprightness, sputtered the muddy water +out of his mouth, and blinked his eyes till vision returned, he found +that he was alone in the slough. Daisy had driven the horse out on the +farther shore, and was just getting out of the buggy. Mr. Coleman, +watching in a fascinated way, with too much water still in his windpipe +to speak, saw his late companion loop up the horse's lines in the +backhand ring, knotting them so they would not fall and tangle the +animal; then give the beast a smart little slap on the flank that +started it off at a brisk trot down the trail.</p> + +<p>"Whoa, there!" Mr. Coleman found breath to exclaim, in a thin aqueous +squeal, as he paddled splashingly and frantically toward land. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> the +horse, headed toward its evening meal of loft-dried hay and oats in the +Toddburn livery stable, exchanged its trot for a canter, and kept on +going.</p> + +<p>"You'll have to go some, to catch him," said Daisy, levelly and +unsmiling; "he knows when he's well off." She kept her eyes steadily on +Coleman, tightening her grip on the handle of the horsewhip which she +had retained.</p> + +<p>"Ha-agh!"</p> + +<p>This is the nearest possible phonetic representation of the sound which +came from the man's throat, as he jumped at her. But Daisy was alert and +strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The +sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's +right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the +left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped, +straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was +running.</p> + +<p>"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and +sparkling. "You're <i>some</i> man!"</p> + +<p>There is something salutary and restorative about the rod—that +corrective instrument recommended by Solomon the Wise. Perhaps it is +less the sting than the shame—although one must admit that both must go +together, to produce the effect.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>Dexie Coleman, all the bad humor gone out of him, sat down dejectedly +on a boulder. For the moment, he forgot pose,—forgot that his face was +muddy and bleeding, his hair rumpled, his clothes soaked and +dripping—forgot himself altogether.</p> + +<p>"I'm a mean son of a gun, ain't I?" he said.</p> + +<p>Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither +flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on." +The girl's face softened a little.</p> + +<p>"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said; +"talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the +girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to +'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines. +You're just an honest farm boy—why don't you be one? Get out and do +some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white +hands on a pitchfork-handle."</p> + +<p>Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very +well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights, +showed it.</p> + +<p>"I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here."</p> + +<p>He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye, +stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed +to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> of himself. A young +man shows shame by rudeness.</p> + +<p>"Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy +called.</p> + +<p>"Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder; +then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long—Kid."</p> + +<p>The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy +reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the +oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes +and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in +contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a +department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he +had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light +the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered.</p> + +<p>As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to +right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms +up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips.</p> + +<p>"I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby—bestest in the world!"</p> + +<p>Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p><p>Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he +approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in. +Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back +toward the barn.</p> + +<p>"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the +matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVIII.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Coming of the Mother.</span></span></h2> + +<p>Hot July had passed, and the sun of August had shaded to the blandness +of near-September, when Daisy Ware climbed into her own buggy, behind +her own smart bronco, and driving out through the gate of her own farm, +took bowlingly the ruts of the Toddburn trail on her way to meet Lady +Frances Ware's train.