"You may kiss me now," she said suddenly, lifting her face to his.

But Ted backed away. The code was still on. A girl of his own kind he would have kissed in a moment at such provocation, or none. But he had an odd feeling of needing to protect this girl from herself as well as from himself.

"You had more sense than I did last night. Let's follow your lead instead of mine," he said. "It's better."

"But Ted, you will come to-morrow?" she pleaded. "You won't forget or go back on your promise?"

"Of course, I'll come," promised Ted again readily.

Five minutes later they parted, he to take his car, and she to stroll in the opposite direction toward her friend Linda's house.

"He is a dear," she thought. "I'm glad he wouldn't kiss me, so there," she said aloud to a dusty daisy that peered up at her rather mockingly from the gutter.

An automobile horn honked behind her. She stepped aside, but the car stopped.

"Well, here is luck. Where are you going, my pretty maid?" called a gay, bold voice.

She turned. The speaker was one Willis Hubbard, an automobile agent by profession, lady's man and general Lothario by avocation. His handsome dark face stood out clearly in the dusk. She could see the avid shine in his eyes. She hated him all of a sudden, though hitherto she had secretly rather admired him, though she had always steadily refused his invitations.

For Madeline was wary. She knew how other girls had gone out with Willis in his smart car and come back to give rather sketchy accounts of the evening's pleasure jaunt. Her friend Linda had tried it once and remarked later that Willis was some speed and that Madeline had the right hunch to keep away from him.

But it happened that Madeline Taylor was the particular peach that Willis Hubbard hankered after. He didn't like them too easy, ready to drop from the bough at the first touch. All the same, he meant to have his way in the end with Madeline. He had an excellent opinion of his powers as a conquering male. He had, alas, plenty of data to warrant it in his relations with the fair and sometimes weak sex.

"What's your hurry, dearie?" he asked now. "Come on for a spin. It's the pink of the evening."

But she thanked him stiffly and refused, remembering Ted Holiday's honest blue eyes.

"What are you so almighty prunes and prisms for, all of a sudden? It's the wrong game to play with a man, I can tell you, if you want to have a good time in the world. I say, Maidie, be a good girl and come out with me to-morrow night. We'll have dinner somewhere and dance and make a night of it. Say yes, you beauty. A girl like you oughtn't to stay cooped up at home forever. It's against nature."

But again Madeline refused and moved away with dignity.

"Your grandfather will never know. You can plan to stay with Linda afterward. I'll meet you by the sycamore tree just beyond the Bates' place at eight sharp—give you the best time you ever had in your life. Believe me, I'm some little spender when I get to going."

"No, thank you, Mr. Hubbard. I tell you I can't go."

He stared at the finality of her manner. He had no means of knowing that he was being measured up, to his infinite disadvantage, with a blue eyed lad who had stirred something in the girl before him that he himself could never have roused in a thousand years. But he did know he was being snubbed and the knowledge disturbed his fond conceit of self.

"Highty tighty with your 'Mr. Hubbards'! You will sing another tune by to-morrow night. I'll wait at the sycamore and you'll be there. See if you won't. You're no fool, Maidie. You want a good time and you know I'm the boy to give it to you. So long! See you to-morrow night." He started his motor, kissed his hand impudently to her and was off down the road, leaving Madeline to follow slowly, in his dust.



CHAPTER VI

A SHADOW ON THE PATH

Across the campus the ivy procession wound its lovely length, flanked by rainbow clad Junior ushers immensely conscious of themselves and their importance as they bore the looped laurel chains between which walked the even more important Seniors, all in white and each bearing an American Beauty rose before her proudly, like a wand of youth.

At the head of the procession, as president of the class, walked Antoinette Holiday, a little lady of quality, as none who saw her could have helped recognizing. Her uncle, watching the procession from the steps of a campus house, smiled and sighed as he beheld her. She was so young, so blithe-hearted, so untouched by the sad and sordid things of life. If only he could keep her so for a little, preserve the shining splendor of her shield of innocent young joy. But, even as he thought, he knew the folly of his wish. Tony would be the last to desire to have life tempered or kept from her. She would want to drain the whole cup, bitter, sweet and all.

Farther back in the procession was Carlotta, looking as heavenly fair and ethereal as if she had that morning been wafted down from the skies. Out of the crowd Phil Lambert's eyes met hers and smiled. Very sensibly and modernly these two had decided to remain the best of friends since fate prevented their being lovers. But Phil's eyes were rather more than friendly, resting on Carlotta, and, underneath the diaphanous, exquisite white cloud of a gown that she wore, Carlotta's heart beat a little faster for what she saw in his face. The hand that held her rose trembled ever so slightly as she smiled bravely back at him. She could not forget those "very different" kisses of his, nor, with all the will in the world, could she go back to where she was before she went up the mountain and came down again in the purple dusk. She knew she had to get used to a strange, new world, a world without Philip Lambert, a rather empty world, it seemed. She wondered if this new world would give her anything so wonderful and sweet as this thing that she had by her own act surrendered. Almost she thought not.

Ted, standing beside his uncle, watching the procession, suddenly heard a familiar whistle, a signal dating back to Holiday Hill days, as unmistakable as the Star Spangled Banner itself, though who should be using it here and why was a mystery. In a moment his roving gaze discovered the solution. Standing upon a slight elevation on the campus opposite he perceived Dick Carson. The latter beckoned peremptorily. Ted wriggled out of the group, descended with one leap over the rail to the lawn, and made his way to where the other youth waited.

"What in Sam Hill's chewing you?" he demanded upon arrival. "You've made me quit the only spot I've struck to-day where I had room to stand on my own feet and see anything at the same time."

"I say, Ted, what train was Larry coming on?" counterquestioned Dick.

"Chicago Overland. Why?"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I am sure. He wired Tony. What in thunder are you driving at? Get it out for Pete's sake?"

"The Chicago Overland smashed into a freight somewhere near Pittsburgh this morning. There were hundreds of people killed. Oh, Lord, Ted! I didn't mean to break it to you like that." Dick was aghast at his own clumsiness as Ted leaned against the brick wall of the college building, his face white as chalk. "I wasn't thinking—guess I wasn't thinking about much of anything except Tony," he added.

Ted groaned.

"Don't wonder," he muttered. "Let's not let her get wind of it till we have to. Are you sure there—there isn't any mistake?" Ted put up his hand to brush back a refractory lock of hair and found his forehead wet with cold perspiration. "There's got to be a mistake. Larry—I won't believe it, so there!"

"You don't have to believe it till you know. Even if he was on the train it doesn't mean he is hurt." Dick would not name the harsher possibility to Larry Holiday's brother.

"Of course, it doesn't," snapped Ted. "I say, Dick, is it in the papers yet?"

"No, it will be in an hour though, as soon as the evening editions get out."

"Good! Dick, it's up to you to keep Tony from knowing. She is going to sing in the concert at five. That will keep her occupied until six. But from now till then nix on the news. Take her out on the fool pond, walk her up Sunset Hill, quarrel with her, make love to her, anything, so she won't guess. I don't dare go near her. I'd give it away in a minute, I'm such an idiot. Besides I can't think of anything but Larry. Gee!" The boy swept his hand across his eyes. "Last time I saw him I consigned him to the devil because he told me some perfectly true things about myself and tried to give me some perfectly sound advice. And now—I'm damned if I believe it. Larry is all right. He's got to be," fiercely.

"Of course, he is," soothed Dick. "And I'll try to do as you say about Tony. I'm not much of an actor, but I guess I can carry it through for—for her sake."

The little break in the speaker's voice made Ted turn quickly and stare at the other youth.

"Dick, old chap, is it like that with you? I didn't know."

Ted's hand went out and held the other's in a cordial grip.

"Nobody knows. I—I didn't mean to show it then. It's no good. I know that naturally."

"I'm not so sure about that. I know one member of the family that would be mighty proud to have you for a brother."

The obvious ring of sincerity touched Dick. It was a good deal coming from a Holiday.

"Thank you, Ted. That means a lot, I can tell you. I'll never forget your saying it like that. You won't give me away, I know."

"Sure not, old man. Tony is way up in the clouds just now, anyway. We are all mostly ants in our minor ant hills so far as she is concerned. Gee! I hope it isn't this thing about Larry that is going to pull her down to earth. If anything had to happen to any of us why couldn't it have been me instead of Larry. He is worth ten of me."

