"Well", said Alice, turning the doorknob as a preliminary to her exit, "I'll leave 'er along o' you, shall I, ma'am, an' go see to my packin'."
"A-a-yes," said Lady Harrison, "yes, do. That's—that's very nice—quite."
Alice backed out and clicked the door shut easily. She had not yet collected her wages, or she would have banged the door—as a parting sign that she was emancipated, and therefore free to be delightfully saucy and flopping.
Whether it was that Alice had, in some queer way, been the discordant note; or that the young woman and the middle-aged one, so oppositely natured and each possessing what the other lacked, flowed at once mentally to a comfortable, common level of distributed qualities; or whether it was that Daisy's comely and now double-dimpled pleasantness as she waited guardedly for the other to speak, just naturally made communications easy: it is certain that Lady Harrison's restraint, as soon as the door closed behind the sour-faced Alice, slipped away so easily and wholly that she herself was agreeably surprised. She pulled down her spectacles from her forehead and settled them across her nose. As she did this the mistress of the big Harrison house looked more homelike and motherly than ever. Daisy's warmth toward her increased proportionately.
"How do you do," said Lady Harrison, stepping largely and simply and rustlingly over, until Daisy, her chin up and irises glinting with a pleasant dancing watchfulness, stood right beneath the regard of the kind brown eyes. The mistress pointed her greeting by extending one of her large wandering hands.
"I'm quite well," Daisy smiled up as she gave the stock response.
"I think we'll sit down," said Lady Harrison, moving to where two chairs stood sociably together.
"So you would like to work here?" she said, as Daisy sat plumply down, cupped her elbow in her palm, and tucked her hand, knuckles outward, beneath her chin.
"I guess so," said Daisy, looking around.
"Have you—have you references?"
"What?" said Daisy.
"A—references—letters from somebody for whom you have worked for," Lady Harrison, pressed by Sir Thomas to acquire social diction, occasionally used a preposition too many.
"I never worked in town," said Daisy, "but I—but I—," it was an effort for Daisy Nixon to add anything savoring of concession, "I will do as well as I can—foryou."
"That's very nice." The social phrase slipped out by chance, this time, in its proper place. "But my hus— but Sir Thomas Harrison may require references. He generally does."
Daisy's face, in spite of her native trait of unconcern, fell a little. She had set her heart upon working in this lady's house.
"Never mind, though, dearie," said Lady Martha Harrison, quickly, as she noted the girl's look of disappointment; "Girls are not very easy to get, in town here, and I think, if you turn out real smart and handy—as I'm sure you will—that he—ur, that Sir Thomas—will give you a trial."
Sir Thomas Harrison sat at a mahogany roll-top desk, big enough and broad enough to accommodate a brace of men, even if both were as burly as he. His feet, stoutly and shiningly booted, were planted, toes pressing down and heels tilted up, in the soft pile of his office rug. A great, clean window behind him, edged with fairy spectra where the sun found a prism in the bevelling of the glass, flooded the office with light.
"Let a lit-tle sun-shine in," Sir Thomas had hummed, with apparent joviality, to the old hymn tune, as, a moment before, he had shot the window-blind noisily up to the top of the sash. There had, however, been an ominous note beneath his outwardly genial, toneless chant, as he had glanced through a challenging eye-corner at his secretary, who had previously tiptoed around and pulled down the shade to cut off the sun that was shining blindingly in his eyes where he sat typing.
"Don't be all night with that letter, Evans," said Sir Thomas, creaking his swivel chair in a way that made Evans—a nervous father of five, who sat up patiently until between 2 and 4 a.m.,three nights a week, minding the youngsters, while his wife, who was young and skittish, "took in" all the dances—writhe in his seat; "show us some speed, ken't you, for once."
"Yes, sir," said Evans, who had only just finished taking dictation. He was a very rapid stenographer—he had to be, or he wouldn't have been long with Sir Thomas Harrison—and the keys of his machine, on its noise-deadening pad, pattered away like a rain-shower on a pane.
Sir Thomas Harrison squared his elbows before him and stared hard and embarrassingly at his clerk while the latter worked, until the concentration of his stare made Evans' eyelids flutter up and down nervously. This was Sir Thomas' way of exercising what he termed his "pur-rsonal power, sir".
"They ken't a one of 'em resist it," he was won't to recount, "no, sir, not a one of 'em. It gets 'em, every time."
