"Poor Davy!" Mrs. Jim repeated softly. She threaded a needle and bent over her sewing. Jim watched the swift deft fingers proudly; they had acquired the habit of industry in a day when the Blaisdells had had to wrestle with the problem of slender income. After a few minutes' silence she let her sewing fall to her lap.

"I think, Jim, if you'll have the machine around I'll go down-town with you in the morning."

Jim sighed in relief. "You've solved it, then?"

"I want to call on my latest acquisition. You remember asking, 'Why is Jonathan Radbourne?'"

Jim nodded, with the smile the thought of that gentleman always evoked.

"The answer is, of course—Davy."

"I'm wondering," said Jim thoughtfully, "just how Davy would like it if he knew you were going to beg a job for him."

"I'm not going to beg a job. I will merely state the case to Mr. Radbourne."

"Suppose he concludes that making a job for Davy is too high a price to pay even for your ladyship's favor?"

Mrs. Jim smiled confidently. "Mr. Radbourne and I understand each other. And he doesn't have to pay for my favor. I have made him a present of it."

Two mornings later David found a note from Jim, asking him to call at the bank. David obeyed the summons at once.

"Davy," Jim began, "did you mean what you said the other day about a job?"

"Yes," David answered quietly.

"Well, I took you at your word. And I think I've landed you one. Radbourne & Company want a good man to do mechanical drawing. They'll pay a hundred and fifty to the right man at the start, and they'll raise that later if you turn out well. Do you care to try it on?"

"Yes," David said again.

"I still think you're making a mistake—but that's your business. Shall we go around to Radbourne's now?"

"Yes."

To those three monosyllables David added nothing during the few minutes' walk. Had Jim been leading him to the prisoner's dock David could not have taken less joy in the journey. Jim discoursed of the judge before whom the prisoner was being led.

"Odd fish, this Radbourne. Dinky little man. With whiskers. You're apt to think he's a fool at first. But that's a mistake. He isn't at all—I'd hate to lose his account. He makes machines in a small way, but very well and quite profitably. His father made a reputation for turning out high-class work and the son keeps it up. We got to know him at St. Mark's. Mrs. Jim says he's the only man of real charity she knows—not even excepting me."

David forgot to smile.

They were shown into a small bare office, where, behind a littered flat-top desk, the judge got nimbly to his feet; although "judge" was in this case a queer fancy indeed, as David had later to confess.

There are several ways in which men can be homely, and Radbourne, of Radbourne & Company, had chosen the worst way of all. When you saw him you wanted to smile. He was little and roly-poly. His eyes were too small, their blue too light. His nose was acutely and ungracefully pug. His ears were too big and stood out from his head. His mouth was too wide. His hair and eyebrows were thick and red, too red, and his round chubby face was flanked by a pair of silky, luxuriant red Dundrearies that would have done credit to a day of hirsute achievements. His linen was strictly without blemish, and he wore a creaseless black frock coat and a waistcoat of brown broadcloth. And as he stood looking up at his tall visitors, head on one side, he reminded them of nothing so much as a sleek cock-robin who had just dined to his taste. He seemed to be in his late thirties.

David would have smiled at any other time. "Why, this," he thought unkindly, "is a mere comic valentine."

The comic valentine smiled, a little shyly it seemed, and put out a slender long-fingered hand.

"This," he announced, "is a great pleasure."

David took the hand and murmured something polite.

Blaisdell chatted briskly for a few minutes, then departed. Radbourne turned to his draftsman-to-be.

"Perhaps Mr. Blaisdell has told you we are needing a man here. Do you think, now you've had a look at us, you would care to come and help us?"

"That's a pleasant way of putting it," said David a bit grimly. "I'm needing a job badly. If you think you aren't afraid to try me—"

Radbourne smiled protestingly. "If you knew all Mr. Blaisdell has said of you, you wouldn't say that. You have warm friends, Mr. Quentin, if he is a sample."

"Did he tell you I've failed in the only thing I ever tried?"

"He didn't put it that way," the little man said gently. "Nor would I, if I were you. There's such a thing as getting into the wrong niche—which isn't failure at all. Shall we consider it settled that you will come?"

"I'd like to be sure," David said, flushing, "that this job isn't one of your—charities."

The little man flushed, too. "Oh, I beg of you not to think that. I expect you to prove it a good stroke of business for me. And I hope we shall please each other. Your first name is David, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And mine is Jonathan. That ought to be a good omen. Don't you think so?" And that diffident smile, so absurdly out of place on the face of an employer, appeared again.

"Why, I hope so," said David.

"And I hope you will like the work, though it may not be very big at first. I understand how important that is to a man." Radbourne nodded gravely. "But I have a theory that if he puts his heart into his work he is bound to get a good deal of happiness out of it. Don't you think so?"

"I'll try to remember that. When do you want me to come?"

"Could you make it next Monday?"

"I will be here then."

David went away from Jonathan Radbourne, the comic valentine; and the heartache, for some reason, was a little eased, courage a little stiffened.

"After all," he kept saying to himself, "it's only a gift to Shirley and the baby. And I'm glad to give it to them—they're worth anything. It's a debt, too. I owe them everything I can give. And maybe now we can be happy as we used to be—no worries or quarrels."

He tried to keep thinking of that—of the comfort in knowing that next month's expenses could be met, of debts growing less, not bigger, of a love happily reborn under freedom from worry.

He went to Dick Holden's office. That busy young man met him with visible embarrassment, which, however, David ignored.

"Dick," he plunged at once into his errand, "I owe you a lot of money."

"Oh, not much—not worth speaking about. No hurry about that, old man."

David smiled grimly at that. "It won't be paid in a hurry—can't be. But I'm quitting the game and taking a job, and I can pay you some every month now; not much, but a nibble, anyhow. And if ever you get rushed with business and I can help you out at nights, I'd be glad to work part of my debt off that way."

"Why," said Dick very eagerly, "that'll be easy. I've got three sets of plans I'd like to have you work out right now. And there'll be more. You know, I'll be pretty busy over that St. Chris—" Dick's tongue halted sharply and the red crept over his face until even his ears were glowing.

"Of course. I haven't congratulated you yet. I do most—"

"Don't you, Davy Quentin!" Dick interrupted fiercely. "Don't you go congratulating me. I feel darn small potatoes just now. You're quitting the game because I beat you out on the St. Christopher's job, and I—"

"Not at all," David interrupted in his turn. "You mustn't look at it that way. I was foozling my approach right along anyway, and the St. Christopher thing couldn't have changed that. One swallow doesn't kill a summer thirst, you know." He laughed at this slender joke so heartily that Dick was almost deceived.

"Is it a pretty fair job?"

"I must say it is. And I expect to make a mighty good draftsman for Radbourne & Company. I've always been rather long on mechanical drawing, you may remember. And I've got a first-rate boss, if I'm any judge. On the whole, it looks pretty good—much better than dubbing along at a game where—where one hasn't the punch, as you put it."

Dick flushed again. For several minutes he was silent save for the drumming of his fingers on the desk. Then he stirred, with a sharp irritable movement.

"Well, I wish you luck. And I'll have the data for those plans to-morrow."

David took this as a hint to go. When he had gone Dick heaved a sigh of relief. During those silent minutes a strange inspiration had come to him, to suggest a partnership in lieu of the new job. Dick felt that he had had a narrow escape from an expensive generosity.

Next David called on a young architect who was looking for quarters. To him it was arranged to transfer the office lease and to sell enough of its furniture to pay the rent in arrears.

Then David went home to lay his gift at Shirley's feet.

And yet, as he neared the apartment, he felt a strange shrinking from telling her the news, lest she guess what his gift had cost him. He wondered at that.

He found Shirley flushed with excitement over news of her own.

"Guess who's coming!"

David could not guess.

"Aunt Clara!"

"Why, that's fine," he rejoiced weakly.

Shirley kissed him nicely.

"And, David, I think she's coming to talk over things."

"Aunt Clara generally is— What things?"

"Why, our affairs. Money, you know."

His glance sharpened. "Why do you think that?"

"Because—now don't scold!" She brushed an imaginary bit of dust from his shoulder. "Because—I asked her."

"Shirley!" His clasp of her relaxed.

"Now please, don't let's have another scene. What's the use of rich relations if they can't help you out once in a while? You've no right to let your foolish pride cut Davy Junior and me off from Aunt Clara's help."

"Luckily we shan't need her help, because"—it was not so he had thought to tender his gift—"because to-day I got a job."

"A job? Oh, David!" Her arms tightened around his neck, Aunt Clara for the moment forgotten. "What is it?"