"We don't know that anything has happened to Larry yet," Dick reminded. "I say, Ted, they must have got the ivy planted. Everybody's coming back. Tony is lunching with me at Boyden's right away, and I'll see that she has her hands full until it is time for the concert. You warn Miss Carlotta, so she'll be on guard after I surrender her. I'm afraid you will have to tell your uncle."

"I will. Trot on, old man, and waylay Tony. I'll make a mess of things sure as preaching if I run into her now."

Tony thought she had never known Dick to be so entertaining or talkative as he was during that luncheon hour. He regaled her with all kinds of newspaper yarns and related some of his own once semi-tragic but now humorous misadventures of his early cub days. He talked, too, on current events and world history, talked well, with the quiet poise and assurance of the reader and thinker, the man who has kept his eyes and ears open to life.

It was a revelation to Tony. For once their respective roles were reversed, he the talker, she the listener.

"Goodness me, Dick!" she exclaimed during a pause in what had become almost a monologue. "Why haven't you ever talked like this before? I always thought I had to do it all and here you talk better than I ever thought of doing because you have something to say and mine is just chatter and nonsense."

He smiled at that.

"I love your chatter. But you are tired to-day and it is my turn. Do you know what we are going to do after luncheon?"

"No, what?"

"We are going to take a canoe out on your Paradise and get into a shady spot somewhere along the bank and you will lean back against a whole lot of becoming cushions and put up that red parasol of yours so nobody but me can see your face and then—"

"Dicky! Dicky! Whatever is in you to-day? Paradise, pillows and parasols are familiar symptoms. You will be making love to me next."

"I might, at that," murmured Dick. "But you did not hear the rest of my proposition. And then—I shall read you a story—a story that I wrote myself."

"Dick!" Tony nearly upset her glass of iced tea in her amazement at this unexpected announcement. "You don't mean you have really and truly written a story!"

"Honest to goodness—such as it is. Please to remember it is my maiden effort and make a margin of allowance. But I want your criticism, too—all the benefit of your superior academic training."

"Superior academic bosh!" scoffed Tony. "I'll bet it is a corking story," she added unacademically. "Come on. Let's go, quick. I can't wait to hear it."

Nothing loath to get away speedily before the newsboys began to cry the accident through the streets, Dick escorted his pretty companion back to the campus and on to Paradise, at which point they took a canoe and, finally selecting a shady point under an over-reaching sycamore tree, drifted in to shore where Tony leaned against the cushions, tilted her parasol as specified at the angle which forbade any but Dick to see her charming, expressive young face and commanded him to "shoot."

Dick shot. Tony listened intently, watching his face as he read, feeling as if this were a new Dick—a Dick she did not know at all, albeit a most interesting person.

"Why Dick Carson!" she exclaimed when he finished. "It is great—a real story with real laughter and tears in it. I love it. It is so—so human."

The author flushed and fidgeted and protested that it wasn't much—just a sketch done from life with a very little dressing up and polishing down.

"I have a lot more of them in my head, though," he added. "And I'm going to grind them out as soon as I get time. I wish I had a bigger vocabulary and knew more about the technical end of the writing game. I am going to learn, though—going to take some night work at the University next fall. Maybe I'll catch up a little yet if I keep pegging away."

"Catch up! Dick, you make me so ashamed. Here Larry and Ted and I have had everything done for us all our lives and we've slipped along with the current, following the line of least resistance. And you have had everything to contend with and you are way ahead of the rest of us already. But why didn't you tell me before about the story? I think you might have, Dicky. You know I would be interested," reproachfully.

"I—I wasn't talking much about it to anybody till I knew it was any good. But I—just took a notion to read it to you to-day. That's all."

It wasn't all, but he wanted Tony to think it was. Not for anything would he have betrayed how reading the story was a desperate expedient to keep her diverted and safe from news of the disaster on the Overland.

He escorted Tony back to the campus house at the latest possible moment and Carlotta, in the secret, pretended to upbraid her roommate for her tardiness and flew about helping her to get dressed, talking continuously the while and keeping a sharp eye on the door lest some intruder burst in and say the very thing Tony Holiday must not be permitted to hear. It would be so ridiculously easy for somebody to ask, "Oh, did you hear about the awful wreck on the Overland?" and then the fat would be in the fire.

But, thanks to Carlotta, nobody had a chance to say it and later Tony Holiday, standing in the twilight in front of College Hall's steps, sang her solo, Gounod's beautiful Ave Maria, smiled happily down into the faces of the dear folks from her beloved Hill and only regretted that Larry was not there with the rest—Larry who, for all the others knew, might never come again.

After dinner Ted rushed off again to the telegraph office which he had been haunting all the afternoon to see if any word had come from his brother, and Doctor Holiday went on up to the campus to escort his niece to the informal hop. He had decided to go on just as if nothing was wrong. If Larry was safe then there was no need of clouding Tony's joy, and if he wasn't—well, there would be time enough to grieve when they knew. By virtue of his being a grave and reverend uncle he was admitted to the sacred precincts of his niece's room and had hardly gotten seated when the door flew open and Ted flew in waving two yellow telegraph blanks triumphantly, one in each hand, and announcing that everything was all right—Larry was all right, had wired from Pittsburgh.

Before Tony had a chance to demand what it was all about the door opened again and a righteously indignant house mother appeared on the threshold, demanding by what right an unauthorized male had gone up her stairway and entered a girl's room, without permission or escort.

"I apologize," beamed Ted with his most engaging smile. "Come on outside, Mrs. Maynerd and I'll tell you all about it." And tucking his arm in hers the irrepressible youth conveyed the angry personage out into the hall, leaving his uncle to explain the situation to Tony.

In a moment he was back triumphant.

"She says I may stay since I'm here, and Uncle Phil is here to play dragon," he announced. "She thought at first Carlotta would have to be expunged to make it legal, but I overruled her, told her you and I had played tiddle-de-winks with each other in our cradles," he added with an impish grin at his sister's roommate. "Of course I never laid eyes on you till two years ago, but that doesn't matter. I have a true tiddle-de-winks feeling for you, anyway, and that is what counts, isn't it, sweetness?"

Carlotta laughed and averred that she was going to expunge herself anyway as Phil was waiting for her downstairs. She picked up a turquoise satin mandarin cloak from the chair and Ted sprang to put it around her bare shoulders, stooping to kiss the tip of her ear as he finished.

"Lucky Phil!" he murmured.

Carlotta shook her head at him and went over to Tony, over whom she bent for an instant with unusual feeling in her lovely eyes.

"Oh, my dear," she whispered. "I wish I could tell you how I feel. I'm so glad—so glad." And then she was gone before Tony could answer.

"Oh me!" she sighed. "She has been so wonderful. You all have. Ted—Uncle Phil! Come over here. I want to hold you tight."

And, with her brother on one side of her and her uncle on the other, Tony gave a hand to each and for a moment no one spoke. Then Ted produced his telegrams one of which was addressed to Tony and one to her uncle. Both announced the young doctor's safety. "Staying over in Pittsburgh. Letter follows," was in the doctor's message. "Sorry can't make commencement. Love and congratulations," was in Tony's.

"There, didn't I tell you he was all right?" demanded Ted, as if his brother's safety were due to his own remarkably good management of the affair. "Gee! Tony! If you knew how I felt when Dick told me this morning. I pretty nearly disgraced myself by toppling over, just like a girl, on the campus. Lord! It was fierce."

"I know." Tony squeezed his hand sympathetically. "And Dick—why Dick must have kept me out in Paradise on purpose."

"Sure he did. Dick's a jim dandy and don't you forget it."

"I shan't," said Tony, her eyes a little misty, remembering how Dick had fought all day to keep her care-free happiness intact. "I don't know whether to be angry at you all for keeping it from me or to fall on your necks and weep because you were all so dear not to tell me. And oh! If anything had happened to Larry! I don't see how I could have stood it. It makes us all seem awfully near, doesn't it?"

"You bet!" agreed Ted with more fervor than elegance. "If the old chap had been done for I'd have felt like making for the river, myself. Funny, now the scare is over and he is all safe, I shall probably cuss him out as hard as ever next time he tries to preach at me."

"You had better listen to him instead. Larry is apt to be right and you are apt to be wrong, and you know it."

