The Coming of Bill

The Coming of Bill

by P. G. Wodehouse

1920

Contents

BOOK ONE

Chapter I A Pawn of Fate

Chapter II Ruth States Her Intentions

Chapter III The Mates Meet

Chapter IV Troubled Waters

Chapter V Wherein Opposites Agree

Chapter VI Breaking the News

Chapter VII Sufficient Unto Themselves

Chapter VIII Suspense

Chapter IX The White Hope is Turned Down

Chapter X An Interlude of Peace

Chapter XI Stung to Action

Chapter XII A Climax

BOOK TWO

Chapter I Empty-handed

Chapter II An Unknown Path

Chapter III The Misadventure of Steve

Chapter IV The Widening Gap

Chapter V The Real Thing

Chapter VI The Outcasts

Chapter VII Cutting the Tangled Knot

Chapter VIII Steve to the Rescue

Chapter IX At One in the Morning

Chapter X Accepting the Gifts of the Gods

Chapter XI Mr. Penway on the Grill

Chapter XII Dolls with Souls

Chapter XIII Pastures New

Chapter XIV The Sixty-First Street Cyclone

Chapter XV Mrs. Porter's Waterloo

Chapter XVI The White-Hope Link

BOOK ONE

Chapter I A Pawn of Fate

Mrs. Lora Delane Porter dismissed the hireling who had brought her

automobile around from the garage and seated herself at the wheel. It

was her habit to refresh her mind and improve her health by a daily

drive between the hours of two and four in the afternoon.

The world knows little of its greatest women, and it is possible that

Mrs. Porter's name is not familiar to you. If this is the case, I am

pained, but not surprised. It happens only too often that the uplifter

of the public mind is baulked by a disinclination on the part of the

public mind to meet him or her half-way. The uplifter does his share.

He produces the uplifting book. But the public, instead of standing

still to be uplifted, wanders off to browse on coloured supplements and

magazine stories.

If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter's books that is your affair.

Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave

you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put

it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put

most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the

modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on

long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined

that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers

and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason

Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in

Arizona was their own shocking health 'way back in the days beyond

recall.

Mrs. Porter's mind worked backward and forward. She had one eye on the

past, the other on the future. If she was strong on heredity, she was

stronger on the future of the race. Most of her published works dealt

with this subject. A careful perusal of them would have enabled the

rising generation to select its ideal wife or husband with perfect

ease, and, in the event of Heaven blessing the union, her little

volume, entitled "The Hygienic Care of the Baby," which was all about

germs and how to avoid them, would have insured the continuance of the

direct succession.

Unfortunately, the rising generation did not seem disposed to a careful

perusal of anything except the baseball scores and the beauty hints in

the Sunday papers, and Mrs. Porter's public was small. In fact, her

only real disciple, as she sometimes told herself in her rare moods of

discouragement, was her niece, Ruth Bannister, daughter of John

Bannister, the millionaire. It was not so long ago, she reflected with

pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank, a

considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal

attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to

him was that his father had died believing to the last that he was a

teapot.

There is nothing evil or degrading in believing oneself a teapot, but

it argues a certain inaccuracy of the thought processes; and Mrs.

Porter had used all her influence with Ruth to make her reject Basil.

It was her success that first showed her how great that influence was.

She had come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she

was personally responsible, a fact which was noted and resented by

others, in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with

a dislike and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards

the boy who saunters towards him with a tin can in his hand.

To Bailey, his strong-minded relative was a perpetual menace, a sort of

perambulating yellow peril, and the fact that she often alluded to him

as a worm consolidated his distaste for her.

* * * * *

Mrs. Porter released the clutch and set out on her drive. She rarely

had a settled route for these outings of hers, preferring to zigzag

about New York, livening up the great city at random. She always drove

herself and, having, like a good suffragist, a contempt for male

prohibitions, took an honest pleasure in exceeding a man-made speed

limit.

One hesitates to apply the term "joy-rider" to so eminent a leader of

contemporary thought as the authoress of "The Dawn of Better Things,"

"Principles of Selection," and "What of To-morrow?" but candour compels

the admission that she was a somewhat reckless driver. Perhaps it was

due to some atavistic tendency. One of her ancestors may have been a

Roman charioteer or a coach-racing maniac of the Regency days. At any

rate, after a hard morning's work on her new book she felt that her

mind needed cooling, and found that the rush of air against her face

effected this satisfactorily. The greater the rush, the quicker the

cooling. However, as the alert inhabitants of ManhattanIsland, a hardy

race trained from infancy to dodge taxicabs and ambulance wagons, had

always removed themselves from her path with their usual agility, she

had never yet had an accident.

But then she had never yet met George Pennicut. And George, pawn of

fate, was even now waiting round the corner to upset her record.

George, man of all work to Kirk Winfield, one of the youngest and least

efficient of New York's artist colony, was English. He had been in

America some little time, but not long enough to accustom his rather

unreceptive mind to the fact that, whereas in his native land vehicles

kept to the left, in the country of his adoption they kept to the

right; and it was still his bone-headed practice, when stepping off the

sidewalk, to keep a wary look-out in precisely the wrong direction.

The only problem with regard to such a man is who will get him first.

Fate had decided that it should be Lora Delane Porter.

To-day Mrs. Porter, having circled the park in rapid time, turned her

car down Central Park West. She was feeling much refreshed by the

pleasant air. She was conscious of a glow of benevolence toward her

species, not excluding even the young couple she had almost reduced to

mincemeat in the neighbourhood of Ninety-Seventh Street. They had

annoyed her extremely at the time of their meeting by occupying till

the last possible moment a part of the road which she wanted herself.

On reaching Sixty-First Street she found her way blocked by a lumbering

delivery wagon. She followed it slowly for a while; then, growing tired

of being merely a unit in a procession, tugged at the steering-wheel,

and turned to the right.

George Pennicut, his anxious eyes raking the middle distance, as

usual, in the wrong direction, had just stepped off the kerb. He

received the automobile in the small of the back, uttered a yell of

surprise and dismay, performed a few improvised Texas Tommy steps, and

fell in a heap.

In a situation which might have stimulated another to fervid speech,

George Pennicut contented himself with saying "Goo!" He was a man of

few words.

Mrs. Porter stopped the car. From all points of the compass citizens

began to assemble, many swallowing their chewing-gum in their

excitement. One, a devout believer in the inscrutable ways of

Providence, told a friend as he ran that only two minutes before he had

almost robbed himself of this spectacle by going into a moving-picture

palace.

Mrs. Porter was annoyed. She had never run over anything before except

a few chickens, and she regarded the incident as a blot on her

escutcheon. She was incensed with this idiot who had flung himself

before her car, not reflecting in her heat that he probably had a

pre-natal tendency to this sort of thing inherited from some ancestor

who had played "last across" in front of hansom cabs in the streets of

London.

She bent over George and passed experienced hands over his portly form.

For this remarkable woman was as competent at first aid as at anything

else. The citizens gathered silently round in a circle.

"It was your fault," she said to her victim severely. "I accept no

liability whatever. I did not run into you. You ran into me. I have a

jolly good mind to have you arrested for attempted suicide."

This aspect of the affair had not struck Mr. Pennicut. Presented to him

in these simple words, it checked the recriminatory speech which, his

mind having recovered to some extent from the first shock of the

meeting, he had intended to deliver. He swallowed his words, awed. He

felt dazed and helpless. Mrs. Porter had that effect upon men.

Some more citizens arrived.

"No bones broken," reported Mrs. Porter, concluding her examination.

"You are exceedingly fortunate. You have a few bruises, and one knee is

slightly wrenched. Nothing to signify. More frightened than hurt. Where

do you live?"

"There," said George meekly.

"Where?"

"Them studios."

"No. 90?"

"Yes, ma'am." George's voice was that of a crushed worm.

"Are you an artist?"

"No, ma'am. I'm Mr. Winfield's man."

"Whose?"

"Mr. Winfield's, ma'am."

"Is he in?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I'll fetch him. And if the policeman comes along and wants to know why

you're lying there, mind you tell him the truth, that you ran into me."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Very well. Don't forget."

"No, ma'am."

She crossed the street and rang the bell over which was a card hearing

the name of "Kirk Winfield". Mr. Pennicut watched her in silence.

Mrs. Porter pressed the button a second time. Somebody came at a

leisurely pace down the passage, whistling cheerfully. The door opened.

It did not often happen to Lora Delane Porter to feel insignificant,

least of all in the presence of the opposite sex. She had well-defined

views upon man. Yet, in the interval which elapsed between the opening

of the door and her first words, a certain sensation of smallness

overcame her.

The man who had opened the door was not, judged by any standard of

regularity of features, handsome. He had a rather boyish face, pleasant

eyes set wide apart, and a friendly mouth. He was rather an outsize in

young men, and as he stood there he seemed to fill the doorway.

It was this sense of bigness that he conveyed, his cleanness, his

magnificent fitness, that for the moment overcame Mrs. Porter. Physical

fitness was her gospel. She stared at him in silent appreciation.

To the young man, however, her forceful gaze did not convey this

quality. She seemed to him to be looking as if she had caught him in

the act of endeavouring to snatch her purse. He had been thrown a

little off his balance by the encounter.

Resource in moments of crisis is largely a matter of preparedness, and

a man, who, having opened his door in the expectation of seeing a

ginger-haired, bow-legged, grinning George Pennicut, is confronted by a

masterful woman with eyes like gimlets, may be excused for not guessing

that her piercing stare is an expression of admiration and respect.

Mrs. Porter broke the silence. It was ever her way to come swiftly to

the matter in hand.

"Mr. Kirk Winfield?"

"Yes."

"Have you in your employment a red-haired, congenital idiot who ambles

about New York in an absent-minded way, as if he were on a desert

island? The man I refer to is a short, stout Englishman, clean-shaven,

dressed in black."

"That sounds like George Pennicut."

"I have no doubt that that is his name. I did not inquire. It did not

interest me. My name is Mrs. Lora Delane Porter. This man of yours has

just run into my automobile."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I cannot put it more lucidly. I was driving along the street when this

weak-minded person flung himself in front of my car. He is out there

now. Kindly come and help him in."

"Is he hurt?"

"More frightened than hurt. I have examined him. His left knee appears

to be slightly wrenched."

Kirk Winfield passed a hand over his left forehead and followed her.

Like George, he found Mrs. Porter a trifle overwhelming.

Out in the street George Pennicut, now the centre of quite a

substantial section of the Four Million, was causing a granite-faced

policeman to think that the age of miracles had returned by informing

him that the accident had been his fault and no other's. He greeted the

relief-party with a wan grin.

"Just broke my leg, sir," he announced to Kirk.

"You have done nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Porter. "You have

wrenched your knee very slightly. Have you explained to the policeman

that it was entirely your fault?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That's right. Always speak the truth."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Mr. Winfield will help you indoors."

"Thank you, ma'am."

She turned to Kirk.

"Now, Mr. Winfield."

Kirk bent over the victim, gripped him, and lifted him like a baby.

"He's got his," observed one interested spectator.

"I should worry!" agreed another. "All broken up."

"Nothing of the kind," said Mrs. Porter severely. "The man is hardly

hurt at all. Be more accurate in your remarks."

She eyed the speaker sternly. He wilted.

"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled sheepishly.

The policeman, with that lionlike courage which makes the New York

constabulary what it is, endeavoured to assert himself at this point.

"Hey!" he boomed.

Mrs. Porter turned her gaze upon him, her cold, steely gaze.

"I beg your pardon?"

"This won't do, ma'am. I've me report to make. How did this happen?"

"You have already been informed. The man ran into my automobile."

"But......"

"I shall not charge him."

She turned and followed Kirk.

"But, say......" The policeman's voice was now almost plaintive.

Mrs. Porter ignored him and disappeared into the house. The policeman,

having gulped several times in a disconsolate way, relieved his

feelings by dispersing the crowd with well-directed prods of his locust

stick. A small boy who lingered, squeezing the automobile's hooter, in

a sort of trance he kicked. The boy vanished. The crowd melted. The

policeman walked slowly toward Ninth Avenue. Peace reigned in the

street.

"Put him to bed," said Mrs. Porter, as Kirk laid his burden on a couch

in the studio. "You seem exceedingly muscular, Mr. Winfield. I noticed

that you carried him without an effort. He is a stout man, too. Grossly

out of condition, like ninety-nine per cent of men to-day."

"I'm not so young as I was, ma'am," protested George. "When I was in

the harmy I was a fine figure of a man."

"The more shame to you that you have allowed yourself to deteriorate,"

commented Mrs. Porter. "Beer?"

A grateful smile irradiated George's face.

"Thank you, ma'am. It's very kind of you, ma'am. I don't mind if I do."

"The man appears a perfect imbecile," said Mrs. Porter, turning

abruptly to Kirk. "I ask him if he attributes his physical decay to

beer and he babbles."

"I think he thought you were offering him a drink," suggested Kirk. "As

a matter of fact, a little brandy wouldn't hurt him, after the shock he

has had."

"On no account. The worst thing possible."

"This isn't your lucky day, George," said Kirk. "Well, I guess I'll

phone to the doctor."

"Quite unnecessary."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Entirely unnecessary. I have made an examination. There is practically

nothing the matter with the man. Put him to bed, and let him sponge his

knee with warm water."

"Are you a doctor, Mrs. Porter?"

"I have studied first aid."

"Well, I think, if you don't mind, I should like to have your opinion

confirmed."

This was rank mutiny. Mrs. Porter stared haughtily at Kirk. He met her

gaze with determination.

"As you please," she snapped.

"Thank you," said Kirk. "I don't want to take any risks with George. I

couldn't afford to lose him. There aren't any more like him: they've

mislaid the pattern."

He went to the telephone.

Mrs. Porter watched him narrowly. She was more than ever impressed by

the perfection of his physique. She appraised his voice as he spoke to

the doctor. It gave evidence of excellent lungs. He was a wonderfully

perfect physical specimen.

An idea concerning this young man came into her mind, startling as all

great ideas are at birth. The older it grew, the more she approved of

it. She decided to put a few questions to him. She had a habit of

questioning people, and it never occurred to her that they might resent

it. If it had occurred to her, she would have done it just the same.

She was like that.

"Mr. Winfield?"

"Yes?"

"I should like to ask you a few questions."

This woman delighted Kirk.

"Please do," he said.

Mrs. Porter scanned him closely.

"You are an extraordinarily healthy man, to all appearances. Have you

ever suffered from bad health?"

"Measles."

"Immaterial."

"Very unpleasant, though."

"Nothing else?"

"Mumps."

"Unimportant."

"Not to me. I looked like a water-melon."

"Nothing besides? No serious illnesses?"

"None."

"What is your age?"

"Twenty-five."

"Are your parents living?"

"No."

"Were they healthy?"

"Fit as fiddles."

"And your grandparents?"

"Perfect bear-cats. I remember my grandfather at the age of about a

hundred or something like that spanking me for breaking his pipe. I

thought it was a steam-hammer. He was a wonderfully muscular old

gentleman."

"Excellent."

"By the way," said Kirk casually, "my life is insured."

"Very sensible. There has been no serious illness in your family at

all, then, as far as you know?"

"I could hunt up the records, if you like; but I don't think so."

"Consumption? No? Cancer? No? As far as you are aware, nothing? Very

satisfactory."

"I'm glad you're pleased."

"Are you married?"

"Good Lord, no!"

"At your age you should be. With your magnificent physique and

remarkable record of health, it is your duty to the future of the race

to marry."

"I'm not sure I've been worrying much about the future of the race."

"No man does. It is the crying evil of the day, men's selfish

absorption in the present, their utter lack of a sense of duty with

regard to the future. Have you read my 'Dawn of Better Things'?"

"I'm afraid I read very few novels."

"It is not a novel. It is a treatise on the need for implanting a sense

of personal duty to the future of the race in the modern young man."

"It sounds a crackerjack. I must get it."

"I will send you a copy. At the same time I will send you my

'Principles of Selection' and 'What of To-morrow?' They will make you

think."

"I bet they will. Thank you very much."

"And now," said Mrs. Porter, switching the conversation to the gaping

George, "you had better put this man to bed."

George Pennicut's opinion of Mrs. Porter, to which he was destined to

adhere on closer acquaintance, may be recorded.

"A hawful woman, sir," he whispered as Kirk bore him off.

"Nonsense, George," said Kirk. "One of the most entertaining ladies I

have ever met. Already I love her like a son. But how she escaped from

Bloomingdale beats me. There's been carelessness somewhere."

The bedrooms attached to the studio opened off the gallery that ran the

length of the east wall. Looking over the edge of the gallery before

coming downstairs Kirk perceived his visitor engaged in a tour of the

studio. At that moment she was examining his masterpiece, "Ariadne in

Naxos." He had called it that because that was what it had turned into.

At the beginning he had had no definite opinion as to its identity. It

was rather a habit with his pictures to start out in a vague spirit of

adventure and receive their label on completion. He had an airy and a

dashing way in his dealings with the goddess Art.

Nevertheless, he had sufficient of the artist soul to resent the fact

that Mrs. Porter was standing a great deal too close to the masterpiece

to get its full value.

"You want to stand back a little," he suggested over the rail.

Mrs. Porter looked up.

"Oh, there you are!" she said.

"Yes, here I am," agreed Kirk affably.

"Is this yours?"

"It is."

"You painted it?"

"I did."

"It is poor. It shows a certain feeling for colour, but the drawing is

weak," said Mrs. Porter. For this wonderful woman was as competent at

art criticism as at automobile driving and first aid. "Where did you

study?"

"In Paris, if you could call it studying. I'm afraid I was not the

model pupil."

"Kindly come down. You are giving me a crick in the neck."

Kirk descended. He found Mrs. Porter still regarding the masterpiece

with an unfavourable eye.

"Yes," she said, "the drawing is decidedly weak."

"I shouldn't wonder," assented Kirk. "The dealers to whom I've tried to

sell it have not said that in so many words, but they've all begged me

with tears in their eyes to take the darned thing away, so I guess

you're right."

"Do you depend for a living on the sale of your pictures?"

"Thank Heaven, no. I'm the only artist in captivity with a private

income."

"A large income?"

"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis

enough, 'twill serve. All told, about five thousand iron men per

annum."

"Iron men?"

"Bones."

"Bones?"

"I should have said dollars."

"You should. I detest slang."

"Sorry," said Kirk.

Mrs. Porter resumed her tour of the studio. She was interrupted by the

arrival of the doctor, a cheerful little old man with the bearing of

one sure of his welcome. He was an old friend of Kirk's.

"Well, what's the trouble? I couldn't come sooner. I was visiting a

case. I work."

"There is no trouble," said Mrs. Porter. The doctor spun round,

startled. In the dimness of the studio he had not perceived her. "Mr.

