Tony snatched the letters, her face rosy.

"Give me Dick's. I haven't heard from him but once since he went back to New York and that was just a card. Oh-h! Listen everybody. The Universal has accepted his story and wants him to do a whole series of them. Oh, isn't that just wonderful?"

Tony's old sparkles were back now. There were no reservations necessary here. Everybody knew and loved Dick and would be glad as she was herself in his success.

"Hail to Dicky Dumas!" she added, gaily waving the letter aloft. "I always knew he would get there. And that was the very story he read me. Wasn't it lucky I liked it really? If I hadn't, and it had turned out to be good, wouldn't it have been awful?"

Everybody laughed at that and perhaps nobody but the doctor noticed that the other letter in the unfamiliar handwriting was tucked away very quickly out of sight in her bag and no comments made.

It was not until Tony had gone the rounds of the household and greeted everyone from Granny down to Max that she read Alan's letter, as she sat curled up in the cretonned window seat, just as the little girl Tony had been wont to sit and devour love stories. This was a love story, too—her own and with a sadly complicated plot at that.

It was the first letter she had had from Alan and she found it very wonderful and exciting reading. It was brimming over, as might have been expected, with passionate lover's protests and extravagant endearments which Tony could not have imagined her Anglo-Saxon relatives or friends even conceiving, let alone putting on paper. But Alan was different. These things were no affectation with him, but natural as breathing, part and parcel of his personality. She could hear him now say "carissima" in that low, deep-cadenced, musical voice of his and the word seemed very sweet and beautiful to her as it sang in her heart and she read it in the dashing script upon the paper.

He was desolated without her, he wrote. Nothing was worth while. Nothing interested him. He was refusing all invitations, went nowhere. He just sat alone in the studio and dreamed about her or made sketches of her from memory. She was everywhere, all about him. She filled the studio with her voice, her laughter, her wonderful eyes. But oh, he was so lonely, so unutterably lonely without her. Must he really wait a whole year before he made her his? A year was twelve long, long months. Anything could happen in a year. One of them might die and the other would go frustrate and lonely forever, like a sad wind in the night.

Tony caught her breath quickly at that sentence. The poetry of it captivated her fancy, the dread of what it conjured clutched like cold hands at her heart. She wanted Alan now, wanted love now. Already those dear folks downstairs were beginning to seem like ghosts, she and Alan the only real people. What if he should die, what if something should happen to keep them forever apart, how could she bear it? How could she?

She turned back to her letter which had turned into an impassioned plea that she would never forsake him, no matter what happened, never drive him over the precipice like the Gadderene swine.

"You and your love are the only thing that can save me, dear heart," he wrote. "Remember that always. Without you I shall go down, down into blacker pits than I ever sank before. With you I shall come out into the light. I swear it. But oh, beloved, pray for me, if you know how to pray. I don't. I never had a god."

There were tears in Tony's eyes as she finished her lover's letter. His unwonted humility touched her as no arrogance could ever have done. His appeal to his desperate need moved her profoundly as such appeals will always move woman. It is an old tale and one oft repeated. Man crying out at a woman's feet, "Save me! Save me! Myself I cannot save!" Woman, believing, because she longs to believe it, that salvation lies in her power, taking on herself the all but impossible mission for love's high sake.

Tony Holiday believed, as all the million other women have believed since time began, that she could save her lover, loved him tenfold the more because he threw himself upon her mercy, came indeed perhaps to truly love him for the first time now with a kind of consecrated fervor which belonged all to the spirit even as the love that had come to her while they danced had belonged rather to the flesh.

* * * * *

And day by day Jim Roberts grew sicker and the gnawing thing crept up nearer to his heart. Day by day he gloated over the goading whips he brandished over Alan Massey's head, amused himself with the various developments it lay in his power to give to the situation as he passed out of life.

He wrote two letters from his sick bed. The first one was addressed to Dick Carson, telling the full story of his own and Alan Massey's share in the deliberate defraudment of that young man of his rightful name and estate. It pleased him to read and reread this letter and to reflect that when it was mailed Alan Massey would drink the full cup of disgrace and exposure while he who was infinitely guiltier would be sleeping very quietly in a cool grave where hate, nor vengeance, nor even pity could touch him.

The other letter, which like the first he kept unmailed, was a less honest and less incriminating letter, filled with plausible half truths, telling how he had just become aware at last through coming into possession of some old letters of the identity of the boy he had once had in his keeping and who had run away from him, an identity which he now hastened to reveal in the interests of tardy justice. The letter made no mention of Alan Massey nor of the unlovely bargain he had driven with that young man as the price of silence and the bliss of ignorance. It was addressed to the lawyers who handled the Massey estate.

Roberts had followed up various trails and discovered that Antoinette Holiday was the girl Massey loved, discovered through the bribing of a Crest House servant, that the young man they called Carson was also presumably in love with the girl whose family had befriended him so generously in his need. It was incredibly good he thought. He could hardly have thought out a more diabolically clever plot if he had tried. He could make Alan Massey writhe trebly, knowing these things.

Pursuing his malignant whim he wrote to Alan Massey and told him of the existence of the two letters, as yet unmailed, in his table drawer. He made it clear that one of the letters damned Alan Massey utterly while the other only robbed him of his ill-gotten fortune, made it clear also that he himself did not know which of the two would be mailed in the end, possibly he would decide it by a flip of a coin. Massey could only wait and see what happened.

"I suppose you think the girl is worth going to Hell for, even if the money isn't," he had written. "Maybe she is. Some women are, perhaps. But don't forget that if she loves you, you will be dragging her down there too. Pretty thought, isn't it? I don't mean any future-life business either. That's rot. I heard enough of that when I was a boy to sicken me of it forever. It is the here and now Hell a man pays for his sins with, and that is God's truth, Alan Massey."

And Alan, sitting in his luxurious studio reading the letter, crushed it in his hands and groaned aloud. He needed no commentary on the "here and now Hell" from Jim Roberts. He was living it those summer days if ever a man did.

It wasn't the money now. Alan told himself he no longer cared for that, hated it in fact. It was Tony now, all Tony, and the horrible fear lest Roberts betray him and shut the gates of Paradise upon him forever. Sometimes in his agony of fear he could almost have been glad to end it all with one shot of the silver-mounted automatic he kept always near, to beat Jim Roberts to the bliss of oblivion in the easiest way.

But Alan Massey had an incorrigible belief in his luck. Just as he had hoped, until he had all but believed, that his cousin John was as dead as he had told that very person he was, so now he hoped against all reason that he would be saved at the eleventh hour, that Roberts would go to his death carrying with him the secret that would destroy himself if it ceased to be a secret.

Those unmailed letters haunted him, however, day and night, so much so, in fact, that he took a journey to Boston one day and sought out the little cigar store again. But this time he had not mounted the stairs. His business was with the black-eyed boy. With one fifty dollar bill he bought the lad's promise to destroy the letters and the packet in Robert's drawer in the event of the latter's death; secured also the promise that if at any time before his death Roberts gave orders that either letter should be mailed, the boy would send the same not to the address on the envelope but to Alan Massey. If the boy kept faith with his pledges there would be another fifty coming to him after the death of the man. He bought the lad even as Roberts had once bought himself. It was a sickening transaction but it relieved his mind considerably and catered in a measure to that incorrigible hope within him.

But he paid a price too. Fifty miles away from Boston was Tony Holiday on her Heaven kissing hill. He was mad to go to her but dared not, lest this fresh corruption in some way betray itself to her clear gaze.

So he went back to New York without seeing her and Tony never knew he had been so near.

And that night Jim Roberts took an unexpected turn for the worse and died, foiled of that last highly anticipated spice of malice in flipping the coin that was to decide Alan Massey's fate.

In the end the boy had not had the courage to destroy the letters as he had promised to do. Instead he sent them both, together with the packet of evidence as to John Massey's identity, to Alan Massey.

The thing was in Alan's own hands at last. Nothing could save or destroy him but himself. And by a paradox his salvation depended upon his being strong enough to bring himself to ruin.



CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED

At home on her Hill Tony Holiday settled down more or less happily after her eventful sally into the great world. To the careless observer she was quite the same Tony who went down the Hill a few weeks earlier. If at times she was unusually quiet, had spells of sitting very still with folded hands and far away dreams in her eyes, if she crept away by herself to read the long letters that came so often, from many addresses but always in the same bold, beautiful script and to pen long answers to these; if she read more poetry than was her wont and sang love songs with a new, exquisite, but rather heart breaking timbre in her lovely contralto voice, no one paid much attention to these signs except possibly Doctor Philip who saw most things. He perceived regretfully that his little girl was slipping away from him, passing through some experience that was by no means all joy or contentment and which was making her grow up all too fast. But he said nothing, quietly bided the hour of confidence which he felt sure would come sooner or later.

Tony puzzled much over the complexities of life these days, puzzled over other things beside her own perverse romance. Carlotta too was much on her mind. She wished she could wave a magic wand and make things come right for these two friends of hers who were evidently made for each other as Hal had propounded. She wondered if Phil were as unhappy as Carlotta was and meant to find out in her own time and way.

She had seen almost nothing of him since her return to the Hill. He was working very hard in the store and never appeared at any of the little dances and picnics and teas with which the Dunbury younger set passed away the summer days and nights, and which Ted and the twins and usually Tony herself frequented. Larry never did. He hated things of that sort. But Phil was different. He had always liked fun and parties and had always been on hand and in great demand hitherto at every social function from a Ladies' Aid strawberry festival to a grand Masonic ball. It wasn't natural for Phil to shut himself out of things like that. It was a bad sign Tony thought.

At any rate she determined to find out for herself how the land lay if she could. Having occasion to do some shopping she marched down the Hill and presented herself at Stuart Lambert and Son's, demanding to be served by no less a person than Philip himself.