He told her.

"Just a draftsman? That isn't a very high position, is it?"

"Not very."

"How much does it pay?"

He told her and saw her face fall.

"Why, that's only a little more than you have been making."

"At least, it's steady and sure."

"But even Maizie makes that much. I used to get ninety from the library. I thought men—clever men—"

"Beggars," he said, "even clever beggars, can't be choosers."

"But we're not beggars, are we?"

"Your Aunt Clara will think so."

He turned away into another room, leaving the matter of Aunt Clara suspended in the air. He saw then that he ran no risk of Shirley guessing what his gift had cost him. He wondered if he yet guessed how much it would cost.

Soon Aunt Clara arrived, in a taxicab and wearing a businesslike, purposeful air. She made herself promptly and perfectly at home and freely passed judgment on all she saw; and very little escaped Aunt Clara's eyes. She inspected the flat and, inquiry establishing the rent, sniffingly reminded them that she and Uncle John—now unhappily deceased—had begun their housekeeping in a fifteen-dollar-a-month cottage. Pouncing upon a drawerful of Davy Junior's sweaters and slippers and lacy dresses, she cited the case of John, fils, who until he was three years old had never had more than two dresses and one coatie at a time. David's books struck her as an appalling extravagance; she and the late Uncle John had never thought of a library until they had ten thousand in bank.

"You are very poor managers, I must admit. You've been married more than four years, and what have you to show for it but didoes—and debts, as I understand?"

The question went home to David's heart. But it was he who, catching up Davy Junior, held out the crowing youngster for her inspection.

"We have this."

And then, a sudden wave of emotion surging unbidden within him, he caught the child sharply to him. He turned away quickly to hide this unwonted demonstration, but Aunt Clara saw.

"Very pretty! But sentiment butters no bread."

"Sometimes," he returned gravely, "it makes dry bread palatable."

"Humph!" remarked Aunt Clara. "And now let us have dinner—something more than dry bread and sentiment, if you please. I never talk business on an empty stomach."

To David, love and pride quivering from hurts lately sustained, that dinner, eaten to the accompaniment of the jarring critical voice, seemed endless. And yet, thinking of a worse thing to come, he could have wished it to last until midnight or that hour which found Aunt Clara too sleepy for business. It lasted until Aunt Clara had slowly sipped her second cup of coffee—which, inquiry brought out, cost forty-three cents the pound.

Perhaps the dinner had mellowed her humor a little, for:

"You may smoke," she nodded to David, "provided it isn't one of those nasty little cigarettes."

"It will have to be a pipe."

"A pipe is the least objectionable," she graciously conceded. "Your late Uncle John smoked one to the last."

Then she produced and donned a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and through them fixed upon David the sternest of glances.

"And now, since I must leave in the morning, let us get to business. You may tell me the situation."

"What situation have you in mind?"

"The one that made you write to me for help."

"But I didn't write to you for help."

"Shirley did, which is the same thing."

"When Shirley wrote, without my knowledge, she hadn't all the facts. I have just taken a position—"

"That is very sensible. What sort of a position?"

"A very good position, quite sufficient for our needs. And so we needn't spoil your visit by discussing our dull affairs."

Aunt Clara glared. "Young man, are you trying to snub me? I remember you tried that the first time I saw you."

"I hope," said David gently, "I haven't given you that impression."

"It's just his silly pride, Aunt Clara," Shirley put in soothingly.

Aunt Clara silenced Shirley with a gesture and kept her attention on David. "You did leave that impression. And you are thinking that I'm nosing into what is none of my business. On the contrary, young man, it is my business. You married against my advice, but it's no credit to me to have my relatives hard up and in debt. You are in debt, I understand?"

"That is true," David answered quietly, "but—"

"But you don't want my money to pay them with, you were about to say? Young man, when you refuse my money, you're a little—quite a little—in advance of the fact. I'm not going to give you money. I don't believe in giving money to able-bodied young men."

"Thank you," said David.

"But I will give you some advice and some help. You can take them or leave them. My advice is—get rid of this expensive apartment and store your goods. For the rest, I will take Shirley and the baby to live with me, paying all their expenses, until you can get on your feet. With your new position and no one but yourself to pay for, it oughtn't to take long."

Shirley gasped—unmistakably with delight.

David turned red, but he answered, still quietly, "It is good of you to make the offer, but of course it is out of the question. I think Shirley would prefer—"

"Young man," Aunt Clara reminded him, "in my family nothing I suggest is ever out of the question. As for Shirley, let her answer for herself."

"I think it would be very sensible," Shirley answered for herself, eagerly.

"She means," corrected Aunt Clara, who was nobody's fool, "she means it would be pleasanter living in my house than scrimping here to pay for dead horses. So it would. But it would be sensible, too. You've got into hot water. I blame Shirley—I know her. But I blame you most. A husband ought always to keep a tight rein on household affairs. Your late Uncle John—well, never mind him. Because you've been weak, you've run into debt, the worst disturber of household peace. I give you a chance to be rid of it quickly. Have you a quicker way?"

"I have a better way. Since we got into the hole through our own carelessness, let us work our own way out."

"Humph! More sentiment. You'd make your family pay for your weakness. However," Aunt Clara rose with the air of having done her whole duty, "I've made my offer. It is for you to decide. I will now go into the other room while you and Shirley talk it over. I make it a rule never to intrude into discussions between husband and wife."

She moved toward the living-room. David ushered her to the door and closed it behind her. Then he turned to Shirley. . . . .

He had made many mistakes, no doubt, been as weak and foolish as Aunt Clara said. But they had been loving faults, born of a deep desire to make Shirley happy. And he had atoned for them. He had declared himself to his world a failure; he had swallowed and forgiven the word that ought never to be on a wife's tongue. Because it seemed best for her, he had given up a work that was very dear to him, even in failure; how dear, he had not known until he had resigned it, as he thought, forever. He had taken unto himself a master and a task that to his cast of mind could never be aught but drudgery. It was no easy thing he had done. But he had not whimpered, he had made an effort, none the less brave because so boyishly obvious, to keep up a smiling front. He had sought to offer his gift from the heart, ungrudgingly, because he had loved her, still loved her, he thought.

That which they had now to decide seemed big and vital to him. His pride was touched. A need was involved. Good sense might counsel acceptance of Aunt Clara's offer, but he thought it cowardly. Since they had failed in the issue of making a living, the brave course was to retrieve that failure by themselves. More—it did not seem to him the act of a loving woman to leave him, even for a few months, when his need of her and her love was greatest.

He did not ask her to count the cost of his gift; he knew she could not. He did want her to justify the gift, to prove that the love for which he had paid so big a price was real love dwelling in a fine brave woman's heart. . .

Shirley was sitting at the table. He went to a chair across from her. She looked up eagerly.

"Shirley, shall you mind very much if I say, no?"

"I think the only sensible thing is to take her at her word."

"Perhaps. But I'd rather not be under obligations to—to anybody."

"Oh, that's just sentiment, as Aunt Clara says. And it's quite time for us to begin being practical. Think of being rid of all those horrid debts! You don't seem to understand what a weight they've been on me."

"I think I do understand, dear. But it will be different now, because we know that if we're careful for a while we can clean them all up. Radbourne seems a good man to work for and maybe this job will develop into something better. And I'll be doing work on the side for Dick for a while. It won't be so long before the debts will melt away. Then we'll have the satisfaction of knowing we did it by ourselves, without any one's help. We'll have proved ourselves, don't you see?"

"That's more sentiment. I can't see anything so awful in going to Aunt Clara's. It would be just a visit, such as any one would make. It wouldn't be for so very long, and it would do us all good. I would have a fine rest, and the change would be good for you, too. You could read and work in the evenings with no one to bother you. And you'd have a fine chance to see all your old men friends."

"It isn't the men I want to see just now. Shirley, dear—" He was pleading now. "Shirley, dear, I— You see, it's cost me a little, a good deal maybe—letting my profession go and taking up work that isn't—isn't so very interesting and is for another man. It'll be a little hard—just for a while of course, until I get used to the idea. And I'd like to have you here with me. Don't you see, dear—I need you."

But the plea failed. With a sharp sinking of his heart he saw her pretty brow wrinkle in an impatient frown.

"I don't see at all. I should think, if the position is such a good one, you'd be glad you've taken it. And you ought to be glad to think of Davy Junior and me out at Aunt Clara's instead of moping around a cheap dingy flat or boarding-house."

"You mean," he tried to keep his voice steady, "you want to go? You'd really rather—aside from saving money?"