In appearance, Sir Thomas Harrison was both tall and stout. His stoutness was concealed, however, by skilful tailoring; and the youthful lines given to his clothing, together with the way his coarse black hair was combed back from his forehead, made him look, to the casual eye at least, two decades younger than his fifty-two years. He had eyes like a bulldog; a little flat nose, blunt and crooked at the tip; a stiff, close-croppedmoustache; a month that blathered redly when he conversed; and a broad, rough blue jowl. Beer had made his face pouchy, and barbers' cosmetics had given his skin the appearance of old canvas.
Evans finished the letter, whipped it out of his machine, stepped briskly over, and handed it to his employer. Sir Tom snatched it, thrust it cracklingly down on the blotter before him, and commenced to read. At the very first line, something met his disapproval; but he merely made a mental note of this, moulded his face into approving lines, and went on reading. He knew Evans, who was watching him a little anxiously, would conclude by his expression that the letter was all right, and would commence to put his things away and close up his desk to go home. Sir Thomas, in fact, protracted his reading of the letter, holding his pen poised as if to sign it, until Evans had his desk closed up and had reached up to the hook behind him for his hat.
Then the contractor let fly an exclamation, half-grunt, half-roar. He dashed his pen back and forth across the page in such a savage "X" that he broke the pen-nib off short.
"'R-r-rite 'er agen!" he bawled, "every blame word of 'er. What the blue blazes d'ye mean by stickin' in them periods whar I told yeh fur to put commas. And I said 'have went'. You got it 'have gone'. Didn't they learn y' no grammar atth' school you went tuh? Take off that hat—'n git out y'r machine—'n r-rite 'r all over agen. Gettin' sore on y'r job, or what, Evans?"
"I'm sorry, sir," said Evans, hastily opening his desk and slipping a fresh letterhead into his typewriter; "I'll do it over again, right away."
"Oh-h—y' will, hey," Sir Thomas drawled in irony, as he got up, put on his gray motor-coat and smart cloth cap, and took a pleased look at himself in the mirror, "I thought maybe you was goin' to refuse for to do it, Evans. I guess yehwilldo it over agen—an' ten times over agen, if I say so."
By the time coat and hat were donned and Sir Thomas had turned himself about several times before the looking-glass, the secretary had the letter re-written. Harrison, scarcely glancing at it—he was growing hungry, for it was 6.15—dipped a new pen in the ink-well, gave it a flick, and scrawled his signature, and glanced again in the mirror.
Evans nearly jumped over the typewriter desk at the burst of language that followed Sir Thomas' look into the mahogany-framed pier-glass. Across the bottom of the contractor's coat was a row of ink-dots, showing up disastrously on their gray background—the result of that pointless, swaggering, utterly expletive flick of the plebeian pen.
A few moments later, Sir Thomas' big smooth-gliding auto pulled up in front of Benwell's Dye House. Benwell's was the oldest-established dyeing and cleaning firm in the city. Out of the automobile, coat on arm, stepped the contractor himself. He was going to give himself another exhibition of his "pur-rsonal power."
In the dyer's office, he flopped the coat down on the counter, with what he deemed an impressive rattle of buttons, and crooked his finger beckoningly at Joseph Benwell, who was at the moment talking to another customer, further down the counter. Here came Harrison's first surprise: Benwell took not the slightest notice of Sir Thomas' summons until, after a moment, the prior customer went out. Then the dyer turned, adjusted his glasses, and, as though he had seen Sir Thomas Harrison for the first time that moment, came over briskly.
"Th' name is Harrison," said the contractor, gratingly, "I don't need to tell you that my time is worth money." He knit his brows, and fixed his bulldog eyes upon the face of the mild but steady-glancing Englishman who faced him across the counter.
"Yes, sir," said the dyer, as, with a business desire to placate a customer, he took up the coat quickly, turning it over with smooth, adroit tailors' fingers; "ah, ink-stains. Yes, sir, we can takethose out for you, and make a very good bit of work, too. A valuable coat sir—fine material."
Sir Thomas Harrison straightened the arm that rested on the counter, lifted it, and pointed a blunt finger directly toward the coat.
"I want that tomarr' mornin'," he said, rolling out his voice with a stump orator's cadence, "tomarr' mornin'. First thing. See?"
"I'm sorry, sir," said Benwell, quietly. "We couldn't have it done before Wednesday—the day after to-morrow, that is. We are a bit behind this week, owing to press of work."
"Press o' work, nuthin'," said Harrison, jerking his hand, "take a half an hour off, an' fix that coat—to-marr' mornin'. I'll send around. Nine o'clock. See that you have it." He turned to go.