Winfield's servant has injured his knee very superficially. There is

practically nothing wrong with him. I have made a thorough

examination."

The doctor looked from one to the other.

"Is the case in other hands?" he asked.

"You bet it isn't," said Kirk. "Mrs. Porter just looked in for a family

chat and a glimpse of my pictures. You'll find George in bed, first

floor on the left upstairs, and a very remarkable sight he is. He is

wearing red hair with purple pyjamas. Why go abroad when you have not

yet seen the wonders of your native land?"

* * * * *

That night Lora Delane Porter wrote in the diary which, with that

magnificent freedom from human weakness that marked every aspect of her

life, she kept all the year round instead of only during the first week

in January.

This is what she wrote:

"Worked steadily on my book. It progresses. In the afternoon an

annoying occurrence. An imbecile with red hair placed himself in

front of my automobile, fortunately without serious injury to the

machine, though the sudden application of the brake cannot be good

for the tyres. Out of evil, however, came good, for I have made the

acquaintance of his employer, a Mr. Winfield, an artist. Mr. Winfield

is a man of remarkable physique. I questioned him narrowly, and he

appears thoroughly sound. As to his mental attainments, I cannot speak

so highly; but all men are fools, and Mr. Winfield is not more so than

most. I have decided that he shall marry my dear Ruth. They will make

a magnificent pair."

Chapter II Ruth States Her Intentions

At about the time when Lora Delane Porter was cross-examining Kirk

Winfield, Bailey Bannister left his club hurriedly.

Inside the club a sad, rabbit-faced young gentleman, who had been

unburdening his soul to Bailey, was seeking further consolation in an

amber drink with a cherry at the bottom of it. For this young man was

one of nature's cherry-chasers. It was the only thing he did really

well. His name was Grayling, his height five feet three, his socks

pink, and his income enormous.

So much for Grayling. He is of absolutely no importance, either to the

world or to this narrative, except in so far that the painful story he

has been unfolding to Bailey Bannister has so wrought upon that

exquisite as to send him galloping up Fifth Avenue at five miles an

hour in search of his sister Ruth.

Let us now examine Bailey. He is a faultlessly dressed young man of

about twenty-seven, who takes it as a compliment when people think

him older. His mouth, at present gaping with agitation and the

unwonted exercise, is, as a rule, primly closed. His eyes, peering

through gold-rimmed glasses, protrude slightly, giving him something

of the dumb pathos of a codfish.

His hair is pale and scanty, his nose sharp and narrow. He is a junior

partner in the firm of Bannister & Son, and it is his unalterable

conviction that, if his father would only give him a chance, he could

show Wall Street some high finance that would astonish it.

The afternoon was warm. The sun beat down on the avenue. Bailey had not

gone two blocks before it occurred to him that swifter and more

comfortable progress could be made in a taxicab than on his admirably

trousered legs. No more significant proof of the magnitude of his

agitation could be brought forward than the fact that he had so far

forgotten himself as to walk at all. He hailed a cab and gave the

address of a house on the upper avenue.

He leaned back against the cushions, trying to achieve a coolness of

mind and body. But the heat of the day kept him unpleasantly soluble,

and dismay, that perspiration of the soul, refused to be absorbed by

the pocket-handkerchief of philosophy.

Bailey Bannister was a young man who considered the minding of other

people's business a duty not to be shirked. Life is a rocky road for

such. His motto was "Let me do it!" He fussed about the affairs

of Bannister & Son; he fussed about the welfare of his friends at the

club; especially, he fussed about his only sister Ruth.

He looked on himself as a sort of guardian to Ruth. Their mother had

died when they were children, and old Mr. Bannister was indifferently

equipped with the paternal instinct. He was absorbed, body and soul, in

the business of the firm. He lived practically a hermit life in the

great house on Fifth Avenue; and, if it had not been for Bailey, so

Bailey considered, Ruth would have been allowed to do just whatever she

pleased. There were those who said that this was precisely what she

did, despite Brother Bailey.

It is a hard world for a conscientious young man of twenty-seven.

Bailey paid the cab and went into the house. It was deliciously cool in

the hall, and for a moment peace descended on him. But the distant

sound of a piano in the upper regions ejected it again by reminding him

of his mission. He bounded up the stairs and knocked at the door of his

sister's private den.

The piano stopped as he entered, and the girl on the music-stool

glanced over her shoulder.

"Well, Bailey," she said, "you look warm."

"I am warm," said Bailey in an aggrieved tone. He sat down

solemnly.

"I want to speak to you, Ruth."

Ruth shut the piano and caused the music-stool to revolve till she

faced him.

"Well?" she said.

Ruth Bannister was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, "a daughter of

the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." From her mother she

had inherited the dark eyes and ivory complexion which went so well

with her mass of dark hair; from her father a chin of peculiar

determination and perfect teeth. Her body was strong and supple. She

radiated health.

To her friends Ruth was a source of perplexity. It was difficult to

understand her. In the set in which she moved girls married young; yet

season followed season, and Ruth remained single, and this so obviously

of her own free will that the usual explanation of such a state of

things broke down as soon as it was tested.

In shoals during her first two seasons, and lately with less unanimity,

men of every condition, from a prince, somewhat battered, but still a

prince, to the Bannisters' English butler, a good man, but at the

moment under the influence of tawny port, had laid their hearts at her

feet. One and all, they had been compelled to pick them up and take

them elsewhere. She was generally kind on these occasions, but always

very firm. The determined chin gave no hope that she might yield to

importunity. The eyes that backed up the message of the chin were

pleasant, but inflexible.

Generally it was with a feeling akin to relief that the rejected, when

time had begun to heal the wound, contemplated their position. There

was something about this girl, they decided, which no fellow could

understand: she frightened them; she made them feel that their hands

were large and red and their minds weak and empty. She was waiting for

something. What it was they did not know, but it was plain that they

were not it, and off they went to live happily ever after with girls

who ate candy and read best-sellers. And Ruth went on her way, cool and

watchful and mysterious, waiting.

The room which Ruth had taken for her own gave, like all rooms when

intelligently considered, a clue to the character of its owner. It was

the only room in the house furnished with any taste or simplicity. The

furniture was exceedingly expensive, but did not look so. The key-note

of the colour-scheme was green and white. All round the walls were

books. Except for a few prints, there were no pictures; and the only

photograph visible stood in a silver frame on a little table.

It was the portrait of a woman of about fifty, square-jawed,

tight-lipped, who stared almost threateningly out of the frame;

exceedingly handsome, but, to the ordinary male, too formidable

to be attractive. On this was written in a bold hand, bristling

with emphatic down-strokes and wholly free from feminine flourish:

"To my dear Ruth from her Aunt Lora." And below the signature, in

what printers call "quotes," a line that was evidently an extract

from somebody's published works: "Bear the torch and do not falter."

Bailey inspected this photograph with disfavour. It always irritated

him. The information, conveyed to him by amused friends, that his Aunt

Lora had once described Ruth as a jewel in a dust-bin, seemed to him to

carry an offensive innuendo directed at himself and the rest of the

dwellers in the Bannister home. Also, she had called him a worm. Also,

again, his actual encounters with the lady, though few, had been

memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she had far too

great an influence on Ruth. And, lastly, that infernal sentence about

the torch, which he found perfectly meaningless, had a habit of running

in his head like a catch-phrase, causing him the keenest annoyance.

He pursed his lips disapprovingly and averted his eyes.

"Don't sniff at Aunt Lora, Bailey," said Ruth. "I've had to speak to

you about that before. What's the matter? What has sent you flying up

here?"

"I have had a shock," said Bailey. "I have been very greatly disturbed.

I have just been speaking to Clarence Grayling."

He eyed her accusingly through his gold-rimmed glasses. She remained

tranquil.

"And what had Clarence to say?"

"A great many things."

"I gather he told you I had refused him."

"If it were only that!"

Ruth rapped the piano sharply.

"Bailey," she said, "wake up. Either get to the point or go or read a

book or do some tatting or talk about something else. You know

perfectly well that I absolutely refuse to endure your impressive

manner. I believe when people ask you the time you look pained and

important and make a mystery of it. What's troubling you? I should have

thought Clarence would have kept quiet about insulting me. But

apparently he has no sense of shame."

Bailey gaped. Bailey was shocked and alarmed.

"Insulting you! What do you mean? Clarence is a gentleman. He is

incapable of insulting a woman."

"Is he? He told me I was a suitable wife for a wretched dwarf with the

miserably inadequate intelligence which nature gave him reduced to

practically a minus quantity by alcohol! At least, he implied it. He

asked me to marry him."

"I have just left him at the club. He is very upset."

"I should imagine so." A soft smile played over Ruth's face. "I spoke

to Clarence. I explained things to him. I lit up Clarence's little mind

like a searchlight."

Bailey rose, tremulous with just wrath.

"You spoke to him in a way that I can only call outrageous and

improper, and, er, outrageous."

He paced the room with agitated strides. Ruth watched him calmly.

"If the overflowing emotion of a giant soul in torment makes you knock

over a table or smash a chair," she said, "I shall send the bill for

repairs to you. You had far better sit down and talk quietly. What

is worrying you, Bailey?"

"Is it nothing," demanded her brother, "that my sister should have

spoken to a man as you spoke to Clarence Grayling?"

With an impassioned gesture he sent a flower-vase crashing to the

floor.

"I told you so," said Ruth. "Pick up the bits, and don't let the water

spoil the carpet. Use your handkerchief. I should say that that would

cost you about six dollars, dear. Why will you let yourself be so

temperamental? Now let me try and think what it was I said to Clarence.

As far as I can remember it was the mere A B C of eugenics."

Bailey, on his knees, picking up broken glass, raised a flushed and

accusing face.

"Ah! Eugenics! You admit it!"

"I think," went on Ruth placidly, "I asked him what sort of children he

thought we were likely to have if we married."

"A nice girl ought not to think about such things."

"I don't think about anything else much. A woman can't do a great deal,

even nowadays, but she can have a conscience and feel that she owes

something to the future of the race. She can feel that it is her duty

to bring fine children into the world. As Aunt Lora says, she can carry

the torch and not falter."

Bailey shied like a startled horse at the hated phrase. He pointed

furiously at the photograph of the great thinker.

"You're talking like that, that damned woman!"

"Bailey precious! You mustn't use such wicked, wicked words."

Bailey rose, pink and wrathful.

"If you're going to break another vase," said Ruth, "you will really

have to go."

"Ever since that...that......" cried Bailey. "Ever since Aunt Lora......"

Ruth smiled indulgently.

"That's more like my little man," she said. "He knows as well as I do

how wrong it is to swear."

"Be quiet! Ever since Aunt Lora got hold of you, I say, you have become

a sort of gramophone, spouting her opinions."

"But what sensible opinions!"

"It's got to stop. Aunt Lora! My God! Who is she? Just look at her

record. She disgraces the family by marrying a grubby newspaper fellow

called Porter. He has the sense to die. I will say that for him. She

thrusts herself into public notice by a series of books and speeches on

subjects of which a decent woman ought to know nothing. And now she

gets hold of you, fills you up with her disgusting nonsense, makes a

sort of disciple of you, gives you absurd ideas, poisons your mind,

and, er...er......-"

"Bailey! This is positive eloquence!"

"It's got to stop. It's bad enough in her; but every one knows she is

crazy, and makes allowances. But in a young girl like you."

He choked.

"In a young girl like me," prompted Ruth in a low, tragic voice.

"It, it's not right. It, it's not proper." He drew a long breath. "It's

all wrong. It's got to stop."

"He's perfectly wonderful!" murmured Ruth. "He just opens his mouth and

the words come out. But I knew he was somebody, directly I saw him, by

his forehead. Like a dome!" Bailey mopped the dome.

"Perhaps you don't know it," he said, "but you're getting yourself

talked about. You go about saying perfectly impossible things to

people. You won't marry. You have refused nearly every friend I have."

Ruth shuddered.

"Your friends are awful, Bailey. They are all turned out on a pattern,

like a flock of sheep. They bleat. They have all got little, narrow

faces without chins or big, fat faces without foreheads. Ugh!"

"None of them good enough for you, is that it?"

"Not nearly."

Emotion rendered Bailey, for him, almost vulgar.

"I guess you hate yourself!" he snapped.

"No sir" beamed Ruth. "I think I'm perfectly beautiful."

Bailey grunted. Ruth came to him and gave him a sisterly kiss. She was

very fond of Bailey, though she declined to reverence him.

"Cheer up, Bailey boy," she said. "Don't you worry yourself. There's a

method in my madness. I'll find him sooner or later, and then you'll be

glad I waited."

"Him? what do you mean?"

"Why, him, of course. The ideal young man. That's who, or is it

whom?, I'm waiting for. Bailey, shall I tell you something? You're so

scarlet already, poor boy, you ought not to rush around in this hot

weather, that it won't make you blush. It's this. I'm ambitious. I mean

to marry the finest man in the world and have the greatest little old

baby you ever dreamed of. By the way, now I remember, I told Clarence

that."

Bailey uttered a strangled exclamation.

"It has made you blush! You turned purple. Well, now you know. I

mean my baby to be the most splendid baby that was ever born. He's

going to be strong and straight and clever and handsome, and, oh,

everything else you can think of. That's why I'm waiting for the ideal

young man. If I don't find him I shall die an old maid. But I shall

find him. We may pass each other on Fifth Avenue. We may sit next each

other at a theatre. Wherever it is, I shall just reach right out and

grab him and whisk him away. And if he's married already, he'll have to

get a divorce. And I shan't care who he is. He may be any one. I don't

mind if he's a ribbon clerk or a prize-fighter or a policeman or a

cab-driver, so long as he's the right man."

Bailey plied the handkerchief on his streaming forehead. The heat of

the day and the horror of this conversation were reducing his weight at

the rate of ounces a minute. In his most jaundiced mood he had never

imagined these frightful sentiments to be lurking in Ruth's mind.

"You can't mean that!" he cried.

"I mean every word of it," said Ruth. "I hope, for your sake, he won't

turn out to be a waiter or a prize-fighter, but it won't make any

difference to me."

"You're crazy!"

"Well, just now you said Aunt Lora was. If she is, I am."

"I knew it! I said she had been putting these ghastly ideas into your

head. I'd like to strangle that woman."

"Don't you try! Have you ever felt Aunt Lora's biceps? It's like a

man's. She does dumb-bells every morning."

"I've a good mind to speak to father. Somebody's got to make you stop

this insanity."

"Just as you please. But you know how father hates to be worried about

things that don't concern business."

Bailey did. His father, of whom he stood in the greatest awe, was very

little interested in any subject except the financial affairs of the

firm of Bannister & Son. It required greater courage than Bailey

possessed to place this matter before him. He had an uneasy feeling

that Ruth knew it.

"I would, if it were necessary," he said. "But I don't believe you're

serious."

"Stick to that idea as long as ever you can, Bailey dear," said Ruth.

"It will comfort you."

Chapter III The Mates Meet

Kirk Winfield was an amiable, if rather weak, young man with whom life,

for twenty-five years, had dealt kindly. He had perfect health, an

income more than sufficient for his needs, a profession which

interested without monopolizing him, a thoroughly contented

disposition, and the happy knack of surrounding himself with friends.

That he had to contribute to the support of the majority of these

friends might have seemed a drawback to some men. Kirk did not object

to it in the least. He had enough money to meet their needs, and, being

a sociable person who enjoyed mixing with all sorts and conditions of

men, he found the Liberty Hall regime pleasant.

He liked to be a magnet, attracting New York's Bohemian population. If

he had his preferences among the impecunious crowd who used the studio

as a chapel of ease, strolling in when it pleased them, drinking his

whisky, smoking his cigarettes, borrowing his money, and, on occasion,

his spare bedrooms and his pyjamas, he never showed it. He was fully as

pleasant to Percy Shanklyn, the elegant, perpetually resting English

actor, whom he disliked as far as he was capable of disliking any one,

as he was to Hank Jardine, the prospector, and Hank's prize-fighter

friend, Steve Dingle, both of whom he liked enormously.

It seemed to him sometimes that he had drifted into the absolutely

ideal life. He lived entirely in the present. The passage of time left

him untouched. Day followed day, week followed week, and nothing seemed

to change. He was never unhappy, never ill, never bored.

He would get up in the morning with the comfortable knowledge that the

day held no definite duties. George Pennicut would produce one of his

excellent breakfasts. The next mile-stone would be the arrival of Steve

Dingle. Five brisk rounds with Steve, a cold bath, and a rub-down took

him pleasantly on to lunch, after which it amused him to play at

painting.

There was always something to do when he wearied of that until, almost

before the day had properly begun, up came George with one of his

celebrated dinners. And then began the incursion of his friends. One by

one they would drop in, making themselves very much at home, to help

their host through till bedtime. And another day would slip into the

past.

It never occurred to Kirk that he was wasting his life. He had no

ambitions. Ambition is born of woman, and no woman that he had ever met

had ever stirred him deeply. He had never been in love, and he had come

to imagine that he was incapable of anything except a mild liking for

women. He considered himself immune, and was secretly glad of it. He

enjoyed his go-as-you-please existence too much to want to have it

upset. He belonged, in fact, to the type which, when the moment

arrives, falls in love very suddenly, very violently, and for all time.

Nothing could have convinced him of this. He was like a child lighting

matches in a powder-magazine. When the idea of marriage crossed his

mind he thrust it from him with a kind of shuddering horror. He could

not picture to himself a woman who could compensate him for the loss of

his freedom and, still less, of his friends.

His friends were men's men; he could not see them fitting into a scheme

of life that involved the perpetual presence of a hostess. Hank

Jardine, for instance. To Kirk, the great point about Hank was that he

had been everywhere, seen everything, and was, when properly stimulated

with tobacco and drink, a fountain of reminiscence. But he could not

talk unless he had his coat off and his feet up on the back of a chair.

No hostess could be expected to relish that.

Hank was a bachelor's friend; he did not belong in a married household.

The abstract wife could not be reconciled to him, and Kirk, loving Hank

like a brother, firmly dismissed the abstract wife.

He came to look upon himself as a confirmed bachelor. He had thought

out the question of marriage in all its aspects, and decided against

it. He was the strong man who knew his own mind and could not be

shaken.

Yet, on the afternoon of the day following Mrs. Lora Delane Porter's

entry into his life, Kirk sat in the studio, feeling, for the first

time in recent years, a vague discontent. He was uneasy, almost afraid.

The slight dislocation in the smooth-working machinery of his

existence, caused by the compulsory retirement of George Pennicut, had

made him thoroughly uncomfortable. With discomfort had come

introspection, and with introspection this uneasiness that was almost

fear.

A man, living alone, without money troubles to worry him, sinks

inevitably into a routine. Fatted ease is good for no one. It sucks the

soul out of a man. Kirk, as he sat smoking in the cool dusk of the

studio, was wondering, almost in a panic, whether all was well with

himself.