"Want to! I'm wild to go. Of course, I'll be homesick for you, but all husbands and wives expect to be apart sometimes on vacations and trips and—oh, David, can't you see? It's been so long since I've had any really good times and I'm hungry for them—starving. And out there at Aunt Clara's, where you don't have to think of money all the time— Why, you couldn't—it isn't like you to be so selfish as to refuse me that."

He said no more. He sat fumbling with a napkin, his eyes cast down. He dared not lift them to Shirley's, lest he see there a truth he had not the courage to face just then. After a little he rose, went to the door and opened it.

"Will you come in now?" he nodded to Aunt Clara. "The family council is over."

Aunt Clara marched into the room.

"Well, what have you decided?"

"Shirley has convinced me," he smiled queerly, "that you are right. But your hospitality is all we ought to accept. For her other expenses I will send something from my salary every month."

"But that isn't what I—"

"I'm afraid," he interrupted quietly, "you will have to concede so much to me—and sentiment." . . .

In the morning Aunt Clara left.

"This is what comes," was her benediction, "of marrying before you're ready and living beyond your means. I hope it will be a lesson to you never to do it again."

David was too tired to smile.

The rest of that week was too full for much thinking. The office was to be cleaned out. Trunks were to be packed, china and silver and bric-a-brac to be wrapped and boxed for storage, a thousand little preparations for moving when a new tenant for the apartment should have been found. David was grateful for that. He did not want time to think. Especially he did not want time to feel.

On Sunday morning he took Shirley and Davy Junior to the train. Not once did he let the baby out of his arms. At the very last a doubt seemed to disturb Shirley.

"David—" They were sitting in the station waiting-room then. "David, it's dear of you to let me go like this."

"It's better than moping around here."

"You don't think I'm selfish in wanting to go, do you?"

He shook his head and kept his eyes on the child's face.

"It doesn't mean I don't love you—oh, with all my heart! I'll be so lonesome for you. I'll be thinking of you all the time and write you every day. And when I come back—! Do you know, dear, I have the feeling that now, with the new position and the debts cleaned up soon, things are going to be different with us, so much brighter."

"Why, I think so, Shirley."

"I'm sure of it." She squeezed his hand. "When people love as we do, things just have to come out right."

"Yes, Shirley."

The gates were thrown open and they went out on the platform. The train thundered in. David took Shirley and Davy Junior into their car. He kissed her hastily and lingered longer over his good-by to the baby. Then he ran out of the car and stood again on the platform, while Shirley made the youngster wave his hand. David managed an answering smile.

He walked homeward by a long roundabout way. The rest of that day he spent in working feverishly at unfinished odds and ends of packing. Then he got out all his sketches and plans and slowly tore them into bits, until the floor around him was littered with the fragments. Last of all he came to the St. Christopher's plans. But his hands refused his command to destroy. He sat looking at this evidence of his failure, until darkness fell and hid them from his sight. He rose then and, wrapping them up carefully, put them with the boxes for storage.

There was nothing more that he could do. He had not eaten since morning but he was not hungry. He leaned back in a chair and let all the thoughts and feelings he had held at bay during the busy days rush at him in the darkness. An incredible loneliness was upon him, a sense of loss bitterer even than loneliness. It seemed that something for which he had paid dearly had been stolen from him.



CHAPTER V

GOOD FAIRIES

But what of the fairies?

So far the old witch had had it all her own way, and that she had done very badly, if not quite her worst, you will have to admit. She had David by day in a cubby-hole office adjoining a noisy throbbing shop, making drawings of mechanical devices out of Radbourne's or an irritable foreman's brain; by his easel in the lonesome apartment at night, working out on paper from Dick Holden's notes the ideas of Dick's clients, who knew exactly what they wanted but not how it would look; saying sadly but sternly, "Begone!" to ideas of his own (in ecclesiastic architecture) that might nevermore hope to have a real birth. She had taken from him what no one could restore, the fine silky bloom of his youth; and something worth even more, though that was a loss he was not yet ready to admit. Worst of all, she had him convinced that he was a failure, a weakling and misfit, a sort of green fool who had asked for the moon and been properly punished for his temerity. And that was a skein even fairies would find hard to unravel.

But there was one who was willing to try.

Who ever heard of a fairy with red Dundrearies? Nobody, of course, but you shall hear of one now. Although the whiskers are really beside the case; all a good fairy needs is a pair of keen eyes and a heart as big as a drum.

An odd fish, no doubt of it, was Jonathan Radbourne, though a good man to work for and, as Jim Blaisdell had said and David soon found, by no means a fool. There was no hint of masterfulness about him, which was because he never thought of himself as a master. He never gave orders and never reproved; he made polite requests and sometimes, gently and apologetically, he showed where mistakes had been made. If you happened to do about what you were paid for doing, he beamed with delight and thanked you as though you had done him a favor. He was always busy and nearly always on the move, flitting back and forth between office and shop with hopping little strides that made him more robin-like than ever, and really accomplished a great deal. But he often found time for friendly little chats with his employees on topics that had no connection with the business, such as the babies at home, the rheumatic old mother, the state of the heart or the lungs; he made it a specialty to know all their troubles. And he always was smiling—on that mouth it was really a grin—a crooked cheery smile that made others smile, too, and he never acknowledged bad weather.

From the first he made a habit of seeking out David. His manner on such occasions was one of shy wistful friendliness, not quite sure of its welcome, that gave David an impulse to pat him on the head and say, "There, there, little man! It's all right. You're my chief and my time is all yours—though I'd rather use it for work." However, he never said that, but was always respectful and polite. He took advantage of these chats to learn more of his duties. With unwearied patience Jonathan explained them, as well as other details of the business, expressing delight at David's interest.

David saw that he had much to learn and he had grave doubts that he was earning his salary. He knew next to nothing of mechanics and did not always understand when Jonathan or Hegner, the foreman, explained some new device for which drawings were needed. But that wrought no change in Jonathan's manner.

"I'm afraid," he would say, "we weren't very clear on that." And he would go over the explanation once more.

When the drawings were correct: "Very good!" he would beam. "I wish I could draw as beautifully as you."

"Do you think," David asked on one such occasion, when he had been in the position nearly a month, "that I'm really the man you want? Sometimes I seem pretty slow."

"Oh, you mustn't think that," Jonathan said warmly. "You're catching on faster than I ever hoped for. You don't know what a help you are to me. The draftsmen I've had before used only their hands. You use your head."

"Thank you," said David, grateful for the assurance, even if the good will behind it was a trifle obvious.

"And you find your work interesting, don't you?"

"I'm learning to like it—very much."

He tried to make his answer convincing. But when he had left the office, Jonathan shook his head and sought out his bookkeeper.

"That's a very nice young man, Miss Summers," he said. "Mr. Quentin, I mean."

Miss Summers agreed.

"But I'm afraid he's pretty heartsore yet."

Miss Summers looked a question.

"He's a young architect," Jonathan explained, "who didn't make good. I'm afraid this work seems a come-down to him."

"That's too bad," said Miss Summers.

"If you get a chance, I wish you would try to make things cheerful for him here."

"Of course," said Miss Summers, who understood Jonathan quite well.

"We've got to try that. We must make a little conspiracy to that end. I'll try to think up some details."

Miss Summers smiled as though she liked making little conspiracies with Jonathan. "Of course," she said again, and looked upon that as a promise.

Very quietly she set about keeping it. A little timidly, too; which was strange, since with others in the office and shop she was not in the least timid. She could do little, it is true—a cheery "Good morning" and a friendly nod at evening, an occasional smile when something brought David into her office, once in a long while a brief little chat in which she, with a breath-taking sense of having an adventure, took the lead. Another young man might have detected her friendliness and considered his charms. But David, though his grave courtesy never failed, neither thought of his charms nor was conscious of hers. Her charms, to be sure, were not of a striking sort; at least at first glance. She was a frail-looking body whose face was nearly always pale and sometimes, toward evening of a hot day, rather pinched; her arms were too slender to be pretty and the cords of her broad white neck stood out. She was not very tall and, perched on her stool at the tall old-fashioned desk by the window, she seemed more girlish even than her years, which were four-and-twenty. She did not look at all like an iris, even a white iris girl; David would almost as soon have suspected Miss Brown.

"I might," thought Miss Summers, "be a part of the furniture, for all he sees in me." She did not think it resentfully, though with an odd little twinge of disappointment. She regarded him as a very superior young man, the sort she had always wanted to know. But she had made a promise and she would not desert the conspiracy.