"Maybe it is because I do know it and because he is so devilish right that I damn him," observed the youngest Holiday sagely, his eyes meeting his uncle's over his sister's head.

It wasn't until he had danced and flirted and made merry for three consecutive hours at the hop, and proposed in the exuberance of his mood to at least three different charmers whose names he had forgotten by the next day, that Ted Holiday remembered Madeline and his promise to keep tryst with her that afternoon. Other things of more moment had swept her clean from his mind.

"Thunder!" he muttered to himself. "Wonder what she is thinking when I swore by all that was holy to come. Oh well; I should worry. I couldn't help it. I'll write and explain how it happened."

So said, so done. He scribbled off a hasty note of explanation and apology which he signed "Yours devotedly, Ted Holiday" and went out to the corner mail box to dispatch the same so it would go out in the early morning collection, and prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind again.

Coming back into his room he found his uncle standing on the threshold.

"Had to get a letter off," murmured the young man as his uncle looked inquiring. He turned to light a cigarette with an air of determined casualness. He didn't care to have Uncle Phil know any more about the Madeline affair.

"It must have been important."

"Was," curtly. "Did you think I was joy riding again?"

"No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick. I haven't been able to get to sleep myself."

Seeing how utterly worn out his uncle looked, Ted's resentment took quick, shamed flight. Poor Uncle Phil! He never spared himself, always bore the brunt of everything for them all. And here he himself had just snapped like a cur because he suspected his guardian of desiring to interfere with his high and mighty private business.

"Too bad," he said. "Wish you'd smoke, Uncle Phil. It's great to cool off your nerves. Honest it is! Have one?" He held out his case.

Doctor Holiday smiled at that, though he declined the proffered weed. He understood very well that the boy was making tacit amends for his ungraciousness of a moment before.

"No, I'll get to sleep presently. It has been rather a wearing day."

"Should say it had been. I hope Aunt Margery doesn't know about the wreck. She'll worry, if she knew Larry was coming east."

"I wired her this evening. I didn't want to take any chance of her thinking he was in the smash."

Ted laid down his cigarette.

"You never forget anybody do you, Uncle Phil?" he said rather soberly for him.

"I never forget Margery. She is a very part of myself, lad."

And when he was alone Ted pondered over that last speech of his uncle's. He wondered if there would ever be a Margery for him, and, if so, what she would think of the Madelines if she knew of them.



CHAPTER VII

DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL

After the family had reassembled on the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived. He was staying on so long as his services were needed. The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained to the uttermost the city's supply of doctors and nurses, and there was more than enough work for all. The writer spared them the details of the wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not anxious to relive the horrors on his own account. He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only. One of these was the instant death of a famous surgeon whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully wasteful to the young doctor. Another was the crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two children, had been happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America for a year. Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with the babies who reminded him of his small cousins, Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip's children.

A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman—just a mere girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring—who had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory entirely. She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises, nothing but what she would easily recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall.

"She tries pitifully hard to remember, and is so sweet and brave we are all devoted to her. I always stop and talk to her when I go by her. She seems to cling to me, rather, as if I could help her get things back. Lord knows I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile a morsel of humanity to be left to fight such a thing alone. She is a regular little Dresden shepherdess, with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must be about crazy, poor chap, not hearing from her. I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim her. I hope so. I don't know what will become of her if he does not.

"It is late and I must turn in. I don't know when I shall get home. I don't flatter myself Dunbury will miss me much when it has you. Give everybody my love and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn't get to commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself."

The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his nephew and junior assistant. With it came another epistle from the same city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself, grow up, and had immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he had discovered the relationship.

"You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head, steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality, Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, through and through, and you can tell him I said so when you see him."

The doctor smiled, well pleased at this tribute to Ned's son and this letter, like Larry's, he handed to his wife Margery to read.

The thirties had touched "Miss Margery" lightly. She was still slim and girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot blue shade which her husband particularly loved she seemed scarcely older than she had on that day, some eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a Fourth of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had begun to lose his heart to her then and there. It was not by shedding care and responsibility, however, that she had kept her youth. It was by no means the easiest thing in the world to be a busy doctor's wife, the mother of two lively children and faithful daughter to an invalid and rather "difficult" mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and an elastic household, which in vacation time included Ned Holiday's children and their friends. Needless to say she did not do any painting these days. But there is more than one way of being an artist, and of the art of simple, lovely, human living Margery Holiday was past mistress.

"Doesn't sound much like 'Lazy Larry' these days, does it?" she commented, giving the letters back to her husband. "I know you are proud of Doctor Fenton's letter, Phil. You ought to be. It is more than a little due to you that Larry is what he is."

"We are advertised by our loving wives," he misquoted teasingly. "I have always observed that the things we approve of in the younger generation are the fruit of seeds we planted. The things we disapprove of slipped in inadvertedly like weeds."

The same mail that brought Larry's letter brought one also to Ted from Madeline Taylor, a letter which made him wriggle a little internally, and pull his forelock, as was his habit when things were a bit perturbing.

Madeline had gone to bed that Sunday night after her meeting with Ted in the woods, full of the happiest kind of anticipations and shy, foolish, impossible dreams. Her mind told her it was the rankest of nonsense to dream about Ted Holiday, but her heart would do it. She knew the affair with Ted had begun wrong, but she couldn't help hoping it would come out beautifully right. She couldn't help making believe she had found her prince, a bonny laddie who liked her well enough to play straight with her and to come again to see her.

She meant to try so hard, so very hard, to make herself into the kind of girl he was used to and liked. She cut out the picture of Tony Holiday that Max Hempel and Dick Carson had studied that day on the train. She studied it even harder and hid it away among her very special treasures where she could take it out and look at it often and use it as a model. She even snatched her hitherto precious earrings from their pink cotton resting place and hurled them as far as she could into the night. She was very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings, and she was even surer she had seen Ted's eyes resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had to go. They had gone.

The next afternoon she had waited for a while patiently by the brook. The distant clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the full hour. No Ted Holiday. By this time her patience had long since evaporated and now blazed into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise, if indeed he had ever meant to keep it. He was with those other girls—his kind. Maybe he was laughing at her, telling them how "easy" she had been, how gullible. No, he wouldn't! He would be ashamed to admit he had had anything to do with her. Men did not boast of their conquest of one kind of girl to another. She had read enough fiction to know that.

In any case she hated Ted Holiday with a fine fury of resentment. She wanted to make him suffer, even as she was suffering, though she sensed vaguely that men couldn't suffer that way. It was only women who were capable of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free.

From her rage against her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut your eyes and have a good time.

Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Taylor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed her. She had done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted, that had been hurt. She discovered that too late.

The next morning had brought Ted's pleasant, penitent note, explaining his defection and expressing the hope that they might meet again soon, signed hers "devotedly." Poor Madeline! The cup of her regret was very bitter to the taste as she read that letter of Ted Holiday's.

Something of her misery and self-abasement crept into the letter to Ted, together with a passionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions was of course not written down for Ted's eyes; but he read quite enough to permit him to guess more than he cared to know. Hubbard was evidently something of a rotter. Maybe he was a bit of a rotter himself. If he hadn't taken the girl out joy riding himself she wouldn't have gone with the other two nights later. That was plain to be seen with half an eye and Ted Holiday was man enough to look at the fact straight and unblinking for a moment.

Well! He should worry. It wasn't his fault if Madeline had been fool enough to go out with Hubbard, when she knew what kind of a chap he was. He wasn't her keeper. He didn't see why she had to ask him to forgive her. It was none of his business. And he wished she hadn't begged so earnestly and humbly that he would see her again soon. He didn't want to see her. Yet, down underneath, Ted Holiday had an uneasy feeling he ought to want it, ought to try to make up to her in some way for something which was somehow his fault, even though he did disclaim the responsibility.

Two days later came another letter even more disturbing. It seemed Madeline was going to Holyoke again soon to visit her Cousin Emma and wanted Ted to join her. She was "dying" to see him. He could stay at Cousin Emma's, but maybe he wouldn't like that because there was a raft of children always under foot and Fred, Emma's husband, was a dreadful "ordinary" person who smoked a smelly pipe and sat round in his shirt sleeves. But if he would come and stay at a hotel they could have a wonderful time. She did want to see him so much. Besides, Willis pestered her all the time and said if she went away he would come down in his car every night to see her. So if Ted didn't want her to run around with Willis as he said in his last letter he had better come himself. She didn't like Willis the way she did Ted, though. Some ways she hated him and she wished awfully she hadn't ever had anything to do with him. And finally she liked Ted better than anybody in the world, and would he please, please come to Holyoke, because she wanted him to so very, very much?