"I want a pair of black satin pumps with very frivolous heels," she announced. "Produce them this instant, slave." She smiled at Phil and he smiled back. He and Tony had always been the best of chums.

"Cannzy ones?" he laughed. "That's what one of our customers calls them."

And while he knelt before her with an array of shoe boxes around him, fitting a dainty slipper on Tony's pretty foot, Tony herself looked not at the slipper but at Philip, studying his face shrewdly. He looked older, graver. There was less laughter in his blue eyes, a grimmer line about his young mouth. Poor Phil! Evidently Carlotta wasn't the only one who was paying the price of too much loving. Tony made up her mind to rush in, though she knew it might be a case for angel hesitation.

"I've never given you a message Hal Underwood sent you," she observed irrelevantly.

Philip looked up surprised.

"Hal Underwood! What message did he send me? I hardly know him."

"He seemed to know you rather well. He told me to tell you to come down and marry Carlotta, that you were the only man that could keep her in order. That is too big, Phil. Try a smaller one." The speaker kicked off the offending slipper. Philip mechanically picked it up and replaced it in the box.

"That is rather a queer message," he commented. "I had an idea Underwood wanted to marry Carlotta himself. Try this." He reached for another pump. His eyes were lowered so Tony could not see them. She wished she could.

"He does," she said. "She won't have him."

"Is—is there—anybody she is likely to have?" The words jerked out as the young man groped for the shoe horn which was almost beside his hand but which apparently he did not see at all.

"I am afraid she is likely to take Herbert Lathrop unless somebody stops her by main force. Why don't you play Lochinvar yourself, Phil? You could."

Philip looked straight up at Tony then, the slipper forgotten in his hand.

"Tony, do you mean that?" he asked.

"I certainly do. Make her marry you, Phil. It is the only way with Carlotta."

"I don't want to make any girl marry me," he said.

"Oh, hang your silly pride, Phil Lambert! Carlotta wants to marry you I tell you though she would murder me if she knew I did tell you."

"Maybe she does. But she doesn't want to live in Dunbury. I've good reason to know that. We thrashed it out rather thoroughly on the top of Mount Tom last June. She hasn't changed her mind."

Tony sighed. She was afraid Phil was right. Carlotta hadn't changed her mind. Was it because she was afraid she might, that she was determining to marry Herbert?

"And you can't leave Dunbury?" she asked soberly.

Just at that moment Stuart Lambert approached, a tall fine looking man, with the same blue eyes and fresh coloring as his son and brown hair only slightly graying around the temples. He had an air of vigor and ageless youth. Indeed a stranger might easily have taken the two men for brothers instead of father and son.

"Hello, Tony, my dear," he greeted cordially. "It is good to see you round again. We have missed you. This boy of mine getting you what you want?"

"He is trying," smiled Tony. "A woman doesn't always know what she wants, Mr. Lambert. The store is wonderful since it was enlarged and I see lots of other improvements too." Her eyes swept her surroundings with sincere appreciation.

"Make your bow to Phil for all that. It is good to get fresh brains into a business. We old fogies need jerking out of our ruts."

The older man's eyes fell upon Phil's bowed head and Tony realized how much it meant to him to have his son with him at last, pulling shoulder to shoulder.

"New brains nothing!" protested Phil. "Dad's got me skinned going and coming for progressiveness. As for old fogies he's the youngest man I know. Make all your bows to him, Tony. It is where they belong." And Phil got to his feet and himself made a solemn obeisance in Stuart Lambert's direction.

Mr. Lambert chuckled.

"Phil was always a blarney," he said. "Don't know where he got it. Don't you believe a word he says, my dear." But Tony saw he was immensely pleased with Phil's tribute for all that. "How do you like the sign?" he asked.

"Fine. Looks good to me and I know it does to you, Mr. Lambert."

"Well, rather." The speaker rested his hand on Phil's shoulder a moment. "I tell you it is good, young lady, to have the son part added, worth waiting for. I'm mighty proud of that sign. Between you and me, Miss Tony, I'm proud of my son too."

"Who is blarneying now?" laughed Phil. "Go on with you, Dad. You are spoiling my sale."

The father chuckled again and moved away. Phil looked down at the girl.

"I think your question is answered. I can't leave Dunbury," he said.

"Then Carlotta ought to come to you."

"There are no oughts in Carlotta's bright lexicon. I don't blame her, Tony. Dunbury is a dead hole from most points of view. I am afraid she wouldn't be happy here. You wouldn't be yourself forever. Bet you are planning to get away right now."

Tony nodded ruefully.

"I suppose I am, Phil. The modern young woman isn't much to pin one's faith to I am afraid. Do I get another slipper? Or is one enough?"

Phil came back from his mental aberration with a start and a grin at his own expense.

"I am afraid I am not a very good salesman today," he apologized. "Honestly I do better usually but you hit me in a vulnerable spot."

"You do care for Carlotta then?" probed Tony.

"Care! I'm crazy over her. I'd go on my hands and knees to Crest House if I thought I could get her to marry me by doing it."

"You would much better go by train—the next one. That's my advice. Are you coming to Sue Emerson's dance? That is why I am buying slippers. You can dance with 'em if you'll come."

"Sorry. I don't go to dances any more."

"That is nonsense, Phil. It is the worst thing in the world for you to make a hermit of yourself. No girl's worth it. Besides there are other girls besides Carlotta."

Phil shook his head as he finished replacing Tony's trim brown oxfords.

"Unfortunately that isn't true for me," he said rising. "At present my world consists of myself bounded, north, south, east and west by Carlotta."

And Tony passing out under the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON a few minutes later sighed a little. Here was Carlotta with a real man for the taking and too stubborn and foolish to put out her hand and here was herself, Tony Holiday, tying herself all up in a strange snarl for the sake of somebody who wasn't a man at all as Holiday Hill standards ran. What queer creatures women were!

Other people besides Tony were inclined to score Phil's folly in making a hermit of himself. His sisters attacked him that very night on the subject of Sue Emerson's dance and accused him of being a "Grumpy Grandpa" and a grouch and various other uncomplimentary things when he announced that he wasn't going to attend the function.

"I'm the authentic T.B.M.," he parried from his perch on the porch railing. "I've cut out dancing."

"More idiot you!" retorted Charley promptly. "Mums, do tell Phil it is all nonsense making such an oyster in a shell of himself."

Mrs. Lambert smiled and looked up at her tall young son, looked rather hard for a moment.

"I think the twins are right, Phil," she said. "You are working too hard. You don't allow yourself any relaxation."

"Oh, yes I do. Only my idea of relaxation doesn't happen to coincide with the twins. Dancing in this sort of weather with your collar slumping and the perspiration rolling in tidal waves down your manly brow doesn't strike me as being a particularly desirable diversion."

"H-mp!" sniffed Charley. "You didn't object to dancing last summer when it was twice as hot. You went to a dance almost every night when Carlotta was visiting Tony. You know you did."

"I wasn't a member of the esteemed firm of Stuart Lambert and Son last summer. A lily of the field can afford to dance all night. I'm a working man I'd have you know."

"Well, I think you might come just this once to please us," joined in Clare, the other twin. "You are a gorgeous dancer, Phil. I'd rather have a one step with you than any man I know." Clare always beguiled where Charley bullied, a method much more successful in the long run as Charley sometimes grudgingly admitted after the fact.

Phil smiled now at pretty Clare and promised to think about it and the twins flew off across the street to visit with Tony and Ruth whom the whole Hill adored.

"Phil dear, aren't you happy?" asked Mrs. Lambert. "Have we asked too much of you expecting you to settle down at home with us?"

"Why yes, Mums. I'm all right." Phil left his post on the rail and dropped into a chair beside his mother. Perhaps he did it purposely lest she see too much. "Don't get notions in your head. I like living in Dunbury. I wouldn't live in a city for anything and I like being with Dad not to mention the rest of you."

Mrs. Lambert shifted her position also. She wanted to see her son's face; just as much as he didn't want her to see it.

"Possibly that is all so but you aren't happy for all that. You can't fool mother eyes, my dear."

Phil looked straight at her then with a little rueful smile.

"I reckon I can't," he admitted. "Very well then. I am not entirely happy but it is nobody's fault and nothing anybody can help."

"Philip, is it a girl?"

How they dread the girl in their sons' lives—these mothers! The very possibility of her in the abstract brings a shadow across the path.

"Yes, Mums, it is a girl."

Mrs. Lambert rose and went over to where her son sat, running her fingers through his hair as she had been wont to do when the little boy Phil was in trouble of any sort.

"I am very sorry, dear boy," she said. "It won't help to talk about it?"

"I am afraid not. Don't worry, Mums. It is just—well, it hurts a little just now that's all."

She kissed his forehead and went back to her chair. It hurt her to know her boy was being hurt, hurt her almost as much to know she could not help him, she must just let him close the door on his grief and bear it alone.

Yet she respected his reserve and loved him the better for it. Phil was like that always. He never cried out when he was hurt. She remembered how long ago the little boy Phil had come to her with a small finger just released from a slamming door that had crushed it unmercifully, the tears streaming down his cheeks but uttering no sound. She recalled another incident of years later, when the coach had been obliged to put some one else in Phil's place on the team the last minute because his sprained ankle had been bothering. She and Stuart had come on for the game. It had been a bitter disappointment to them all. To the boy it had been little short of a tragedy. But he had smiled bravely at her in spite of the trouble in his blue eyes. "Don't mind, Mums. It is all right," he had said steadily. "We've got to win. We can't risk my darned ankle's flopping. It's the bleachers for me. The game's the thing."

The game had always been the thing for Phil. Even in his blundering, willful boyhood he had played hard and played fair and taken defeat like a man when things had gone against him.

There was a moment's silence. Then Mrs. Lambert spoke again.

"Phil, I wish you would go to the dance with the girls. It will please them and be good for you. You can't shut yourself away from everything the way you are doing, if you are going to make Dunbury your home. Your father never has. He has always given himself freely to it, worked with it, played with it, made it a real part of himself. You mustn't start out by building a wall around yourself."