She noticed that he never ate or went out at the noon hour, as if there were no such thing as an inner man demanding attention. Thereafter her luncheon, which was always carried in a dainty little basket, was seasoned with a conviction of gross selfishness. And one day, after she had eaten, she went, basket in hand, to the door of David's little room.

"Mr. Quentin—" she began.

Instantly David was on his feet—one of his habits she liked so well; other men in the office did not have it. "Yes, Miss Summers?"

She held out the basket. In the bottom reposed two fat cookies and a big apple whose ruddy cheeks had a rival in hers at the moment.

"My eyes were bigger than my appetite. Would you care for them?"

"Thank you, Miss Summers," he said politely, "but I never eat at noon."

"I wish you would," she insisted. "If you don't, they—they'll spoil."

"By to-morrow? Hardly, I should think. Thank you, no," he repeated. "I find it doesn't agree—"

He saw her face fall.

"On second thought I believe I will. They look so tempting. It's very good of you to think of it."

He took the basket from her hands. But she did not leave. She stood, still hesitant, looking up at him. He motioned to his chair, the only one in the room.

"Won't you sit down?"

"But where will you sit?"

He answered by brushing some papers from the corner of the table and seating himself there. She took the chair—and the sense of adventure was very vivid.

David bit into a cooky. "Fine! This is good of you. Ordinarily I'm not hungry at all at noon—habit, you know. But to-day I am. How did you happen to guess it?"

"I didn't guess it. I just thought—" She looked up at him again, timidly. "Often I bring more than I can eat, and if—"

He had to smile at that. "Isn't that a little obvious? I could go out if I wanted to, you know."

"Oh, I didn't mean that!" She was overcome by confusion.

"And I didn't mean to snub you," he smiled again. "You needn't apologize. One need never be ashamed of a bit of hospitality, need one?" To give her time to recover, he went on, "There's a good deal of that around here, isn't there? Tell me something about Mr. Radbourne. You've been here some time, I believe."

"Two years. He's the best and kindest—"

She entered, eager to cover up her late awkwardness, upon a glowing history of their employer's multifarious kindness. There was Miss Brown, the stenographer, rescued from the department store where she had been "dying on her feet," sent to a commercial school and given a position she never could fill. And Blake, the collector, who had lung trouble and half the time was not able to report for duty. And Hegner, who was a genius but had a burning palate, picked up almost from the gutter and given an important place in the shop in the hope that responsibility would restore the shattered will. And Smith, the latest recruit, but recently out of the penitentiary.

"Though I wish he hadn't taken him in. He looks bad and has fishy eyes and is always so surly."

"Is this a business or a sort of hospital for broken lives?" David inquired.

"I think in his heart Mr. Radbourne is more interested in the hospital."

"It's too bad he's so homely, isn't it? It's rather hard to take him very seriously."

"Yes." She sighed, then caught herself up loyally. "No! Because when you get to know him you don't think about his face at all."

David was thinking he had not done full justice to her face. It was spirited and really intelligent, he decided, though its prettiness was as yet open to question. He perceived what hitherto he had missed: that she had hair and eyes quite worthy of consideration. Black as night the former was, and fine and rebellious, with little curling wisps about her ears and neck. The eyes were a peculiar slaty gray and had depths inviting inspection. He found himself wishing he could see them really alight.

"It would be something," he said thoughtfully, going back to Jonathan, "to be able to run that sort of hospital. But what a crew of lame ducks we are! Except you, of course!"

She laughed. "Oh, you needn't be polite. I'm one, too. Not a very big one or very tragic. A lame duckling, shall we say?"

He suggested that a lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan, and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured prominently. And he did not ask a question.

"But how does he get his work done, with such a crew?"

"We're not all lame ducks, you know. And—you work hard, don't you?"

"Of course. It would be only decent—"

"We all think that. Even the big strong ducks like to work for him."

"I'm told he makes money."

"A good deal more than he spends on himself. I keep his personal accounts and I know. Several of his specialties are very valuable, inventions of his father's that are still in demand. He'd make more money if he had a better system. Hegner says he can't accept all his orders. Maybe," she suggested, "you could help him there?"

He shook his head. "I'm afraid, Miss Summers," his laugh was not pleasant this time, "I don't know much of anything useful."

"You could learn, couldn't you?" she asked quietly.

He flushed, because he had let himself whimper. "Why—I suppose I could try."

She left him then. And strangely—how, he could not have told—soothing oil had been poured into his wounds.

By most rules set by most men he should have been happy enough. He had work, clean and honest, that he was learning to do well. He had paid a first installment on his debts. Dick Holden had been as good as his word, the evening hours were busy ones and Dick would soon cease to be a creditor. Shirley wrote daily. She was well, the good times had materialized, Davy Junior was learning a new word every day and they both were so homesick for him.

He was learning a new thing—to work, not with the natural easy absorption in a well-loved calling, but with faculties through sheer force of will concentrated on tasks set by others, in which he had no heart; to shut out of mind and heart, while he was working, all other facts of his life. It is a good thing for a man to know.

But, let his will relax its grip, and instantly his hurts began to throb. His pride had suffered; he had proclaimed himself to his little world a failure in his chosen calling. The new work was not his work. Desire for that would not die, despite failure. His mind, once freed from his will's leash, would leap, unwontedly active, into the old groove, setting before him creations that tantalized him with their beauty and vigor and made him yearn to be at work upon them. And that was a bad habit, he thought; if he was to learn content in the new work, he must first put off love for the old. When the debts were paid, the work for the successful uninspired Dick should cease.

And in idle moments, though they were few, and in sleepless hours, not so few, the incredible loneliness would rush upon him, not lessened by custom; and a more poignant sense of loss. To that vague sense he carefully denied words, lest definition add to the hurt.

Perhaps he was more than a little morbid. Men are apt to be so, when harassed overlong by care. And perhaps he made a mistake, shunning his friends and seeking an anodyne only in a wearying routine.

That afternoon the subject of the noon hour's chat came into David's quarters to ask a question about some drawings. The errand accomplished, he, too, lingered. He refused the chair David vacated and sat on the table.

"I heard you and Miss Summers talking a while ago," he said abruptly.

"You said you heard—" David looked up, self-conscious.

"I heard you laughing." Radbourne's eyes twinkled keenly down on his draftsman. "So you were talking about me?"

"There was nothing you couldn't have heard—without offense, sir."

"I know that. Miss Summers is a loyal friend."

"I hope the same can be said of me, sir."

"Would you mind," Jonathan asked, "not sirring me like that? That's a very fine young lady, Mr. Quentin."

"Evidently," said David, though with something less than his employer's enthusiasm.

"An inspiration to any man," Jonathan continued.

"I have no doubt."

Jonathan smiled. "Meaning you do doubt it? But I forgot—you probably don't know. She had a disappointment, Mr. Quentin, a heavy one, and she bore it as—as you and I would have been proud to. She had a voice. And just as she was beginning to make her living out of it and getting ready for bigger things, she took diphtheria. It left her throat so weak that she had to give up singing, altogether for a while, professionally for good."

"Why, that was too bad!"

"It was very bad. But she didn't whine. Just put it behind her. Since she had to make her own living somehow, she went to a commercial school and studied bookkeeping. I was lucky enough to get her."

"She could really sing?"

"She would have gone far, very far. I had happened to hear her and I followed her progress closely enough to know. I have never been reconciled—"

Jonathan broke off sharply, staring hard at a crack in the wall. The little blue eyes were very sad. David, too, fell into a long thoughtful silence.

He broke it at last. "As you say—"

Jonathan started, as if he had forgotten David's presence.

"As you say, it called for more courage, because she was a real artist and not a proven failure."

"But I didn't say that."

"You had it in mind when you told me that. You are quite right. Thank you for telling me."

"There!" Jonathan beamed happily. "I said she was an inspiration to any man."

"At least," said David grimly, "she is a good example."

Jonathan left. But in a moment he returned.

"Do you like music?"

"Very much."

"Then one of these evenings we'll go out to my house, we three, and have some, if you'd care for it."

"I should be glad to."

"Next Saturday, perhaps?"

David repeated his polite formula.

Jonathan eyed him wistfully. "You know, you're not obliged to say that if there is something else you would rather do. I shouldn't care to take advantage of my position to force my company and—and my friendship upon you."

"I should be very glad to have them." And when he had said it, David knew he had meant it. "Both of them," he added.

The little man's face lighted up eagerly. "You really mean that?"

"I certainly do."