And then the postscript. "The cut is going to leave a scar, I am most sure. I don't care. I like it. It makes me think of you and what a wonderful time we had together that night."

Ted read the letter coming up the Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to make him undeniably restless. Madeline's proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly. After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly killing her. He didn't like this Hubbard fellow, either. He rather thought it was his duty to go and send him about his business. Ted was a bit of a knight, at heart, and felt now the chivalric urge, combining with others less unselfish, to go to the rescue of the damsel and set her free of the false besieger.

Her undisguised admission of her caring for him was a bit disconcerting, although perhaps also a little sweet to his youthful male vanity. Her caring was a complication, made him feel as if somehow he ought to make up to her for failing her in the big thing by granting her the smaller favor.

By the time he had reached the top of the Hill he was rather definitely committed in his own mind to the Holyoke trip, if he could throw enough dust in his uncle's eyes to get away with it.

Arrived at the house he flung the other mail on the hall table and went upstairs. As he passed his grandmother's room he noticed that the door was ajar and stepped in for a word with her. She looked very still and white as she lay there in the big, old fashioned four-poster bed! Poor Granny! It was awfully sad to be old. Ted couldn't quite imagine it for himself, somehow.

"'Lo, Granny dear," he greeted, stooping to kiss the withered old cheek. "How goes it?"

"About as usual, dear. Any word from Larry?" There was a plaintive note in Madame Holiday's voice. She was never quite content unless all the "children" were under the family roof-tree. And Larry was particularly dear to her heart.

"Yes, I just brought a letter for Uncle Phil. The very idea of your wanting Larry when you have Tony and me, and you haven't had us for so long." Ted pretended to be reproachful and his grandmother reached for his hand.

"I know, dear boy. I am very glad to have you and Tony. But Larry is a habit, like Philip. You mustn't mind my missing him."

"Course I don't mind, Granny. I was just jossing. I don't blame you a bit for missing Larry. He is a mighty good thing to have in the family. Wish I were half as valuable."

"You are, sonny. I am so happy to be having you here all summer."

"Maybe not quite all summer. I'll be going off for little trips," he prepared her gently.

"Youth! Youth! Never still—always wanting to fly off somewhere!"

"We all fly back mighty quick," comforted Ted. "There come the kiddies."

A patter of small feet sounded down the hall. In the next moment they were there—sturdy Eric, the six year old, apple-cheeked, incredibly energetic, already bidding fair to equal if not to rival his cousin Ted's reputation for juvenile naughtiness; and Hester, two years younger, a rose-and-snow creation, cherubic, adorable, with bobbing silver curls, delectably dimpled elbows and corn flower blue eyes.

Fresh from the tub and the daily delightful frolic with Daddy, they now appeared for that other ceremonial known as saying good-night to Granny.

"Teddy! Teddy! Ride us to Granny," demanded Eric hilariously, jubilant at finding his favorite tall cousin on the spot.

"'Es, wide us, wide us," chimed in Hester, not to be outdone.

"You fiends!" But Ted obediently got down on "all fours" while the small folks clambered up on his back and he "rode" them over to the bed, their bathrobes flying as they went. Arrived at the destination Ted deftly deposited his load in a giggling, squirming heap on the rug and then gathering up the small Hester, swung her aloft, bringing her down with her rose bud of a mouth close to Granny's pale cheeks.

"Kiss your flying angel, Granny, before she flies away again."

"Me! Me!" clamored Eric vociferously, hugging Ted's knees. "Me flying angel, too!"

"Not much," objected Ted. "No angel about you. Too, too much solid flesh and bones. Kiss Granny, quick. I hear your parents approaching."

Philip and Margery appeared on the threshold, seeking their obstreperous offspring.

There was another stampede, this time in the direction of the "parents."

"Ca'y me! Ca'y me, Daddy," chirruped Hester.

"No, me. Ride me piggy-back," insisted Eric.

"Such children!" smiled Margery. "Ted, you encourage them. They are more barbarian than ever when you are here, and they are bad enough under normal conditions."

Ted chuckled at that. He and his Aunt Margery were the best of good friends. They always had been since Ted had refused to join her Round Table on the grounds that he might have to be sorry for being bad if he did, though he had subsequently capitulated, in view of the manifest advantages accruing to membership in the order.

"That's right. Lay it to me. I don't believe Uncle Phil was a saint, either, was he, Granny?" he appealed. "I'll bet the kids get some of their deviltry by direct line of descent."

His grandmother smiled.

"We forget a good deal about our children's naughtinesses when they are grown up," she said. "I've even forgotten some of yours, Teddy."

"Lucky," grinned her grandson, stooping to kiss her again. "Allons, enfants."

Later, when the obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing request that he be permitted to bring the little lady who had forgotten her past to Holiday Hill with him.

"Queer proposition!" murmured the doctor. "Doesn't sound like sober Larry."

"I am not so sure. There is a quixotic streak in him—in all you Holidays, for that matter. You can't say much. Think of the stray boys you have taken in at one time or another, some of them rather dubious specimens, I infer."

Margery's eyes smiled tender raillery at her husband. He chuckled at the arraignment, and admitted its justice. Still, boys were not mystery ladies. She must grant him that. Then he sobered.

"It is only you that makes me hesitate, Margery mine. You are carrying about as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn't any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather a large order, my dear."

"Not too large. It isn't as if she were seriously ill, or would be a burden in any way. Besides, it is Larry's home as well as ours, and he so seldom asks anything for himself, and is always ready to help anywhere. Do you really mind her coming, Phil?"

"Not if you don't. I am glad to agree if it is not going to be too hard for you. As you say, Larry doesn't ever ask much for himself and I am interested in the case, anyway. Shall we wire him to bring her, then?"

"Please do. I shall be very glad."

"You are a wonder, Margery mine." And the doctor bent and kissed his wife before going in to telephone the message to be sent his nephew that night, a message bidding him and the little stranger welcome, whenever they cared to come to the House on the Hill.

And far away in Pittsburgh, Larry got the word that night and smiled content. Bless Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery! They never failed you, no matter what you asked of them.



CHAPTER VIII

THE LITTLE LADY WHO FORGOT

Larry Holiday was a rather startlingly energetic person when he once got under way. The next morning he overruled the "Mystery Lady's" faint demurs, successfully argued the senior doctor into agreement with his somewhat surprising plan of procedure, wired his uncle, engaged train reservations for that evening, secured a nurse, preempted the services of a Red Cap who promised to be waiting with a chair at the station so that the little invalid would not have to set foot upon the ground, and finally carried the latter with his own strong young arms onto the train and into a large, cool stateroom where a fan was already whirring and the white-clad nurse waiting to minister to the needs of the frail traveler.

In a few moments the train was slipping smoothly out of the station and the girl who had forgotten most things else knew that she was being spirited off to a delightful sounding place called Holiday Hill in the charge of a gray-eyed young doctor who had made himself personally responsible for her from the moment he had extricated her, more dead than alive, from the wreckage. Somehow, for the moment she was quite content with the knowledge.

Leaving his charge in the nurse's care, Larry Holiday ensconced himself in his seat not far from the stateroom and pretended to read his paper. But it might just as well have been printed in ancient Sanscrit for all the meaning its words conveyed to his brain. His corporeal self occupied the green plush seat. His spiritual person was elsewhere.

After fifteen minutes of futile effort at concentration he flung down the paper and strode to the door of the stateroom. A white linen arm answered his gentle knock. There was a moment's consultation, then the nurse came out and Larry went in.

On the couch the girl lay very still with half-closed eyes. Her long blonde braids tied with blue ribbons lay on the pillow on either side of her sweet, pale little face, making it look more childlike than ever.

"I can't see why I can't remember," she said to Larry as he sat down on the edge of the other cot opposite her. "I try so hard."

"Don't try. You are just wearing yourself out doing it. It will be all right in time. Don't worry."

"I can't help worrying. It is—oh, it is horrible not to have any past—to be different from everybody in the world."

"I know. It is mighty tough and you have been wonderfully brave about it. But truly I do believe it will all come back. And in the meanwhile you are going to one of the best places in the world to get well in. Take my word for it."