"I regret," said Benwell, still politely, "that we cannot break our fixed rule, made in fairness to all our customers, that all work must take its turn."
"Well," said Harrison, "you'll break it this time."
"We will not," said Benwell, firmly. "That is the rule by which this house has built up its business. We have never broken it, and never shall. It was originally made purely in a spirit of business fairness and courtesy; but it has paid, as well."
"Well," Sir Thomas leaned hard on thecounter, and drove out the words, "it's a ba-ad rule"—the contractor said the "ba" part of the adjective with his mouth extended, red as a bull's, till the tongue was visible, flattened down within its crescent of big coarse white teeth—"a bad rule, I say, and it wun't pay you this time. I'll give this job to summun that's out fur business in th' proper way. Keen, see? On th' jump, see? Out fur th' old he-dollars—get me-e?"
"That is your prerogative, sir," said Benwell.
"An' I'll tell you somethin' more," the contractor, after moving away a step, returned to the counter and shook the coat in the air, "I live up on the Crescent. Yoe know that"—the contractor's head oscillated laterally, like a slowly-stirred punching-bag, while he gave this forth—"and yoe know that a bunch o' trade comes off o' that same Crescent street. You won't get none of it—none that I ken ketch an' head off. Understand!"
Joseph Benwell, coming quietly around the end of the counter, opened the door leading to the street. Holding it open, he turned to Sir Thomas Harrison pleasantly.
"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "that we have been unable to serve you. Good evening."
Harrison, noisome with the gross perspiration of temper, brushed out.
"He's sure one daisy, ain't he." This fromGary, the dyer's bookkeeper, whose shirt-sleeved elbow supported a slim torso that leaned above Benwell's ledger.
The proprietor stooped and picked up a vociferous tweed hat—not his—which had lain for some time unnoticed on the floor, beneath its hook.
"Sir Thomas," he said, in his mild and temperate way, as he dusted the hat off with his elbow and hung it up, "is a man who deserves great credit for his energy and push—even though sometimes that energy may be a bit misdirected. Never say uncomplimentary things, Gary—especially about one who has just paid us a distinct compliment by selecting us instead of one of our competitors to offer his bit of work to."
Sir Thomas Harrison, about to step into his automobile, paused cholerically at the sound of a voice which interposed, humbly but audibly, with the apparently irrelevant observation:
"Shoelaces, sir?"
The contractor swung about. A brown leather face looked up at him from across the sidewalk, where Jim McMunn, the pencil and shoestring man, stood on his two six-inch stumps of leg. Sir Thomas cast his overcoat across the back of the auto seat, thrust his square-palmed hand in his pocket, drew out a mighty roll of bills, and stripped one off. Thrusting the rest of the roll back in his pocket, Harrison held up the "greenback"he had kept out. It was a double-width five hundred dollar note.
"Change it," he grated, his eyes glowing with the stir of the spite-devil jumping up and down inside him; "change it, an' it's yours, an' keep the shoelaces."
Jim McMunn eyed the bill imperturbably a moment. Then a slit appeared in the lower part of the leather face—a slit whose corners curled slowly upward as Jim, laying on the sidewalk his tray of shoelaces, pulled up the faded skirt of his coat and slipped one twisted hand, not into his pocket but inside his trousers, deep down to where the stout fabric was folded back and forth under the iron-shod pad that protected the end of his right leg-stump. When, after a moment, the hand returned into view, it held a money-roll not unlike Sir Thomas' own. The slit in Jim McMunn's countenance kept on curling upward at the ends as he laid on the end of the shoelace tray, one after another, four hundred-dollar bills, then nine tens, then a five and four ones; then, out of his vest-pocket ninety cents in silver; then, on top of all, a neatly coiled and knotted pair of shoelaces.
"Brah-vo!" came in leisurely comment from an unexpected quarter; "Harrison, old chappie, you lose, you know."
The contractor jerked about. Leaning across the automobile from the street-side, with glovedhands resting on the tonneau door and cane hooked over one arm, stood no less a person than Sir William Ware, Baronet, man-about-town and sportsman, president of the Northern Bank and also of a certain exclusive club where Sir Thomas' application for membership was even now awaiting consideration.
Sir Thomas Harrison, whose idea of "having the laugh" on the shoelace man, in spite of the latter's unexpected display of financial strength, had been to call a policeman and give McMunn in charge for judicial investigation as to the source of his wealth, abruptly changed his cue.