"I am very happy to hear you say so. You see," Jonathan explained, "I lead a rather lonely life of it, away from the shop. I am not equipped for social life. People of talent and agreeable manners and taste do not seem to care for my company. They are not to be blamed, of course."

The homely face was sad again. David was uncomfortable and silent.

"However," Jonathan's smile reappeared, "I am fortunate to have found congenial friends here. Miss Summers is one. And now I add you to the list. With two friends a man ought to count himself rich, don't you think?"

David agreed smilingly.

Jonathan started away for the second time, then caught himself. "I forgot. I am ashamed to have forgotten. Perhaps you ought to be with your family Saturday evening. I should hate to feel—"

"My family is away."

If David's voice had become suddenly curt, Jonathan did not seem to perceive it.

"Then we'll consider it settled."

This time his departure was final. And the cloud, lifted a little by the efforts of a white-faced bookkeeper and a comically ugly manikin, settled upon David once more. He bent grimly to his interrupted work.

At that moment Radbourne was obtaining Miss Summers' assent to the occasion of Saturday. It was not hard to obtain.

"I like that young man," he confided. "I think we're going to be very good friends."

"I hope so."

"Yes. It would mean much to me, Miss Summers."

"But I was thinking of him," she said gravely.

And the slate-gray eyes, as they rested on the little man, were very gentle. . . . .



CHAPTER VI

SPELLS

A unwonted excitement pervaded the offices of Radbourne & Company on that Saturday morning, radiated no doubt from the head of the concern himself. He flitted about restlessly, tugged at his whiskers continually, and his voice, as he rattled off his correspondence to Miss Brown, had a happy boyish lilt. Occasionally, chancing to catch Miss Summers' eye, he would nod with a sly knowing smile.

For the original program for Saturday had been enlarged. Miss Summers and David had been notified to be ready at mid-afternoon for an event as yet cloaked in secrecy.

Mid-afternoon arrived. Radbourne glanced out into the street, nodded with satisfaction, closed his desk with a bang—greatly to the relief of Miss Brown, who would now have leisure to recopy the letters she had bungled—and vanished into his cloak-room.

At the same moment David strolled into Miss Summers' presence, watch in hand.

"The hour has struck," he burlesqued. "What doth it hold?"

"Whatever it is," she answered, "you must seem to be delighted."

"I think I shall be." David was actually smiling. "For the last hour I've been looking at my watch every five minutes. This excitement is infectious. He hasn't grown up, has he?"

"But isn't that his great charm?" Miss Summers seemed already delighted over something.

"Charm?" David looked doubtful. "I hadn't thought of him as—"

But he did not finish. Quick staccato footsteps were heard. Then a strange vision burst upon them—Jonathan Radbourne accoutered for motoring, in visored cap and duster, with a huge pair of shell-rimmed goggles that sat grotesquely athwart his beaming countenance. On one arm he carried a veil and another coat.

"Ready?" And to their astonished gaze he explained, "First we're going for a little run—if it is agreeable to you?"

They assured him, in italics, that it was.

"Then let us hurry." He handed the coat and veil to Miss Summers. "I brought these along for you. They are my mother's. I got them for her but she never would go out in a machine. She thinks it would be tempting Providence. I'm sorry," this to David, "I had nothing to fit you. Can you do without?"

David put him at ease on that point, and Miss Summers retired.

In a few minutes, fewer than you might suppose, she returned. Radbourne clapped his hands in delight.

"Look, David!"

David obeyed.

And then he was sure that he had never done justice to the face peering up at him from under the veiled hat. He was bound to admit that it had, after all, certain elements of prettiness; he was astonished that he could have thought otherwise. But then he had never seen her when cheeks glowed shell-pink and eyes danced with that undefined but delicious sense of adventure.

As he looked he smiled. It was a very friendly smile and the shell-pink deepened.

A touch on his arm interrupted—it seems there was something to interrupt.

"Have I taken a liberty? I called you David."

David turned the remnant of the friendly smile upon Jonathan Radbourne.

"Of course not. I hope you will do that again."

Jonathan beamed. "Thank you. And now, shall we start?"

An hour later they were bowling swiftly along, up hill and down dale, over a smooth country road. Fields of young corn sped by, stretches of yellowing grain that rippled and tossed under the sweep of the breeze, fragrant wood-lots whose shadow was a caress. The host of the occasion sat with the chauffeur, turning often to point out to his guests some beauty of landscape they already had seen, commenting tritely, obvious as always in his effort to be entertaining, happy in the belief that he was succeeding. And he was succeeding; such is the uplifting power of the spirit of true friendliness, even when dwelling in a dinky little man with whiskers absurdly swept by the rushing wind.

The guests were silent for the most part when his comments did not call for answer. In the girl—she seemed very girlish that afternoon—the sense of holiday and adventure continued, her eyes shone softly and the pretty color did not fade. This despite her seatmate's evident wish to be left to his thoughts. She had no wish to break through his reserve. But she wondered, a bit gravely, what he was thinking, and she did wish she could make things brighter for him, the superior young man who for all his nice courtesy and friendly smiles held himself so aloof and was so evidently subject to the blues. She thought she knew what troubled him. She could understand that. She was not always so contented as her quiet cheery manner proclaimed; sometimes, in the middle of the night, she awoke crying for the gift that had been taken from her.

His thoughts were less somber than from his long face she supposed. He, too, had his pleasurable sense—of respite. For once, though idle, neither loneliness nor dejection oppressed him. It was good to lean back lazily in the chariot of the rich, dreamily watching the ever-shifting picture, soaking in the sunshine. It was good, too—but in no-wise alarming—to have beside him this pretty girl who knew when not to talk and in whose occasional smile was a new subtle flattery. It was even good to be with that odd fish Jonathan Radbourne, for whose company, in a more fortunate case, he would have had no desire. He was glad Radbourne had arranged this little party.

They came, at the end of a long climb, to a ridge lifted high above those they had crossed. On its crest, at a word from Radbourne, the chauffeur brought his machine to a stop.

Behind them lay the rough broken country of the foot-hills through which they had passed. And before—the mountains! To them the eyes of the holiday-takers turned and clung.

Range after range they rose, like mighty billows, mounting higher until the tallest, dimly outlined in a thickening purplish haze, cut the sky, a rampart vision could not pierce. They seemed alive, those hills, the thick untouched growth stirring ceaselessly under the wind, a restless sea of sunlit green with flashes of white from laurel thickets and soft glintings where satiny oak-leaves caught and tossed back the slanting rays. And they sang.

"Listen!" Jonathan commanded, and the chauffeur shut off the panting motor.

They listened—all but the chauffeur, that philistine, who opened the hood and gingerly felt of the heated engine. And the voice of the wind, wandering through the forest, came to them. David heard a long wondering sigh from the girl beside him.

Jonathan, too, heard and turned quickly.

"That is real music, isn't it?"

She nodded.

"Is it worth the long ride?"

"The ride was good enough in itself, but this—! I never saw mountains before and I—oh, there aren't words for it."

"I know," Jonathan nodded, and the little twinkling eyes, even through the hideous goggles, seemed very tender as they rested on her. "'I will lift mine eyes unto the hills.' The old fellow who sang that knew what he was talking about, didn't he? If you've happened to mislay a faith anywhere, the mountains are a good place to look for it."

"Even faith in one's self?"

"The easiest to lose and the hardest to recover? Yes, even that. Particularly that. To any one needing it, I'd prescribe a month over yonder. I've never been able to do that, but often, when the world seems a little—gray, I ride up here for an hour. It does me good."

The philistine yawned and turned his passengers' thoughts to a more interesting matter.

"See there." He pointed to a thin low-lying cloud on the western horizon. "That's the city. 'Most sixty miles. Done it in two hours, up-hill more'n half the way, too."

"That's very good time, isn't it?" said Jonathan politely.

"Humph!" The philistine's disdain was marked. "We'll do better'n that goin' back. That is," he hinted, "if the dark don't catch us."

It seemed best, on such sound considerations as a waiting dinner, to take the hint. The big car panted once more, moved slowly along the ridge, then dipped sharply as it took the down grade. They coasted, gathering headway with each turn of the wheels. The girl, half turned, wistfully watched the mountains until the ridge rose to shut off the last crest from her sight. Then she settled back in the seat as though she were very tired.

David saw and on an impulse leaned toward her.

"Do you mean," he asked in a voice so low that the others could not hear, "that you lose faith in yourself?"

"It's the same thing, I suppose. I lose courage sometimes. I get tired of trying to like to do things I never really can like."

"I understand," he said gently. "Mr. Radbourne told me about you. Will you let me say, I am very sorry?"