This mild domestic calamity had upset him so infernally. It could not

be right that so slight a change in his habits should have such an

effect upon him. George had been so little hurt, the doctor gave him a

couple of days before complete recovery, that it had not seemed worth

while to Kirk to engage a substitute. It was simpler to go out for his

meals and make his own bed. And it was the realization that this

alteration in his habits had horribly disturbed and unsettled him that

was making Kirk subject himself now to an examination of quite unusual

severity.

He hated softness. Physically, he kept himself always in perfect

condition. Had he become spiritually flabby? Certainly this unexpected

call on his energies would appear to have found him unprepared. It

spoiled his whole day, knowing, when he got out of bed in the morning,

that he must hunt about and find his food instead of sitting still and

having it brought to him. It frightened him to think how set he had

become.

Forty-eight hours ago he would have scorned the suggestion that he

coddled himself. He would have produced as evidence to the contrary his

cold baths, his exercises, his bouts with Steve Dingle. To-day he felt

less confidence. For all his baths and boxing, the fact remained that

he had become, at the age of twenty-six, such a slave to habit that a

very trifling deviation from settled routine had been enough to poison

life for him.

Bachelors have these black moments, and it is then that the abstract

wife comes into her own. To Kirk, brooding in the dusk, the figure of

the abstract wife seemed to grow less formidable, the fact that she

might not get on with Hank Jardine of less importance.

The revolutionary thought that life was rather a bore, and would become

more and more of a bore as the years went on, unless he had some one to

share it with, crept into his mind and stayed there.

He shivered. These were unpleasant thoughts, and in his hour of clear

vision he knew whence they came. They were entirely due to the

knowledge that, instead of sitting comfortably at home, he would be

compelled in a few short hours to go out and get dinner at some

restaurant. To such a pass had he come in the twenty-sixth year of his

life.

Once the gods have marked a bachelor down, they give him few chances of

escape. It was when Kirk's mood was at its blackest, and the figure of

the abstract wife had ceased to be a menace and become a shining angel

of salvation, that Lora Delane Porter, with Ruth Bannister at her side,

rang the studio bell.

Kirk went to the door. He hoped it was a tradesman; he feared it was a

friend. In his present state of mind he had no use for friends. When he

found himself confronting Mrs. Porter he became momentarily incapable

of speech. It had not entered his mind that she would pay him a second

visit. Possibly it was joy that rendered him dumb.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. "I have come to

inquire after the man Pennicut. Ruth, this is Mr. Winfield. Mr.

Winfield, my niece, Miss Bannister."

And Kirk perceived for the first time that his visitor was not alone.

In the shadow behind her a girl was standing. He stood aside to let

Mrs. Porter pass, and Ruth came into the light.

If there are degrees in speechlessness, Kirk's aphasia became doubled

and trebled at the sight of her. It seemed to him that he went all to

pieces, as if he had received a violent blow. Curious physical changes

were taking place in him. His legs, which only that morning he had

looked upon as eminently muscular, he now discovered to be composed of

some curiously unstable jelly.

He also perceived, a fact which he had never before suspected, that he

had heart-disease. His lungs, too, were in poor condition; he found it

practically impossible to breathe. The violent trembling fit which

assailed him he attributed to general organic weakness.

He gaped at Ruth.

Ruth, outwardly, remained unaffected by the meeting, but inwardly she

was feeling precisely the same sensation of smallness which had come to

Mrs. Porter on her first meeting with Kirk. If this sensation had been

novel to Mrs. Porter, it was even stranger to Ruth.

To think humbly of herself was an experience that seldom happened to

her. She was perfectly aware that her beauty was remarkable even in a

city of beautiful women, and it was rarely that she permitted her

knowledge of that fact to escape her. Her beauty, to her, was a natural

phenomenon, impossible to overlook. The realization of it did not

obtrude itself into her mind, it simply existed subconsciously.

Yet for an instant it ceased to exist. She was staggered by a sense of

inferiority.

It lasted but a pin-point of time, this riotous upheaval of her nature.

She recovered herself so swiftly that Kirk, busy with his own emotions,

had no suspicion of it.

A moment later he, too, was himself again. He was conscious of feeling

curiously uplifted and thrilled, as if the world had suddenly become

charged with ozone and electricity, and for some reason he felt capable

of great feats of muscle and energy; but the aphasia had left him, and

he addressed himself with a clear brain to the task of entertaining his

visitors.

"George is better to-day," he reported.

"He never was bad," said Mrs. Porter succinctly.

"He doesn't think so."

"Possibly not. He is hopelessly weak-minded."

Ruth laughed. Kirk thrilled at the sound.

"Poor George!" she observed.

"Don't waste your sympathy, my dear," said Mrs. Porter. "That he is

injured at all is his own fault. For years he has allowed himself to

become gross and flabby, with the result that the collision did damage

which it would not have done to a man in hard condition. You, Mr.

Winfield," she added, turning abruptly to Kirk, "would scarcely have

felt it. But then you," went on Mrs. Porter, "are in good condition.

Cold baths!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you take cold baths?"

"I do."

"Do you do Swedish exercises?"

"I go through a series of evolutions every morning, with the utmost

loathing. I started them as a boy, and they have become a habit like

dram-drinking. I would leave them off if I could, but I can't."

"Do nothing of the kind. They are invaluable."

"But undignified."

"Let me feel your biceps, Mr. Winfield," said Mrs. Porter. She nodded

approvingly. "Like iron." She poised a finger and ran a meditative

glance over his form. Kirk eyed her apprehensively. The finger darted

forward and struck home in the region of the third waistcoat button.

"Wonderful!" she exclaimed. "Ruth!"

"Yes, aunt."

"Prod Mr. Winfield where my finger is pointing. He is extraordinarily

muscular."

"I say, really!" protested Kirk. He was a modest young man, and this

exploration of his more intimate anatomy by the finger-tips of the girl

he loved was not to be contemplated.

"Just as you please," said Mrs. Porter. "If I were a man of your

physique, I should be proud of it."

"Wouldn't you like to go up and see George?" asked Kirk. It was hard on

George, but it was imperative that this woman be removed somehow.

"Very well. I have brought him a little book to read, which will do him

good. It is called 'Elementary Rules for the Preservation of the

Body'."

"He has learned one of them, all right, since yesterday," said Kirk.

"Not to walk about in front of automobiles."

"The rules I refer to are mainly concerned with diet and wholesome

exercise," explained Mrs. Porter. "Careful attention to them may yet

save him. His case is not hopeless. Ruth, let Mr. Winfield show you his

pictures. They are poor in many respects, but not entirely without

merit."

Ruth, meanwhile, had been sitting on the couch, listening to the

conversation without really hearing it. She was in a dreamy, contented

mood. She found herself curiously soothed by the atmosphere of the

studio, with its shaded lights and its atmosphere of peace. That was

the keynote of the place, peace.

From outside came the rumble of an elevated train, subdued and

softened, like faintly heard thunder. Somebody passed the window,

whistling. A barrier seemed to separate her from these noises of the

city. New York was very far away.

"I believe I could be wonderfully happy in a place like this," she

thought.

She became suddenly aware, in the midst of her meditations, of eyes

watching her intently. She looked up and met Kirk's.

She could read the message in them as clearly as if he had spoken it,

and she was conscious of a little thrill of annoyance at the thought of

all the tiresome formalities which must be gone through before he could

speak it. They seemed absurd.

It was all so simple. He wanted her; she wanted him. She had known it

from the moment of their meeting. The man had found his woman, the

woman her man. Nature had settled the whole affair in an instant. And

now civilization, propriety, etiquette, whatever one cared to call it,

must needs step in with the rules and regulations and precedents.

The goal was there, clear in sight, but it must be reached by the

winding road appointed. She, being a woman and, by virtue of her sex,

primeval, scorned the road, and would have ignored it. But she knew

men, and especially, at that moment as their eyes met, she knew Kirk;

and she understood that to him the road was a thing that could not be

ignored. The mere idea of doing so would seem grotesque and impossible,

probably even shocking, to him. Men were odd, formal creatures, slaves

to precedent.

He must have time, it was the prerogative of the male; time to reveal

himself to her, to strut before her, to go through the solemn comedy of

proving to her, by the exhibition of his virtues and the careful

suppression of his defects, what had been clear to her from the first

instant, that here was her mate, the man nature had set apart for her.

He would begin by putting on a new suit of clothes and having his hair

cut.

She smiled. It was silly and tiresome, but it was funny.

"Will you show me your pictures, Mr. Winfield?" she asked.

"If you'd really care to see them. I'm afraid they're pretty bad."

"Exhibit A. Modesty," thought Ruth.

The journey had begun.

Chapter IV Troubled Waters

It is not easy in this world to take any definite step without annoying

somebody, and Kirk, in embarking on his wooing of Ruth Bannister,

failed signally to do so. Lora Delane Porter beamed graciously upon

him, like a pleased Providence, but the rest of his circle of

acquaintances were ill at ease.

The statement does not include Hank Jardine, for Hank was out of New

York; but the others, Shanklyn, the actor; Wren, the newspaper-man;

Bryce, Johnson, Willis, Appleton, and the rest, sensed impending change

in the air, and were uneasy, like cattle before a thunder-storm. The

fact that the visits of Mrs. Porter and Ruth to inquire after George,

now of daily occurrence, took place in the afternoon, while they,

Kirk's dependents, seldom or never appeared in the studio till drawn

there by the scent of the evening meal, it being understood that during

the daytime Kirk liked to work undisturbed, kept them ignorant of the

new development.

All they knew was that during the last two weeks a subtle change had

taken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritability

than of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and was

frequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on the

back at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wren

belonging to the jovial school of thought which holds that nature gave

us hands in order to slap backs, was to bring forth a new and

unexpected Kirk, a Kirk who scowled and snarled and was hardly to be

appeased with apology. Stranger still, this new Kirk could be summoned

into existence by precisely the type of story at which, but a few weeks

back, he would have been the first to laugh.

Percy Shanklyn, whose conversation consisted of equal parts of

autobiography and of stories of the type alluded to, was the one to

discover this. His latest, which he had counted on to set the table in

a roar, produced from Kirk criticism so adverse and so crisply

delivered that he refrained from telling his latest but one and spent

the rest of the evening wondering, like his fellow visitors, what had

happened to Kirk and whether he was sickening for something.

Not one of them had the faintest suspicion that these symptoms

indicated that Kirk, for the first time in his easy-going life, was in

love. They had never contemplated such a prospect. It was not till his

conscientious and laborious courtship had been in progress for over two

weeks and was nearing the stage when he felt that the possibility of

revealing his state of mind to Ruth was not so remote as it had been,

that a chance visit of Percy Shanklyn to the studio during the

afternoon solved the mystery.

One calls it a chance visit because Percy had not been meaning to

borrow twenty dollars from Kirk that day at all. The man slated for the

loan was one Burrows, a kindly member of the Lambs Club. But fate and a

telegram from a manager removed Burrows to Chicago, while Percy was

actually circling preparatory to the swoop, and the only other man in

New York who seemed to Percy good for the necessary sum at that precise

moment was Kirk.

He flew to Kirk and found him with Ruth. Kirk's utter absence of any

enthusiasm at the sight of him, the reluctance with which he made

the introduction, the glumness with which he bore his share of the

three-cornered conversation, all these things convinced Percy that

this was no ordinary visitor.

Many years of living by his wits had developed in Percy highly

sensitive powers of observation. Brief as his visit was, he came away

as certain that Kirk was in love with this girl, and the girl was in

love with Kirk, as he had ever been of anything in his life.

As he walked slowly down-town he was thinking hard. The subject

occupying his mind was the problem of how this thing was to be stopped.

Percy Shanklyn was a sleek, suave, unpleasant youth who had been

imported by a theatrical manager two years before to play the part of

an English dude in a new comedy. The comedy had been what its

enthusiastic backer had described in the newspaper advertisements as a

"rousing live-wire success." That is to say, it had staggered along for

six weeks on Broadway to extremely poor houses, and after three weeks

on the road, had perished for all time, leaving Percy out of work.

Since then, no other English dude part having happened along, he had

rested, living in the mysterious way in which out-of-work actors do live.

He had a number of acquaintances, such as the amiable Burrows, who were

good for occasional loans, but Kirk Winfield was the king of them all.

There was something princely about the careless open-handedness of Kirk's

methods, and Percy's whole soul rose in revolt against the prospect of

being deprived of this source of revenue, as something, possibly Ruth's

determined chin, told him that he would be, should Kirk marry this girl.

He had placed Ruth at once, directly he had heard her name. He

remembered having seen her photograph in the society section of the

Sunday paper which he borrowed each week. This was the daughter of old

John Bannister. There was no doubt about that. How she had found her

way to Kirk's studio he could not understand; but there she certainly

was, and Percy was willing to bet the twenty dollars which, despite the

excitement of the moment, he had forgotten to extract from Kirk in a

hurried conversation at the door, that her presence there was not known

and approved by her father.

The only reasonable explanation that Kirk was painting her portrait he

dismissed. There had been no signs of any portrait, and Kirk's

embarrassment had been so obvious that, if there had been any such

explanation, he would certainly have given it. No, Ruth had been there

for other reasons than those of art.

"Unchaperoned, too, by Jove!" thought Percy virtuously, ignorant of

Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, who at the time of his call, had been busily

occupied in a back room instilling into George Pennicut the gospel of

the fit body. For George, now restored to health, had ceased to be a

mere student of "Elementary Rules for the Preservation of the Body" and

had become an active, though unwilling, practiser of its precepts.

Every morning Mrs. Porter called and, having shepherded him into the

back room, put him relentlessly through his exercises. George's groans,

as he moved his stout limbs along the dotted lines indicated in the

book's illustrated plates, might have stirred a faint heart to pity.

But Lora Delane Porter was made of sterner stuff. If George so much as

bent his knees while touching his toes he heard of it instantly, in no

uncertain voice.

Thus, in her decisive way, did Mrs. Porter spread light and sweetness

with both hands, achieving the bodily salvation of George while, at the

same time, furthering the loves of Ruth and Kirk by leaving them alone

together to make each other's better acquaintance in the romantic

dimness of the studio.

* * * * *

Percy proceeded down-town, pondering. His first impulse, I regret to

say, was to send Ruth's father an anonymous letter. This plan he

abandoned from motives of fear rather than of self-respect. Anonymous

letters are too frequently traced to their writers, and the prospect of

facing Kirk in such an event did not appeal to him.

As he could think of no other way of effecting his object, he had begun

to taste the bitterness of futile effort, when fortune, always his

friend, put him in a position to do what he wanted in the easiest

possible way with the minimum of unpleasantness.

Bailey Bannister, that strong, keen Napoleon of finance, was not above

a little relaxation of an evening when his father happened to be out of

town. That giant mind, weary with the strain of business, needed

refreshment.

And so, at eleven thirty that night, his father being in Albany, and

not expected home till next day, Bailey might have been observed,

beautifully arrayed and discreetly jovial, partaking of lobster at one

of those Broadway palaces where this fish is in brisk demand. He was in

company with his rabbit-faced friend, Clarence Grayling, and two

members of the chorus of a neighbouring musical comedy.

One of the two, with whom Clarence was conversing in a lively manner

that showed his heart had not been irreparably broken as the result of

his recent interview with Ruth, we may dismiss. Like Clarence, she is

of no importance to the story. The other, who, not finding Bailey's

measured remarks very gripping, was allowing her gaze to wander idly

around the room, has this claim to a place in the scheme of things,

that she had a wordless part in the comedy in which Percy Shanklyn had

appeared as the English dude and was on terms of friendship with him.

Consequently, seeing him enter the room, as he did at that moment, she

signalled him to approach.

"It's a little feller who was with me in 'The Man from Out West'," she

explained to Bailey as Percy made his way toward them. At which

Bailey's prim mouth closed with an air of disapproval.

The feminine element of the stage he found congenial to his business-

harassed brain, but with the "little fellers" who helped them to keep

the national drama sizzling he felt less in sympathy; and he resented

extremely his companion's tactlessness in inciting this infernal mummer

to intrude upon his privacy.

He prepared to be cold and distant with Percy. And when Bailey, never a

ray of sunshine, deliberately tried to be chilly, those with him at the

time generally had the sensation that winter was once more in their

midst.

Percy, meanwhile, threaded his way among the tables, little knowing

that fate had already solved the problem which had worried him the

greater part of the day.

He had come to the restaurant as a relief from his thoughts. If he

could find some kind friend who would invite him to supper, well and

good. If not, he was feeling so tired and depressed that he was ready

to take the bull by the horns and pay for his meal himself. He had

obeyed Miss Freda Reece's signal because it was impossible to avoid

doing so; but one glance at Bailey's face had convinced him that not

there was his kind host.

"Why, Perce," said Miss Reece, "I ain't saw you in years. Where you

been hiding yourself?"

Percy gave a languid gesture indicative of the man of affairs whose

time is not his own.

"Percy," continued Miss Reece, "shake hands with my friend Mr.

Bannister. I been telling him about how you made such a hit as the pin

in 'Pinafore'!"

The name galvanized Percy like a bugle-blast.

"Mr. Bannister!" he exclaimed. "Any relation to Mr. John Bannister, the

millionaire?"

Bailey favoured him with a scrutiny through the gold-rimmed glasses

which would have frozen his very spine.

"My father's name is...ah...John, and he is a millionaire."

Percy met the scrutiny with a suave smile.

"By Jove!" he said. "I know your sister quite well, Mr. Bannister. I

meet her frequently at the studio of my friend Kirk Winfield. Very

frequently. She is there nearly every day. Well, I must be moving on.

Got a date with a man. Goodbye, Freda. Glad you're going strong. Good

night, Mr. Bannister. Delighted to have made your acquaintance. You

must come round to the studio one of these days. Good night."

He moved softly away. Miss Reece watched him go with regret.

"He's a good little feller, Percy," she said. "And so he knows your

sister. Well, ain't that nice!"

Bailey did not reply. And to the feast of reason and flow of soul that

went on at the table during the rest of the meal he contributed so

little that Miss Reece, in conversation that night with her friend

alluded to him, not without justice, first as "that stiff," and, later,

as "a dead one."

* * * * *

If Percy Shanklyn could have seen Bailey in the small hours of that

night he would have been satisfied that his words had borne fruit. Like

a modern Prometheus, Bailey writhed, sleepless, on his bed till

daylight appeared. The discovery that Ruth was in the habit of paying

clandestine visits to artists' studios, where she met men like the

little bounder who had been thrust upon him at supper, rent his haughty

soul like a bomb.