"But I don't see why I should be going. It isn't as if I had any claim on you or your people. Why are you taking me to your home?" The blue eyes were wide open now, and looking straight up into Larry Holiday's gray ones.

Larry smiled and Larry's smile, coming out of the usual gravity and repose of his face, was irresistible. More than one young woman, case and non-case, had wished, seeing that smile, that its owner had eyes for girls as such.

"Because you are the most interesting patient I ever had. Don't begrudge it to me. I get measles and sore throats mostly. Do you wonder I snatched you as a dog grabs a bone?" Then he sobered. "Truly, Ruth—you don't mind my calling you that, do you, since we don't know your other name?—the Hill is the one place in the world for you just now. You will forgive my kidnapping you when you see it and my people. You can't help liking it and them."

"I am not afraid of not liking it or them if—" She had meant to say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she substituted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are you Holidays all like that?"

"More or less," admitted Larry with another smile. "Maybe we are a bit vain-glorious about Holiday hospitality. It is rather a family tradition. The House on the Hill has had open doors ever since the first Holiday built it nearly two hundred years ago. You saw Uncle Phil's wire. He meant that 'welcome ready.' You'll see. But anyway it won't be very hard for them to open the door to you. They will all love you."

She shut her eyes again at that. Possibly the young doctor's expression was rather more un-professionally eloquent than he knew.

"Tired?" he asked.

"Not much—tired of wondering. Maybe my name isn't Ruth at all."

"Maybe it isn't. But it is a name anyway, and you may as well use it for the present until you can find your own. I think Ruth Annersley is a pretty name myself," added the young doctor seriously. "I like it."

"Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley," corrected the girl. "That is rather pretty too."

Larry agreed somewhat less enthusiastically.

Ruth lifted her hand and fell to twisting the wedding ring which was very loose on her thin little finger.

"Think of being married and not knowing what your husband looks like. Poor Geoffrey Annersley! I wonder if he cares a great deal for me."

"It is quite possible," said Larry Holiday grimly.

He had taken an absurd dislike to the very name of Geoffrey Annersley. Why didn't the man appear and claim his wife? Practically every paper from the Atlantic to the Pacific had advertised for him. If he was any good and wanted to find his wife he would be half crazy looking for her by this time. He must have seen the newspaper notices. There was something queer about this Geoffrey Annersley. Larry Holiday detested him cordially.

"You don't suppose he was killed in the wreck, do you?" Ruth's mind worked on, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

"You were traveling alone. Your chair was near mine. I noticed you because I thought—" He broke off abruptly.

"Thought what?"

"That you were the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life," he admitted. "I wanted to speak to you. Two or three times I was on the verge of it but I never could quite get up the courage. I'm not much good at starting conversations with girls. My kid brother, Ted, has the monopoly of that sort of thing in my family."

"Oh, if you only had," she sighed. "Maybe I would have told you something about myself and where I was going when I got to New York."

"I wish I had," regretted Larry. "Confound my shyness! I don't see why anybody ever let you travel alone from San Francisco to New York anyway," he added. "Your Geoffrey ought to have taken better care of you."

"Maybe I haven't a Geoffrey. The fact that there was an envelope in my bag addressed to Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley doesn't prove that I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley."

"No, still there is the ring." Larry frowned thoughtfully. "If you aren't Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley you must be Mrs. Somebody Else, I suppose. And the locket says Ruth from Geoffrey."

"Oh, yes, I suppose I am Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley. It seems as if I must be. But why can't I remember? It seems as if any one would remember the man she was married to—as if one couldn't forget that, no matter what happened. But if there is a Geoffrey Annersley why doesn't he come and get me and make me remember him?"

Larry shook his head.

"Don't worry, please. We'll keep on advertising. He is bound to come before long if he really is your husband. Some day he will be coming up our hill and run away with you, worse luck!"

Ruth's eyes were on the ring again.

"It is funny," she said. "But I can't make myself feel married. I can't make the ring mean anything to me. I don't want it to mean anything. I don't want to be married. Sometimes I dream that Geoffrey Annersley has come and I put my hand over my eyes because I don't want to see him. Isn't that dreadful?" she turned to Larry to ask.

"You can't help it." Larry tried manfully to push back his own wholly unreasonable satisfaction in her aversion to her presumptive husband. "It is the blow and the shock of the whole thing. It will be all right in time. You will fall on your Geoffrey's neck and call him blessed when the time comes."

"I don't believe he is coming," she announced suddenly with conviction.

Larry got up and walked over to her couch.

"What makes you say that?" he demanded.

"I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Something inside me said right out loud: 'He isn't coming. He isn't your husband.' Maybe it is because I don't want him to come and don't want him to be my husband. Oh, dear! It is all so queer and mixed up and horrid. It is awful not to be anybody—just a ghost. I wish I'd been killed. Why didn't you leave me? Why did you dig me out? All the others said I was dead. Why didn't you let me be dead? It would have been better."

She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow, sobbing softly, suddenly like a child.

This was too much for Larry. He dropped on his knees beside her and put his arms around the quivering little figure.

"Don't, Ruth," he implored. "Don't cry and don't—don't wish you were dead. I—I can't stand it."

There was a tap at the door. Larry got to his feet in guilty haste and went to the door of the stateroom.

"It is time for Mrs. Annersley's medicine," announced the nurse impersonally, entering and going over to the wash stand for a glass.

The white linen back safely turned, Larry gave one swift look at Ruth and bolted, shutting the door behind him. The nurse turned to look at the patient whose face was still hidden in the pillow and then her gaze traveled meditatively toward the door out of which the young doctor had shot so precipitately. Larry had forgotten that there was a mirror over the wash stand and that nurses, however impersonal, are still women with eyes in their heads.

"H—m," reflected the onlooker. "I wouldn't have thought he was that kind. You never can tell about men, especially doctors. I wish him joy falling in love with a woman who doesn't know whether or not she has a husband. Your tablets, Mrs. Annersley," she added aloud.

* * * * *

"Larry, I think your Ruth is the dearest thing I ever laid eyes on," declared Tony next day to her brother. "Her name ought to be Titania. I'm not very big myself, but I feel like an Amazon beside her. And her laugh is the sweetest thing—so soft and silvery, like little bells. But she doesn't laugh much, does she? Poor little thing!"

"She is awfully up against it," said Larry with troubled eyes. "She can't stop trying to remember. It is a regular obsession with her. And she is very shy and sensitive and afraid of strangers."

"She doesn't look at you as if you were a stranger. She adores you."

"Nonsense!" said Larry sharply.

Tony opened her eyes at her brother's tone.

"Why, Larry! Of course, I didn't mean she was in love with you. She couldn't be when she is married. I just meant she adored you—well, the way Max adores me," she explained as the tawny-haired Irish setter came and rested his head on her knee, raising solemn worshipful brown eyes to her face. "Why shouldn't she? You saved her life and you have been wonderful to her every way."

"Nonsense!" said Larry again, though he said it in a different tone this time. "I haven't done much. It is Uncle Phil and Aunt Margery who are the wonderful ones. It is great the way they both said yes right away when I asked if I could bring her here. I tell you, Tony, it means something to have your own people the kind you can count on every time. And it is great to have a home like this to bring her to. She is going to love it as soon as she is able to get downstairs with us all."

Up in her cool, spacious north chamber, lying in the big bed with the smooth, fine linen, Ruth felt as if she loved it already, though she found these Holidays even more amazing than ever, now that she was actually in their midst. Were there any other people in the world like them she wondered—so kind and simple and unfeignedly glad to take a stranger into their home and a queer, mysterious, sick stranger at that!

"If I have to begin living all over just like a baby I think I am the luckiest girl that ever was to be able to start in a place like this with such dear, kind people all around me," she told Doctor Holiday, senior, to whom she had immediately lost her heart as soon as she saw his smile and felt the touch of his strong, magnetic, healing hand.

"We will get you out under the trees in a day or two," he said. "And then your business will be to get well and strong as soon as possible and not worry about anything any more than if you were the baby you were just talking about. Can you manage that, young lady?"

"I'll try. I would be horrid and ungrateful not to when you are all so good to me. I don't believe my own people are half as nice as you Holidays. I don't see how they could be."

The doctor laughed at that.