She started, as if she had forgotten herself, and flushed deeply in her contrition.

"There! I'm perfectly nonsensical, letting myself be a cry-baby just when I'd intended— It isn't my habit at all. There's nothing really to be sorry for. If you give any work your best and put your heart into it, you'll get—",

"A great deal of happiness out of it," David finished dryly. "Exactly! I recognize the formula. Also its author. I think you're just whistling to keep up your courage now."

"But that isn't a bad thing at all to do. Why—" She turned to face him, with a little gasp for her daring. "Why don't you try it?"

It was his turn to grow red. "You think I'd be more cheerful company?"

"I think," she said, with a pretty gravity, "you make too much of being a—lame duck. And I think that isn't like you."

"How do you know whether it's like me or not?"

"That," she laughed to cover her discomfiture, "is an embarrassing question. But I do think it."

"At least, I'm not such a grouch as I sound. And I know how to be thankful when I find good—friends?"

She nodded emphatically, and indicated their host. "Two of us."

"I'll hold you to that. And," he continued, "you make me a little ashamed. I should like to say that you, being with you, is very good medicine for lame ducks."

Another flush—not of contrition this time nor yet of displeasure—deepened the pretty color. He pursed his lips and whistled, as well as he could against the rushing wind, a bar or two of the latest popular melody. They found humor in this and laughed, so merrily that their host turned and beamed approvingly upon them.

It was a good car and the chauffeur was as good as his word. The miles stretched out behind them, at a pace that forbade conversation. The exhilaration of speed was upon David; and a deeper joy, born of a friendship found in a waste of loneliness.

The late June sun was just sinking to rest when they entered the outskirts of the city and drew up before a rambling white house set well back on a velvety lawn. Two great elms stood in the front of the yard and rhododendrons bloomed against the wide porch, their fragrance lingering on the evening air.

"That," said Jonathan, "was a very spirited ride. But I hope," this to David, "you aren't sorry it's ended, because this is my home, where we want you to come very often. Miss Summers," he added, "already knows her welcome is sure."

He got to the pavement and helped Miss Summers to alight, as deferentially as if she had been the finest lady in the land. And, despite red whiskers and cap and goggles, to David the manner did not seem absurd. . . .

A little later David descended from the room where he had removed the traces of their ride. At the parlor door he stopped, looking uncertainly at the sole occupant of that cozy room. She was reclining, eyes closed and hands folded, on a pillowed settee, where the glow of a shaded lamp fell softly upon her, and David thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A very wisp of a woman she was; he could have held her in his arms and scarcely felt the weight. But he would have taken her very tenderly, so fragile she seemed. Under a filmy lace cap her hair, still fine and plentiful, shone silvery. The face, though the face of age and white and thin almost to transparency, was strangely unlined. She wore a black silk dress with many folds and flounces and fine ruching at neck and wrists.

He thought she was taking one of those naps which are the prerogative of age at any hour, and began to tiptoe away. But she started and sat upright, her face turned toward him.

"Who is it?" she asked. "But I know. You are Mr. Quentin, of course. I am Jonathan's mother." She smiled.

But something was wrong with that smile. It seemed incomplete.

"You may come in."

She held out a hand. David advanced and took it. She caught his in both of hers, in a soft lingering clasp.

She smiled again. "It is a good strong hand. You are quite tall, aren't you?"

"Almost six feet."

"And broad, too?"

"Rather, I believe."

He tried to speak lightly, but a hard lump was gathering in his throat. For he knew what was wrong with that smile. She was blind.

"I am glad of that." She nodded brightly. "I am very fond of large men. It has been my cross that Jonathan took his size from me and not from his father. I could walk under his arm and not even graze his sleeve."

She drew him down beside her.

"Do you mind if I touch your face?"

"It isn't much of a face, you know." But that lump was very stubborn.

She reached up and passed both hands over his face, a light caressing touch he scarcely felt.

"Now," she smiled, "I see you. You are quite mistaken. It is a good true face and I like it very much. Ah!" She had touched his lashes. "You are feeling sorry for me. But you must not," she chided gently. "I don't like people to be sorry for me."

To that David had no answer. But on an impulse—or it may have been an inspiration—as the little hands left his face, he brushed one lightly with his lips.

She beamed—always with that pathetic lack—just as Jonathan did when something pleased him.

"That was very pretty." She nodded again. "I see I am to like Jonathan's new friend very much. You know, you have quite won him. He talks of you all the time. You like him, do you not?" The smile had become quite wistful.

"Better all the time," David answered promptly and with truth.

"I am glad of that. And it is good of you to come here. We have so few visitors—I suppose," she sighed, "because we aren't very interesting. I am afraid Jonathan gets very lonely sometimes, having to spend most of his evenings here with no one but me. Not," she made haste to add, "that he isn't always good to me."

"I think he is good to every one."

"You have found that out? It is because he had a great disappointment once, I think."

"One would never guess that."

"No. Of course, when one has had a disappointment or been made to suffer, one makes up for that by trying to make the world brighter for others."

"It seems," said David, "that some people do that."

"He wanted to play the violin professionally. He had studied hard and his teachers said that he had talent. But his father forbade it. He said it wasn't a man's work to fiddle in public. My husband," she sighed, "was a very firm man and wanted Jonathan to learn the business. So Jonathan went to the technical school here and studied engineering. Jonathan," she added proudly, "had been well brought up and knew that his parents were wiser than he."

"I see," said David.

"But I think," the little lady went on, after a pause, "we didn't know how hard it was for him. I understand better now. Sometimes, though he doesn't suspect, I hear it in his playing. Then I wonder if we were wiser than he—and if I was selfish. Of course, the music would have taken him away so much and it would have been very lonely for me—and very dark. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't his real reason for giving up his music."

David was silent.

"You say nothing." Even without eyes to give meaning, her smile was wistful as a child's. "Are you thinking he would have been happier—or better off—in the work he wanted than in taking care of me?"

"I think," said David, "he is happy because he stayed with you."

"He has said so himself." She sighed. "I wonder—I wonder!"

For a little they said nothing, David thinking very hard.

"And now," she said at last, "you may tell me what you think of Miss Summers."

"Why," he answered, "she seems very attractive."

"Jonathan has led me to believe so. And a gentlewoman, should you say?"

"I think so," said David, who had not thought of it at all. "Oh, yes, undoubtedly."

"That is my opinion. And she sings very nicely." Jonathan's mother sighed again.

There was a dinner that included creations not found in cheap boarding-houses: fried chicken, for example, tender and flaky and brown, and crisp waffles with honey, and sweet potatoes in the southern style. It was cooked and served by a white-haired old negress whose round eyes popped with pride at the destruction David wrought. She listened shamelessly, fat bosom aquiver, to her radiant master's quips, commenting, "Mistuh Jon'than,—chuckle—ef yo' ain'—chuckle—de beatenes' evuh!" and warned David in a stage whisper to save room for a miracle of a pudding to come. Mrs. Radbourne opened the casket of her memory to display several well polished anecdotes of a day when the world must have been very bright indeed, full of light and color; chiefest jewel of which concerned a meeting with the elder Booth, from which occasion her husband—that very firm man—had emerged with credit. If, as some wise man has said, wit is all a matter of the right audience, then David must have been very witty indeed. And across the table from him sat a pair of slate-gray eyes, still aglow with that sense of adventure.

Then there were cigars, mild and very good, smoked on the porch; both ladies protesting that they liked the fragrance of tobacco. And then the host, with the air of having come to the real business of the meeting, rose and said:

"Shall we have some music now?"

"Oh, by all means!" said David politely, wondering how much credence he ought to place in the advance notices.

They went into the parlor, where Jonathan turned to Miss Summers, "Do you feel like singing this evening?"

"Yes," she said, and went at once to the piano.

She played a few chords softly. And then her voice rose in a low crooning note that went straight to David's heart.

For she sang as the thrush sings—because God had put music in her heart and shaped her throat to give forth pure rich liquid sounds and meant her to be revealed through song. And that evening, in the simple little slumber song she sang first, there was no faltering or roughened note to tell that part of her gift had been taken from her. While she sang, there was nothing in the world but melody and the rest of which she sang . . . and the singer.

She ended. But over at least one of her audience the spell of her voice lingered. For a long moment David sat motionless, lips parted, staring wonderingly at her, even after she had swung around to face them.

"Why—" he stammered foolishly. "Why—I didn't think—"

The rose pink in her cheeks became rose madder and it was easy to see that she was happy over something. "Oh," she said, "it just happens to be one of my good days. Sometimes my voice leaves me in the middle of a note and lets me down flat." She laughed, as though there were humor in that.