He knew no artists, but he had read novels of Bohemian life in Paris,

and he had gathered a general impression that they were, as a class,

shock-headed, unwashed persons of no social standing whatever,

extremely short of money and much addicted to orgies. And his sister

had lowered herself by association with one of these.

He rose early. His appearance in the mirror shocked him. He looked

positively haggard.

Dressing with unwonted haste, he inquired for Ruth, and was told that a

telephone message had come from her late the previous evening to say

that she was spending the night at the apartment of Mrs. Lora Delane

Porter. The hated name increased Bailey's indignation. He held Mrs.

Porter responsible for the whole trouble. But for her pernicious

influence, Ruth would have been an ordinary sweet American girl,

running as, Bailey held, a girl should, in a decent groove.

It increased his troubles that his father was away from New York.

Bailey, who enjoyed the dignity of being temporary head of the firm of

Bannister & Son, had approved of his departure. But now he would have

given much to have him on the spot. He did not doubt his own ability to

handle this matter, but he felt that his father ought to know what was

going on.

His wrath against this upstart artist who secretly entertained his

sister in his studio grew with the minutes. It would be his privilege

very shortly to read that scrubby dauber a lesson in deportment which

he would remember.

In the interests of the family welfare he decided to stay away from the

office that day. The affairs of Bannister & Son would be safe for the

time being in the hands of the head clerk. Having telephoned to Wall

Street to announce his decision, he made a moody breakfast and then

proceeded, as was his custom of a morning, to the gymnasium for his

daily exercise.

The gymnasium was a recent addition to the Bannister home. It had been

established as the result of a heart-to-heart talk between old John

Bannister and his doctor. The doctor spoke earnestly of nervous

prostration and stated without preamble the exact number of months

which would elapse before Mr. Bannister living his present life, would

make first-hand acquaintance with it. He insisted on a regular routine

of exercise. The gymnasium came into being, and Mr. Steve Dingle,

physical instructor at the New York Athletic Club, took up a position

in the Bannister household which he was wont to describe to his

numerous friends as a soft snap.

Certainly his hours were not long. Thirty minutes with old Mr.

Bannister and thirty minutes with Mr. Bailey between eight and nine in

the morning and his duties were over for the day. But Steve was

conscientious and checked any disposition on the part of his two

clients to shirk work with a firmness which Lora Delane Porter might

have envied.

There were moments when he positively bullied old Mr. Bannister. It

would have amazed the clerks in his Wall Street office to see the

meekness with which the old man obeyed orders. But John Bannister was a

man who liked to get his money's worth, and he knew that Steve was

giving it to the last cent.

Steve at that time was twenty-eight years old. He had abandoned an

active connection with the ring, which had begun just after his

seventeenth birthday, twelve months before his entry into the Bannister

home, leaving behind him a record of which any boxer might have been

proud. He personally was exceedingly proud of it, and made no secret of

the fact.

He was a man in private life of astonishingly even temper. The only

thing that appeared to have the power to ruffle him to the slightest

extent was the contemplation of what he described as the bunch of

cheeses who pretended to fight nowadays. He would have considered it a

privilege, it seemed, to be allowed to encounter all the middle-weights

in the country in one ring in a single night without training. But it

appeared that he had promised his mother to quit, and he had quit.

Steve's mother was an old lady who in her day had been the best

washerwoman on Cherry Hill. She was, moreover, completely lacking in

all the qualities which go to make up the patroness of sport. Steve had

been injudicious enough to pay her a visit the day after his celebrated

unpleasantness with that rugged warrior, Pat O'Flaherty (ne

Smith), and, though he had knocked Pat out midway through the second

round, he bore away from the arena a black eye of such a startling

richness that old Mrs. Dingle had refused to be comforted until he had

promised never to enter the ring again. Which, as Steve said, had come

pretty hard, he being a man who would rather be a water-bucket in a

ring than a president outside it.

But he had given the promise, and kept it, leaving the field to the

above-mentioned bunch of cheeses. There were times when the temptation

to knock the head off Battling Dick this and Fighting Jack that became

almost agony, but he never yielded to it. All of which suggests that

Steve was a man of character, as indeed he was.

Bailey, entering the gymnasium, found Steve already there, punching

the bag with a force and precision which showed that the bunch of

cheeses ought to have been highly grateful to Mrs. Dingle for her

anti-pugilistic prejudices.

"Good morning, Dingle," said Bailey precisely.

Steve nodded. Bailey began to don his gymnasium costume. Steve gave the

ball a final punch and turned to him. He was a young man who gave the

impression of being, in a literal sense, perfectly square. This was due

to the breadth of his shoulders, which was quite out of proportion to

his height. His chest was extraordinarily deep, and his stomach and

waist small, so that to the observer seeing him for the first time in

boxing trunks, he seemed to begin as a big man and, half-way down,

change his mind and become a small one.

His arms, which were unusually long and thick, hung down nearly to his

knees and were decorated throughout with knobs and ridges of muscle

that popped up and down and in and out as he moved, in a manner both

fascinating and frightening. His face increased the illusion of

squareness, for he had thick, straight eyebrows, a straight mouth, and

a chin of almost the minimum degree of roundness. He inspected Bailey

with a pair of brilliant brown eyes which no detail of his appearance

could escape. And Bailey, that morning, as has been said, was not

looking his best.

"You're lookin' kind o' sick, bo," was Steve's comment. "I guess you

was hittin' it up with the gang last night in one of them lobster

parlours."

Bailey objected to being addressed as "bo," and he was annoyed that

Steve should have guessed the truth respecting his overnight movements.

Still more was he annoyed that Steve's material mind should attribute

to a surfeit of lobster a pallor that was superinduced by a tortured

soul.

"I did...ah...take supper last night, it is true," he said. "But if I am

a little pale to-day, that is not the cause. Things have occurred to

annoy me intensely."

"You should worry!" advised Steve. "Catch!"

The heavy medicine-ball struck Bailey in the chest before he could

bring up his hands and sent him staggering back.

"Damn it, Dingle," he gasped. "Kindly give me warning before you do

that sort of thing."

Steve was delighted. It amused his simple, honest soul to catch Bailey

napping, and the incident gave him a text on which to hang a lecture.

And, next to fighting, he loved best the sound of his own voice.

"Warning? Nix!" he said. "Ain't it just what I been telling you every

day for weeks? You gotta be ready always. You seen me holding

the pellet. You should oughter have been saying to yourself: 'I gotta

keep an eye on that gink, so's he don't soak me one with that thing

when I ain't looking.' Then you would have caught it and whizzed it

back at me, and maybe, if I hadn't been ready for it, you might have

knocked the breeze out of me."

"I should have derived no pleasure......-"

"Why, say, suppose a plug-ugly sasshays up to you on the street to take

a crack at your pearl stick-pin, do you reckon he's going to drop you a

postal card first? You gotta be ready for him. See what I mean?"

"Let us spar," said Bailey austerely. He had begun to despair of ever

making Steve show him that deference and respect which he considered

due to the son of the house. The more frigid he was, the more genial

and friendly did Steve become. The thing seemed hopeless.

It was a pleasing sight to see Bailey spar. He brought to the task the

measured dignity which characterized all his actions. A left jab from

him had all the majesty of a formal declaration of war. If he was a

trifle slow in his movements for a pastime which demands a certain

agility from its devotees he at least got plenty of exercise and did

himself a great deal of good.

He was perspiring freely as he took off the gloves. A shower-bath,

followed by brisk massage at the energetic hands of Steve, made him

feel better than he had imagined he could feel after that night of

spiritual storm and stress. He was glowing as he put on his clothes,

and a certain high resolve which had come to him in the night watches

now returned with doubled force.

"Dingle," he said, "how did I seem to-day?"

"Fine," answered Steve courteously. "You're gettin' to be a regular

terror."

"You think I shape well?"

"Sure."

"I am glad. This morning I am going to thrash a man within an inch of

his life."

"What!"

Steve spun round. Bailey's face was set and determined.

"You are?" said Steve feebly.

"I am."

"What's he been doing to you?"

"I am afraid I cannot tell you that. But he richly deserves what he

will get."

Steve eyed him with affectionate interest.

"Well, ain't you the wildcat!" he said. "Who'd have thought it? I'd

always had you sized up as a kind o' placid guy."

"I can be roused."

"Gee, can't I see it! But, say, what sort of a gook is this gink,

anyway?"

"In what respect?"

"Well, I mean is he a heavy or a middle or a welter or what? It makes a

kind o' difference, you know."

"I cannot say. I have not seen him."

"What! Not seen him? Then how's there this fuss between you?"

"That is a matter into which I cannot go."

"Well, what's his name, then? Maybe I know him. I know a few good

people in this burg."

"I have no objection to telling you that. He is an artist, and his name

is...his name is......"

Wrinkles appeared in Bailey's forehead. His eyes bulged anxiously

behind their glasses.

"I've forgotten," he said blankly.

"For the love of Mike! Know where he lives?"

"I am afraid not."

Steve patted him kindly on the shoulder.

"Take my advice, bo," he said. "Let the poor fellow off this time."

And so it came about that Bailey, instead of falling upon Kirk

Winfield, hailed a taxicab and drove to the apartment of Mrs. Lora

Delane Porter.

Chapter V Wherein Opposites Agree

The maid who opened the door showed a reluctance to let Bailey in. She

said that Mrs. Porter was busy with her writing and had given orders

that she was not to be disturbed.

Nothing could have infuriated Bailey more. He, Bailey Bannister, was to

be refused admittance because this preposterous woman wished to write!

It was the duty of all decent citizens to stop her writing. If it had

not been for her and her absurd books Ruth would never have made it

necessary for him to pay this visit at all.

"Kindly take my card to Mrs. Porter and tell her that I must see her at

once on a matter of the utmost urgency," he directed.

The domestic workers of America had not been trained to stand up

against Bailey's grand manner. The maid vanished meekly with the card,

and presently returned and requested him to step in.

Bailey found himself in a comfortable room, more like a man's study

than a woman's boudoir. Books lined the walls. The furniture was strong

and plain. At the window, on a swivel-chair before a roll-top desk,

Mrs. Porter sat writing, her back to the door.

"The gentleman, ma'am," announced the maid.

"Sit down," said his aunt, without looking round or ceasing to write.

The maid went out. Bailey sat down. The gentle squeak of the quill pen

continued.

Bailey coughed.

"I have called this morning......"

The left hand of the writer rose and waggled itself irritably above her

left shoulder.

"Aunt Lora," spoke Bailey sternly.

"Shish!" said the authoress. Only that and nothing more. Bailey,

outraged, relapsed into silence. The pen squeaked on.

After what seemed to Bailey a considerable time, the writing ceased. It

was succeeded by the sound of paper vigorously blotted. Then, with

startling suddenness, Mrs. Porter whirled round on the swivel-chair,

tilted it back, and faced him.

"Well, Bailey?" she said.

She looked at Bailey. Bailey looked at her. Her eyes had the curious

effect of driving out of his head what he had intended to say.

"Well?" she said again.

He tried to remember the excellent opening speech which he had prepared

in the cab.

"Good gracious, Bailey!" cried Mrs. Porter, "you have not come here and

ruined my morning's work for the pleasure of looking at me surely? Say

something."

Bailey found his voice.

"I have called to see Ruth, who, I am informed, is with you."

"She is in her room. I made her breakfast in bed. Is there any message

I can give her?"

Bailey suddenly remembered the speech he had framed in the cab.

"Aunt Lora," he said, "I am sorry to have to intrude upon you at so

early an hour, but it is imperative that I see Ruth and ask her to

explain the meaning of a most disturbing piece of news that has come to

my ears."

Mrs. Porter did not appear to have heard him.

"A man of your height should weigh more," she said. "What is your

weight?"

"My weight; beside the point......"

"Your weight is under a hundred and forty pounds, and it ought to be

over a hundred and sixty. Eat more. Avoid alcohol. Keep regular hours."

"Aunt Lora!"

"Well?"

"I wish to see my sister."

"You will have to wait. What did you wish to see her about?"

"That is a matter that concerns......No! I will tell you, for I believe

you to be responsible for the whole affair."

"Well?"

"Last night, quite by chance, I found out that Ruth has for some time

been paying visits to the studio of an artist."

Mrs. Porter nodded.

"Quite right. Mr. Kirk Winfield. She is going to marry him."

Bailey's hat fell to the floor. His stick followed. His mouth opened

widely. His glasses shot from his nose and danced madly at the end of

their string.

"What!"

"It will be a most suitable match in every way," said Mrs. Porter.

Bailey bounded to his feet.

"It's incredible!" he shouted. "It's ridiculous! It's abominable!

It's...it's incredible!"

Mrs. Porter gazed upon his transports with about the same amount of

interest which she would have bestowed upon a whirling dervish at Coney

Island.

"You have not seen Mr. Winfield, I gather?"

"When I do, he will have reason to regret it. I......"

"Sit down."

Bailey sat down.

"Ruth and Mr. Winfield are both perfect types. Mr. Winfield is really a

splendid specimen of a man. As to his intelligence, I say nothing. I

have ceased to expect intelligence in man, and I am grateful for the

smallest grain. But physically, he is magnificent. I could not wish

dear Ruth a better husband."

Bailey had pulled himself together with a supreme effort and had

achieved a frozen calm.

"Such a marriage is, of course, out of the question," he said.

"Why?"

"My sister cannot marry a, a nobody, an outsider......"

"Mr. Winfield is not a nobody. He is an extraordinarily healthy young

man."

"Are you aware that Ruth, if she had wished, could have married a

prince?"

"She told me. A little rat of a man, I understand. She had far too much

sense to do any such thing. She has a conscience. She knows what she

owes to the future of the......"

"Bah!" cried Bailey rudely.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Porter, "that, like most men, you care nothing

for the future of the race? You are not interested in eugenics?"

Bailey quivered with fury at the word, but said nothing.

"If you have ever studied even so elementary a subject as the colour

heredity of the Andalusian fowl......"

The colour heredity of the Andalusian fowl was too much for Bailey.

"I decline to discuss any such drivel," he said, rising. "I came here

to see Ruth, and..."

"And here she is," said Mrs. Porter.

The door opened, and Ruth appeared. She looked, to Bailey, insufferably

radiant and pleased with herself.

"Bailey!" she cried. "Whatever brings my little Bailey here, when he

ought to be working like a good boy in Wall Street?"

"I will tell you," Bailey's demeanour was portentous.

"He's frowning," said Ruth. "You have been stirring his hidden depths,

Aunt Lora!"

Bailey coughed.

"Ruth!"

"Bailey, don't! You don't know how terrible you look when you're

roused."

"Ruth, kindly answer me one question. Aunt Lora informs me that you are

going to marry this man Winfield. Is it or is it not true?"

"Of course it's true."

Bailey drew in his breath. He gazed coldly at Ruth, bowed to Mrs.

Porter, and smoothed the nap of his hat.

"Very good," he said stonily. "I shall now call upon this Mr. Winfield

and thrash him." With that he walked out of the room.

He directed his cab to the nearest hotel, looked up Kirk's address in

the telephone-book, and ten minutes later was ringing the studio bell.

A look of relief came into George Pennicut's eyes as he opened the

door. To George, nowadays, every ring at the bell meant a possible

visit from Lora Delane Porter.

"Is Mr. Kirk Winfield at home?" inquired Bailey.

"Yes, sir. Who shall I say, sir?"

"Kindly tell Mr. Winfield that Mr. Bannister wishes to speak to him."

"Yes, sir. Will you step this way, sir?"

Bailey stepped that way.

* * * * *

While Bailey was driving to the studio in his taxicab, Kirk, in boxing

trunks and a sleeveless vest, was engaged on his daily sparring

exercise with Steve Dingle.

This morning Steve seemed to be amused at something. As they rested, at

the conclusion of their fifth and final round, Kirk perceived that he

was chuckling, and asked the reason.

"Why, say," explained Steve, "I was only thinking that it takes all

kinds of ivory domes to make a nuttery. I ran across a new brand of

simp this morning. Just before I came to you I'm scheduled to show up

at one of these Astorbilt homes t'other side of the park. First I mix

it with the old man, then son and heir blows in and I attend to him.

"Well, this morning, son acts like he's all worked up. He's one of

these half-portion Willie-boys with Chippendale legs, but he throws out

a line of talk that would make you wonder if it's safe to let him run

around loose. Says his mind's made up; he's going to thrash a gink

within an inch of his life; going to muss up his features so bad he'll

have to have 'em replanted.

"'Why?' I says. 'Never you mind,' says he. 'Well, who is he?' I asks.

What do you think happens then? He thinks hard for a spell, rolls his

eyes, and says: 'Search me. I've forgotten.' 'Know where he lives?' I

asks him. 'Nope,' he says.

"Can you beat it! Seems to me if I had a kink in my coco that big I'd

phone to an alienist and have myself measured for a strait-jacket. Gee!

You meet all kinds, going around the way I do."

Kirk laughed and lit a cigarette.

"If you want to use the shower, Steve," he said, "you'd better get up

there now. I shan't be ready yet awhile. Then, if this is one of your

energetic mornings and you would care to give me a rub-down......"

"Sure," said Steve obligingly. He picked up his clothes and went

upstairs to the bathroom, which, like the bedrooms, opened on to the

gallery. Kirk threw himself on the couch, fixed his eyes on the

ceiling, and began to think of Ruth.

"Mr. Bannister," announced George Pennicut at the door.

Kirk was on his feet in one bound. The difference, to a man whose mind

is far away, between "Mr. Bannister" and "Miss Bannister" is not great,

and his first impression was that it was Ruth who had arrived.

He was acutely conscious of his costume, and was quite relieved when he

saw, not Ruth, but a severe-looking young man, who advanced upon him in

a tight-lipped, pop-eyed manner that suggested dislike and hostility.

The visitor was a complete stranger to him, but, his wandering wits

returning to their duties, he deduced that this must be one of Ruth's

relatives.

It is a curious fact that the possibility of Ruth having other

relatives than Mrs. Porter had not occurred to him till now. She

herself filled his mind to such an extent that he had never speculated

on any possible family that might be attached to her. To him Ruth was

Ruth. He accepted the fact that she was Mrs. Porter's niece. That she

might also be somebody's daughter or sister had not struck him. The

look on Bailey's face somehow brought it home to him that the world was

about to step in and complicate the idyllic simplicity of his wooing.

Bailey, meanwhile, as Kirk's hundred and eighty pounds of bone and

muscle detached themselves from the couch and loomed up massively

before him, was conscious of a weakening of his determination to

inflict bodily chastisement. The truth of Steve's remark, that it made

a difference whether one's intended victim is a heavyweight, a middle,

or a welter, came upon him with some force.

Kirk, in a sleeveless vest that showed up his chest and shoulders was

not an inviting spectacle for a man intending assault and battery.

Bailey decided to confine himself to words. There was nothing to be

gained by a vulgar brawl. A dignified man of the world avoided

violence.