</p> + +<p>For half a mile, the road led past Sir William's fields, in which the +wheat was now its full ripe harvest yellow. Around one of these fields, +a binder hummed, and the shirt-sleeved man on the seat of it flung a +kiss to Daisy from afar. That shirt-sleeved man was Sir William Ware, +Baronet. The man who was stooking behind the binder also lifted his hand +to his lips, though in <i>his</i> case the salute was not a kiss but a +friendly hail; for the stooker was he who had been yodling, artificial, +"city-bug"-imitating Dexie Coleman. He had callouses on his palms now +that it would be hard to get through with a chisel, and on each arm a +biceps that would burst an iron ring.</p> + +<p>Daisy herself was changed in some indefinable way. Her mouth was +softened, her eyes had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>become forward-looking and dreamy, her color +more delicate. Her attitude was not now tensed, aggressive, a-jump with +schoolgirlish spirit; but gentle, relaxed, restful. One could not on +this day imagine her with the horsewhip of punishment in her hand.</p> + +<p>There were no pools on the Toddburn highway to impede this August drive. +The breath of autumn was soft in the air, and the summer's work of the +sun was over. The ruts of the trail were cushioned with soft dust, the +uplands ripe green, the trees full-sapped and thriving, every twig +deciduously ready for the going of the leaves. The prairie plants had +long ago sent the last of their pollen abroad by wind and voyaging bee. +There were red berries on the rose-bushes, and white on the wolf-willow. +The house of the world was swept and garnished for the fall.</p> + +<p>The thoughts of the young woman who sat, with that quiescent and settled +look in her eyes, on the seat of the tranquilly-travelling buggy, moved +to her beginning of life and ratchetted slowly up the years to the now; +and it came to Daisy Ware, as it has come to many another who thinks +more abstrusely, that consummated marriage is, and properly, the climax +of womanhood. Every growing thing about her whispered it to-day. The +message received definiteness and point as there blew across her lap a +fragment of fertile fluff that had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> in its heyday and its summer +nodding-time been part of a maiden dandelion-blossom.</p> + +<p>In the light of this flash of truth from exemplary Nature, the young +wife saw in its true light the "board and lodging" marriage in which she +might have continued unawakened—continued, perhaps, until she was old +and blase and "set" and sterile—if it had not been for the potent +something, salutarily born, both to her and to her husband, by the airs +that move among the hills and groves of God. She saw why a "little chum" +is not a wife.</p> + +<p>Lady Frances had been held, partly by her years and partly by the +prejudices which fixedly inhabit the old, from exploring far this +northwest of her son's adoption. Among people not socially en rapport +with her, she had long ago decided she was too advanced in years to +commence to mingle. She had found few enough intimates in the cities of +this colonial dominion; she anticipated there would be in the country no +"nice people" at all.</p> + +<p>She had at last consented to come out to the farm, less because she had +been assured that now suitable and comfortable accommodation awaited +her, than because her heart contained a vague hunger. When she had +started on her journey, she had thought it was her son she wanted to +see. But now, as she sat reflectively in the coach that—after +travelling what had seemed to her an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>interminable stretch of +country—was at last approaching the place Toddburn, Lady Frances Ware +discovered that the one she most looked forward to meeting was, not her +son, but her young daughter-in-law.</p> + +<p>This was not wholly because of regard for Daisy herself—although the +young wife, with her frank and clean girlishness, had won the warmest +possible place in the old lady's affections—but because Daisy was +linked with a hope and a dream that now abode daily with the mother of +the last male of the ancient lineage of Ware.</p> + +<p>Daisy had, by letting the bronco take its own gait, occupied a little +too much time on the trip to the village—a thing her alert and +practical former self would never have done—and, as she rose to the +crest of the last hill outside Toddburn, she saw the passenger train +just leaving the station, from which she was still separated by about +half a mile. This meant that Lady Frances, if she had come—which was +certain, for she was always punctual—was waiting alone at the little +depot. Daisy sat up straight, rousing the little bronco to its best +speed with voice and driving-reins.</p> + +<p>"My dear, it's quite immaterial," was the response of the old +gentlewoman to her apology, as the two embraced—not in the little depot +waiting-room, but out on the end of the platform, where Daisy had found +Lady Frances, standing by her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> luggage and looking about her. The old +lady had on a simple black travelling dress and a light wrap, rather +Victorian in pattern. Neither glasses nor any substitute were in view. +Lady Frances could see "her way about" quite easily without them, and +never carried anything as a concession to mode, or for pose or show.