"Am I doing that, Mums?" Phil's voice was sober.

"I am afraid you are, Phil. It troubles your father. He was so disappointed when you wouldn't serve on the library committee. They were disappointed too. They didn't expect it of your father's son."

"I—I wasn't interested."

"No, you weren't interested. That was the trouble. You ought to have been. You have had your college training, the world of books has been thrown wide open for you. You come back here and aren't interested in seeing that others less fortunate get the right kind of books into their hands and heads. I don't want to preach, dear. But education isn't only a privilege. It is a responsibility."

"Maybe you are right, Mums. I didn't think of it that way. I just didn't want to bother. I was—well, I was thinking too much about myself I suppose."

"Youth is apt to. There were other things too. When they asked you to take charge of the Fourth of July pageant, to dig up Dunbury's past history and make it live for us again, your father and I both thought you would enjoy it. He was tremendously excited about it, full of ideas to help. But the project fell through because nobody would undertake the leadership. You were too busy. Every one was too busy."

"But, Mums, I was busy," Phil defended himself. "It is no end of a job to put things like that through properly."

"Most things worth doing are no end of a job. Your father would have taken it with all the rest he has on his hands and made a success of it. But he was hurt by your high handed refusal to have anything to do with it and he let it go, though you know having Fourth of July community celebrations is one of his dearest hobbies—always has been since he used to fight so hard to get rid of the old, wretched noise, law breaking and rowdyism kind of village celebration you and the other young Dunbury vandals delighted in."

Phil flushed at that. The point went home. He remembered vividly his boyish self tearing reluctantly from Doctor Holiday's fireworks impelled by an unbearably guilty conscience to confess to Stuart Lambert that his own son had been a transgressor against the law. Boy as he was, he had gotten out of the interview with his father that night a glimpse into the ideal citizenship which Stuart Lambert preached and lived and worked for. He had understood a little then. He understood better now having stood beside his father man to man.

"I am sorry, Mums. I would have done the thing if I'd known Dad wanted me to. Why didn't he say so?"

Mrs. Lambert smiled.

"Dad doesn't say much about what he wants. You will have to learn to keep your eyes open and find out for yourself. I did."

"Any more black marks on my score? I may as well eat the whole darned pie at once." Phil's smile was humorous but his eyes were troubled. It was a bit hard when you had been thinking you had played your part fairly creditably to discover you had been fumbling your cues wretchedly all along.

"Only one other thing. We were both immensely disappointed when you wouldn't take the scout-mastership they offered you. Father believes tremendously in the movement. He thinks it is going to be the making of the next generation of men. He would have liked you to be a Scoutmaster and when you wouldn't he went on the Scout Troop Committee himself though he really could not spare the time."

"I see," said Phil. "I guess I've been pretty blind. Funny part of it is I really wanted to take the Scoutmaster job but I thought Dad would think it took too much of my time. Anything more?" he asked.

"Not a thing. Haven't you had quite enough of a lecture for once?" his mother smiled back.

"I reckon I needed it. Thank you, Mums. I'll turn over a new leaf if it isn't too late. I'll go to the dance and I'll ask them if there is still a place for me on the library committee and I'll start a troop of Scouts myself—another bunch I've had my eyes on for some time."

"That will please Dad very much. It pleases me too. Boys are very dear to my heart. I wonder if you can guess why, Philip, my son?"

"I wish I'd been a better son, Mums. Some chaps never seem to cause their-mothers any worry or heart ache. I wasn't that kind. I am afraid I am not even yet."

"No son is, dear, unless there is something wrong with him or the mother. Mothering means heart ache and worries, plus joy and pride and the joy and pride more than makes up for the rest. It has for me a hundred times over even when I had a rather bad little boy on my hands and now I have a man—a man I am glad and proud to call my son."



CHAPTER XVII

A WEDDING RING IT WAS HARD TO REMEMBER

It was a grilling hot August afternoon. The young Holidays were keeping cool as best they could out in the yard. Ruth lay in the canopied hammock against a background of a hedge of sweet peas, pink and white and lavender, looking rather like a dainty, frail little flower herself. Tony in cool white was seated on a scarlet Navajo blanket, leaning against the apple tree. Around her was a litter of magazines and an open box of bonbons. Ted was stretched at his ease on the grass, gazing skyward, a cigarette in his lips, enjoying well-earned rest after toil. Larry occupied the green garden bench in the lee, of the hammock. He was unsolaced either by candy or smoke and looked tired and not particularly happy. There were dark shadows under his gray eyes which betrayed that he was not getting the quota of sleep that healthy youth demands. His eyes were downcast now, apparently absorbed in contemplation of a belated dandelion at his feet.

"Ruth, why don't you come down to the dance with us tonight?" demanded Tony suddenly dropping her magazine. "You are well enough now and I know you would enjoy it. It is lovely down on the island where the pavilion is—all quiet and pine-woodsy. You needn't dance if you don't want to. You could just lie in the hammock and listen to the music and the water. We'd come and talk to you between dances so you wouldn't be lonesome. Do come."

"Oh, I couldn't." Ruth's voice was dismayed, her blue eyes filled with alarm at the suggestion.

"Why couldn't you?" persisted Tony. "You aren't going to just hide away forever are you? It is awfully foolish, isn't it, Larry?" she appealed to her brother.

He did not answer, but he did transfer his gaze from the dandelion to Ruth as if he were considering his sister's proposition.

"Sure, it's foolish," Ted replied for him, sitting up. "Come on down and dance the first foxtrot with me, sweetness. You'll like it. Honest you will, when you get started."

"Oh, I couldn't" reiterated Ruth.

"That is nonsense. Of course, you could," objected Tony. "It is just your notion, Ruthie. You have kept away from people so long you are scared. But you would get over that in a minute and truly it would be lots better for you. Tell her it would, Larry. She is your patient."

"I don't know whether it would or not," returned Larry in his deliberate way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded, impulsive Tony.

"Then you are a rotten doctor," she flung back. "I know better than that myself and Uncle Phil agrees with me. I asked him."

"Ruth's my patient, as you reminded me a moment ago. She isn't Uncle Phil's." There was an unusual touchiness in the young doctor's voice. He was not professionally aggressive as a rule.

"Well, I wouldn't be a know-it-all, if she is," snapped Tony. "Maybe Uncle Phil knows a thing or two more than you do yet. And anyway you are only a man and I am a girl and I know that girls need people and fun and dancing. It isn't good for anybody to hide away by herself. I believe you are keeping Ruth away from everybody on purpose."

The hot weather and other things were setting Tony's nerves a bit on edge. She felt slightly belligerent and not precisely averse to picking a quarrel with her aggravatingly quiet brother, if he gave her half an opening.

Larry flushed and scowled at that and ordered her sharply not to talk nonsense. Whereupon Ted intervened.

"I'm all on your side, Tony. Of course it is bad for Ruth not to see anybody but us. Any fool would know that. Dancing may be the very thing for her anyhow. You can't tell till you try. Maybe when you are foxtrotting with me, goldilocks, you'll remember how it seemed to have some other chap's arm around you. It might be like laying a fuse."

"I'm glad you all know so much about my business," said Larry testily. "You make me tired, both of you."

"Oh," begged Ruth, her blue eyes full of trouble. "Please, please, don't quarrel about me."

"I beg your pardon," apologized Larry. "See here, would you be willing to try it, just as an experiment? Would you go down there for a little while tonight with us?"

The blue eyes met the gray ones.

"If you—wanted me to," faltered the blue-eyes.

"Would you mind it very much?" Larry leaned forward. His voice was low, solicitous. Tony, listening, resented it a little. She didn't see why Larry had to keep his good manners for somebody outside the family. He might have spoken a little more politely to herself, she thought. She had only been trying to be nice to Ruth.

"Not—if you would take care of me and not let people talk to me too much," Ruth answered the solicitous tone.

"I will," promised Larry. "You needn't talk to a soul if you don't want to. I'll ward 'em off. And you can dance if you want to—one dance anyway."

"With me," announced Ted complacently from the grass. "My bid was in first. Don't you forget, Miss Peaseblossom." Ted had a multitude of pet names for Ruth. They slipped off his tongue easily, as water falling over a cliff.

"No, with me," said his brother shortly.

"Gee, I wish I were a doctor! It gives you a hideous advantage."

"But I haven't anything to wear," exclaimed Ruth, coming next to the really sole and only supreme woman question.

"We'll fix that easy as easy," said Tony, amicable again now. "I've a darling blue organdy that will look sweet on you—just the color of your eyes. Don't you worry a minute, honey. Your fairy godmother will see to all that. All I ask is that you won't let that old ogre of an M.D. change his mind and say you can't go. It isn't good for Larry to obey him so meekly. He is getting to be a regular tyrant."

A moment later Doctor Holiday joined the group, dropped on the bench beside Larry and was informed by Tony that Ruth was to go on an adventure down the Hill; to Sue Emerson's dance in fact.

"Isn't that great?" she demanded.

"Superb," he teased. Then he smiled approval at Ruth. "Good idea, Larry," he added to his nephew. "Glad you thought of it."

"I didn't think of it. Tony did. You really approve?" The gray eyes were a little anxious. Larry was by no means a know-it-all doctor, as his sister accused him. He had too little rather than too much confidence in his own judgment in fact.

"I certainly do. Go to it, little lady. May be the best medicine in the world for you."

"Now you are talking," exulted Ted. "That's what Tony and I said and Larry wanted to execute us on the spot for daring to have an opinion at all."

"Scare you much to think of it?" Doctor Holiday asked Ruth, prudently ignoring this last sally.

"A good deal," sighed Ruth. "But I'll try not to be too much scared if Larry will go too and not let people ask questions."

The young doctor had long since become Larry to Ruth. It was too confusing talking about two Doctor Holidays. Everybody in Dunbury said Larry or Doctor Larry or at most, respectfully, Doctor Laurence.