"Mr. Winfield?"

"Mr. Bannister?"

It was at this point that Steve, having bathed and dressed, came out on

the gallery. The voices below halted him, and the sound of Bailey's

decided him to remain where he was. Steve was not above human

curiosity, and he was anxious to know the reason for Bailey's sudden

appearance.

"That is my name. It is familiar to you. My sister," said Bailey

bitterly, "has made it so."

"Won't you sit down?" said Kirk.

"No, thank you. I will not detain you long, Mr. Winfield."

"My dear fellow! There's no hurry. Will you have a cigarette?"

"No, thank you."

Kirk was puzzled by his visitor's manner. So, unseen in the shadows of

the gallery, was Steve.

"I can say what I wish to say in two words, Mr. Winfield," said Bailey.

"This marriage is quite out of the question."

"Eh?"

"My father would naturally never consent to it. As soon as he hears of

what has happened he will forbid it absolutely. Kindly dismiss from

your mind entirely the idea that my sister will ever be permitted to

marry you, Mr. Winfield."

Steve, in the gallery, with difficulty suppressed a whoop of surprise.

Kirk laughed ruefully.

"Aren't you a little premature, Mr. Bannister? Aren't you taking a good

deal for granted?"

"In what way?"

"Well, that Miss Bannister cares the slightest bit for me, for

instance; that I've one chance in a million of ever getting her to care

the slightest bit for me?"

Bailey was disgusted at this futile attempt to hide the known facts of

the case from him.

"You need not trouble to try and fool me, Mr. Winfield," he said

tartly. "I know everything. I have just seen my sister, and she told me

herself in so many words that she intended to marry you."

To his amazement he found his hand violently shaken.

"My dear old man!" Kirk was stammering in his delight. "My dear old

sport, you don't know what a weight you've taken off my mind. You know

how it is. A fellow falls in love and instantly starts thinking he

hasn't a chance on earth. I hadn't a notion she felt that way about me.

I'm not fit to shine her shoes. My dear old man, if you hadn't come and

told me this I never should have had the nerve to say a word to her.

"You're a corker. You've changed everything. You'll have to excuse me.

I must go to her. I can't wait a minute. I must rush and dress. Make

yourself at home here. Have you breakfasted? George! George! Say,

George, I've got to rush away. See that Mr. Bannister has everything he

wants. Get him some breakfast. Good-bye, old man." He gripped Bailey's

hand once more. "You're all right. Good-bye!"

He sprang for the staircase. George Pennicut turned to the speechless

Bailey.

"How would it be if I made you a nice cup of hot tea and a rasher of

'am, sir?" he inquired with a kindly smile.

Bailey eyed him glassily, then found speech.

"Go to hell!" he shouted. He strode to the door and shot into the

street, a seething volcano.

George, for his part, was startled, but polite.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Very good, sir," and withdrew.

Kirk, having reached the top of the stairs, had to check the wild rush

he was making for the bathroom in order not to collide with Steve, whom

he found waiting for him with outstretched hand and sympathetic

excitement writ large upon his face.

"Excuse me, squire," said Steve, "I've been playing the part of

Rubberneck Rupert in that little drama you've just been starring in. I

just couldn't help listening. Say, this mitt's for you. Shake it! So

you're going to marry Bailey's sister, Ruth, are you? You're the lucky

guy. She's a queen!"

"Do you know her, Steve?"

"Do I know her! Didn't I tell you I was the tame physical instructor in

that palace? I wish I had a dollar for every time I've thrown the

medicine-ball at her. Why, I'm the guy that gave her that figure of

hers. She don't come to me regular, like Bailey and the old man, but do

I know her? I should say I did know her."

Kirk shook his hand.

"You're all right, Steve!" he said huskily, and vanished into the

bathroom. A sound as of a tropical deluge came from within.

Steve hammered upon the door. The downpour ceased.

"Say!" called Steve.

"Hello?"

"I don't want to discourage you, squire, but......"

The door opened and Kirk's head appeared.

"What's the matter?"

"Well, you heard what Bailey said?"

"About his father?"

"Sure. It goes."

Kirk came out into the gallery, towelling himself vigorously.

"Who is her father?" he asked, seating himself on the rail.

"He's a son of a gun," said Steve with emphasis. "As rich as John D.

pretty nearly and about as chummy as a rattlesnake. Were you thinking

of calling and asking him for a father's blessing?"

"Something of the sort, I suppose."

"Forget it! He'd give you the hook before you'd got through asking if

you might call him daddy."

"You're comforting, Steve. They call you Little Sunbeam at home, don't

they?"

"Hell!" said Steve warmly, "I'm not shooting this at you just to make

you feel bad. I gotta reason. I want to make you see this ain't going

to be no society walk-over, with the Four Hundred looking on from the

pews and poppa signing cheques in the background. Say, did I ever tell

you how I beat Kid Mitchell?"

"Does it apply to the case in hand?"

"Does it what to the which?"

"Had it any bearing on my painful position? I only ask, because that's

what is interesting me most just now, and, if you're going to change

the subject, there's a chance that my attention may wander."

"Sure it does. It's a, what d'you call it when you pull something

that's got another meaning tucked up its sleeve?"

"A parable?"

"That's right. A...what you said. Well, this Kid Mitchell was looked on

as a coming champ in those days. He had cleaned up some good boys,

while I had only gotten a rep about as big as a nickel with a hole in

it. I guess I looked pie to him. He turkey-trotted up to me for the

first round and stopped in front of me as if he was wondering what had

blown in and whether the Gerry Society would stand for his hitting it.

I could see him thinking 'This is too easy' as plain as if he'd said

it. And then he took another peek at me, as much as to say, 'Well,

let's get it over. Where shall I soak him first?' And while he's doing

this I get in range and I put my left pretty smart into his lunch-wagon

and I pick up my right off the carpet and hand it to him, and down he

goes. And when he gets up again it's pretty nearly to-morrow morning and

I've drawn the winner's end and gone home."

"And the moral?"

"Why, don't spar. Punch! Don't wait for the wallop. Give it."

"You mean?"

"Why, when old man Bannister says: 'Nix! You shall never marry my

child!' come back at him by saying: 'Thanks very much, but I've just

done it!'"

"Good heavens, Steve!"

"You'll never win out else. You don't know old man Bannister. I do."

"But......"

The door-bell rang.

"Who on earth's that?" said Kirk. "It can't be Bailey back again."

"Good morning, Pennicut," spoke the clear voice of Mrs. Lora Delane

Porter. "I wish to see Mr. Winfield."

"Yes, ma'am. He's upstairs in 'is bath!"

"I will wait in the studio."

"Good Lord!" cried Kirk, bounding from his seat on the rail. "For

Heaven's sake, Steve, go and talk to her while I dress. I'll be down in

a minute."

"Sure. What's her name?"

"Mrs. Porter. You'll like her. Tell her all about yourself, where you

were born, how much you are round the chest, what's your favourite

breakfast food. That's what she likes to chat about. And tell her I'll

be down in a second."

Steve, reaching the studio, found Mrs. Porter examining the

boxing-gloves which had been thrown on a chair.

"Eight-ounce, ma'am," he said genially, by way of introduction.

"Kirk'll be lining up in a moment. He's getting into his rags."

Mrs. Porter looked at him with the gimlet stare which made her so

intensely disliked by practically every man she knew.

"Are you a friend of Mr. Winfield?" she said.

"Sure. We just been spieling together up above. He sent me down to tell

you he won't be long."

Mrs. Porter concluded her inspection.

"What is your name?"

"Dingle, ma'am."

"You are extraordinarily well developed. You have unusually long arms

for a man of your height."

"Yep. I got a pretty good reach."

"Are you an artist?"

"A which?"

"An artist. A painter."

Steve smiled broadly.

"I've been called a good many things, but no one's ever handed me that.

No, ma'am, I'm a has-been."

"I beg your pardon."

"Granted."

"What did you say you were?" asked Mrs. Porter after a pause.

"A has-been. I used to be a middle, but mother kicked, and I quit. All

through taking a blue eye home! Wouldn't that jar you?"

"I have no doubt you intend to be explicit......"

"Not on your life!" protested Steve. "I may be a rough-neck, but I've

got me manners. I wouldn't get explicit with a lady."

Mrs. Porter sat down.

"We appear to be talking at cross-purposes," she said. "I still do not

gather what your profession is or was."

"Why, ain't I telling you? I used to be a middle......"

"What is a middle?"

"Why, it's in between the light-heavies and the welters. I was a welter

when I broke into the fighting game, but......"

"Now I understand. You are a pugilist?"

"Used to be. But mother kicked."

"Kicked whom?"

"You don't get me, ma'am. When I say she kicked, I mean my blue eye

threw a scare into her, and she put a crimp in my career. Made me quit

when I should have been champ in another couple of fights."

"I am afraid I cannot follow these domestic troubles of yours. And why

do you speak of your blue eye? Your eyes are brown."

"This one wasn't. It was the fattest blue eye you ever seen. I ran up

against a short right hook. I put him out next round, ma'am, mind you,

but that didn't help me any with mother. Directly she seen me blue eye

she said: 'That'll be all from you, Steve. You stop it this minute.' So

I quit. But gee! It's tough on a fellow to have to sit out of the game

and watch a bunch of cheeses like this new crop of middle-weights

swelling around and calling themselves fighters when they couldn't lick

a postage-stamp, not if it was properly trained. Hell! Beg pardon,

ma'am."

"I find you an interesting study, Mr. Dingle," said Mrs. Porter

thoughtfully. "I have never met a pugilist before. Do you box with Mr.

Winfield?"

"Sure. Kirk and me go five rounds every morning."

"You have been boxing with him to-day? Then perhaps you can tell me if

an absurd young man in eye-glasses has called here yet? He is wearing a

grey......"

"Do you mean Bailey, ma'am. Bailey Bannister?"

"You know my nephew, Mr. Dingle?"

"Sure. I box with him every morning."

"I never expected to hear that my nephew Bailey did anything so

sensible as to take regular exercise. He does not look as if he did."

"He certainly is a kind o' half-portion, ma'am. But say, if he's your

nephew, Miss Ruth's your niece."

"Perfectly correct."

"Then you know all about this business?"

"Which business, Mr. Dingle?"

"Why, Kirk and Miss Ruth."

Mrs. Porter raised her eyebrows.

"Really, Mr. Dingle! Has Mr. Winfield made you his confidant?"

"How's that?"

"Has Mr. Winfield told you about my niece and himself?"

"Hell, no! You don't find a real person like Kirk shooting his head

about that kind of thing. I had it from Bailey."

"From Bailey?"

"Surest thing you know. He blew in here and shouted it all out at the

top of his voice."

"Indeed! I was wondering if he had arrived yet. He left my apartment

saying he was going to thrash Mr. Winfield. I came here to save him

from getting hurt. Was there any trouble?"

"Not so's you could notice it. I guess when he'd taken a slant at Kirk

he thought he wouldn't bother to swat him. Say, ma'am..."

"Well?"

"Whose corner are you in for this scrap?"

"I don't understand you."

"Well, are you rooting for Kirk, or are you holding the towel for old

man Bannister?"

"You mean, do I wish Mr. Winfield to marry my niece?"

"You're hep."

"Most certainly I do. It was I who brought them together."

"Bully for you! Well, say, I just been shooting the dope into Kirk

upstairs. I been, you didn't happen to read the report of a scrap I

once had with a gazook called Kid Mitchell, did you, ma'am?"

"I seldom, I may say never, read the sporting section of the daily

papers."

Steve looked at her in honest wonder.

"For the love of Pete! What else do you find to read in 'em?" he said.

"Well, I was telling Kirk about it. The Kid came at me to soak me, but

I soaked him first and put him out. It's the only thing to do, ma'am,

when you're up against it. Get in the first wallop before the other guy

can get himself set for his punch. 'Kirk,' I says, 'don't you wait for

old man Bannister to tell you you can't marry Miss Ruth. Marry her

before he can say it.' I wish you'd tell him the same thing, ma'am. You

know the old man as well as I do, better, I guess, and you know that

Kirk ain't got a chance in a million with him if he don't rush him.

Ain't that right?"

"Mr. Dingle," said Mrs. Porter, "I should like to shake you by the

hand. It is amazing to me to find such sound sense in a man. You have

expressed my view exactly. If I have any influence with Mr. Winfield,

he shall marry my niece to-day. You are a man of really exceptional

intelligence, Mr. Dingle."

"Aw, check it with your hat, ma'am!" murmured Steve modestly. "Nix on

the bouquets! I'm only a roughneck. But I fall for Miss Ruth, and there

ain't many like Kirk, so I'd like to see them happy. It would sure get

my goat the worst way to have the old man gum the game for them."

"I cannot understand a word you say," said Mrs. Porter, "but I fancy we

mean the same thing. Here comes Mr. Winfield at last. I will speak to

him at once."

"Spiel away, ma'am," said Steve. "The floor's yours."

Kirk entered the studio.

Chapter VI Breaking the News

Old John Bannister returned that night. Learning from Bailey's

trembling lips the tremendous events that had been taking place in his

absence, he was first irritated, then coldly amused. His coolness

dampened, while it comforted, Bailey.

A bearer of sensational tidings likes to spread a certain amount of

dismay and terror; but, on the other hand, it was a relief to him to

find that his father appeared to consider trivial a crisis which, to

Bailey, had seemed a disaster without parallel in the annals of

American social life.

"She said she was going to marry him!"

Old Bannister opened the nut-cracker mouth that always had the

appearance of crushing something. His pale eyes glowed for an instant.

"Did she?" he said.

"She seemed very...ah...determined."

"Did she!"

Silence falling like a cloud at this point, Bailey rightly conjectured

that the audience was at an end and left the room. His father bit the

end off a cigar and began to smoke.

Smoking, he reviewed the situation, and his fighting spirit rose to

grapple with it. He was not sorry that this had happened. His was a

patriarchal mind, and he welcomed opportunities of exercising his

authority over his children. It had always been his policy to rule them

masterfully, and he had often resented the fact that his daughter, by

the nature of things, was to a great extent outside his immediate rule.

During office hours business took him away from her. The sun never set

on his empire over Bailey, but it needed a definite crisis like the

present one to enable him to jerk at the reins which guided Ruth, and

he was glad of the chance to make his power felt.

The fact that this affair brought him into immediate contact with Mrs.

Porter added to his enjoyment. Of all the people, men or women, with

whom his business or social life had brought him into conflict, she

alone had fought him squarely and retired with the honours of war. When

his patriarchal mind had led him to bully his late wife, it was Mrs.

Porter who had fought her cause. It was Mrs. Porter who openly

expressed her contempt for his money and certain methods of making it.

She was the only person in his immediate sphere over whom he had no

financial hold.

He was a man who liked to be surrounded by dependents, and Mrs. Porter

stoutly declined to be a dependent. She moved about the world, blunt

and self-sufficing, and he hated her as he hated no one else. The

thought that she had now come to grips with him and that he could best

her in open fight was pleasant to him. All his life, except in his

conflicts with her, he had won. He meant to win now.

Bailey's apprehensions amused him. He had a thorough contempt for all

actors, authors, musicians, and artists, whom he classed together in

one group as men who did not count, save in so far as they gave mild

entertainment to the men who, like himself, did count. The idea of

anybody taking them seriously seemed too fantastic to be considered.

Of affection for his children he had little. Bailey was useful in the

office, and Ruth ornamental at home. They satisfied him. He had never

troubled to study their characters. It had never occurred to him to

wonder if they were fond of him. They formed a necessary part of his

household, and beyond that he was not interested in them. If he had

ever thought about Ruth's nature, he had dismissed her as a feminine

counterpart of Bailey, than whom no other son and heir in New York

behaved so exactly as a son and heir should.

That Ruth, even under the influence of Lora Delane Porter, should have

been capable of her present insubordination, was surprising, but the

thing was too trivial to be a source of anxiety. The mischief could be

checked at once before it amounted to anything.

Bailey had not been gone too long before Ruth appeared. She stood in

the doorway looking at him for a moment. Her face was pale and her eyes

bright. She was breathing quickly.

"Are you busy, father? I...I want to tell you something."

John Bannister smiled. He had a wintry smile, a sort of muscular

affection of the mouth, to which his eyes contributed nothing. He had

made up his mind to be perfectly calm and pleasant with Ruth. He had

read in novels and seen on the stage situations of this kind, where the

father had stormed and blustered. The foolishness of such a policy

amused him. A strong man had no need to behave like that.

"I think I have heard it already," he said. "I have just been seeing

Bailey."

"What did Bailey tell you, father?"

"That you fancied yourself in love with some actor or artist or other

whose name I have forgotten."

"It is not fancy. I do love him."

"Yes?"

There was a pause.

"Are you very angry, father?"

"Why should I be? Let's talk it over quietly. There's no need to make a

tragedy of it."

"I'm glad you feel like that, father."

John Bannister lit another cigar.

"Tell me all about it," he said.

Ruth found herself surprisingly near tears. She had come into the room

with every nerve in her body braced for a supreme struggle. Her

father's unexpected gentleness weakened her, exactly as he had

foreseen. The plan of action which he had determined upon was that of

the wrestler who yields instead of resisting, in order to throw an

antagonist off his balance.

"How did it begin?" he asked.

"Well," said Ruth, "it began when Aunt Lora took me to his studio."

"Yes, I heard that it was she who set the whole thing going. She is a

friend of this fellow-what is his name?"

"Kirk Winfield. Yes, she seemed to know him quite well."

"And then?"

In spite of her anxiety, Ruth smiled.

"Well, that's all," she said. "I just fell in love with him."

Mr. Bannister nodded.

"You just fell in love with him," he repeated. "Pretty quick work,

wasn't it?"

"I suppose it was."

"You just took one look at him and saw he was the affinity, eh?"

"I suppose so."

"And what did he do? Was he equally sudden?"

Ruth laughed. She was feeling quite happy now.

"He would have liked to be, poor dear, but he felt he had to be

cautious and prepare the way before telling me. If it hadn't been for

Bailey, he might be doing it still. Apparently, Bailey went to him and

said I had said I was going to marry him, and Kirk came flying round,

and...well, then it was all right."

Mr. Bannister drew thoughtfully at his cigar. He was silent for a few

moments.

"Well, my dear," he said at last. "I think you had better consider the

engagement broken off."

Ruth looked at him quickly. He still smiled, but his eyes were cold and

hard. She realized suddenly that she had been played with, that all his

kindliness and amiability had been merely a substitute for the storm

which she had expected. After all, it was to be war between them, and

she braced herself for it!

"Father!" she cried.

Mr. Bannister continued to puff serenely at his cigar.

"We needn't get worked up about it," he said. "Let's keep right on

talking it over quietly."