David did not laugh. He saw no humor in that. He could not believe that it had ever happened. . . .

And so she became the iris girl. But he did not suspect that yet. He was not looking for iris girls; it is much to his credit.

They did not notice the excitement glistening in Jonathan's eyes.

"You have been practising again," he declared.

"Just a little. And only for the fun of it. Not in earnest of course. It's your turn now."

He said no more about her practise but got out his violin, tuned it carefully, opened a book of music before her and waited for her to play the prelude. Then, tucking the violin under his chin with an eager caressing gesture, he began to play.

That was a night of wonders to David. He was transported from a world of failures and disappointments into a delectable land where a dinky little man, armed with nothing but a horsehair bow and his own nimble fingers, compelled a gut-strung box to sing songs of love and throb with pain and dark passions and splendid triumphs. That is always magic, though some call it genius. And the magic did not cease there. It touched the player, transformed him. The homely manikin, a bit ridiculous with his mannerisms and whiskers, a trifle too obvious in his good will to others, disappeared. Where he had been stood a man strong but fine and gentle in his strength, proud and passionate, as strong men are apt to be, but brave enough to turn willingly from his chosen path because another way seemed best. David, watching the player's swaying body and transfigured face, understood, as even the blind little mother could never understand, how much her son had given to her.

"If only he could be playing always!"

Jonathan's mother slept. But for two hours the man who was no longer manikin and the girl who in real life was only a frail little bookkeeper played to David: a brilliant polonaise, a nocturne that was moonlight and shadow set to music, a concerto that only the masters attempt, a few noble old classics. Between them she sang thrice, songs chosen by Jonathan, each a little more taxing than the one before. Not once did she falter and only once, in the last song where her contralto voice had to take b-flat above middle c, was there a hint of strain.

More than rare harmonies and melodies and rhythms were coming to David. Player and singer, though they did not know it, were giving themselves to him. This was the man, and that the girl, whom—rather patronizingly, as though he were conferring a favor—he had let proffer their simple unaffected friendship! "He gave up his work of his own accord for that poor old woman who can't even guess at what it cost him. She was forced out of hers when success was in sight. I don't know which is worse. And they don't make gloomy grandeur out of it."

The last song, to which Jonathan improvised an obbligato, ended the music. Esther—for that was her name—pointed in dismay, toward the clock and the sleeping hostess.

"Thank you," said David from his heart. He was thanking them for more than the music.

Mrs. Radbourne stirred, yawning daintily. "Are you stopping so soon? My dear, you sang very prettily. Jonathan, you surpassed yourself. Particularly in the Largo. I remember Ole Bull, in 'sixty-seven. . . ."

When that anecdote was concluded, the guests rose to leave. Because it was very late, Mrs. Radbourne prevailed upon Esther to stay overnight. David would not be persuaded. So they gathered around him at the door. And, having shaken hands, he said again:

"Thank you. And I should like to say—"

A sudden awkward lump jumped into his throat. He began anew, "I should like to say—"

But what he would like to say would not be said. "Good night," he forced out abruptly and hurried into the night.

Jonathan Radbourne stood before the cold fireplace, tugging with both hands at his whiskers.

"Miss Summers," he said, "that young man grows nicer all the time."

"Yes," she said.

"I wish I could make things brighter for him."

"You are, I think."

"No more than he has earned from me. He's a very faithful worker, you know. I must look up some of his professional work. And I have an idea that concerns you, young lady. There's a new throat specialist I've just heard of. You're to call on him on Monday."

David walked home. When that absurd lump had been conquered he began to whistle determinedly, as became a young man who was no longer to make gloomy grandeur out of his failure. He kept it up until he reached the apartment and its chill loneliness smote him.

"Oh, Shirley," he cried, "if only you were—" And that was another saying he did not complete, because it might have been lacking in loyalty. . . .

A new tenant for the apartment had been found. The next Saturday David turned the key for the last time on a scene of defeat. He was not sorry to leave. That night he took a train for an over-Sunday visit with Shirley. She had been urging him to come.

"I know it's an extravagance," she wrote. "All the nice things are. But Davy Junior and I are so homesick for you." David's heart cut no capers at that, even before he read what followed. "I'm afraid people will think it queer, your not coming, and of course, I can't tell them it's because we are poor."

It was an unsuccessful trip from the beginning, though Shirley, all smiles and exclamations, met him at the station and hugged him so hard that she wrinkled his collar. She took him to Aunt Clara's in that lady's new car, saying, "Home, Charles," as if she had been born to automobiles and chauffeurs. There the day was taken up by many guests—including the resplendent Sam Hardy, in cutaway and silk waistcoat, New York made, that made David feel shabbier than he looked—come to inspect Shirley's husband. The only real "aside" he had was with Aunt Clara, who quizzed him concerning the state of his debts.

"You are doing quite well," she was pleased to approve. "I begin to believe there's something in you, after all."

"Thank you," David murmured, as politely as the case allowed.

"Now don't get huffy with me, young man," she said. "That's saying a great deal, from me to you. You can't expect me to fall on your neck."

"Not exactly," said David.

"Humph!" she sniffed. "Sounds much like 'God forbid!' Which isn't grateful. You've much to thank me for, if you only knew it. Shirley's better off here—and you're much better off having her here—than back there pinching pennies with you. There are some things Shirley never could understand."

David answered nothing, but a little voice within was piping, "It is true! It is true!"

Aunt Clara looked at him sharply, then suddenly—to her own great surprise—blew a trumpet blast from her long nose and said:

"Tut! tut! Don't mind my impertinent old tongue. I like you better than I sound. You may never set the river afire, but you have a pretty patience I never had. And I could be a fool over you, if I let myself. Do you want me to send her back home? I will, if you say the word."

David hesitated a moment.

"Do you want her to go?"

"No," said Aunt Clara. "Shirley can be good company when things go to her taste."

"Does she want to go?"

"If she does," said Aunt Clara, quite herself once more, "she's bearing up under the disappointment remarkably well—for Shirley. I take it my question is answered."

Shirley and David went to the station as they had gone from it, alone in Aunt Clara's car. All the way he was trying to tell her of the new resolve he had taken when Jonathan and Esther Summers made music for him. It was strangely hard to tell. Not until they were in the station, with but a few minutes left, did he find words for the essay.

"Shirley, I'm afraid you thought I was pretty babyish—about giving up my profession. I—I was babyish. I'd like you to know I've got my nerve back."

Shirley was very sweet about it. "I did think you were a little foolish to take it so hard, dear, when the old architecture never brought us anything but disappointments. I always knew you would come to look at it sensibly."

And she dismissed the subject with the carelessness it may have deserved. "When do you think Mr. Radbourne will raise your salary?"

"Probably before I have earned it."

"David, do you think we'll ever be rich?"

"I suppose not. There seems little chance of it."

She sighed.

"There is nothing in the world but money, is there?"

Tears of self-pity were coming into her eyes. "It's terrible, having to look forward to being poor forever."

The train announcer made loud noises through a megaphone. David rose and looked down in a sudden daze at the pretty young woman who was his wife—to whom he had become but a disappointing means to an end, to whom his heart, though he might thrust it naked and quivering before her eyes, would ever be a sealed book inspiring no interest. His pretty house of love was swaying, falling, and he could not support it.

"And I begin to think," he said queerly, "that we'll always be hopelessly, miserably poor."

Even Shirley could perceive a cryptic quality in that speech.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing that need disturb you. I have no reason," he added grimly, "to believe that it will disturb you."

She eyed him reproachfully and gave a sigh of patience sorely taxed.

"David, I wonder if you never realize that in some of your moods you are very hard to understand."

"Too temperamental, I suppose? Right as always, my dear." He laughed. Men sometimes laugh because they can not weep. But Shirley did not know that. "But I think I can promise you—no more temperament. I'm learning a cure for that. And now I'd better turn you over to Charles. I think that noise means my train is ready."

He took her to the car, kissed her and helped her into the seat and watched her ride away. Then he went back into the station just in time to catch the train.

Shirley found herself perturbed and close to tears; she hardly knew why.

"I wonder what he meant by that about temperament?" She sighed again. "Sometimes I think the worry and everything are turning David's temper sour. I wish—I wish he were like other men. He doesn't realize how trying he is sometimes."

And Shirley being Shirley, she bade Charles drive faster and tried to put David's unlikeness to other men out of her mind.

David being David, he sat up all night, submitting to his cure for temperament. He was facing the truth from which he had been hiding ever since Shirley went away. His heavy sense of loss had been defined.