"I'll let nobody talk to you but myself," said Larry.

"There you are!" flashed Tony. "You might just as well keep her penned up here in the yard. You want to keep her all to yourself."

She didn't mean anything in particular, only to be a little disagreeable, to pay Larry back for being so snappy. But to her amazement Ruth was suddenly blushing a lovely but startling blush and Larry was bending over to examine the hammock-hook in obvious confusion.

"Good gracious!" she thought in consternation. "Is that what's up? It can't be. I'm just imagining it. Larry wouldn't fall in love with any one who wore a wedding ring. He mustn't."

But she knew in her heart that whether Larry must or must not he had. A thousand signs betrayed the truth now that her eyes were open. Poor Larry! No wonder he was cross and unlike himself. And Ruth was so sweet—just the girl for him. And poor Uncle Phil! She herself was hurting him dreadfully keeping her secret about Alan and nobody knew what Ted had up his sleeve under his cloak of incredible virtue. And now here was Larry with a worse complication still. Oh dear! Would the three of them ever stop getting into scrapes as long as they lived? It was bad enough when they were children. It was infinitely worse now they were grown up and the scrapes were so horribly serious.

"I suppose you can't tear yourself away from your studies to attend a mere dance?" Doctor Holiday was asking of his younger nephew with a twinkle in his eyes when Tony recovered enough to listen again.

Ted sent his cigarette stub careening off into the shrubbery and grinned back at his uncle, a grin half merry, half defiant.

"Like fun, I can't!" he ejaculated. "I'm a union man, I am. I've done my stunt for the day. If anybody thinks I'm going to stick my nose in between the covers of a book before nine A.M. tomorrow he has a whole orchard of brand new little thinks growing up to stub his toes on, that's all."

"So the student life doesn't improve with intimate acquaintance?" The doctor's voice was still teasing, but there was more than teasing behind his questions. He was really interested in his nephew's psychology.

"Not a da—ahem—darling bit. If I had my way every book in existence would be placed on a huge funeral pyre and conflagrated instantly. Moreover, it would be a criminal offence punishable by the death sentence for any person to bring another of the infernal nuisances into the world. That is my private opinion publicly expressed." So saying Ted picked himself up from the grass and sauntered off toward the house.

His uncle chuckled. He was sorry the boy did not take more cordially to books, since it looked as if there were a good two years of them ahead at the least. But he liked the honesty that would not pretend to anything it did not feel, and he liked even better the spirit that had kept the lad true to his pledge of honest work without a squirm or grumble through all these weeks of grilling summer weather when sustained effort of any sort, particularly mental effort, was undoubtedly a weariness and abomination to flesh and soul, to his restless, volatile, ease-addicted, liberty loving young ward. The boy had certainly shown more grit and grace than he had credited him with possessing.

The village clock struck six. Tony sprang up from her blanket and began to gather up her possessions.

"I never get over a scared, going-to-be-scolded feeling running down my spine when the clock strikes and I'm not ready for supper," she said. "Poor dear Granny! She certainly worked hard trying to make truly proper persons out of us wild Arabs. It isn't her fault if she didn't succeed, is it Larry?" She smiled at her brother—a smile that meant in Tony language "I am sorry I was cross. Let's make up."

He smiled back in the same spirit. He rose taking the rug and magazines from his sister's hand and walked with her toward the house.

Ruth sat up in her hammock and smoothed her disarrayed blonde hair.

"I am glad you are going down the Hill," said the doctor to her. "It is a fine idea, little lady. Do you lots of good."

"Doctor Holiday, I think I ought to go away," announced Ruth suddenly. "I am perfectly well now, and there is no reason why I should stay."

"Tired of us?"

"Oh no! I could never be that. I love it here and love all of you. But after all I am only a stranger."

"Not to us, Ruthie. Listen. I would like to explain how I feel about this, not from your point of view but from ours."

Tony would be going away soon. They needed a home daughter very much, needed Ruth particularly as she had such a wonderful way with the children, who adored her, and because Granny loved her so well, though she did not love many people who were not Holidays. And he and Larry needed her good fairy ministrations. They had not been unmindful, though perhaps manlike they had not expressed their appreciation of the way fresh flowers found their way to the offices daily, and they were kept from being snowed under by the newspapers of yester week. In short Doctor Holiday made it very clear that, if Ruth cared to stay she was wanted and needed very much in the House on the Hill. And Ruth touched and grateful and happy promised to remain.

"If you think it is all right—" she added with rather sudden blush, "for me to stay when I am married or not married and don't know which."

Whereupon Doctor Holiday, who happened not to observe the blush, remarked that he couldn't see what that had to do with it. Anyway she seemed like such a child to them that they hardly remembered the wedding ring at all.

Ruth blushed again at that and wished she dared confess that she was afraid the wedding ring had a good deal to do with the situation in the eyes of one Holiday at least. But she could not bring herself to speak the fatal word which might banish her from the dear Hill and from Larry, who had come to be even dearer.

A dozen times, while she was dressing for the dance later, Ruth felt like crying out to Tony in the next room that she could not go, that she dared not face strangers, that it was too hard. But she set her lips firmly and did nothing of the sort. Larry wanted her to do it. She wouldn't disappoint him if it killed her.

Oh dear! Why did she always have to do everything as a case, never just as a girl. She couldn't even be natural as a girl. She had to be maybe married. She hated the ring which seemed to her a symbol of bondage to a past that was dead and yet still clutched her with cold hands. She had a childish impulse to fling the ring out of the window where she could never—never see it again. If it wasn't for the ring—

She interrupted her own thoughts, blushing hotly again. She knew she had meant to go on, "If it were not for the ring she could marry Larry Holiday." She mustn't think about that. She must not forget the ring, nor let Larry forget it. She must not let him love her. It was a terrible thing she was doing. He was unhappy—dreadfully unhappy and it was all her fault. And by and by they would all see it. Tony had seen it today, she was almost sure. And Doctor Holiday would see it. He saw so much it was a wonder he had not seen it long before this. They would hate her for hurting Larry and spoiling his life. She could not bear to have them hate her when she loved them so and they had been so kind and good to her. She must go away. She must. Maybe Larry would forget her if she wasn't always there right under his eyes.

But how could she go? Doctor Philip would think it queer and ungrateful of her after she had promised to stay. How could she desert him and the children and dear Granny? And if she went what could she do? What use was she anyway but to be a trouble and a burden to everybody? It would have been better, much better, if Larry had left her to die in the wreck.

Why didn't Geoffrey Annersley come and get her, if there was a Geoffrey Annersley? She knew she would hate him, but she wished he would come for all that. Anything was better than making Larry suffer, making all the Holidays suffer through him. Oh why hadn't she died, why hadn't she?

But in her heart Ruth knew she did not want to die. She wanted to live. She wanted life and love and happiness and Larry Holiday.

And then Tony stood on the threshold, smiling friendly encouragement.

"Ready, hon? Oh, you look sweet! That blue is lovely for you. It never suited me at all. Blue is angel color and I have too much—well, of the other thing in my composition to wear it. Come on. The boys have been whistling impatience for half an hour and I don't want to scare Larry out of going. It is the first function he has condescended to attend in a blue moon."

On the porch Ted and Larry waited, two tall, sturdy, well-groomed, fine-looking youths, bearing the indefinable stamp of good birth and breeding, the inheritance of a long line of clean strong men and gentle women—the kind of thing not forged in one generation but in many.

They both rose as the girls appeared. Larry crossed over to Ruth. His quick gaze took in her nervousness and trouble of mind.

"Are you all right, Ruth? You mustn't let us bully you into going if you really don't want to."

"No, I am all right. I do want to—with you," she added softly.

"We'll all go over in the launch," announced Ted, but Larry interposed the fact that he and Ruth were going in the canoe. Ruth would get too tired if she got into a crowd.

"More professional graft," complained Ted. He was only joking but Tony with her sharpened sight knew that it was thin ice for Larry and suspected he had non-professional reasons for wanting Ruth alone in the canoe with him that night. Poor Larry! It was all a horrible tangle, just as her affair with Alan was.

It was a night made for lovers, still and starry. Soft little breezes came tiptoeing along the water from fragrant nooks ashore and stopped in their course to kiss Ruth's face as she lay content and lovely among the scarlet cushions, reading the eloquent message of Larry Holiday's gray eyes.

They did not talk much. They were both a little afraid of words. They felt as if they could go on riding in perfect safety along the edge of the precipice so long as neither looked over or admitted out loud that there was a precipice.



CHAPTER XVIII

A YOUNG MAN IN LOVE

The dance was well in progress when Larry and Ruth arrived. The latter was greeted cordially and not too impressively by gay little Sue Emerson, their hostess, and her friends. Ruth was ensconced comfortably in a big chair where she could watch the dancers and talk as much or little as she pleased. Everybody was so pleasant and natural and uncurious that she did not feel frightened or strange at all, and really enjoyed the little court she held between dances. Pretty girls and pleasant lads came to talk with her, the latter besieging her with invitations to dance which she refused so sweetly that they found the little Goldilocks more charming than ever for her very denial.

They rallied Larry however on his rigorous dragonship and finally Ruth herself dismissed him to dance with his hostess as a proper guest should. She never meant he must stick to her every moment anyway. That was absurd. He rose to obey reluctantly; but paused to ask if she wouldn't dance with him just once. No, she couldn't—didn't even know whether she could. He mustn't try to make her. And seeing she was in earnest, Larry left her. But Ted came skating down the floor to her and he begged for just one dance.

"Oh, I couldn't, Ted, truly I couldn't," she denied.

But obeying a sudden impulse Ted had swooped down upon her, picked her up and before she really knew what was happening she had slid into step with him and was whirling off down the floor in his arms.