"Very well," said Ruth. "But, after what you have just said, what is

there to talk over?"

"You might be interested to hear my reasons for saying it."

"And I will argue my side."

Mr. Bannister waved his hand gently.

"You don't have to argue. You just listen."

Ruth bit her lip.

"Well?"

"In the first place," said her father, "about this young man. What is

he? Bailey says he is an artist. Well, what has he ever done? Why don't

I know his name? I buy a good many pictures, but I don't remember ever

signing a cheque for one of his. I read the magazines now and then, but

I can't recall seeing his signature to any of the illustrations. How

does he live, anyway, without going into the question of how he intends

to support a wife?"

"Aunt Lora told me he had private means."

"How much?"

"Five thousand dollars a year."

"Exactly the amount necessary to let him live without working. I have

him placed now. I know his type. I could show you a thousand men in

this city in exactly the same position. They don't starve and they

don't work. This young man of yours is a loafer."

"Well?"

Ruth's voice was quiet, but a faint colour had crept into her face and

her eyes were blazing.

"Now perhaps you would care to hear what I think of his principles. How

do you feel that he comes out of this business? Does he show to

advantage? Isn't there just a suspicion of underhandedness about his

behaviour?"

"No."

"No? He lets you pay these secret visits......"

Ruth interrupted.

"There was nothing secret about them, to him. Aunt Lora brought me to

the studio in the first place, and she kept on bringing me. I don't

suppose it ever occurred to Kirk to wonder who I was and who my father

might be. He has been perfectly straight. If you like to say I have

been underhanded, I admit it. I have. More so than you imagine. I just

wanted him, and I didn't care for anything except that."

"It did not strike you that you owed anything to me, for instance?"

"No."

"I should have thought that, as your father, I had certain claims."

Ruth was silent.

Mr. Bannister sighed.

"I thought you were fond of me, Ruth," he said wistfully. It was the

wrestler yielding instead of resisting. Ruth's hard composure melted

instantly. She flung her arms round his neck in a burst of remorseful

affection.

"Of course I am, father dear. You're making this awfully hard for me."

Mr. Bannister chuckled inwardly. It seemed to him that victory was in

sight. He always won, he told himself, always.

"I only want you to be sensible."

Ruth stiffened at the word. It jarred upon her. She felt that they were

leagues apart, that they could never be in sympathy with each other.

"Father," she said.

"Yes?"

"Would you like to see Kirk?"

"I have been wondering when he was going to appear on the scene. I

always thought it was customary on these occasions for the young man to

present himself in person, and not let the lady fight his battles for

him. Is this Mr. Winfield a little deficient in nerve?"

Ruth flushed angrily.

"I particularly asked Kirk not to come here before I had seen you. I

insisted on it. Naturally, he wanted to."

"Of course!"

There was a sneer in his voice which he did not try to hide. It flicked

Ruth like a whip. Her painfully preserved restraint broke up under it.

"Do you think Kirk is afraid of you, father?"

"It crossed my mind."

"He is not."

"I have only your word for it."

"You can have his if you want it. There is the telephone. You can have

him here in ten minutes if you want to see him."

"A very good idea. But, as it happens, I do not want to see him. There

is no necessity. His views on this matter do not interest me. I......"

There was a hurried knock at the door. Bailey burst in, ruffled and

wild as to the eyes.

"Father," he cried, "I don't want to interrupt you, but that infernal

woman, Aunt Lora, has arrived, and says she won't go till she has seen

you. She's downstairs now."

"Not now," said Lora Delane Porter, moving him to one side and entering

the room. "I thought it would be a comfort to you, Ruth, to have me

with you to help explain exactly how matters stand. Good evening, John.

Go away, Bailey. Now let us discuss things quietly."

"She is responsible for the whole thing, father," cried Bailey.

Mr. Bannister rose.

"There is nothing to discuss," he said shortly. "I have no wish to

speak to you at all. As you appear to have played a large part in this

affair, I may as well tell you that it is settled. Ruth will not marry

Mr. Winfield."

Lora Delane Porter settled herself comfortably in a chair. She drew off

her gloves and placed them on the table.

"Please ask that boy Bailey to go," she said. "He annoys me. I cannot

marshal my thoughts in his presence."

Quelled by her eye, Bailey removed himself. His father remained

standing. Ruth, who had risen at her aunt's entry, sat down again. Mrs.

Porter looked round the room with some approval.

"You have a nice taste in pictures, John," she said. "That is a Corot,

surely, above the mantelpiece?"

"Will you......"

"But about this little matter. You dislike the idea of Ruth marrying

Mr. Winfield? Have you seen Mr. Winfield?"

"I have not."

"Then how can you possibly decide whether he is a fit husband for

Ruth?"

"I know all about him."

"What do you know?"

"What Ruth has told me. That he is a loafer who pretends to be an

artist."

"He is a poor artist. I grant you that. His drawing is weak. But are

you aware that he is forty-three inches round the chest, six feet tall,

and in perfect physical condition?"

"What has that got to do with it?"

"Everything. You have not read my 'Principles of Selection'?"

"I have not."

"I will send you a copy to-morrow."

"I will burn it directly it arrives."

"Then you will miss a great deal of valuable information," said Mrs.

Porter tranquilly.

There was a pause. John Bannister glared furiously at Mrs. Porter, but

her gaze was moving easily about the room, taking in each picture in

turn in a leisurely inspection.

An exclamation from Ruth broke the silence, a sharp cry like that of an

animal in pain. She sprang up, her face working, her eyes filled with

tears.

"I can't stand it!" she cried. "I can't stand it any longer! Father,

Kirk and I were married this afternoon."

Mrs. Porter went quickly to her and put her arm round her. Ruth was

sobbing helplessly. The strain had broken her. John Bannister's face

was leaden. The veins stood out on his forehead. His mouth twisted

dumbly.

Mrs. Porter led Ruth gently to the door and pushed her out. Then she

closed it and turned to him.

"So now you know, John," she said. "Well, what are you going to do

about it?"

Self-control was second nature with John Bannister. For years he had

cultivated it as a commercial asset. Often a fortune had depended on

his mastery of his emotions. Now, in an instant, he had himself under

control once more. His face resumed its normal expression of cold

impassiveness. Only his mouth twitched a little.

"Well?" asked Mrs. Porter.

"Take her away," he said quietly. "Take her out of here. Let her go to

him. I have done with her."

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Porter, and left the room.

Chapter VII Sufficient Unto Themselves

Some months after John Bannister had spoken his ultimatum in the

library two drought-stricken men met on the Rialto. It was a close June

evening, full of thirst.

"I could do with a drink," said the first man. "Several."

"My tongue is black clear down to the roots," said the second.

"Let's go up to Kirk Winfield's," proposed the first man, inspired.

"Not for me," said the other briefly. "Haven't you heard about Kirk?

He's married!"

"I know, but......"

"And when I say married, I mean married. She's old John

Bannister's daughter, you know, and I guess she inherits her father's

character. She's what I call a determined girl. She seems to have made

up her mind that the old crowd that used to trail around the studio

aren't needed any longer, and they've been hitting the sidewalk on one

ear ever since the honeymoon.

"If you want to see her in action, go up there now. She'll be perfectly

sweet and friendly, but somehow you'll get the notion that you don't

want to go there again, and that she can bear up if you don't. It's

something in her manner. I guess it's a trick these society girls

learn. You've seen a bouncer handling a souse. He doesn't rough-house

him. He just puts his arm round his waist and kind of suggests he

should leave the place. Well, it's like that."

"But doesn't Kirk kick? He used to like having us around."

His friend laughed.

"Kick? Kirk? You should see him! He just sits there waiting for you to

go, and, when you do go, shuts the door on you so quick you have to

jump to keep from getting your coat caught in it. I tell you, those two

are about all the company either of them needs. They've got the

Newly-weds licked to a whisper."

"It's always the best fellows that get it the worse," said the other

philosophically, "and it's always the fellows you think are safe too. I

could have bet on Kirk. Six months ago I'd have given you any odds you

wanted that he would never marry."

"And I wouldn't have taken you. It's always the way."

The criticisms of the two thirsty men, though prejudiced, were

accurate. Marriage had undeniably wrought changes in Kirk Winfield. It

had blown up, decentralized, and re-arranged his entire scheme of life.

Kirk's was one of those natures that run to extremes. He had been a

whole-hearted bachelor, and he was assuredly a much-married man. For

the first six months Ruth was almost literally his whole world. His

friends, the old brigade of the studio, had dropped away from him in a

body. They had visited the studio once or twice at first, but after

that had mysteriously disappeared. He was too engrossed in his

happiness to speculate on the reasons for this defection: he only knew

that he was glad of it.

Their visits had not been a success.

Conversation had flowed fitfully. Some sixth sense told him that Ruth,

though charming to them all, had not liked them; and he himself was

astonished to find what bull dogs they really were. It was odd how out

of sympathy he felt with them. They seemed so unnecessary: yet what a

large part of his life they had once made up!

Something had come between him and them. What it was he did not know.

Ruth could have told him. She was the angel with the flaming sword who

guarded their paradise. Marriage was causing her to make unexpected

discoveries with regard to herself. Before she had always looked on

herself as a rather unusually reasonable, and certainly not a jealous,

woman. But now she was filled with an active dislike for these quite

harmless young men who came to try and share Kirk with her.

She knew it was utterly illogical. A man must have friends. Life could

not be forever a hermitage of two. She tried to analyse her objection

to these men, and came to the conclusion that it was the fact that they

had known Kirk before she did that caused it.

She made a compromise with herself. Kirk should have friends, but they

must be new ones. In a little while, when this crazy desire to keep

herself and him alone together in a world of their own should have left

her, they would begin to build up a circle. But these men whose

vocabulary included the words "Do you remember?" must be eliminated one

and all.

Kirk, blissfully unconscious that his future was being arranged for him

and the steering-wheel of his life quietly taken out of his hands,

passed his days in a state of almost painful happiness. It never

crossed his mind that he had ceased to be master of his fate and

captain of his soul. The reins were handled so gently that he did not

feel them. It seemed to him that he was travelling of his own free will

along a pleasant path selected by himself.

He saw his friends go from him without a regret. Perhaps at the bottom

of his heart he had always had a suspicion of contempt for them. He had

taken them on their surface value, as amusing fellows who were good

company of an evening. There was not one of them whom he had ever known

as real friends know each other , not one, except Hank Jardine; and

Hank had yet to be subjected to the acid test of the new conditions.

There were moments when the thought of Hank threw a shadow across his

happiness. He could let these others go, but Hank was different. And

something told him that Ruth would not like Hank.

But these shadows were not frequent. Ruth filled his life too

completely to allow him leisure to brood on possibilities of future

trouble.

Looking back, it struck him that on their wedding-day they had been

almost strangers. They had taken each other blindly, trusting to

instinct. Since then he had been getting to know her. It was

astonishing how much there was to know. There was a fresh discovery to

be made about her every day. She was a perpetually recurring miracle.

The futility of his old life made him wince whenever he dared think of

it. How he had drifted, a useless log on a sluggish current!

He was certainly a whole-hearted convert. As to Saul of Tarsus, so to

him there had come a sudden blinding light. He could hardly believe

that he was the same person who had scoffed at the idea of a man giving

up his life to one woman and being happy. But then the abstract wife

had been a pale, bloodless phantom, and Ruth was real.

It was the realness of her that kept him in a state of perpetual

amazement. To see her moving about the studio, to touch her, to look at

her across the dinner-table, to wake in the night and hear her

breathing at his side.... It seemed to him that centuries might pass,

yet these things would still be wonderful.

And always in his heart there was the gratitude for what she had done

for him. She had given up everything to share his life. She had weighed

him in the balance against wealth and comfort and her place among the

great ones of the world, and had chosen him. There were times when the

thought filled him with a kind of delirious pride: times, again, when

he felt a grateful humility that made him long to fall down and worship

this goddess who had stooped to him.

In a word, he was very young, very much in love, and for the first time

in his life was living with every drop of blood in his veins.

* * * * *

Hank returned to New York in due course. He came to the studio the same

night, and he had not been there five minutes before a leaden weight

descended on Kirk's soul. It was as he had feared. Ruth did not like

him.

Hank was not the sort of man who makes universal appeal. Also, he was

no ladies' man. He was long and lean and hard-bitten, and his supply of

conventional small talk was practically non-existent. To get the best

out of Hank, as has been said, you had to let him take his coat off and

put his feet up on the back of a second chair and reconcile yourself to

the pestiferous brand of tobacco which he affected.

Ruth conceded none of these things. Throughout the interview Hank sat

bolt upright, tucking a pair of shoes of the dreadnought class coyly

underneath his chair, and drew suspiciously at Turkish cigarettes from

Kirk's case. An air of constraint hung over the party. Again and again

Kirk hoped that Hank would embark on the epic of his life, but shyness

kept Hank dumb.

He had heard, on reaching New York, that Kirk was married, but he had

learned no details, and had conjured up in his mind the vision of a

jolly little girl of the Bohemian type, who would make a fuss over him

as Kirk's oldest friend. Confronted with Ruth, he lost a nerve which

had never before failed him. This gorgeous creature, he felt, would

never put up with those racy descriptions of wild adventures which had

endeared him to Kirk. As soon as he could decently do so, he left, and

Kirk, returning to the studio after seeing him out, sat down moodily,

trying to convince himself against his judgment that the visit had not

been such a failure after all.

Ruth was playing the piano softly. She had turned out all the lights

except one, which hung above her head, shining on her white arms as

they moved. From where he sat Kirk could see her profile. Her eyes were

half closed.

The sight of her, as it always did, sent a thrill through him, but he

was conscious of an ache behind it. He had hoped so much that Hank

would pass, and he knew that he had not. Why was it that two people so

completely one as Ruth and himself could not see Hank with the same

eyes?

He knew that she had thought him uncouth and impossible. Why could not

Hank have exerted himself more, instead of sitting there in that

stuffed way? Why could not Ruth have unbent? Why had not he himself

done something to save the situation? Of the three, he blamed himself

most. He was the one who should have taken the lead and made things

pleasant for everybody instead of forcing out conversational

platitudes.

Once or twice he had caught Hank's eye, and had hated himself for

understanding what it said and not being able to deny it. He had marked

the end of their old relationship, the parting of the ways, and that a

tragedy had been played out that night.

He found himself thinking of Hank as of a friend who had died. What

times they had had! How smoothly they had got on together! He could not

recall a single occasion on which they had fallen out, from the time

when they had fought as boys at the prep. school and cemented their

friendship the next day. After that there had been periods when they

had parted, sometimes for more than a year, but they had always come

together again and picked up the threads as neatly as if there had been

no gap in their intimacy.

He had gone to college: Hank had started on the roving life which

suited his temperament. But they had never lost touch with each other.

And now it was all over. They would meet again, but it would not be the

same. The angel with the flaming sword stood between them.

For the first time since the delirium of marriage had seized upon him,

Kirk was conscious of a feeling that all was not for the best in a best

of all possible worlds, a feeling of regret, not that he had married , the

mere thought would have been a blasphemy , but that marriage was such a

complicated affair. He liked a calm life, free from complications, and

now they were springing up on every side.

There was the matter of the models. Kirk had supposed that it was only

in the comic papers that the artist's wife objected to his employing

models. He had classed it with the mother-in-law joke, respecting it

for its antiquity, but not imagining that it ever really happened. And

Ruth had brought this absurd situation into the sphere of practical

politics only a few days ago.

Since his marriage Kirk had dropped his work almost entirely. There had

seemed to be no time for it. He liked to spend his days going round the

stores with Ruth, buying her things, or looking in at the windows of

Fifth Avenue shops and choosing what he would buy her when he had made

his fortune. It was agreed upon between them that he was to make his

fortune some day.

Kirk's painting had always been more of a hobby with him than a

profession. He knew that he had talent, but talent without hard work is

a poor weapon, and he had always shirked hard work. He had an instinct

for colour, but his drawing was uncertain. He hated linework, while

knowing that only through steady practice at linework could he achieve

his artistic salvation. He was an amateur, and a lazy amateur.

But once in a while the work fever would grip him. It had gripped him a

few days before Hank's visit. An idea for a picture had come to him,

and he had set to work upon it with his usual impulsiveness.

This had involved the arrival of Miss Hilda Vince at the studio. There

was no harm in Miss Vince. Her morals were irreproachable. She

supported a work-shy father, and was engaged to be married to a young

gentleman who travelled for a hat firm. But she was of a chatty

disposition and no respecter of persons. She had posed frequently for

Kirk in his bachelor days, and was accustomed to call him by his first

name , a fact which Kirk had forgotten until Ruth, who had been out in

the park, came in.

Miss Vince was saying at the moment: "So I says to her, 'Kirk's just

phoned to me to sit.' 'What! Kirk!' she says. 'Is he doin' a bit

of work for a change? Well, it's about time.' 'Aw, Kirk don't need to

work,' I says. 'He's a plute. He's got it in gobs.' So......"

"I didn't know you were busy, dear," said Ruth. "I won't interrupt

you."

She went out.

"Was that your wife?" inquired Miss Vince. "She's got a sweet face.

Say, I read the piece about you and her in the paper. You certainly got

a nerve, Kirk, breaking in on the millionaires that way."

That night Ruth spoke her mind about Miss Vince. It was in vain that

Kirk touched on the work-shy father, dwelt feelingly on the young

gentleman who travelled in hats. Ruth had made up her mind. It was

thumbs down for Miss Vince.

"But if I'm to paint," said Kirk, "I must have models."

"There must be hundreds who don't call you by your Christian name."

"After about five minutes they all do," said Kirk. "It's a way they've

got. They mean no harm."

Ruth then made this brilliant suggestion: "Kirk, dear, why don't you

paint landscapes?"

In spite of his annoyance, he laughed.

"Why don't I paint landscapes, Ruth? Because I'm not a landscape

painter, that's why."

"You could learn."

"It's a different branch of the trade altogether. You might just as

well tell a catcher to pitch."

"Well, anyhow," reported Ruth with spirit, "I won't have that Vince

creature in the place again."

It was the first time she had jerked at the reins or given any sign

that she was holding them, and undoubtedly this was the moment at which

Kirk should have said: "My dearest, the time has come for me to state

plainly that my soul is my own. I decline to give in to this absurd

suggestion. Marriage is an affair of give and take, not a circus where

one party holds the hoop while the other jumps through and shams dead.

We shall be happier later on if we get this clearly into our heads

now."

What he did say was: "Very well, dear. I'll write and tell her not to

come."

He knew he was being abominably weak, but he did not care. He even felt

a certain pleasure in his surrender. Big, muscular men are given to

this feebleness with women. Hercules probably wore an idiotic grin of

happiness when he spun wool for Omphale.