</p> + +<p>"I have been enjoying myself immensely during the interval," she said, +as the two proceeded to the sloping end of the platform, at the foot of +which stood the buggy; "this is an enormous country—simply enormous, my +dear. No, you needn't help me in."</p> + +<p>Putting one gloved hand on the brace of the buggy-top, Lady Frances, +from the slight eminence of the platform-end, reached handily the iron +step of the buggy and raised herself halely to the cushioned seat.</p> + +<p>"No, no, child—I should much prefer to wait till we are home—that is +to say, unless you are hungry," she said, as Daisy started the pony in +the direction of the Toddburn House.</p> + +<p>"I'm not hungry, Mother. Billy said——"</p> + +<p>"Billy?" Lady Frances made the interruption in a tone of pleasant +interrogation.</p> + +<p>"Will," Daisy substituted, with a little blush (Lady Frances, of course, +could not know that she was a real wife now), "said that he thought you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> +would rather lunch at home, so I had a little something just before I +left."</p> + +<p>"Billy—Billy," Lady Frances, in mental enquiry, repeated the nickname, +which had at first grated her a bit. Then her heart gave a great leap. +She turned and looked closely at Daisy. One glance at the softened eyes, +the delicate-hued and somewhat pale cheeks, the dreamy lips, the relaxed +and restful lines of neck and bosom—and the old gentlewoman and mother, +warmth of joy flooding all her arteries, reached out her hand, covered +Daisy's with it, and held the young girl's fingers in a close and long +caress.</p> + +<p>"My darling, my darling!" she murmured, with a thrilling tenderness, +"oh, we <i>will</i> have to take such care of you. Does William know?"</p> + +<p>Daisy answered with her frank and matter-of-fact affirmative nod.</p> + +<p>The drive home was a very quiet one. Daisy's new habit of +forward-looking occupied her. Lady Frances Ware was wrapped in an +ecstasy of that kind and depth which one does not want to break or to +have broken by the paltry sound of the spoken word.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> + +<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIX.</span> <span class="smaller"><span class="smcap">The Bud.</span></span></h2> + +<p>"That high-priced doctor from the city fired me out," said Dex Coleman, +coming down to the barn where Jim Burns sat on the oat-box, behind the +stall where the newly-arrived Toddburn livery horse munched hungrily at +a fresh feed of hay, "and Bill's upstairs, so I couldn't ast him what it +is. If it's a boy, the old lady will go crazy—that's one thing sure. +Milt Hayes says he'll find out, as soon as he gets warmed up, and come +down here and let us know."</p> + +<p>Milt Hayes was the Toddburn liveryman's son, who had brought out the +doctor to the Ware farm over roads crisped and snowbound by February, +and had been given license to remain by the stove in the bustling and +anxious house, until he "got thawed out".</p> + +<p>"Ain't it queer, when you come to think of it, Dex?" remarked Jim Burns, +as the other sat down beside him on the oat-box.</p> + +<p>"Ain't what queer, Jim?" said Dex Coleman.</p> + +<p>"Her," said Jim Burns, "goin' to school with us about five years ago, +an' now—"</p> + +<p>"It's queer, all right," agreed Dex Coleman.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p><p>"I wonder what she could have saw in him," pursued Jim Burns, following +the groove of an old problem.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I dunno," Dex Coleman set his hat to the back of his head and spat +down between his hands in a thoughtful way, "Bill ain't a bad head, Jim, +when you get to know him. I never worked for a better boss, nor for +higher wages. He pays me every cent I'm worth an' a little more."</p> + +<p>"Maybe so," said Jim Burns, "I ain't got nothin' against him personally. +But—"</p> + +<p>"But what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh—nothin'," said Jim Burns.</p> + +<p>"Come on, now, Jim,—tell us. What's wrong with Bill?"</p> + +<p>"Well," Jim Burns flung out an expressive hand, "I could have had Daise +myself, if he hadn't took her."</p> + +<p>Dex Coleman tilted back his head and laughed till the barn rang. Jim +Burns got up slowly off the oat-box and commenced to take off his coat.</p> + +<p>"Come on," he said, "if you want a fight. I'll push your nose out +through the back of your head, if you laugh at me that way, Coleman."</p> + +<p>Coleman sobered, and slapped the other on the back.</p> + +<p>"I ain't laughin' at you, boy," he said; "don't you ever think it. It +was myself I was laughin' at. I wanted her too, Jim, them days. But we +both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> went at it the wrong way. You said nothin' at all to her, and I +said too much. Bill goes about it in the right way, and he gets the +girl. Bill's a gentleman."</p> + +<p>"Well," demanded Burns, "ain't we gentlemen, too? I am, anyway, and I +have a poke in the jaw for any man that says I ain't."