"Didn't I tell you, sweetness?" he exulted. "Of course you can dance. What fairy can't? Tired?" He bent over to ask with the instinctive gentleness that was in all Holiday men.

Ruth shook her head. She was exhilarated, excited, tense, happy. She could dance—she could. It was as easy and natural as breathing. She did not want to stop. She wanted to go on and on. Then suddenly something snapped. They came opposite Sue and Larry. The former called a gay greeting and approval. Larry said nothing. His face was dead white, his gray eyes black with anger. Both Ted and Ruth saw and understood and the lilt went out of the dance for both of them.

"Oh Lord!" groaned Ted. "Now I've done it. I'm sorry, Ruth. I didn't suppose the old man would care. Don't see why he should it you are willing. Come on, just one more round before the music stops and we're both beheaded."

But Ruth shook her head. There was no more joy for her after that one glimpse of Larry's face.

"Take me to a seat, Ted, please. I'm tired."

He obeyed and she sank down in the chair, white and trembling, utterly exhausted. She was hurt and aching through and through. How could she? How could she have done that to Larry when he loved her so? How could she have let Ted make her dance with him when she had refused to dance with Larry? No wonder he was angry. It was terrible—cruel.

But he mustn't make a scene with Ted. He mustn't. She cast an apprehensive glance around the room. Larry was invisible. A forlornness came over her, a despair such as she had never experienced even in that dreadful time after the wreck when she realized she had forgotten everything. She felt as if she were sinking down, down in a fearful black sea and that there was no help for her anywhere. Larry had deserted her. Would he never come back?

In a minute Tony and the others were beside her, full of sympathetic questions. How had it seemed to dance again? Wasn't it great to find she could still do it? How had she dared to do it while Larry was off guard? Why wouldn't she, couldn't she dance with this one or that one if she could dance with Ted Holiday? But they were quick to see she was really tired and troubled and soon left her alone to Tony's ministrations.

"Ruth, what is the trouble? Where is Larry? And Ted is gone, too. What happened?" Tony's voice was anxious. She hadn't seen Larry's face, but she knew Larry and could guess at the rest.

"Ted made me dance with him. I didn't mean to. But when we got started I couldn't bear to stop, it was so wonderful to do it and to find I could. I—am afraid Larry didn't like it."

"I presume he didn't," said Larry's sister drily. "Let him be angry if he wants to be such a silly. It was quite all right, Ruthie. Ted has just as much right to dance with you as Larry has."

"I am afraid Larry doesn't think so and I don't think so either."

Tony squeezed the other girl's hand.

"Never mind, honey. You mustn't take it like that. You are all of a tremble. Larry has a fearful temper, but he will hang on to it for your sake if for no other reason. He won't really quarrel with Ted. He never does any more. And he won't say a word to you."

"I'd rather he would," sighed Ruth. "You are all so good to me and I—am making a dreadful lot of trouble for you all the time, though I don't mean to and I love you so."

"It isn't your fault, Ruthie, not a single speck of it. Oh, yes. I mean just what you mean. Not simply Larry's being so foolish as to lose his temper about this little thing, but the whole big thing of your caring for each other. It is all hard and mixed up and troublesome; but you are not to blame, and Larry isn't to blame, and it will all come out right somehow. It has to."

As soon as Ted had assured himself that Ruth was all right in his sister's charge he had looked about for Larry. Sue was perched on a table eating marshmallows she had purloined from somewhere with Phil Lambert beside her, but there was no Larry to be seen.

Ted stepped outside the pavilion. He was honestly sorry his brother was hurt and angry. He realized too late that maybe he hadn't behaved quite fairly or wisely in capturing Ruth like that, though he hadn't meant any harm, and had had not the faintest idea Larry would really care, care enough to be angry as Ted had not seen him for many a long day. Larry's temper had once been one of the most active of the family skeletons. It had not risen easily, but when it did woe betide whatever or whomever it met in collision. By comparison with Larry's rare outbursts of rage Tony's frequent ebullitions were as summer zephyrs to whirlwinds.

But that was long past history. Larry had worked manfully to conquer his familiar demon and had so far succeeded that sunny Ted had all but forgotten the demon ever existed. But he remembered now, had remembered with consternation when he saw the black passion in the other's face as they met on the floor of the dance hall.

Puzzled and anxious he stared down the slope toward the water. Larry was just stepping into the canoe. Was he going home, leaving Ruth to the mercies of the rest of them, or was he just going off temporarily by himself to fight his temper to a finish as he had been accustomed to do long ago when he had learned to be afraid and ashamed of giving into it? Ted hesitated a moment, debating whether to call him back and get the row over, if row there was to be, or to let him get away by himself as he probably desired.

"Hang it! It's my fault. I can't let him go off like that. It just about kills him to take it out of himself that way. I'd rather he'd take it out of me."

With which conclusion Ted shot down the bank whistling softly the old Holiday Hill call, the one Dick had used that day on the campus to summon himself to the news that maybe Larry was killed.

Larry did not turn. Ted reached the shore with one stride.

"Larry," he called. "I say, Larry."

No answer. The older lad picked up the paddle, prepared grimly to push off, deaf, to all intents and purposes to the appeal in the younger one's voice.

But Ted Holiday was not an easily daunted person. With one flying leap he landed in the canoe, all but upsetting the craft in his sudden descent upon it.

The two youths faced each other. Larry was still white, and his sombre eyes blazed with half subdued fires. He looked anything but hospitable to advances, however well meant.

"Better quit," he advised slowly in a queer, quiet voice which Ted knew was quiet only because Larry was making it so by a mighty effort of will. "I'm not responsible just now. We'll both be sorry if you don't leave me alone."

"I won't quit, Larry. I can't. It was my fault. Confound it, old man! Please listen. I didn't mean to make you mad. Come ashore and punch my fool head if it will make you feel any better."

Still Larry said nothing, just sat hunched in a heap, running his fingers over the handle of the paddle. He no longer even looked at Ted. His mouth was set at its stubbornest.

Ted rushed on, desperately in earnest, entirely sincere in his willingness to undergo any punishment, himself, to help Larry.

"Honest, I didn't mean to make trouble," he pleaded. "I just picked her up and made her dance on impulse, though she told me she wouldn't and couldn't. I never thought for a minute you would care. Maybe it was a mean trick. I can see it might have looked so, but I didn't intend it that way. Gee, Larry! Say something. Don't swallow it all like that. Get it out of your system. I'd rather you'd give me a dozen black eyes than sit still and feel like the devil."

Larry looked up then. His face relaxed its sternness a little. Even the hottest blaze of wrath could not burn quite so fiercely when exposed to a generous penitence like his young brother's. He understood Ted was working hard not only to make peace but to spare himself the sharp battle with the demon which, as none knew better that Larry Holiday, did, indeed, half kill.

"Cut it, Ted," he ordered grimly. "'Nough said. I haven't the slightest desire to give you even one black eye at present, though I may as well admit if you had been in my hands five minutes ago something would have smashed."

"Don't I know it?" Ted grinned a little. "Gee, I thought my hour had struck!"

"What made you come after me then?"

Ted's grin faded.

"You know why I came, old man. You know I'd let you pommel my head off any time if it could help you anyhow. Besides it was my fault as I told you. I didn't mean to be mean. I'll do any penance you say."

Larry picked up the paddle.

"Your penance is to let me absolutely alone for fifteen minutes. You had better go ashore though. You will miss a lot of dances."

"Hang the dances! I'm staying."

Ted settled down among the cushions against which Ruth's blonde head had nestled a few hours ago. He took out his watch, struck a match, looked at the time, lit a cigarette with the same match, replaced the watch and relapsed into silence.

The canoe shot down the lake impelled by long, fierce strokes. Larry was working off the demon. Far away the rhythmic beat of dance music reached them faintly. Now and then a fish leaped and splashed or a bull frog bellowed his hoarse "Better go home" into the silence. Otherwise there was no sound save the steady ripple of the water under the canoe.

Presently Ted finished his cigarette, sent its still ruddy remains flashing off into the lake where it fell with a soft hiss, took out his watch again, lit another match, considered the time, subtracted gravely, looked up and announced "Time's up, Larry."

Larry laid down the paddle and a slow reluctant smile played around the corners of his mouth, though there was sharp distress still in his eyes. He loathed losing his temper like that. It sickened him, filled him with spiritual nausea, a profound disgust for himself and his mastering weakness.

"I've been a fool, kid," he admitted. "I'm all right now. You were a trump to stand by me. I appreciate it."

"Don't mention it," nonchalantly from Ted "Going back to the pavilion?"

His brother nodded, resumed the paddle and again the canoe shot through the waters, this time toward the music instead of away from it.

"I suppose you know why your dancing with Ruth made me go savage," said Larry after a few moments of silence.

"Damned if I do," said Ted cheerfully. "It doesn't matter. I don't need a glossary and appendix. Suit yourself as to the explanations. I put my foot in it. I've apologized. That is the end of it so far as I am concerned unless you want to say something more yourself. You don't have to you know."

"It was plain, fool movie stuff jealousy. That is the sum and substance of it. I'm in love with her. I couldn't stand her dancing with you when she had refused me. I could almost have killed you for a minute. I am ashamed but I couldn't help it. That is the way it was. Now—forget it, please."

Ted swallowed hard and pulled his forelock in genuine perturbation.

"Good Lord, Larry!" he blurted. "I—"

His brother held up an imperious warning hand.

"I said 'forget it.' Don't make me want to dump you now, after coming through the rest."

Ted saluted promptly.

"Ay, ay, sir! It's forgot. Only perhaps you'll let me apologize again, underscored, now I understand. Honest, I'm no end sorry, Larry."

The other nodded acceptance of the underscored apology and again silence had its way.

As they landed Ted fastened the canoe and for a moment the two brothers stood side by side in the starlight. Larry put out his hand. Ted took it. Their eyes met, said more than any words could have expressed.

"Thank you, Ted. You've been great—helped a lot."