Since then the picture had been laid aside, but Kirk's desire to be up

and at it had grown with inaction. When a lazy man does make up his

mind to assail a piece of work, he is like a dog with a bone.

* * * * *

The music had stopped. Ruth swung round.

"What are you dreaming about Kirk?"

Kirk came to himself with a start.

"I was thinking of a lot of things. For one, about that picture of

mine."

"What about it?"

"Well, when I was going to finish it."

"Why don't you?"

Kirk laughed.

"Where's my model? You've scared her up a tree, and I can't coax her

down."

Ruth came over to him and sat down on a low chair at his side. She put

her arm round his waist and rested her head in the hollow of his

shoulder.

"Is he pining for his horrid Vince girl, the poor boy?"

"He certainly is," said Kirk. "Or at any rate, for some understudy to

her."

"We must think. Do they all call you Kirk?"

"I've never met one who didn't."

"What horrible creatures you artists are!"

"My dear kid, you don't understand the thing at all. When you're

painting a model she ceases to be a girl at all. You don't think of her

as anything except a sort of lay-figure."

"Good gracious! Does your lay-figure call you Kirk too?"

"It always looks as if it were going to."

Ruth shuddered.

"It's a repulsive thing. I hate it. It gives me the creeps. I came in

here last night and switched on the light, and there it was, goggling

at me."

"Are you getting nervous?"

Ruth's face grew grave.

"Do you know, Kirk, I really believe I am. This morning as I was

dressing, I suddenly got the most awful feeling that something terrible

was going to happen. I don't know what. It was perfectly vague. I just

felt a kind of horror. It passed off in a moment or two; but, while it

lasted , ugh!"

"How ghastly! Why didn't you tell me before? You must be run down. Look

here, let's shut up this place and get out to Florida or somewhere for

the winter!"

"Let's don't do anything of the kind. Florida indeed! For the love of

Mike, as Steve would say, it's much too expensive. You know, Kirk, we

are both frightfully extravagant. I'm sure we are spending too much

money as it is. You know you sold out some of your capital only the

other day."

"It was only that once. And you had set your heart on that pendant.

Surely to goodness, if I drag you away from a comfortable home to live

in a hovel, the least I can do is to......"

"You didn't drag me. I just walked in and sat down, and you couldn't

think how to get rid of me, so in despair you married me."

"That was it. And now I've got to set to work and make a fortune

and, what do you call it? support you in the style to which you have

been accustomed. Which brings us back to the picture. I don't suppose I

shall get ten dollars for it, but I feel I shall curl up and die if I

don't get it finished. Are you absolutely determined about the

Vince girl?"

"I'm adamant. I'm granite. I'm chilled steel. Oh! Kirk, can't you find

a nice, motherly old model, with white hair and spectacles? I shouldn't

mind her calling you by your first name."

"But it's absurd. I told you just now that an artist doesn't look on

his models as human beings while......"

"I know. I've read all about that in books, and I believed it then.

Why, when I married you, I said to myself: 'I mustn't be foolish.

Kirk's an artist, I mustn't be a comic-supplement wife and object to

his using models!' Oh, I was going to be so good and reasonable. You

would have loved me! And then, when it came to the real thing, I found

I just could not stand it. I know it's silly of me. I know just as well

as you do that Miss Vince is quite a nice girl really, and is going to

make a splendid Mrs. Travelling Salesman, but that doesn't help me.

It's my wicked nature, I suppose. I'm just a plain cat, and that's all

there is to it. Look at the way I treat your friends!"

Kirk started.

"You jumped!" said Ruth. "You jerked my head. Do you think I didn't

know you had noticed it? I knew how unhappy you were when Mr. Jardine

was here, and I just hated myself."

"Didn't you like Hank?" asked Kirk.

Ruth was silent for a moment.

"I wish you would," Kirk went on. "You don't know what a real white man

old Hank is. You didn't see him properly that night. He was nervous.

But he's one of the very best God ever made. We've known each other all

our lives. He and I......"

"Don't tell me!" cried Ruth. "Don't you see that that's just the reason

why I can't like him? Don't tell me about the things you and he did

together, unless you want me to hate him. Don't you understand, dear?

It's the same with all your friends. I'm jealous of them for having

known you before I did. And I hate these models because they come into

a part of your life into which I can't. I want you all to myself. I

want to be your whole life. I know it's idiotic and impossible, but I

do."

"You are my whole life," said Kirk seriously. "I wasn't born till I met

you. There isn't a single moment when you are not my whole life."

She pressed her head contentedly against his arm.

"Kirk."

"Yes?"

"Let me pose for your picture."

"What! You couldn't!"

"Why not?"

"It's terribly hard work. It's an awful strain."

"I'm sure I'm as strong as that Vince girl. You ask Steve; he's seen me

throw the medicine-ball."

"But posing is different. Hilda Vince has been trained for it."

"Well let me try, at any rate."

"But......"

"Do! And I'll promise to like your Hank and not put on my grand manner

when he begins telling me what fun you and he used to have in the good

old days before I was born or thought of. May I?"

"But......"

"Quick! Promise!"

"Very well."

"You dear! I'll be the best model you ever had. I won't move a muscle,

and I'll stand there till I drop."

"You'll do nothing of the kind. You'll come right down off that

model-throne the instant you feel the least bit tired."

* * * * *

The picture which Kirk was painting was one of those pictures which

thousands of young artists are working on unceasingly every day. Kirk's

ideas about it were in a delightfully vague state. He had a notion that

it might turn out in the end as "Carmen." On the other hand, if

anything went wrong and he failed to insert a sufficient amount of wild

devilry into it, he could always hedge by calling it "A Reverie" or

"The Spanish Maiden."

Possibly, if the thing became too pensive and soulful altogether,

he might give it some title suggestive of the absent lover at the

bull-fight, "The Toreador's Bride" , or something of that sort. The

only point on which he was solid was that it was to strike the Spanish

note; and to this end he gave Ruth a costume of black and orange and

posed her on the model-throne with a rose in her hair.

Privately he had decided that ten minutes would be Ruth's limit. He

knew something of the strain of sitting to an artist.

"Tired?" he asked at the end of this period.

Ruth shook her head and smiled.

"You must be. Come and sit down and take a rest."

"I'm quite all right, dear. Go on with your work."

"Well, shout out the moment you feel you've had enough."

He began to paint again. The minutes went by and Ruth made no movement.

He began to grow absorbed in his work. He lost count of time. Ruth

ceased to be Ruth, ceased even to be flesh and blood. She was just

something he was painting.

"Kirk!"

The sharp suddenness of the cry brought him to his feet, quivering.

Ruth was swaying on the model-throne. Her eyes were staring straight

before her and her face was twisted with fear.

As he sprang forward she fell, pitching stiffly head foremost, as he

had seen men fall in the ring, her arms hanging at her sides; and he

caught her.

He carried her to the couch and laid her down. He hung for an instant

in doubt whether to go for water or telephone for the doctor. He

decided on the telephone.

He hung up the receiver and went back to Ruth. She stirred and gave a

little moan. He flew upstairs and returned with a pitcher of water.

When he got back Ruth was sitting up. The look of terror was gone from

her face. She smiled at him, a faint, curiously happy smile. He flung

himself on his knees beside her, his arm round her waist, and burst

into a babble of self-reproach.

He cursed himself for being such a brute, such a beast as to let her

stand there, tiring herself to death. She must never do it again. He

was a devil. He ought to have known she could not stand it. He was not

fit to be married. He was not fit to live.

Ruth ruffled his hair.

"Stop abusing my husband," she said. "I'm fond of him. Did you catch

me, Kirk?"

"Yes, thank God. I got to you just in time."

"That's the last thing I remember, wondering if you would. You seemed

such miles and miles away. It was like looking at something in a mist

through the wrong end of a telescope. Oh, Kirk!"

"Yes, honey?"

"It came again, that awful feeling as if something dreadful was going

to happen. And then I felt myself going." She paused. "Kirk, I think I

know now. I understand; and oh, I'm so happy!"

She buried her face on his shoulder, and they stayed there silent, till

there came a ring at the bell. Kirk got up. George Pennicut ushered in

the doctor. It was the same little old doctor who had ministered to

George in his hour of need.

"Feeling better, Mrs. Winfield?" he said, as he caught sight of Ruth.

"Your husband told me over the 'phone that you were unconscious."

"She fainted," cried Kirk. "It was all through me. I......-"

The doctor took him by the shoulders. He had to stretch to do it.

"You go away, young man," he said. "Take a walk round the block. You

aren't on in this scene."

* * * * *

Kirk was waiting in the hall when he left a few minutes later.

"Well?" he said anxiously.

"Well?" said the little doctor.

"Is she all right? There's nothing wrong, is there?"

The doctor grinned a friendly grin.

"On the contrary," he said. "You ought to be very pleased."

"What do you mean?"

"It's quite a commonplace occurrence, though I suppose it will seem

like a miracle to you. But, believe me, it has happened before. If it

hadn't, you and I wouldn't be here now."

Kirk looked at him in utter astonishment. His words seemed meaningless.

And then, suddenly, he understood, and his heart seemed to stand still.

"You don't mean......-" he said huskily.

"Yes, I do," said the doctor. "Good-bye, my boy. I've got to hurry off.

You caught me just as I was starting for the hospital."

* * * * *

Kirk went back to the studio, his mind in a whirl. Ruth was lying on

the couch. She looked up as the door opened. He came quickly to her

side.

"Ruth!" he muttered.

Her eyes were shining with a wonderful light of joy. She drew his head

down and kissed him.

"Oh, Kirk," she whispered. "I'm happy. I'm happy. I've wanted this so."

He could not speak. He sat on the edge of the couch and looked at her.

She had been wonderful to him before. She was a thousand times more

wonderful now.

Chapter VIII Suspense

It seemed to Kirk, as the days went by, that a mist of unreality fell

like a curtain between him and the things of this world. Commonplace

objects lost their character and became things to marvel at. There was

a new bond of sympathy between the world and himself.

A citizen walking in the park with his children became a kind of

miracle. Here was a man who had travelled the road which he was

travelling now, who had had the same hopes and fear and wonder. Once he

encountered a prosperous looking individual moving, like a liner among

tugs, in the midst of no fewer than six offspring. Kirk fixed him with

such a concentrated stare of emotion and excitement that the other was

alarmed and went on his way alertly, as one in the presence of danger.

It is probable that, if Kirk had happened to ask him the time at that

moment, or indeed addressed him at all, he would have screamed for the

police.

The mystery of childbirth and the wonder of it obsessed Kirk as time

crept on. And still more was he conscious of the horrible dread that

was gathering within him. Ruth's unvarying cheerfulness was to him

almost uncanny. None of the doubts and fears which blackened his life

appeared to touch her. Once he confided these to his friend, the little

doctor, and was thoroughly bullied by him for his foolishness. But in

spite of ridicule the fear crept back, cringingly, like a whipped dog.

And then, time moving on its leisurely but businesslike fashion, the

day arrived, and for the first time in his life Kirk knew what fear

really meant. All that he had experienced till now had, he saw, been a

mild apprehension, not worthy of a stronger name. His flesh crawled

with the thoughts which rose in his mind like black bubbles in a pond.

There were moments when the temptation to stupefy himself with drink

was almost irresistible.

It was his utter uselessness that paralysed him. He seemed destined to

be of no help to Ruth at just those crises when she needed him most.

When she was facing her father with the news of the marriage he had not

been at her side. And now, when she was fighting for her life, he could

do nothing but pace the empty, quiet studio and think.

The doctor had arrived at eight o'clock, cheery as ever, and had come

downstairs after seeing Ruth to ask him to telephone to Mrs. Porter. In

his overwrought state, this had jarred upon Kirk. Here, he felt, was

somebody who could help where he was useless.

Mrs. Porter had appeared in a cab and had had the cold brutality to ask

for a glass of sherry and a sandwich before going upstairs. She put

forward the lame excuse that she had not dined. Kirk gave her the

sherry and sandwich and resumed his patrol in a glow of indignation.

The idea of any one requiring food at this moment struck him as gross

and revolting.

His wrath did not last. In a short while fear came back into its own.

The hands of the clock pointed to ten before he stooped to following

Mrs. Porter's example. George Pennicut had been sent out, so he went

into the little kitchen, where he found eggs, which he mixed with milk

and swallowed. After this he was aware of a momentary excess of

optimism. The future looked a little brighter. But not for long.

Presently he was prowling the studio as restlessly as ever.

Men of Kirk's type are not given to deep thought. Until now he had

probably never spent more than a couple of minutes consecutively in

self-examination. This vigil forced him upon himself and caused him to

pass his character under review, with strange and unsatisfactory

results. He had never realised before what a curiously contemptible and

useless person he was. It seemed to him that this was all he was fit

for , to hang about doing nothing while everybody else was busy and

proving his or her own worth.

A door opened and the little doctor came quietly down the stairs. Kirk

sprang at him.

"Well?"

"My dear man, everything's going splendidly. Couldn't be better." The

doctor's eyes searched his face. "When did you have anything to eat

last?"

"I don't know. I had some eggs and milk. I don't know when."

The doctor took him by the shoulders and hustled him into the kitchen,

where he searched and found meat and bread.

"Eat that," he said. "I'll have some, too."

"I couldn't."

"And some whisky. Where do you keep it?"

After the first few mouthfuls Kirk ate wolfishly. The doctor munched a

sandwich with the placidity of a summer boarder at a picnic. His

calmness amazed and almost shocked Kirk.

"You can't help her by killing yourself," said the doctor

philosophically. "I like that woman with the gimlet eyes. At least I

don't, but she's got sense. Go on. You haven't done yet. Another

highball won't hurt you." He eyed Kirk with some sympathy. "It's a bad

time for you, of course."

"For me? Good God!"

"You want to keep your nerve. Nothing awful is going to happen."

"If only there was something I could do."

"'They also serve who only stand and wait,'" quoted the doctor

sententiously. "There is something you can do."

"What?"

"Light your pipe and take it easy."

Kirk snorted.

"I mean it. In a very short while now you will be required to take the

stage and embrace your son or daughter, as the case may be. You don't

want to appear looking as if you had been run over by an automobile

after a night out. You want your appearance to give Mrs. Winfield as

little of a shock as possible. Bear that in mind. Well, I must be

going."

And Kirk was alone again.

The food and the drink and the doctor's words had a good effect. His

mind became quieter. He sat down and filled his pipe. After a few puffs

he replaced it in his pocket. It seemed too callous to think of smoking

now. The doctor was a good fellow, but he did not understand. All the

same, he was glad that he had had that whisky. It had certainly put

heart into him for the moment.

What was happening upstairs? He strained his ears, but could hear

nothing.

Gradually, as he waited, his mood of morbid self-criticism returned. He

had sunk once more into the depths when he was aware of a soft tapping.

The door bell rang very gently. He went to the door and opened it.

"I kinder thought I'd look in and see how things were getting along,"

said a voice.

It was Steve. A subdued and furtive Steve. Kirk's heart leaped at the

sight of him. It was as if he had found something solid to cling to in

a shifting world.

"Come in, Steve."

He spoke huskily. Steve sidled into the studio, embarrassment written

on every line of him.

"Don't mind my butting in, do you? I've been walking up and down and

round the block till every cop on the island's standing by waiting for

me to pull something. Another minute and they'd have pinched me on

suspicion. I just felt I had to come and see how Miss Ruth was making

out."

"The doctor was down here just now. He said everything was going well."

"I guess he knows his business."

There was a silence. Kirk's ears were straining for sounds from above.

"It's hell," said Steve.

Kirk nodded. This kind of talk was more what he wanted. The doctor

meant well, but he was too professional. Steve was human.

"Go and get yourself a drink, Steve. I expect you need one."

Steve shook his head.

"Waggon," he said briefly. And there was silence again.

"Say, Kirk."

"Yes?"

"What a wonder she is. Miss Ruth, I mean. I've helped her throw that

medicine-ball , often , you wouldn't believe. She's a wonder." He paused.

"Say, this is hell, ain't it?"

Kirk did not answer. It was very quiet in the studio now. In the street

outside a heavy waggon rumbled part. Somebody shouted a few words of a

popular song. Steve sprang to his feet.

"I'll fix that guy," he said. But the singing ceased, and he sat down

again.

Kirk got up and began to walk quickly up and down. Steve watched him

furtively.

"You want to take your mind off it," he said. "You'll be all in if you

keep on worrying about it in that way."

Kirk stopped in his stride.

"That's what the doctor said," he snapped savagely. "What do you two

fools think I'm made of?" He recovered himself quickly, ashamed of the

outburst. "I'm sorry, Steve. Don't mind anything I say. It's awfully

good of you to have come here, and I'm not going to forget it."

Steve scratched his chin reflectively.

"Say, I'll tell you something," he said. "My mother told me once that

when I was born my old dad took it just like you. Found he was getting

all worked up by having to hang around and do nothing, so he says to

himself: 'I've got to take my mind off this business, or it's me for

the foolish-house.'

"Well, sir, there was a big guy down on that street who'd been picking

on dad good and hard for a mighty long while. And this guy suddenly

comes into dad's mind. He felt of his muscle, dad did. 'Gee!' he says

to himself, 'I believe the way I'm feeling, I could just go and eat up

that gink right away.' And the more he thought of it, the better it

looked to him, so all of a sudden he grabs his hat and beats it like a

streak down to the saloon on the corner, where he knew the feller would

be at that time, and he goes straight up to him and hands him one.

"Back comes the guy at him, he was a great big son of a gun, weighing

thirty pounds more than dad, and him and dad mixes it right there in

the saloon till the barkeep and about fifty other fellers throws them

out, and they goes off to a vacant lot to finish the thing. And dad's

so worked up that he gives the other guy his till he hollers that

that's all he'll want. And then dad goes home and waits quite quiet and

happy and peaceful till they tell him I'm there."

Steve paused.

"Kirk," he said then, "how would you like a round or two with the small

gloves, just to get things off your mind for a spell and pass the time?

My dad said he found it eased him mighty good."

Kirk stared at him.

"Just a couple of rounds," urged Steve. "And you can go all out at

that. I shan't mind. Just try to think I'm some guy that's been picking

on you and let me have it. See what I mean?"

For the first time that day the faint ghost of a grin appeared on

Kirk's face.

"I wonder if you're right, Steve?"

"I know I'm right. And, say, don't think I don't need it, too. I ain't

known Miss Ruth all this time for nothing. You'll be doing me a

kindness if you knock my face in."

The small gloves occupied a place of honour to themselves in a lower

drawer. It was not often that Kirk used them in his friendly bouts with

Steve. For ordinary occasions the larger and more padded species met

with his approval. Steve, during these daily sparring encounters, was

amiability itself; but he could not be counted upon not to forget

himself for an occasional moment in the heat of the fray; and though

Kirk was courageous enough, he preferred to preserve the regularity of

his features at the expense of a little extra excitement.