"We will let it go at that for the present. You will be singing another tune when your Geoffrey Annersley comes up the Hill to claim you."

The girl's expressive face clouded over at that. She did not quite dare to tell Doctor Holiday as she had his nephew that she did not want to see Geoffrey Annersley nor to have to know she was married to him. It sounded horrid, but it was true. Sometimes she hated the very thought of Geoffrey Annersley.

Later Doctor Holiday and his nephew went over the girl's case together from both the personal and professional angles. There was little enough to go on in untangling her mystery. The railway tickets which had been found in her purse were in an un-postmarked envelope bearing the name Mrs. Geoffrey Annersley, but no address. The baggage train had been destroyed by fire at the time of the accident, so there were no trunks to give evidence. The small traveling bag she had carried with her bore neither initial nor geographical designation, and contained nothing which gave any clew as to its owner's identity save that she was presumably a person of wealth, for her possessions were exquisite and obviously costly. A small jewel box contained various valuable rings, one or two pendants and a string of matched pearls which even to uninitiated eyes spelled a fortune. Also, oddly enough, among the rest was an absurd little childish gold locket inscribed "Ruth from Geoffrey."

She had worn no rings at all except for a single platinum-set, and very perfect, diamond and a plain gold band, obviously a wedding ring. The inference was that she was married and that her husband's name was Geoffrey Annersley, but where he was and why she was traveling across the United States alone and from whence she had come remained utterly unguessable. Larry had seen to it that advertisements for Geoffrey Annersley were inserted in every important paper from coast to coast but nothing had come of any of his efforts.

As for the strange lapse of memory, there seemed nothing to do but wait in the hope that recovered health and strength might bring it back.

"It may come bit by bit or by a sudden bound or never," was Doctor Holiday's opinion. "There is nothing that I know of that she or you or any one can do except let nature take her course. It is a case of time and patience. I am glad you brought her to us. Margery and I are very glad to have her."

"You are awfully good, Uncle Phil. I do appreciate it and it is great to have you behind me professionally. I haven't got a great deal of confidence in myself. Doctoring scares me sometimes. It is such a fearful responsibility."

"It is, but you are going to be equal to it. The confidence will come with experience. You need have no lack of faith in yourself; I haven't. There is no reason why I should have, when I get letters like this."

The senior doctor leaned over and extracted old Doctor Fenton's letter from a cubby hole in his desk and gave it to his nephew to read. The latter perused it in silence with slightly heightened color. Praise always embarrassed him.

"He is too kind," he observed as he handed back the letter. "I didn't do much out there, precious little in fact but what I was told to do. I figured it out that we young ones were the privates and it was up to us to take orders from the captains who knew their business better than we did and get busy. I worked on that basis."

"Sound basis. I am not afraid that a man who can obey well won't be able to command well when the time comes. It isn't a small thing to be recognized as a true Holiday, either. It is something to be proud of."

"I am proud, Uncle Phil. There is nothing I would rather hear—and deserve. But, if I am anywhere near the Holiday standard, it is you mostly that brought me up to it. I don't mean any dispraise of Dad. He was fine and I am proud to be his son. But he never understood me. I didn't have enough dash and go to me for him. Ted and Tony are both more his kind, though I don't believe either of them loved him as I did. But you seemed to understand always. You helped me to believe in myself. It was the best thing that could have happened to me, coming to you when I did."

Larry turned to the mantel and picked up a photograph of himself which stood there, a lad of fifteen or so, facing the world with grave, sensitive eyes, the Larry he had been when he came to the House on the Hill. He smiled at his uncle over the boy's picture.

"You burned out the plague spots, too, with a mighty hot iron, some of them," he added. "I'll never forget your sitting there in that very chair telling me I was a lazy, selfish snob and that, all things considered, I didn't measure up for a nickel with Dick. Jerusalem! I wonder if you knew how that hit. I had a fairly good opinion of Larry Holiday in some ways and you rather knocked the spots out of it, comparing me to my disadvantage with a circus runaway."

He replaced the picture, the smile still lingering on his face.

"It was the right medicine though. I needed it. I can see that now. Speaking of doses I wish you would make Ted tutor this summer. I don't know whether he has told you. I rather think not. But he flunked so many courses he will have to drop back a year unless he makes up the work and takes examinations in the fall."

The senior doctor drummed thoughtfully on the desk. So that was what the boy had on his mind.

"Why not speak to him yourself?" he asked after a minute.

"And be sent to warm regions as I was last spring when I ventured to give his lord highmightiness some advice. No good, Uncle Phil. He won't listen to me. He just gets mad and swings off in the other direction. I don't handle him right. Haven't your patience and tact. I wonder if he ever will get any sense into his head. He is the best hearted kid in the world, and I'm crazy over him, but he does rile me to the limit with his fifty-seven varieties of foolness."



CHAPTER IX

TED SEIZES THE DAY

The next morning Ted strolled into his uncle's office to ask if the latter had any objections to his accepting an invitation to a house-party from Hal Underwood, a college classmate, at the latter's home near Springfield.

The doctor considered a moment before answering. He knew all about the Underwoods and knew that his erratic nephew could not be in a safer, pleasanter place. Also his quick wit saw a chance to put the screws on the lad in connection with the tutoring business.

"I suppose your June allowance is able to float your traveling expenses," he remarked less guilelessly than the remark sounded.

The June allowance was, it seemed, the missing link.

"I thought maybe you would be willing to allow me a little extra this month on account of commencement stunts. It is darned expensive sending nosegays to sweet girl graduates. I couldn't help going broke. Honest I couldn't, Uncle Phil." Then as his uncle did not leap at the suggestion offered, the speaker changed his tack. "Anyway, you would be willing to let me have my July money ahead of time, wouldn't you?" he ingratiated. "It is only ten days to the first."

But Doctor Holiday still chose to be inconveniently irrelevant.

"Have you any idea how much my bill was for repairing the car?" he asked.

Ted shook his head shamefacedly, and bent to examine a picture in a magazine which lay on the desk. He wasn't anxious to have the car incident resurrected. He had thought it decently buried by this time, having heard no more about it.

"It was a little over a hundred dollars," continued the doctor.

The boy looked up, genuinely distressed.

"Gee, Uncle Phil! It's highway robbery."

"Scarcely. All things considered, it was a very fair bill. A hundred dollars is a good deal to pay for the pleasure of nearly getting yourself and somebody else killed, Ted."

Ted pulled his forelock and had nothing to say.

"Were you in earnest about paying up for that particular bit of folly, son?"

"Why, yes. At least I didn't think it would be any such sum as that," Ted hedged. "I'll be swamped if I try to pay it out of my allowance. I can't come out even, as it is. Couldn't you take it out of my own money—what's coming to me when I'm of age?"

"I could, if getting myself paid were the chief consideration. As it happens, it isn't. I'm sorry if I seem to be hard on you, but I am going to hold you to your promise, even if it pinches a bit. I think you know why. How about it, son?"

"I suppose it has to go that way if you say so," said Ted a little sulkily. "Can I pay it in small amounts?"

"How small? Dollar a year? I'd hate to wait until I was a hundred and forty or so to get my money back."

The boy grinned reluctantly, answering the friendly twinkle in his uncle's eyes. He was relieved that a joke had penetrated what had begun to appear to be an unpleasantly jestless interview. He hated to be called to account. Like many another older sinner he liked dancing, but found paying the piper an irksome business.

"Nonsense, Uncle Phil! I meant real paying. Will ten dollars a month do?"

"It will, provided you don't try to borrow ahead each month from the next one."

"I won't," glibly. "If you will—" The boy broke off and had the grace to look confused, realizing he had been about to do the very thing he had promised in the same breath not to do. "Then that means I can't go to Hal's," he added soberly.

He felt sober. There was more than Hal and the house-party involved, though the latter had fallen in peculiarly fortuitous with his other plans. He had rashly written Madeline he would be in Holyoke next week as she desired, and the first of July and his allowance would still be just out of reach next week. It was a confounded nuisance, to say the least, being broke just now, with Uncle Phil turned stuffy.

"No, I don't want you to give up your house-party, though that rests with you. I'll make a bargain with you. I'll advance your whole July allowance minus ten dollars Saturday morning."

Ted's face cleared, beamed like sudden sunshine on a cloudy March day.

"You will! Uncle Phil, you certainly are a peach!" And in his exuberance he tossed his cap to the ceiling, catching it deftly on his nose as it descended.