Larry's voice was a little unsteady, his eyes were full of trouble and shame.

"Ought to, after starting the conflagration," said Ted. "I'll attend to the general explanations. You go to Ruth."

More than one person had wondered at the mysterious disappearance of the two Holidays. It is quite usual, and far from unexpected, when two young persons of the opposite sex drift off somewhere under the stars on a summer night without giving any particular account of themselves; but one scarcely looks for that sort of social—or unsocial—eccentricity from two youths, especially two brothers. Nobody but Ruth and Tony, and possibly shrewd-eyed Sue, suspected a quarrel, but everybody was curious and ready to burst into interrogation upon the simultaneous return of the two young men which was quite as sudden as their vanishing had been.

"Larry and I had a wager up," announced Ted to Sue in a perfectly clear, distinct voice which carried across the length of the small hall now that the music was silent. "He said he could paddle down to the point, current against him, faster than I could paddle back, current with me. We took a notion to try it out tonight. Please forgive us, Susanna, my dear. A Holiday is a creature of impulse you know."

Sue made a little face at the speaker. She was quite sure he was lying about the wager, but she was a good hostess and played up to his game.

"You don't deserve to be forgiven, either of you," she sniffed. "Especially Larry who never comes to parties and when he does has to go off and do a silly thing like that. Who won though? I will ask that." She smiled at Ted and he grinned back.

"Larry, of course. Give me a dance, Sue. I've got my second wind."

"Bless Ted!" thought Tony, listening to her brother's glib excuses. "Thank goodness he can lie like that. Larry never could." And as her eyes met Ted's a moment later when they passed each other in the maze of dancers he murmured "All right" in her ear and she was well content. Bless Ted, indeed!

Meanwhile Larry had gone, as Ted bade him, straight to Ruth. He bent over her tired little white face, an agony of remorse in his own.

"Ruth, forgive me. I'll never forgive myself."

"Don't, Larry. It is I who ought to be sorry and I am—oh so sorry—you don't know. Ted didn't mean any harm. I ought not to have let him do it. It was my fault."

"There was nobody at fault except me and my fool temper. I am desperately ashamed of myself Ruth. I've left you all alone all this time and I promised I wouldn't. You'll never trust me again and I don't deserve to be trusted. It doesn't do any good to say I am sorry. It can't undo what I did. I didn't dare stay and that's the fact. I didn't know what I'd do to Ted if he got in my way. I felt—murderous."

"Larry!"

"I know it sounds awful. It is awful. It is an old battle. I thought I'd won it, but I haven't. Don't look so scared though. Nothing happened. Ted came after me like the corking big-hearted kid he is and brought me to, in half the time I could have done it for myself. It is thanks to him I'm here now. But never mind that. It is only you that matters. Shall I take you home? I don't deserve it, but if you will let me it will show you forgive me a little bit anyway," he finished humbly.

"Don't look so dreadfully unhappy, Larry. It is over now, and of course I forgive you if you think there is anything to forgive. I'm so thankful you didn't quarrel with Ted. I was awfully worried and so was Tony. She watched the door every minute till you came back."

"I suppose so," groaned Larry. "I made one horrible mess of everything for you all. Are you ready to go?"

"I'd like to dance with you once first, Larry, if—if you would like to."

"Would I like to!" Larry's face lost its mantle of gloom, was sudden sunshine all over. "Will you really dance with me—after the rotten way I've behaved?"

"Of course, I will. I wanted to all the time, but I was afraid. But when Ted made me it all came back and I loved it, only it was you I wanted to dance with most. You know that, don't you, Larry, dear?" The last word was very low, scarcely more than a breath, but Larry heard it and it nearly undid him. A flood of long-pent endearments trembled on his lips. But Ruth held up a hand of warning.

"Don't, Larry. We mustn't spoil it. We've got to remember the ring."

"Damn the ring!" he exploded. "I beg your pardon." Larry was genuinely shocked at his own bad manners. "I don't know why I'm such a brute tonight. Let's dance."

And to the delight and relief of the younger Holidays, Larry and Ruth joined the dancers.

The dance over, they made their farewells. Larry guided Ruth down the slope, his arm around her ostensibly for her support, and helped her into the canoe. Once more they floated off over the quiet water, under the quiet stars. But their young hearts were anything but quiet. Their love was no longer an unacknowledged thing. Neither knew just what was to be done with it; but there it was in full sight, as both admitted in joy and trepidation and silence.

As Larry held open the door for her to step inside the quiet hall he bent over the girl a moment, taking both her hands in his. Then he drew away abruptly and bolted into the living room, leaving her to grope her way up stairs in the dark alone.

"I wonder," she murmured to herself later as she stood before her mirror shaking out her rippling golden locks from their confining net. "I wonder if it would have been so terrible if he had kissed me just that once. Sometimes I wish he weren't quite so—so Holidayish."



CHAPTER XIX

TWO HOLIDAYS MAKE CONFESSION

The next evening Doctor Holiday listened to a rather elaborate argument on the part of his older nephew in favor of the latter's leaving Dunbury immediately in pursuit of his specialist training that he had planned to go in for eventually.

"You are no longer contented here with me—with us?" questioned the older man when the younger had ended his exposition.

Larry's quick ear caught the faint hurt in his uncle's voice and hastened to deny the inference.

"It isn't that, Uncle Phil. I am perfectly satisfied—happier here with you that I would be anywhere else in the world. You have been wonderful to me. I am not such an ungrateful idiot as not to understand and appreciate what a start it has given me to have you and your name and work behind me. Only—maybe I've been under your wing long enough. Maybe I ought to stand on my feet."

Doctor Holiday studied the troubled young face opposite him. He was fairly certain that he wasn't getting the whole or the chief reasons which were behind this sudden proposition.

"Do you wish to go at once?" he asked. "Or will the first of the year be soon enough."

Larry flushed and fell to fumbling with a paper knife that lay on the desk.

"I—I meant to go right away," he stammered.

"Why?"

Larry was silent.

"I judge the evidence isn't all in," remarked the older doctor a little drily. "Am I going to hear the rest of it—the real reason for your decision to go just now?"

Still silence on Larry's part, the old obstinate set to his lips.

"Very well then. Suppose I take my turn. I think you haven't quite all the evidence yourself. Do you know Granny is dying?"

The paper knife fell with a click to the floor.

"Uncle Phil! No, I didn't know. Of course I knew it was coming but you mean—soon?"

"Yes, Larry, I mean soon. How soon no one can tell, but I should say three months would be too long to allow."

The boy brushed his hand across his eyes. He loved Granny. He had always seemed to understand her better than the others had and had been himself always the favorite. Moreover he was bound to her by a peculiar tie, having once saved her life, conquering his boyish fear to do so. It was hard to realize she was really going, that no one could save her now.

"I didn't know," he said again in a low voice.

"Ted will go back to college. I shall let Tony go to New York to study as she wishes, just as you had your chance. It isn't exactly the time for you to desert us, my boy."

"I won't, Uncle Phil. I'll stay."

"Thank you, son. I felt sure you wouldn't fail us. You never have. But I wish you felt as if you could tell me the other reason or reasons for going which you are keeping back. If it is they are stronger than the one I have given you for staying it is only fair that I should have them."

Larry's eyes fell. A slow flush swept his face, ran up to his very hair.

"My boy, is it Ruth?"

The gray eyes lifted, met the older man's grave gaze unfalteringly.

"Yes, Uncle Phil, it is Ruth. I thought you must have seen it before this. It seemed as if I were giving myself away, everything I did or didn't do."

"I have thought of it occasionally, but dismissed the idea as too fantastic. It hasn't been so obvious as it seemed to you no doubt. You have not made love to her?"

"Not in so many words. I might just as well have though. She knows. If it weren't for the ring—well, I think she would care too."

"I am very sorry, Larry. It looks like a bad business all round. Yet I can't see that you have much to blame yourself for. I withdraw my objections to your going away. If it seems best to you to go I haven't a word to say."

"I don't know whether it is best or not. I go round and round in circles trying to work it out. It seems cowardly to run away from it, particularly if I am needed here. A man ought not to pull up stakes just because things get a little hard. Besides Ruth would think she had driven me away. I know she would go herself if she guessed I was even thinking of going. And I couldn't stand that. I'd go to the north pole myself and stay forever before I would send her away from you all. I was so grateful to you for asking her to stay and making her feel she was needed. She was awfully touched and pleased. She told me last night."

The senior doctor considered, thought back to his talk with Ruth. Poor child! So that was what she had been trying to tell him. She had thought she ought to go away on Larry's account, just as he was thinking he ought to go on hers. Poor hapless youngsters caught in the mesh of circumstances! It was certainly a knotty problem.

"It isn't easy to say what is right and best to do," he said after a moment. "It is something you will have to decide for yourself. When you came to me you had decided it was best to go, had you not? Was there a specially urgent reason?"

Larry flushed again and related briefly the last night's unhappy incident.

"I'm horribly ashamed of the way I acted," he finished. "And the whole thing showed me I couldn't count on my self-control as I thought I could. I couldn't sleep last night, and I thought perhaps maybe the thing to do was to get out quick before I did any real damage. It doesn't matter about me. It is Ruth."

"Do you think you can stay on and keep a steady head for her sake and for ours?"

"I can, Uncle Phil. It is up to me to stick and I'll do it. Uncle Phil, how long must a woman in Ruth's position wait before she can legally marry?"

"Ruth's position is so unique that I doubt if there is any legal precedent for it. Ordinarily when the husband fails to put in appearance and the presumption is he is no longer living, the woman is considered free in the eyes of the law, after a certain number of years, varying I believe, in different states. With Ruth the affair doesn't seem to be a case of law at all. She is in a position which requires the utmost protection from those who love her as we do. The obligation is moral rather than legal. I wouldn't let my mind run on the marrying aspects of the case at present my boy."