Once, after a brisk rally, he had gone about the world looking as if he

was suffering from mumps, owing to a right hook which no one regretted

more than Steve himself.

But to-day was different; and Kirk felt that even a repetition of that

lethal punch would be welcome.

Steve, when the contest opened, was disposed to be consolatory in word

as well as deed. He kept up a desultory conversation as he circled and

feinted.

"You gotta look at it this way," he began, side-stepping a left, "it

ain't often you hear of anything going wrong at times like this. You

gotta remember", he hooked Kirk neatly on the jaw, "that" he concluded.

Kirk came back with a swing at the body which made his adversary grunt.

"That's true," he said.

"Sure," rejoined Steve a little breathlessly, falling into a clinch.

They moved warily round each other.

"So," said Steve, blocking a left, "that ought to comfort you some."

Kirk nodded. He guessed correctly that the other was alluding to his

last speech, not to the counter which had just made the sight of his

left eye a little uncertain.

Gradually, as the bout progressed, Kirk began to lose the slight

diffidence which had hampered him at the start. He had been feeling so

wonderfully friendly toward Steve, so grateful for his presence, and

his sympathy, that it had been hard, in spite of the other's

admonitions, to enter into the fray with any real conviction. Moreover,

subconsciously, he was listening all the time for sounds from above

which never came.

These things gave a certain lameness to his operations. It was

immediately after this blow in the eye, mentioned above, that he ceased

to be an individual with private troubles and a wandering mind, and

became a boxer pure and simple, his whole brain concentrated on the

problem of how to get past his opponent's guard.

Steve, recognizing the change in an instant, congratulated himself on

the success of his treatment. It had worked even more quickly than he

had hoped. He helped the cure with another swift jab which shot over

Kirk's guard.

Kirk came in with a rush. Steve slipped him. Kirk rushed again. Steve,

receiving a hard punch on a nose which, though accustomed to such

assaults, had never grown really to enjoy them, began to feel a slight

diminution of his detached attitude toward this encounter. Till now his

position had been purely that of the kindly physician soothing a

patient. The rapidity with which the patient was permitting himself to

be soothed rendered the post of physician something of a sinecure; and

Steve, as Kirk had done, began to slip back into the boxer.

It was while he was in what might be called a transition stage that an

unexpected swing sent him with some violence against the wall; and from

that moment nature asserted itself. A curious, set look appeared on his

face; wrinkles creased his forehead; his jaw protruded slightly.

Kirk made another rush. This time Steve did not slip; he went to meet

it, head down and hands busy.

* * * * *

Mrs. Lora Delane Porter came downstairs with the measured

impressiveness of one who bears weighty news. Her determined face was

pale and tired, as it had every right to be; but she bore herself

proudly, as one who has fought and not been defeated.

"Mr. Winfield," she said.

There was no answer. Looking about her, she found the studio empty.

Then, from behind the closed door of the inner room, she was aware of a

strange, shuffling sound. She listened, astonished. She heard a gasp,

then curious thuds, finally a bump louder than the thuds. And then

there was silence.

These things surprised Mrs. Porter. She opened the door and looked in.

It says much for her iron self-control that she remained quiet at this

point. A lesser person, after a far less tiring ordeal than she had

passed through, would have found relief in some cry or exclamation,

possibly even in a scream.

Against the far wall, breathing hard and fondling his left eye with a

four-ounce glove, leaned Steve Dingle. His nose was bleeding somewhat

freely, but this he appeared to consider a trifle unworthy of serious

attention. On the floor, an even more disturbing spectacle, Kirk lay at

full length. To Mrs. Porter's startled gaze he appeared to be dead. He

too, was bleeding, but he was not in a position to notice it.

"It's all right, ma'am," said Steve, removing the hand from his face

and revealing an eye which for spectacular dilapidation must have

rivalled the epoch-making one which had so excited his mother on a

famous occasion. "It's nothing serious."

"Has Mr. Winfield fainted?"

"Not exactly fainted, ma'am. It's like this. He'd got me clear up in a

corner, and I seen it's up to me if I don't want to be knocked through

the wall, so I has to cross him. Maybe I'd gotten a little worked up

myself by then. But it was my fault. I told him to go all out, and he

sure did. This eye's going to be a pippin to-morrow."

Mrs. Porter examined the wounded organ with interest.

"That, I suppose Mr. Dingle, is what you call a blue eye?"

"It sure is, ma'am."

"What has been happening?"

"Well, it's this way. I see he's all worked up, sitting around doing

nothing except wait, so I makes him come and spar a round to take his

mind off it. My old dad, ma'am, when I was coming along, found that

dope fixed him all right, so I reckoned it would do as much good here.

My old dad went and beat the block off a fellow down our street, and it

done him a lot of good."

Mrs. Porter shook his gloved hand.

"Mr. Dingle," she said with enthusiasm, "I really believe that you are

the only sensible man I have ever met. Your common sense is

astonishing. I have no doubt you saved Mr. Winfield from a nervous

break-down. Would you be kind enough, when you are rested, to fetch

some water and bring him to and inform him that he is the father of a

son?"

Chapter IX The White Hope is Turned Down

William Bannister Winfield was the most wonderful child. Of course,

you had to have a certain amount of intelligence to see this. To the

vapid and irreflective observer he was not much to look at in the early

stages of his career, having a dough-like face almost entirely devoid

of nose, a lack-lustre eye, and the general appearance of a poached

egg. His immediate circle of intimates, however, thought him a model of

manly beauty; and there was the undeniable fact that he had come into

the world weighing nine pounds. Take him for all in all, a lad of

promise.

Kirk's sense of being in a dream continued. His identity seemed to have

undergone a change. The person he had known as Kirk Winfield had

disappeared, to be succeeded by a curious individual bubbling over with

an absurd pride for which it was not easy to find an outlet. Hitherto a

rather reserved man, he was conscious now of a desire to accost perfect

strangers in the street and inform them that he was not the ordinary

person they probably imagined, but a father with an intensely unusual

son at home, and if they did not believe him they could come right

along and see for themselves.

The only flaw in his happiness at the moment was the fact that his

circle of friends was so small. He had not missed the old brigade of

the studio before, but now the humblest of them would have been

welcome, provided he would have sat still and listened. Even Percy

Shanklyn would have been acceptable as an audience.

Steve, excellent fellow, was always glad to listen to him on his

favourite subject. He had many long talks with Steve on the question of

William's future. Steve, as the infant's godfather, which post he had

claimed and secured at an early date, had definite views on the matter.

Here, held Steve, was the chance of a lifetime. With proper training, a

baby of such obvious muscular promise might be made the greatest

fighter that ever stepped into the ring. He was the real White Hope. He

advised Kirk to direct William's education on the lines which would

insure his being, when the time was ripe, undisputed heavy-weight

champion of the world. To Steve life outside the ring was a poor

affair, practically barren of prizes for the ambitious.

Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, eyeing William's brow, of which there was

plenty, he being at this time extremely short of hair, predicted a less

robust and more intellectual future for him. Something more on the

lines of president of some great university or ambassador at some

important court struck her as his logical sphere.

Kirk's view was that he should combine both careers and be an

ambassador who took a few weeks off every now and then in order to

defend his champion's belt. In his spare time he might paint a picture

or two.

Ruth hesitated between the army, the navy, the bar, and business. But

every one was agreed that William was to be something special.

This remarkable child had a keen sense of humour. Thus he seldom began

to cry in his best vein till the small hours of the morning; and on

these occasions he would almost invariably begin again after he had

been officially pronounced to be asleep. His sudden grab at the hair of

any adult who happened to come within reach was very droll, too.

As to his other characteristics, he was of rather an imperious nature.

He liked to be waited on. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it.

The greater part of his attention being occupied at this period with

the important duty of chewing his thumb, he assigned the drudgery of

life to his dependants. Their duties were to see that he got up in the

morning, dressed, and took his tub; and after that to hang around on

the chance of general orders.

Any idea Kirk may have had of resuming his work was abandoned during

these months. No model, young and breezy or white-haired and motherly,

passed the studio doors. Life was far too interesting for work. The

canvas which might have become "Carmen" or "A Reverie" or even "The

Toreador's Bride" lay unfinished and neglected in a corner.

It astonished Kirk to find how strong the paternal instinct was in him.

In the days when he had allowed his mind to dwell upon the abstract

wife he had sometimes gone a step further and conjured up the abstract

baby. The result had always been to fill him with a firm conviction

that the most persuasive of wild horses should not drag him from his

bachelor seclusion. He had had definite ideas on babies as a class. And

here he was with his world pivoting on one of them. It was curious.

The White Hope, as Steve called his godson, possibly with the idea of

influencing him by suggestion, grew. The ailments which attacked lesser

babies passed him by. He avoided croup, and even whooping-cough paid

him but a flying visit hardly worth mentioning. His first tooth gave

him a little trouble, but that is the sort of thing which may happen to

anyone; and the spirited way in which he protested against the

indignity of cutting it was proof of a high soul.

Such was the remarkableness of this child that it annoyed Kirk more and

more that he should be obliged to give the exhibition of his

extraordinary qualities to so small an audience. Ruth felt the same;

and it was for this reason that the first overtures were made to the

silent camp which contained her father and her brother Bailey.

Since that evening in the library there had come no sign from the house

on Fifth Avenue that its inmates were aware of her existence. Life had

been too full till now to make this a cause of trouble to her; but with

William Bannister becoming every day more amazing the desire came to

her to try and heal the breach. Her father had so ordered his life in

his relation to his children that Ruth's affection was not so deep as

it might have been; but, after all, he was William Bannister's

grandfather, and, as such, entitled to consideration.

It was these reflections that led to Steve's state visit to John

Bannister, probably the greatest fiasco on record.

Steve had been selected for the feat on the strength of his having the

right of entry to the Fifth Avenue house, for John Bannister was still

obeying his doctor's orders and taking his daily spell of exercise with

the pugilist, and Steve bungled it hopelessly.

His task was not a simple one. He was instructed to employ tact, to

hint rather than to speak, to say nothing to convey the impression that

Ruth in any way regretted the step she had taken, to give the idea that

it was a matter of complete indifference to her whether she ever saw

her father again or not, yet at the same time to make it quite clear

that she was very anxious to see him as soon as possible.

William Bannister, grown to maturity and upholding the interests of his

country as ambassador at some important court, might have jibbed at the

mission.

William Bannister was to accompany Steve and be produced dramatically

to support verbal arguments. It seemed to Ruth that for her father to

resist William when he saw him was an impossibility. William's position

was that of the ace of trumps in the cards which Steve was to play.

Steve made a few objections. His chief argument against taking up the

post assigned to him was that he was a roughneck, and that the job in

question was one which no roughneck, however gifted in the matter of

left hooks, could hope to carry through with real success. But he

yielded to pressure, and the expedition set out.

William Bannister at this time was at an age when he was beginning to

talk a little and walk a little and take a great interest in things.

His walking was a bit amateurish, and his speech rather hard to follow

unless you had the key to it. But nobody could have denied that his

walk, though staggery, was a genuine walk, and his speech, though

limited, genuine speech, within the meaning of the act.

He made no objections to the expedition. On being told that he was

going to see his grandpa he nodded curtly and said: "Gwa-wah," after

his custom. For, as a conversationalist, perhaps the best description

of him is to say that he tried hard. He rarely paused for a word. When

in difficulties he said something; he did not seek refuge in silence.

That the something was not always immediately intelligible was the

fault of his audience for not listening more carefully.

Perhaps the real mistake of the expedition was the nature of its

baggage. William Bannister had stood out for being allowed to take with

him his wheelbarrow, his box of bricks, and his particular favourite,

the dying pig, which you blew out and then allowed to collapse with a

pleasing noise. These properties had struck his parents as excessive,

but he was firm; and when he gave signs of being determined to fight it

out on these lines if it took all the summer, they gave in.

Steve had no difficulty in smuggling William into his grandfather's

house. He was a great favourite below stairs there. His great ally was

the English butler, Keggs.

Keggs was a stout, dignified, pigeon-toed old sinner, who cast off the

butler when not on duty and displayed himself as something of a

rounder. He was a man of many parts. It was his chief relaxation to

look in at Broadway hotels while some big fight was in progress out

West to watch the ticker and assure himself that the man he had backed

with a portion of the loot which he had accumulated in the form of tips

was doing justice to his judgment, for in private Keggs was essentially

the sport.

It was this that so endeared Steve to him. A few years ago Keggs had

won considerable sums by backing Steve, and the latter was always given

to understand that, as far as the lower regions of it were concerned,

the house on Fifth Avenue was open to him at all hours.

To-day he greeted Steve with enthusiasm and suggested a cigar in the

pantry before the latter should proceed to his work.

"He ain't ready for you yet, Mr. Dingle. He's lookin' over some papers

in, for goodness' sake, who's this?"

He had caught sight of William Bannister, who having wriggled free of

Steve, was being made much of by the maids.

"The kid," said Steve briefly.

"Not…… "

Steve nodded.

"Sure. His grandson."

Keggs' solemnity increased.

"You aren't going to take him upstairs with you?"

"Surest thing you know. That's why I brought him."

"Don't you do it, Mr. Dingle. 'E's in an awful temper this morning, he

gets worse and worse, he'll fire you as soon as look at you."

"Can't be helped. I've got me instructions."

"You always were game," said Keggs admiringly. "I used to see that

quick enough before you retired from active work. Well, good luck to

you, Mr. Dingle."

Steve gathered up William Bannister, the wheelbarrow, the box of

bricks, and the dying pig and made his way to the gymnasium.

The worst of these pre-arranged scenes is that they never happen just

as one figured them in one's mind. Steve had expected to have to wait a

few minutes in the gymnasium, then there would be a step outside and

the old man would enter. The beauty of this, to Steve's mind, was that

he himself would be "discovered," as the stage term is; the onus of

entering and opening the conversation would be on Mr. Bannister. And,

as everybody who has ever had an awkward interview knows, this makes

all the difference.

But the minutes passed, and still no grandfather. The nervousness which

he had with difficulty expelled began to return to Steve. This was

exactly like having to wait in the ring while one's opponent tried to

get one's goat by dawdling in the dressing room.

An attempt to relieve himself by punching the ball was a dismal

failure. At the first bang of the leather against the wood William

Bannister, who had been working in a pre-occupied way at the dying pig,

threw his head back and howled, and would not be comforted till Steve

took out the rope and skipped before him, much as dancers used to dance

before oriental monarchs in the old days.

Steve was just saying to himself for the fiftieth time that he was a

fool to have come, when Keggs arrived with the news that Mr. Bannister

was too busy to take his usual exercise this morning and that Steve was

at liberty to go.

It speaks well for Steve's character that he did not go. He would have

given much to retire, for the old man was one of the few people who

inspired in him anything resembling fear. But he could not return

tamely to the studio with his mission unaccomplished.

"Say, ask him if he can see me for a minute. Say it is important."

Keggs' eye rested on William Bannister, and he shook his head.

"I shouldn't, Mr. Dingle. Really I shouldn't. You don't know what an

ugly mood he's in. Something's been worrying him. It's what you might

call courting disaster."

"Gee! Do you think I want to do it? I've just got to. That's all

there is to it."

A few moments later Keggs returned with the news that Mr. Bannister

would see Dingle in the library.

"Come along, kid," said Steve. "Gimme hold of the excess baggage, and

let's get a move on."

So in the end it was Mr. Bannister who was discovered and Steve who

made the entrance. And, as Steve pointed out to Kirk later, it just

made all the difference.

The effect of the change on Steve was to make him almost rollicking in

his manner, as if he and Mr. Bannister were the nucleus of an Old Home

Week celebration or two old college chums meeting after long absence.

Nervousness, on the rare occasions when he suffered from it, generally

had that effect on him.

He breezed into the library, carrying the wheelbarrow, the box of

bricks, and the dying pig, and trailing William in his wake. William's

grandfather was seated with his back to the door, dictating a letter to

one of his secretaries.

He looked up as Steve entered. He took in Steve and William in a rapid

glance and guessed the latter's identity in an instant. He had expected

something of this sort ever since he had heard of his grandson's birth.

Indeed, he had been somewhat surprised that the visit had not occurred

before.

He betrayed no surprise.

"One moment, Dingle," he said, and turned to the secretary again. A

faint sneer came and went on his face.

The delay completed Steve's discomfiture. He placed the wheel harrow on

the floor, the box of bricks on the wheelbarrow, and the dying pig on

the box of bricks, whence it was instantly removed and inflated by

William.

"'Referring to your letter of the eighth, '" said Mr. Bannister in his

cold, level voice.

He was interrupted by the incisive cry of the dying pig.

"Ask your son to be quiet, Dingle," he said impassively.

Steve was staggered.

"Say, this ain't my son, squire," he began breezily.

"Your nephew, then, or whatever relation he happens to be to you."

He resumed his dictation. Steve wiped his forehead and looked

helplessly at the White Hope, who, having discarded the dying pig, was

now busy with the box of bricks.

Steve wished he had not come. He was accustomed to the primitive

exhibition of emotions, having moved in circles where the wrathful

expressed their wrath in a normal manner.

Anger which found its expression in an exaggerated politeness was out

of his line and made him uncomfortable.

After what seemed to him a century, John Bannister dismissed the

secretary. Even then, however, he did not come immediately to Steve. He

remained for a few moments writing, with his back turned. Then, just

when Steve had given up hope of ever securing his attention, he turned

suddenly.

"Well?"

"Say, it's this way, colonel," Steve had begun, when a triumphant cry

from the direction of the open window stopped him. The White Hope was

kneeling on a chair, looking down into the street.

"Bix," he explained over his shoulder.

"Kindly ring the bell, Dingle," said Mr. Bannister, unmoved. "Your

little nephew appears to have dropped his bricks into Fifth Avenue."

In answer to the summons Keggs appeared. He looked anxious.

"Keggs,"

said Mr. Bannister, "tell one of the footmen to go out into the avenue

and pick up some wooden bricks which he will find there. Dingle's

little brother has let some fall."

As Keggs left the room Steve's pent-up nervousness exploded in a whirl

of words.

"Aw say, boss, quit yer kiddin'. You know this kid ain't anything to do

with me. Why, say, how would he be any relation of a roughneck like me?

Come off the roof, bo. You know well enough who he is. He's your

grandson. On the level."

Mr. Bannister looked at William, now engaged in running the wheelbarrow

up and down the room, emitting the while a curious sound, possibly to

encourage an imaginary horse. The inspection did not seem to excite him

or afford him any pleasure.

"Oh!" he said.

Steve was damped, but resumed gamely:

"Say, boss, this is the greatest kid on earth. I'm not stringing you,

honest. He's a wonder. On the level, did you ever see a kid that age