</p> + +<p>"That," rejoined Dex Coleman, "is one son of a moose of a way to prove +to a man that you're a <i>gentleman</i>. The trouble with us out in this +section of the country, Jim, is that, some way, we seem to have the idea +in the back of our heads that a gentleman is a man who's got either +money enough or nerve enough to sport around in a tailor-made suit and +not do any work. That's the reason each of us is so sensitive about his +claim to the title: because we think the man who says 'you're no +gentleman' sees us as day-laborers and himself as our wealthy or nervy +neighbor who don't have to work. Jim, this gentleman thing is inside of +you—not outside. I've learned that much from workin' alongside of Bill, +anyway.... Here comes Milt. Well, Milt, did they let you see it?"</p> + +<p>"It ain't a 'it', boys," said Milt Hayes, "it's a him."</p> + +<p>"Three cheers!" shouted Dex Coleman; "how did the old lady take it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, carried it kind of easy, in a shawl so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>clean-white it pretty near +blinded you," replied Milt Hayes, staring; "why, how did you suppose +she'd take it? By the scruff of the neck?"</p> + +<p>"I don't mean the baby," explained Dex Coleman, "I mean the news."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't no news to her," responded the other vaguely, "she brung him +downstairs herself, I'm tellin' you."</p> + +<p>"Oh, go to blazes!" exclaimed Dex Coleman, jumping off the oat-box, +"boys, I'm goin' up to the house. I'll get in, sir, if I have to +massacree that city doctor to do it."</p> + +<p>"Ast how Daise is," called Jim Burns after Coleman as he went out, "we +don't care about whether the old lady likes the baby or lumps it."</p> + +<p>It was not long till tall, good-looking and still somewhat "nervy" Dex +Coleman came whooping back to the barn with the word, "I bunted past the +doctor, fellows—never even let on I knew he was there—and spoke right +up to Lady Frances herself. She says all you boys may come right up and +have a look at the baby."</p> + +<p>"I guess we <i>may</i>," said Jim Burns, as he followed the speaker out +through the door; "it's Daise's baby, not hers."</p> + +<p>"I had one look at him," commented Milt Hayes, as he brought up the rear +of the procession, "but I guess I can stand another."</p> + +<p>Lady Frances, as the three young men entered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> was sitting in the big +upholstered chair in the centre of the farmhouse living-room. Her eyes +were shining, and her whole figure radiated an extraordinary animation. +In her lap lay something in shawls—something that waved tiny red +antennæ in a futile way, and emitted a series of unclassifiable sounds.</p> + +<p>"He sounds like a crow," Milt Hayes said, sotto voce, to Jim Burns, +"don't he?"</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't know a crow from a cowbird, Hayes," Jim Burns muttered; +"talk sense, or keep still."</p> + +<p>The three approached on tiptoe. Lady Frances looked up and smiled.</p> + +<p>"You may walk briskly, young men," she said, "the child is quite wide +awake, and not at all nervous, I think."</p> + +<p>The three came on abreast, a little sheepishly; but when they were about +five feet away, Jim Burns, with an air of proprietorship, elbowed the +other two aside and stepped to the front. Arriving at Lady Frances' +chair, he leaned over and took a lengthy and critical survey of the +infant.</p> + +<p>"Well, ma'am," he said, "I been like a brother to Daise, and I've give +Bill a talkin'-to, more than the once: so I can speak my mind plain-out +about this baby. It's pretty fair-looking, and I guess by the way it +slings its hands around and hollers, it'll live—but I don't think it +does entire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> justice to Daise's looks and Bill's style. I certainly +don't. Come on, boys: yous can take a peek, but don't touch it with your +big clumsy hands. You first, Dex, and then Milt. Don't breathe in his +face, Coleman, you galoot!"</p> + +<p>Here obviously ends the book of Daisy the Girl, but not the story of +Daisy. For as Daisy—or, more briefly, "Daise"—she still lives in the +Toddburn district of Plowland. If you are ever that way along, you may +call—any hour of any day, for there are no receiving days in Plowland. +In asking your direction of those along the trail, do not enquire for +the "estate of Sir William Ware". Nobody would know whom you meant. Just +say, "Where does Bill Ware live?"</p> + +<p>For the ancient title has fallen into disuse, and the big house in the +city has been sold, and Lady Frances does not wince when little Billie +Ware, jumping up and down ecstatically at the window, shouts across to +her, "Oh, Gamma, see <i>zem</i> horses wun!"</p> + +<p class="center">—THE END—</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Daisy Herself, by Will E. Ingersoll + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAISY HERSELF *** + +***** This file should be named 49188-h.htm or 49188-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/4/9/1/8/49188/ + +Produced by Andrew Sly, Al Haines, Martin Pettit and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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