"I—Uncle Phil, sometimes I think I'll just marry her anyway and let the rest of it take care of itself. There isn't any proof she is married—not the slightest shadow of proof," Larry argued with sudden heat.

His uncle's eyebrows went up. "Steady, Larry. A wedding ring is usually considered presumptive evidence of marriage."

"I don't care," flashed the boy, the tension of the past weeks suddenly snapping. "She loves me. I don't see what right anything has to come between us. What is a wedding ceremony when a man and woman belong to each other as we belong? Hanged if I don't think I'd be justified in marrying her tomorrow! There is nothing but a ring to prevent."

"There is a good deal more than a ring to prevent," said Doctor Holiday with some sternness. "What if you did do just that and her husband appeared in two months or six?"

"I don't believe she has a husband. If she had he would have come after her before this. We've waited. He's had time."

"You have waited scarcely two months, Larry. That is hardly enough time upon which to base finalities."

"What of it? I'm half crazy sometimes over the whole thing. I can't see things straight. I don't want to. I don't want anything but Ruth, whether she is married or not. I want her. Some day I'll ask her to go off with me and she will go. She will do anything I ask."

"Hold on, Larry lad. You are saying things you don't mean. You are the last man in the world to take advantage of a girl's defenseless position and her love for you to gratify your own selfish desires and perhaps wreck her life and your own."

Larry bit his lip, wheeled and went over to the window, staring out into the night. At last he turned back, white, but master of himself again.

"I beg your pardon, Uncle Phil. You are right. I was talking like a fool. Of course I'll do nothing of the kind. I won't do anything to harm Ruth anyway. I won't even make love to her—if I can help it," he qualified in a little lower tone.

"If you can't you had better go at once," said his uncle still a bit sternly. Then more gently. "I know you don't want to play the cad, Larry."

"I won't, Uncle Phil. I promise."

"Very well. I am satisfied with your word. Remember I am ready to help any way and if it gets too hard I'll make it easy at any time for you to go. But in the mean time we won't talk about it. The least said the better."

Larry nodded his assent to that and suddenly switched to another subject, asking his uncle what he knew about this Alan Massey with whom Tony was having such an extensive correspondence.

His uncle admitted that he didn't know much of anything about him, except that he was the inheritor of the rather famous Massey property and an artist of some repute.

"He has plenty of repute of other kinds," said Larry. "He is a thorough-going rotter, I infer. I made some inquiries from a chap who knows him. He has gone the pace and then some. It makes me sick to have Tony mixed up with a chap like that."

"You haven't said anything to her yourself?"

"No. Don't dare. It would only make it worse for me to tackle her. Neither she nor Ted will stand any interference from me. We are a cranky lot I am afraid. We all have what Dad used to call the family devil. So far as I know you are the only person on record that can manage him."

And Larry smiled rather shame-facedly at his uncle.

"I am afraid you will all three have to learn to manage your own particular familiar. Devils are rather personal property, Larry."

"Don't I know it? I got into mighty close range with mine last night, and just now for that matter. Anyway I am not prepared to do any preaching at anybody at present; but I would be awfully grateful to you if you will speak to Tony. Somebody has to. And you can do it a million times better than anyone else."

"Very well. I will see what I can do." And thus quietly Doctor Holiday accepted another burden on his broad shoulders.

The next day he found Tony on the porch reading one of the long letters which came to her so frequently in the now familiar, dashing script.

"Got a minute for me, niece o' mine?" he asked.

Tony slid Alan's letter back into its envelope and smiled up at her uncle.

"Dozens of them, nice uncle," she answered.

"It is getting well along in the summer and high time we decided a few things. Do you still want to go in for the stage business in the fall?"

"I want to very much, Uncle Phil, if you think it isn't too much like deserting Granny and the rest of you."

"No, you have earned it. I want you to go. I don't suppose because you haven't talked about Hempel's offer that it means you have forgotten it?"

"Indeed, I haven't forgotten it. For myself I would much rather get straight on the stage if I could and learn by doing it, but you would prefer to have me go to a regular dramatic school, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, Tony, I would. A year of preparation isn't a bit too much to get your bearings in before you take the grand plunge. I want you to be very sure that the stage is what you really want."

"I am sure of that already. I've been sure for ages. But I am perfectly willing to do the thing any way you want and I am more grateful than I can tell you that you are on my side about it. Are you going to tell Granny? It will about break her heart I am afraid." Tony's eyes were troubled. She did hate to hurt Granny; but on the other hand she couldn't wait forever to begin.

She did not see the shadow that crept over her uncle's face. Well he knew that long before Tony was before the footlights, Granny would be where prejudices and misunderstandings were no more; but he had no wish to mar the girl's happiness by betraying the truth just now.

"I think we are justified in indulging in a little camouflage there," he said. "We will tell Granny you are going to study art. Art covers a multitude of sins," he added with a lightness he was far from feeling. "One thing more, my dear. I have waited a good while to hear something about the young man who writes these voluminous letters."' He nodded at the envelope in Tony's lap. "I like his writing; but I should like to know something about him,—himself."

Tony flushed and averted her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up frankly.

"I haven't said anything because I didn't know what to say. He is Alan Massey, the artist. I met him at Carlotta's. He wants to marry me."

"But you have not already accepted him?"

"No, I couldn't. He—he isn't the kind of man you would want me to marry. He is trying to be, for my sake though. I think he will succeed. I told him if he wanted to ask me again next summer I would tell him what my answer would be."

"He is on probation then?"

"Yes."

"And you care for him?"

"I—think so."

"You don't know it?"

"No, Uncle Phil. I don't. He cares so much for me—so terribly much. And I don't know whether I care enough or not. I should have to care a great deal to overlook what he has been and done. Maybe it wasn't anything but midsummer madness and his wonderful dancing. We danced almost every night until I sent him away. And when we danced we seemed to be just one person. Aside from his dancing he fascinated me. I couldn't forget him or ignore him. He was—is—different from any man I ever knew. I feel differently about him from what I ever felt about any other man. Maybe it is love. Maybe it isn't. I—I thought it was last month."

Doctor Holiday shook his head dubiously.

"And you are not so sure now?" he questioned.

"Not always," admitted Tony. "I didn't want to love him. I fought it with all my might. I didn't want to be bothered with love. I wanted to be happy and free and make a great success of my work. But after Alan came all those things didn't seem to matter. I am afraid it goes rather deep, Uncle Phil. Sometimes I think he means more to me than even you and Larry and Ted do. It is strange. It isn't kind or loyal or decent. But that is the way it is. I have to be honest, even if it hurts."

Her dark eyes were wistful and beseeched forgiveness as they sought her uncle's. He did not speak and she went on swiftly, earnestly.

"Please don't ask me to break off with him, Uncle Phil. I couldn't do it, not only because I care for him too much, but because it would be cruel to him. He has gotten out of his dark forest. I don't want to drive him back into it. And that is what it would mean if I deserted him now. I have to go on, no matter what you or Larry or any one thinks about it."

She had risen now and stood before her uncle earnestly pleading her lover's cause and her own.

"It isn't fair to condemn a man forever because he has made mistakes back in the past. We don't any of us know what we would have been like if things had been different. Larry and Ted are fine. I am proud of their clean record. It would be horrible if people said things about either of them such as they say about Alan. But Larry and Ted have every reason to be fine. They have had you and Dad and Grandfather Holiday and the rest of them to go by. They have lived all their lives in the Holiday tradition of what a man should be. Alan has had nobody, nothing. Nobody ever helped him to see the difference between right and wrong and why it mattered which you chose. He does see now. He is trying to begin all over again and begin right. And I'm going to stand by him. I have to—even if I have to go against you, Uncle Phil."

There was a quiver—almost a sob in Tony's voice Her uncle drew her into his arms.

"All right, little girl. It is not an easy thing to swallow. I hate to have your shining whiteness touch pitch even for a minute. No, wait, dear. I am not going to condemn your lover. If he is sincerely in earnest in trying to clean the slate, I have only respect for the effort. You are right about much of it. We can none of us afford to do over much judging. We are all sinners, more or less. And there are a million things to be taken into consideration before we may dare to sit in judgment upon any human being. It takes a God to do that. I am not going to ask you to give him up, or to stop writing or even seeing him. But I do want you to go slow. Marriage is a solemn thing. Don't wreck your life from pity or mistaken devotion. Better a heart-ache now than a life-long regret. Let your lover prove himself just as you have set him to do. A woman can't save a man. He has to save himself. But if he will save himself for love of her the chances are he will stay saved and his love is the real thing. I shall accept your decision. I shan't fight it in any way, whatever it is. All I ask is that you will wait the full year before you make any definite promise of marriage."

"I will," said Tony. "I meant to do that any way. I am not such a foolish child as maybe you have been thinking I was. I am pretty much grown up, Uncle Phil. And I have plenty of sense. It I hadn't—I should be married to Alan this minute."

He smiled a little sadly at that.

"Youth! Youth! Yes, Tony, I believe you have sense. Maybe I have under-estimated it. Any way I thank the good Lord for it. No more secrets? Everything clear?"

He lifted her face in his hands and looked down into her eyes with tender searching.

"Not a secret. I am very glad to have you know. We all feel better the moment we dump all our woes on you," she sighed.

He smiled and stroked her hair.

"I had much rather be a dumping ground than be shut out of the confidence of any one of you. That hurts. We all have to stand by Larry, just now. Not in words but in—well, we'll call it moral support. The poor lad needs it."

"Oh, Uncle Phil! Did he tell you or did you guess?"

"A little of both. The boy is in a bad hole, Tony. But he will keep out of the worst of the bog. He has grit and chivalry enough to pull through somehow. And maybe before many weeks the mystery will be cleared for better or worse. We can only hope for the best and hold on tight to Larry, and Ruth too, till they are out of the woods."