"Hold on. Don't rejoice too soon. It was to be a bargain, you know. You have heard only one side."

"Oh—h!" The exclamation was slightly crestfallen.

"I understand that you fell down on most of your college work this spring. Is that correct?"

This was a new complication and just as he had thought he was safely out of the woods, too. Ted hung his head, gave consent to his uncle's question by silence and braced himself for a lecture, though he was a little relieved that he need not bring up the subject of that inconvenient flunking of his, himself; that his uncle was already prepared, whoever it was that had told tales. The lecture did not come, however.

"Here is the bargain. I will advance the money as I said, provided that as soon as you get back from Hal's you will make arrangements to tutor with Mr. Caldwell this summer, in all the subjects you failed in and promise to put in two months of good, solid cramming, no half way about it."

"Gee, Uncle Phil! It's vacation."

"You don't need a vacation. If all I hear of you is true, or even half of it, you made your whole college year one grand, sweet vacation. What is the answer? Want time to think the proposition over?"

"No—o. I guess I'll take you up. I suppose I'll have to tutor anyway if I don't want to drop back a class, and I sure don't," Ted admitted honestly. "Unless you'll let me quit and you won't. It is awfully tough, though. You never made Tony or Larry kill themselves studying in vacations. I don't see—"

"Neither Tony or Larry ever flunked a college course. It remained for you to be the first Holiday to wear a dunce cap."

Ted flushed angrily at that. The shot went home, as the doctor intended it should. He knew when to hit and how to do it hard, as Larry had testified.

"Fool's cap if you like, Uncle Phil. I am not a dunce."

"I rather think that is true. Anyway, prove it to us this summer and there is no one who will be gladder than I to take back the aspersion. Is it understood then? You have your house-party and when you come back you are pledged to honest work, no shirking, no requests for time off, no complaints. Have I your word?"

Ted considered. He thought he was paying a stiff price for his house-party and his lark with Madeline. He could give up the first, though a fellow always had a topping time at Hal's; but he couldn't quite see himself owning ignominiously to Madeline that he couldn't keep his promise to her because of empty pockets. Moreover, as he had admitted, he would have to tutor anyway, probably, and he might as well get some gain out of the pain.

"I promise, Uncle Phil."

"Good. Then that is settled. I am not going to say anything more about the flunking. You know how we all feel about it. I think you have sense enough and conscience enough to see it about the way the rest of us do."

Ted's eyes were down again now. Somehow Uncle Phil always made him feel worse by what he didn't say than a million sermons from other people would have done. He would have gladly have given up the projected journey and anything else he possessed this moment if he could have had a clean slate to show. But it was too late for that now. He had to take the consequences of his own folly.

"I see it all right, Uncle Phil," he said looking up. "Trouble is I never seem to have the sense to look until—afterward. You are awfully decent about it and letting me go to Hal's and—everything. I—I'll be gone about a week, do you mind?"

"No. Stay as long as you like. I am satisfied with your promise to make good when you do come."

Ted slipped away quickly then. He was ashamed to meet his uncle's kind eyes. He knew he was playing a crooked game with stacked cards. He hadn't exactly lied—hadn't said a word that wasn't strictly true, indeed. He was going to Hal's, but he had let his uncle think he was going to stay there the whole week whereas in reality he meant to spend the greater part of the time in Madeline Taylor's society, which was not in the bargain at all. Well he would make up later by keeping his promise about the studying. He would show them Larry wasn't the only Holiday who could make good. The dunce cap jibe rankled.

And so, having satisfied his sufficiently elastic conscience, he departed on Saturday for Springfield and adjacent points.

He had the usual "topping" time at Hal's and tore himself away with the utmost reluctance from the house-party, had half a mind, indeed, to wire Madeline he couldn't come to Holyoke. But after all that seemed rather a mean thing to do after having treated her so rough before, and in the end he had gone, only one day later than he had promised.

It was characteristic that, arrived at his destination, he straightway forgot the pleasures he was foregoing at Hal's and plunged whole-heartedly into amusing himself to the utmost with Madeline Taylor. Carpe Diem was Ted Holiday's motto.

Madeline had indeed proved unexpectedly pretty and attractive when she opened the door to him on Cousin Emma's little box of a front porch, clad all in white and wearing no extraneous ornament of any sort, blushing delightfully and obviously more than glad of his coming. He would not have been Ted Holiday if he hadn't risen to the occasion. The last girl in sight was usually the only girl for him so long as she was in sight and sufficiently jolly and good to look upon.

A little later Madeline donned a trim tailored black sailor hat and a pretty and becoming pale green sweater and the two went down the steps together, bound for an excursion to the park. As they descended Ted's hand slipped gallantly under the girl's elbow and she leaned on it ever so little, reveling in the ceremony and prolonging it as much as possible. Well she knew that Cousin Emma and the children were peering out from behind the curtains of the front bedroom upstairs, and that Mrs. Bascom and her stuck up daughter Lily had their faces glued to the pane next door. They would all see that this was no ordinary beau, but a real swell like the magnificent young men in the movies. Perhaps as she descended Cousin Emma's steps and went down the path between the tiger lilies and peonies that flanked the graveled path with Ted Holiday beside her, Madeline Taylor had her one perfect moment.

Only the "ordinary" Fred, on hearing his wife's voluble descriptions later of Madeline's "grand" young man failed to be suitably impressed. "Them swells don't mean no girl no good no time," he had summed up his views with sententious accumulation of negatives.

But little enough did either Ted or Madeline reck of Fred's or any other opinion as they fared their blithe and care-free way that gala week. The rest of the world was supremely unimportant as they went canoeing and motoring and trolley riding and mountain climbing and "movieing" together. Madeline strove with all her might to dress and act and be as nearly like those other girls after whom she was modeling herself as possible, to do nothing, which could jar on Ted in any way or remind him that she was "different." In her happiness and sincere desire to please she succeeded remarkably well in making herself superficially at least very much like Ted's own "kind of girl" and though with true masculine obtuseness he was entirely unaware of the conscious effort she was putting into the performance nevertheless he enjoyed the results in full and played up to her undeniable charms with his usual debonair and heedless grace and gallantry.

The one thing that had been left out of the program for lack of suitable opportunity was dancing, an omission not to be tolerated by two strenuous and modern young persons who would rather fox trot than eat any day. Accordingly on Thursday it was agreed that they should repair to the White Swan, a resort down the river, famous for its excellent cuisine, its perfect dance floor and its "snappy" negro orchestra. Both Ted and Madeline knew that the Swan had also a reputation of another less desirable sort, but both were willing to ignore the fact for the sake of enjoying the "jolliest jazz on the river" as the advertisement read. The dance was the thing.

It was, indeed. The evening was decidedly the best yet, as both averred, pirouetting and spinning and romping through one fox trot and one step after another. The excitement of the music, the general air of exhilaration about the place and their own high-pitched mood made the occasion different from the other gaieties of the week, merrier, madder, a little more reckless.

Once, seeing a painted, over-dressed or rather under-dressed, girl in the arms of a pasty-faced, protruding-eyed roue, both obviously under the spell of too much liquid inspiration, Ted suffered a momentary revulsion and qualm of conscience. He shouldn't have brought Madeline here. It wasn't the sort of place to bring a girl, no matter how good the music was. Oh, well! What did it matter just this once? They were there now and they might as well get all the fun they could out of it. The music started up, he held out his hand to Madeline and they wheeled into the maze of dancers, the girl's pliant body yielding to his arms, her eyes brilliant with excitement. They danced on and on and it was amazingly and imprudently late when they finally left the Swan and went home to Cousin Emma's house.

Ted had meant to leave Madeline at the gate, but somehow he lingered and followed the girl out into the yard behind the house where they seated themselves in the hammock in the shade of the lilac bushes. And suddenly, without any warning, he had her in his arms and was kissing her tempestuously.

It was only for a moment, however. He pulled himself together, hot cheeked and ashamed and flung himself out of the hammock. Madeline sat very still, not saying a word, as she watched him march to and fro between the beds of verbena and love-lies-bleeding and portulaca. Presently he paused beside the hammock, looking down at the girl.

"I am going home to-morrow," he said a little huskily.

Madeline threw out one hand and clutched one of the boy's in a feverish clasp.

"No! No!" she cried. "You mustn't go. Please don't, Ted."