A little imp with a nasty sneering voice that jabbed like a hot needle perched itself on his shoulder and kept dinning into his ears:

"The truth is, you had nothing to lose but a fancy. Shirley never really loved you. You were only one of her toys, one sort of a good time, and not worth the price. You didn't really love Shirley, only what you thought she was, what you see now she is not. Therefore . . ."



CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY

Some men fall out of love with their wives as easily and unconcernedly as they fell in. They even feel a sort of relief, thinking a disturbing factor thus removed from their lives, and they live happily ever after. But they are not "temperamental."

It was not so with David. He thought it a tragedy, at least for a while. Even when it had failed him, when it had refused to shine in darkness, itself turned upon him in an hour of need, he had not lost faith in love. He had said in his heart, "At least I have love left, which is worth while in itself; and having that, I can yet work out some sort of happiness for us all." He had clung desperately to that hope, though the evidence was against it.

He had been clinging to an illusion. When he found that out, he had nothing left. He was bewildered by the task of working out a happiness where no love was. How could he rebuild when he had not even wreckage with which to build?

He went to live at the boarding-house where he had been taking his meals, a dingy cheerless establishment that had but the one merit of cheapness. He spent his evenings there alone, smoking too much, reading or working for Dick Holden. The cheap tobacco burned his tongue and the loneliness, more than ever, ate into his soul. He thought of going out to call on the Jim Blaisdells or for dinners with the men he had used to know. But he shrank from that because he supposed his old friends must be saying, "That David Quentin—poor Davy!—has quite petered out, hasn't he?" As probably they were.

He had sense enough to understand that these nights were not good for him.

"As far as I know, I've got to exist a good many years yet and make a living for myself and Shirley and Davy Junior. So I mustn't let myself get into this sort of a rut. I must hunt up a more cheerful place to stay."

When a love is dead, it is dead, and there's an end to it. After a decent period of mourning you get used to the fact. . . .

The office, after all, was not so unbearably prison-like. There was the balm of friendship—a double friendship—which is good for the self-respect of a man. And there was the work, with which he was growing more familiar and which, therefore, was more easily and quickly and better done. At his own suggestion the scope of his duties had been broadened; and he borrowed books from the library and tried to study out schemes to systematize Jonathan's business. Some of these schemes were not wholly absurd and one or two were adopted, which pleased Jonathan far more than David. Strictly speaking, David was not putting his heart into his work, but he was giving fidelity and a desire to do his best; and he was getting back, perhaps not happiness, but at least a measure of the honest workman's best reward. So that Jonathan's theorem was given a partial demonstration. Jonathan saw.

"Mother," he said one evening, "I am more than a little ashamed. I took David Quentin into the office because Mr. Blaisdell said he was badly in need of a position and nothing else offered. I'm afraid I thought it a charity and was rather patronizing at first. I'm afraid," Jonathan sighed, "I am puffed up at times by my charities, which don't amount to so much, after all."

"We are not required to be too humble," she reminded him. "Why are you ashamed just now?"

"It wasn't charity at all. David is really a very capable man and a hard worker. He more than earns his salary—I'll have to raise that very soon. I can't understand how he failed as an architect."

"Perhaps he didn't have the right talent. I understand architecture is a very difficult profession."

"It is a noble art," said Jonathan, "and very few men have the talent. That must be the explanation, though I've looked up some of his work and it seems quite as good as that of many architects I know. But I find it hard not to be glad that he was forced to come to me. He is the most likable man I have ever met."

"He seems attractive," said his mother, less sweepingly, "and has excellent manners. He is good-looking, is he not?"

"Very." Jonathan winced. "He is just what a man would like to be. And I never had a friendship that meant quite so much to me."

"Has he displaced Miss Summers?"

"Miss Summers," said Jonathan, "is—different. What shall I read to-night—Earnest Maltravers?"

Boarding-houses that are both good and cheap are not easy to find. David took his problem to Esther Summers. It made an excuse for a minute's chat. He liked to watch the dancing lights in those expressive gray eyes.

"Do you happen to know of any pretty good boarding-house? I say pretty good, because it has to be pretty cheap, too. The place I'm at now is a nightmare. They're always frying onions. And the star-boarder is a haberdashery clerk. He looks like an advertisement of ready-made clothes and talks out of the side of his mouth in what he thinks is an English accent. He's always talking to me about the squabs on his staff."

"What is a squab?" she asked.

"I'm not quite sure, but I think it's a wholly imaginary creature much taken by the charms of haberdashery clerks."

"I see. I don't think of any place now. Unless—" She hesitated doubtfully.

"Unless what?"

"My aunt has a third-story room that is empty. It's a very nice room, though it isn't furnished now. There are only two other roomers, who are very quiet and never bother any one. We never fry onions and there is a pretty good boarding-house only a block away. You could get your meals there."

"It sounds like the very thing. I could furnish the room myself with some of my stuff that's in storage. And— Do you happen to live there?"

"I happen to. Of course, if that's an objection—" She laughed.

"Would you let me set my door on a crack when you sing?"

She nodded. "Since you'd probably do it anyhow!"

"Then I think I could waive that objection. Would you mind speaking to your aunt about it?"

"This very night," she said.

That is how David went to live under the same roof that sheltered Esther Summers.

It seemed a harmless arrangement. He saw her very rarely there. In the morning he left the house before she did, at the end of the day stayed longer at the office; not by intention but because his work called for longer hours. In the evening she stayed with her faded old aunt in their part of the house. The other roomers were as quiet and exclusive as the prospectus had promised. So David, in his new quarters—pleasant enough once his things had been installed—was left alone with his books, his letters to Shirley and his work for the successful Dick Holden.

But there was something in that house—not to be accounted for by mere creature comforts—that made it easier to fight off the blue devils of loneliness and took away a little of the reminder's stings when some tantalizing shape appeared in his tobacco clouds. Every morning he was awakened by her voice at the piano, a few minutes of scales and then one song, always a true matin song, full of hope and the sheer joy of living. In the evening she sang again, a little longer at scales and another song, sometimes two. Then David's door would be set on a crack and he would lean back in his chair, listening and thrilling with some emotion as vague but as beautiful as a very good idea in ecclesiastical architecture. Sometimes a film would come over his eyes; it is not clear why, for when she sang he forgot to remember that he was a failure, that he was in mourning for a love lately dead and that he had become a mere drudge for money.

One evening when he had been under that roof for nearly three weeks she did not stop with the second or even the third song. Ballads and arias followed until she had sung steadily for more than an hour. Wondering, David stole from his room and sat with the other roomers on the stairs, listening raptly to the golden voice that floated up to them. And not once did it falter or lose its pure timbre.

Silence fell at last. The other roomers, sighing, went back to their rooms. David went down to the parlor.

The singer was still sitting before the piano, absent eyes fixed on the open sheet of music; a happy but half-incredulous smile was playing about her lips. It became a friendly welcoming smile when she saw him at the door.

"Did you like my little concert?"

"Like it!" He used a gesture to explain that she had set too big a task for his tongue.

Her cheeks made answer.

"Do you know," he asked abruptly, "that your voice is getting better and stronger all the time?"

"I think so," she said quietly.

"Don't you think that maybe your throat is getting well?"

"I think so. But I can't be sure. It's too soon to tell yet. And it's too good to be true."

"Oh, no!" he protested. "You mustn't say that. You mustn't think—" He stopped with a curt laugh. "That's queer advice from me."

"But it's very good advice—for any one, I am sure." Her eyes had become very grave. "And I shouldn't have said that, for it really doesn't matter so much as it did once. You see, I was pretty cowardly about it at first, when I found I couldn't depend on my voice. Because I couldn't have all I wanted I wouldn't have anything at all. For two years I wouldn't sing a note. The doctor says the long rest is what gives me a chance now, but I don't deserve that. I made myself foolishly unhappy. But it's different now. Even if I can't go back to studying or ever hope to do big things, I know I can sing a little for myself and get a great deal of happiness out of that."

It may be that her smile was a little too bright.

"Do you really mean that?" he asked. "Or are you only whistling again to keep up your courage?"

"If I'm only whistling—why, please let me whistle. But I think I do mean it. It's very sound philosophy. Even if the lame duckling can't fly, is there any reason why it shouldn't waddle for the fun of it?" And now the smile was just as it should have been.

David considered that. For some reason hidden from her his cheeks were burning; you would have said that he was ashamed again.

"No reason at all," he said at last, "if the duckling happens to be very brave. But I hope she is going to fly very high and very far."