CHAPTER XX

A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE

Philip Lambert was rather taken by surprise when Harrison Cressy appeared at the store one day late in August, announcing that he had come to talk business and practically commanding the young man to lunch with him that noon. It was Saturday and Phil had little time for idle conjecture, but he did wonder every now and then that morning what business Carlotta's father could possibly have with himself, and if by any chance Carlotta had sent him.

Later, seated in the dining-room of the Eagle Hotel, Dunbury's one hostelry, it seemed to Phil that his host was distinctly nervous, with considerably less than his usual brusque, dogmatic poise of manner.

Having left soup the waiter shuffled away with the congenital air of discouragement which belongs to his class, and Harrison Cressy got down to business in regard both to the soup and his mission in Dunbury. He was starting a branch brokerage concern in a small city just out of Boston. He needed a smart young man to put at the head of it. The smart young man would get a salary of five thousand a year, plus his commissions to start with. If he made good the salary would go up in proportion. In fact the sky would be the limit. He offered the post to Philip Lambert.

Phil laid down his soup spoon and stared at his companion. After a moment he remarked that it was rather unusual, to say the least, to offer a salary like that to an utter greenhorn in a business as technical as brokerage, and that he was afraid he was not in the least fitted for the position in question.

"That is my look out," snapped Mr. Cressy. "Do I look like a born fool, Philip Lambert? You don't suppose I am jumping in the dark do you? I have gone to some pains to look up your record in college. I found out you made good no matter what you attempted, on the gridiron, in the classroom, everywhere else. I've been picking men for years and I've gone on the principle that a man who makes good in one place will make good in another if he has sufficient incentive."

"I suppose the five thousand is to be considered in the light of an incentive," said Phil.

"It is five times the incentive and more than I had when I started out," grunted his host. "What more do you want?"

"Nothing. I don't want so much. I couldn't earn it. And in any case I cannot consider any change at present. I have gone in with my father."

"So I understood. But that is not a hard and fast arrangement. A young man like you has to look ahead. Your father won't stand in the way of your bettering yourself." Harrison Cressy spoke with conviction. Well he might. Though Philip had not known it his companion had spent an hour in earnest conversation with his father that morning. Harrison Cressy knew his ground there.

"Go ahead, Mr. Cressy," Stewart Lambert had said at the close of the interview. "You have my full permission to offer the position to the boy and he has my full permission to accept it. He is free to go tomorrow if he cares to. If it is for his happiness it is what his mother and I want."

But the younger Lambert was yet to be reckoned with.

"It is a hard and fast arrangement so far as I am concerned," he said quietly now. "Dad can fire me. I shan't fire myself."

Mr. Cressy made a savage lunge at a fly that had ventured to light on the sugar bowl, not knowing it was for the time being Millionaire Cressy's sugar bowl. He hated being balked, even temporarily. He had supposed the hardest sledding would be over when he had won the father's consent. He had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June. But it did not look like it just now.

"You are a darn fool, my young man," he gnarled.

"Very likely," said Phil Lambert, with the same quietness which had marked his father's speech earlier in the day. "If you had a son, Mr. Cressy, wouldn't you want him to be the same kind of a darn fool? Would you expect him to take French leave the first time somebody offered him more money?"

Harrison Cressy snorted, beckoned to the waiter his face purple with rage. Why in blankety blank blank et cetera, et cetera, didn't he bring the fish? Did he think they were there for the season? Philip did not know he had probed an old wound. The one great disappointment of Harrison Cressy's career was the fact that he had no son, or had had one for such a brief space of hours that he scarcely counted except as a pathetic might-have-been And even as Phil had said, so he would have wanted his son to behave. The boy was a man, every inch of him, just such a man as Harrison Gressy had coveted for his own.

"Hang the money part." he snapped back at Phil, after the interlude with the harrassed waiter. "Let's drop it."

"With all my heart," agreed Phil. "Considering the money part hanged what is left to the offer? Carlotta?"

Mr. Cressy dropped his fork with a resounding clatter to the floor and swore muttered monotonous oaths at the waiter for not being instantaneously on the spot to replace the implement.

"Young man," he said to Phil. "You are too devilish smart. Carlotta—is why I am here."

"So I imagined. Did she send you?"

"Great Scott, no! My life wouldn't be worth a brass nickel if she knew I was here."

"I am glad she didn't. I wouldn't like Carlotta to think I could be—bribed."

"She didn't. Carlotta has perfectly clear impressions as to where you stand. She gives you entire credit for being the blind, stubborn, pigheaded jack-ass that you are."

Phil grinned faintly at this accumulation of epithets, but his blue eyes had no mirth in them. The interview was beginning to be something of a strain. He wished it were over.

"That's good," he said. "Apparently we all know where we all stand. I have no illusions about Carlotta's view-point either. There is no reason I should have. I got it first hand."

"Don't be an idiot," ordered Mr. Cressy. "A woman can have as many view-points as there are days in the year, counting Sundays double. You have no more idea this minute where Carlotta stands than—than I have," he finished ignominiously, wiping his perspiring forehead with an imported linen handkerchief.

"Do you mind telling me just why you are here, if Carlotta didn't send you? I don't flatter myself you automatically selected me for your new post without some rather definite reason behind it."

"I came because I had a notion you were the best man for another job—a job that makes the whole brokerage business look like a game of jack-straws—the job of marrying my daughter Carlotta."

Phil stared. He had not expected Mr. Cressy to take this position. He had been ready enough to believe Carlotta's prophecy that her parent would raise a merry little row if she announced to him her intention of marrying that obscure individual, Philip Lambert, of Dunbury, Massachusetts. He thought that particular way of behavior on the parent's part not only probable but more or less justifiable, all things considered. He saw no reason now why Mr. Cressy should feel otherwise.

Harrison Cressy drained a deep draught of water, once more wiped his highly shining brow and leaned forward over the table toward his puzzled guest.

"You see, Philip," he went on using the young man's first name for the first time. "Carlotta is in love with you."

Philip flushed and his frank eyes betrayed that this, though not entirely new news, was not unwelcome to hear.

"In fact," continued Carlotta's father grimly, "she is so much in love with you she is going to marry another man."

The light went out of Phil's eyes at that, but he said nothing to this any more than he had to the preceding statement. He waited for the other man to get at what he wanted to say.

"I can't stand Carlotta's being miserable. I never could. It is why I am here, to see if I can't fix up a deal with you to straighten things out. I am in your hands, boy, at your mercy. I have the reputation of being hard as shingle nails. I'm soft as putty where the girl is concerned. It kills me by inches to have her unhappy."

"Is she—very unhappy?" Phil's voice was sober. He thought that he too was soft as putty, or softer where Carlotta was concerned. It made him sick all over to think of her being unhappy.

"She is—damnably unhappy." Harrison Cressy blew his nose with a sound as of a trumpet. "Here you," he bellowed at the waiter who was timidly approaching. "Is that our steak at last? Bring it here, quick and don't jibber. Are you deaf and dumb as well as paralyzed?"

The host attacked the steak with ferocity, slammed a generous section on a plate and fairly threw it at the young man opposite. Phil wasn't interested in steak. He scarcely looked at it. His eyes were on Mr. Cressy, his thoughts were on that gentleman's only daughter.

"I am sorry she is unhappy," he said. "I don't know how much you know about it all; but since you know so much I assume you also know that I care for Carlotta just as much as she cares for me, possibly more. I would marry her tomorrow if I could."

"For the Lord Harry's sake, do it then. I'll put up the money."

Phil's face hardened.

"That is precisely the rock that Carlotta and I split on, Mr. Cressy. She wanted to have you put up the money. I love Carlotta but I don't love her enough to let her or you—buy me."

The old man and the young faced each other across the table. There was a deadlock between them and both knew it.

"But this offer I've made you is a bona fide one. You'll make good. You will be worth the five thousand and more in no time. I know your kind. I told you I was a good picker. It isn't a question of buying. Can the movie stuff. It's a fair give and take."

"I have refused your offer, Mr. Cressy."

"You refused it before you knew Carlotta was eating her heart out for you. Doesn't that make any difference to you, my lad? You said you loved her," reproachfully.

A huge blue-bottle fly buzzed past the table, passed on to the window where it fluttered about aimlessly, bumping itself against the pane here and there. Mechanically Phil watched its gyrations. It was one of the hardest moments of his life.

"In one way it makes a great difference, Mr. Cressy," he answered slowly. "It breaks my heart to have her unhappy. But it wouldn't make her happy to have me do something I know isn't right or fair or wise. I know Carlotta. Maybe I know her better than you do; I know she doesn't want me that way."

"But you can't expect her to live in a hole like this, on a yearly income that is probably less than she spends in one month just for nothing much."

"I don't expect it," explained Phil patiently. "I've never blamed Carlotta for deciding against it. But there is no use going over it all. She and I had it out together. It is our affair, not yours, Mr. Cressy."

"Philip Lambert, did you ever see Carlotta cry?"

Phil winced. The shot went home.

"No. I'd hate to," he admitted.

"You would," seconded Harrison Cressy. "I hated it like the devil myself. She cried all over my new dress suit the other night."

Phil's heart was one gigantic ache. The thought of Carlotta in tears was almost unbearable. Carlotta—his Carlotta—was all sunshine and laughter.

"It was like this," went on Carlotta's parent. "Her aunt told me she was going to marry young Lathrop—old skin-flint tea-and-coffee Lathrop's son. I couldn't quite stomach it. The fellow's an ass, an unobjectionable ass, it is true, but with all the ear marks. I tackled Carlotta about it. She said she wasn't engaged but might be any minute. I said some fool thing about wanting her to be happy, and the next thing I knew she was in my arms crying like anything. I haven't seen her cry since she was a little tot. She has laughed her way through life always up to now. I couldn't bear it. I can't bear it now, even remembering it. I squeezed the story out of her, drop at a time, till I got pretty much the whole bucket full. I tell you, Phil Lambert, you've got to give in. I can't have her heart broken. You can't have her heart broken. God, man, it's your funeral too."