"I've got to," stolidly.

"Why?"

"You know why."

"You mean—what you did—just now?"

He nodded miserably.

"That doesn't matter. I'm not angry. I—I liked it."

"I am afraid it does matter. It makes a mess of everything, and it's all my fault. I spoiled things. I've got to go."

"But you will come back?" she pleaded.

He shook his head.

"It is better not, Madeline. I'm sorry."

She snatched her hand away from his, her eyes shooting sparks of anger.

"I hate you, Ted Holiday. You make me care and then you go away and leave me. You are cruel—selfish. I hate you—hate you."

Ted stared down at her, helpless, miserable, ashamed. No man knows what to do with a scene, especially one which his own folly has precipitated.

"Willis Hubbard is coming down to-morrow night and if you don't stay as you promised I'll go to the Swan with him. He has been teasing me to go for ages and I wouldn't, but I will now, if you leave me. I'll—I'll do anything."

Ted was worried. He did not like the sound of the girl's threats though he wasn't moved from his own purpose.

"Don't go to the Swan with Hubbard, Madeline. You mustn't."

"Why not? You took me."

"I know I did, but that is different," he finished lamely.

"I don't see anything very different," she retorted hotly.

Ted bit his lip. Remembering his own recent aberration, he did not see as much difference as he would have liked to see himself.

"I suppose you wouldn't have taken your kind of girl to the Swan," taunted Madeline.

"No, I—"

It was a fatal admission. Ted hadn't meant to make it so bluntly, but it was out. The damage was done.

A demon of rage possessed the girl. Beside herself with anger she sprang to her feet and delivered a stinging blow straight in the boy's face. Then, her mood changing, she fell back into the hammock sobbing bitterly.

For a moment Ted was too much astonished by this fish-wife exhibition of temper even to be angry with himself. Then a hot wave of wrath and shame surged over him. He put up his hand to his cheek as if to brush away the indignity of the blow. But he was honest enough to realize that maybe he had deserved the punishment, though not for the reason the girl had dealt it.

Looking down at her in her racked misery, his resentment vanished and an odd impersonal kind of pity for her possessed him instead, though her attraction was gone forever. He could see the scar on her forehead, and it troubled and reproached him vaguely, seemed a symbol of a deeper wound he had dealt her, though never meaning any harm. He bent over her, gently.

"Forgive me, Madeline," he said. "I am sorry—sorry for everything. Goodby."

In a moment he was gone, past the portulaca and love-lies-bleeding, past Cousin Emma's unlit parlor windows, down the walk between the tiger lilies and peonies, out into the street. And Madeline, suddenly realizing that she was alone, rushed after him, calling his name softly into the dark. But only the echo of his firm, buoyant young feet came back to her straining ears. She fled back to the garden and, throwing herself, face down, on the dew drenched grass, surrendered to a passion of tearless grief.

Ted astonished his uncle, first by coming home a whole day earlier than he had been expected and second, by announcing his intention of seeing Robert Caldwell and making arrangements about the tutoring that very day. He was more than usually uncommunicative about his house-party experiences the Doctor thought and fancied too that just at first after his return the boy did not meet his eyes quite frankly. But this soon passed away and he was delighted and it must be confessed considerably astounded too to perceive that Ted really meant to keep his word about the studying and settled down to genuine hard work for perhaps the first time, in his idle, irresponsible young life. He had been prepared to put on the screws if necessary. There had been no need. Ted had applied his own screws and kept at his uncongenial task with such grim determination that it almost alarmed his family, so contrary was his conduct to his usual light-hearted shedding of all obligations which he could, by hook or crook, evade.

Among other things to be noted with relief the doctor counted the fact that there were no more letters from Florence. Apparently that flame which had blazed up rather brightly at first had died down as a good many others had. Doctor Holiday was particularly glad in this case. He had not liked the idea of his nephew's running around with a girl who would be willing to go "joy-riding" with him after midnight, and still less had he liked the idea of his nephew's issuing such invitations to any kind of girl. Youth was youth and he had never kept a very tight rein on any of Ned's children, believing he could trust them to run straight in the main. Still there were things one drew the line at for a Holiday.



CHAPTER X

TONY DANCES INTO A DISCOVERY

Tony was dressing for dinner on her first evening at Crest House. Carlotta was perched on the arm of a chair near by, catching up on mutual gossip as to events that had transpired since they parted a month before at Northampton.

"I have a brand new young man for you, Tony. Alan Massey—the artist. At least he calls himself an artist, though he hasn't done a thing but philander and travel two or three times around the globe, so near as I can make out, since somebody died and left him a disgusting big fortune. Aunt Lottie hints that he is very improper, but anyway he is amusing and different and a dream of a dancer. It is funny, but he makes me think a little bit once in a while of somebody we both know. I won't tell you who, and see if the same thing strikes you."

A little later Tony met the "new young man." She was standing with her friend in the big living room waiting for the signal for dinner when she felt suddenly conscious of a new presence. She turned quickly and saw a stranger standing on the threshold regarding her with a rather disconcertingly intent gaze. He was very tall and foreign-looking, "different," as Carlotta had said, with thick, waving blue-black hair, a clear, olive skin and deep-set, gray-green eyes. There was nothing about him that suggested any resemblance to anyone she knew. Indeed she had a feeling that there was nobody at all like him anywhere in the world.

The newcomer walked toward her, their glances crossing. Tony stood very still, but she had an unaccountable sensation of going to meet him, as if he had drawn her to him, magnet-wise, by his strange, sweeping look. They were introduced. He bowed low in courtly old world fashion over the girl's hand.

"I am enchanted to know Miss Holiday," he said. His voice was as unusual as the rest of him, deep-throated, musical, vibrant—an unforgettable voice it seemed to Tony who for a moment seemed to have lost her own.

"I shall sit beside Miss Tony to-night, Carla," he added. It was not a question, not a plea. It was clear assertion.

"Not to-night, Alan. You are between Aunt Lottie and Mary Frances Day. You liked Mary Frances yesterday. You flirted with her outrageously last night."

He shrugged.

"Ah, but that was last night, my dear. And this is to-night. And I have seen your Miss Tony. That alters everything, even your seating arrangements. Change me, Carlotta."

Carlotta laughed and capitulated. Alan's highhanded tactics always amused her.

"Not that you deserve it," she said. "Don't be too nice to him, Tony. He is not a nice person at all."

So it happened that Tony found herself at dinner between Ted's friend, and her own, Hal Underwood, and this strange, impossible, arbitrary, new personage who had hypnotized her into unwonted silence at their first meeting.

She had recovered her usual poise by this time, however, and was quite prepared to keep Alan Massey in due subjection if necessary. She did not like masterful men. They always roused her own none too dormant willfulness.

As they sat down he bent over to her.

"You are glad I made Carlotta put us together," he said, and this, too, was no question, but an assertion.

Tony was in arms in a flash.

"On the contrary, I am exceedingly sorry she gave in to you. You seem to be altogether too accustomed to having your own way as it is." And rather pointedly she turned her pretty shoulder on her too presuming neighbor and proceeded to devote her undivided attention for two entire courses to Hal Underwood.

But, with the fish, Hal's partner on the other side, a slim young person in a glittering green sequined gown, suggesting a fish herself, or, at politest, a mermaid, challenged his notice and Tony returned perforce to her left-hand companion who had not spoken a single word since she had snubbed him as Tony was well aware, though she had seemed so entirely absorbed in her own conversation with Hal.

His gray-green eyes smiled imperturbably into hers.

"Am I pardoned? Surely I have been punished enough for my sins, whatever they may have been."

"I hope so," said Tony. "Are you always so disagreeable?"

"I am never disagreeable when I am having my own way. I am always good when I am happy. At this moment I am very, very good."

"It hardly seems possible," said Tony. "Carlotta said you were not good at all."

He shrugged, a favorite mannerism, it seemed.

"Goodness is relative and a very dull topic in any case. Let us talk, instead, of the most interesting subject in the universe—love. You know, of course, I am madly in love with you."

"Indeed, no. I didn't suspect it," parried Tony. "You fall in love easily."

"Scarcely easily, in this case. I should say rather upon tremendous provocation. I suppose you know how beautiful you are."

"I look in the mirror occasionally," admitted Tony with a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "Carlotta told me you were a philanderer. Forewarned is forearmed, Mr. Massey."