"Y'bet," he jetted, gustily; "ya, y'bet. Laugh's on me—hey!" He crumpled the bill in his hand carelessly and tossed it toward its winner. As Mr. McMunn, in spite of his infirmity, very adroitly and gleefully caught the light, elusive paper ball, Harrison swung around upon the baronet and hooked the latter by the arm, tight as an anaconda.
"I got strict orders frum th' Missis," he said, "for to bring you home to supper, one of these here nights. Well, we'll just make to-night the night, hey? How about it, Bohunk?"
Sir William's features were composed. His eyes, blinking manfully, fought back a smile.
"Why,—er—," he set his cane on the ground, leaned on it a moment; looked away, mentally conning over his engagements for the evening;then brought his face around with a gentlemanly look of polite elation; "I should be very delighted, d'you know. Most unexpected pleasure, Sir Thomas."
It was a rule of conduct with Ware to do, whenever possible, the thing he saw would give pleasure. He had met Harrison several times, and had tried hard to be sympathetically interested in him as a neighbor—but the baronet's mind was naturally of a speculative turn, and, in spite of his intention to be brotherly, he had to admit to himself that his interest in the contractor-knight had less of a human than an anthropological bearing. As now, he climbed bustlingly into Harrison's auto, Sir William tried hard to persuade himself that he was off to a pleasant neighborly dinner; but all the while he knew in his heart that the impelling motive was merely cold curiosity. He was anxious to see the beast in its native haunts—to note how it lived, and what it ate.
Harrison, getting in from the opposite side of car, bumped down, bulging like a balloon in his ostentation. As the automobile slid into motion, Sir Thomas glanced from side to side, watching closely among pedestrians and passing cars for prominent citizens, especially members of Sir William's club. When such an one, in response to Harrison's deliberate hail or a sharp, shrewd "toot" of the contractor's horn, glanced around,Sir Thomas would bring his arm up in a flourishing salute. If the citizen were sufficiently notable and the street-din permitted, there would be a brief volley of social inanities from Harrison, engaging the notable citizen long enough to let the latter see Ware.
"A-ow, Mr. Archbishop," the contractor, for instance, would megaphone, through his curved palm, "what's th' good word?"
And Archbishop Markham, a man of long social experience, would roar back humorously, though with no more than a passing glance, "A-ow! A-ow!"
Sir William, sitting back with his cane between his knees, was too deep in amused contemplation to note the capital that was being made of his presence in Harrison's vigorously-snorting, frequently-tooting car as it progressed down Main Street. The contractor's guest was, in fact, engaged in practising the pronunciation of a certain word he had, after entering the auto, jotted down phonetically in a little leather-covered note-book. When he would get it right, or as nearly right as possible, Sir William would chuckle and slap his leg in immense enjoyment. The word was "Bohunk."
"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, you see, since Alice has left us."
"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the soup-tureen—watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious to please her mistress—the first disinterestedly kind person she had met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her great adventure—kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when they're set doon. There—listen!"
Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots dried by the sun of the street was smothered insoft carpeting as the tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill.
"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; "look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll 'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an upraw, 'e down't."
Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered soup-tureen and warm plates.
"Hey—bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; "what do we pay you for?"
Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sittingawkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the soup-dish.
There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward—his "pur-rsonal power" must be kept active—which Sir Thomas always delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around with the usual glare upward.
A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing anddimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen.
What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire you ..." etc., etc.—making each sentence hurt as much as possible, according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities.
What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty good!"
And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of her eye. His face changed ever so little—just a slight lowering of the eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip—but enough to let Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal with—that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures.
* * * * *
Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the position,even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave him as little work or concern as his several other business connections of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago "quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper."
Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two things most people want most—money, and social prestige and power—and has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his experience of the real thing.
Ware had the highest social status, both by birth—which counts for little in the West—and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born wealthy. SirWilliam, who had enjoyed but never either misused or wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see everybody a friend to everybody else.
Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted.
These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. She must, above all, be new material—that is, young enough not to be hardened against impress.
In his quest for a wife—or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present matrimonial vigilance—Sir William had followed a course exactly opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead ofseeking out some woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir William Ware proposed to discover and marry.
When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered.
* * * * *
Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy.
"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a word', as he calls it,wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of his head.
"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin and making a mouth at the messenger.
"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it swung in his direction.
"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, after a rap like that. Skedaddle!"
The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a little poke with her forefinger and thumb.
"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's."
"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next time, and send him off home."
"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door nosnibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me."
Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were great maples, with mysterious darkness between—thickening into a group with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked the junction of driveway and street.
Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty—although how he had found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the Imperial Hotel—for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride."
Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the chance to tell him, "plump and plain"and finally, that she was quite capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men were of only two classes—those who were "forward" and "had fun in them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got them started, and could not be handled at all.
She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so—for the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle shaped for adventure—when there stepped out from under the foliage a tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good evening"—not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something faintly familiar about his voice.
"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he said.
Daisy, withholding speech—she had found out by experience that it was a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for the first few moments—let her companion precede her through the gate.
In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest.
She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"—his quiet clothes, worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing figure—because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in a companionable sense, at once.
Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright anddimpling, perusing him with eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness—armed cap-a-pie in every virile nerve and muscle—not a bit timorous, but flashingly on guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped—in short, susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground.
"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more preface than the friendliest of all smiles.
There! It was out—said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say it—without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it.
Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity—his glance steady, but so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl looked back at him—her face first shortening and dimpling to a half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon'snatural expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed—to put it the way it presented itself to her—as though she had stepped into a book or a moving-picture or a dream.
Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it.
"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?"
Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins—one twin going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see how the adventure was going to turn out—was conscious of a short walk under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant.
Sir William, without looking at the menu thewaiter held before him, gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy.
"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy—at least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the table—seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into one a moment, and the whole Daisy said:
"Who's Lady Ware?"
Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her with a kind of pondering exaltation—a deep but self-contained joy.
"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long time, my dear. But she's here at last."
"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively.
"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both try hard, and try together."
"Well—Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman."
"Do you know, now," Sir William reached outa strong white hand and put it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that—infinitely rejoiced. The way you said it, too! My word!"
His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is surprised to find that it knows some tricks already.
"What's your name?" said Daisy.
Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand!
"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have to learn to be-Ware, you see."
The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and silver—and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little cubes of cheese.
Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream.
"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you don't like it, we'll have in some cream."
Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it.
"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some cre-eam, quick."
Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, ifshewas ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon herself the bloom andbody of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his half-century and more.
"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially.
Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness.
"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting her head a little on one side.
"I say—stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know—don't flirt, please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?"
"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes twinkled.
"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't you?"
Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the proffered cup.
"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening,covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think about our—our plan, as it were?"
The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its profundity.
Daisy cleared her throat a little—a habit she had when about to speak seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of the western farm country.
"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped beneath her chin.
"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand under his.
"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and I like all the boys the same—just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get alongwith. But—but when a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have to—have to—oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know how—they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help it."
Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling—as though she would like to recall what she had just "come out with"—possessed her for a moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite of herself.
Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of several emotions.
"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. Boys are pretty near allalike—you go out with them a couple of times, and you know all about them. They're all right to play with—but when a girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as hens' teeth."
Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its customary dimpling.
"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, putting her head on one side.
Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his chin.
"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe that I don't intend to forget you—in fact, haven't the slightest intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do you think, in your present position?"
"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house."
"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "veryfine, indeed.... Now, I shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and cane.
Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You won't let the city spoil you, I mean—it has a tendency that way, you know."
Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, "I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this.
"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he said.
"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at the good-bye moment.
"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean on a cane—almost as though it were a part of him—and, just as she was about to reply, interjected,"wait a bit, though. I believe I should like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, guessing. Nineteen?"
"Seventeen," said Daisy.
"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is only seventeen—the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name—do you realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean."
"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy."
"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I knew—that is, I almost knew—it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what we've been talking about—shall you?"
If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an attempt to take her hand,Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket of his coat.
Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused there, then was extended toward Sir William.
The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way.
"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing overpower you."
With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement.
"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had extended toward him. Withthis, and raising his hat quietly, he turned and walked away.
Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively.
"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well—he'll be back, if," she flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway."
Daisy went lightly and swiftly along the gravelled walk on her return to the side-door of the great Harrison house. Her mind kept returning to certain events of the meeting, giving them a romantic tinge—the cafe, with its quiet and rich appointments and the stupendous prices named on its menu for even the ordinary things; the waiter, looking straight before him, feature-fixed as a Teddy-bear; and, most of all, the presiding spirit, the polished and pleasant man who had talked so simply and companionably and yet who, in certain unexplainable ways, had unconsciously suggested that he was "somebody great." With the whole city yet new to her—new and unexplored and fascinating—the experience through which she had just passed seemed like a chapter out of a book or a scene out of a picture-play. Looking back upon the affair now, Daisy was most amazed at her own part in it—at the strong and sane impulse which had caused her to "turn down" a proposal that, she somehow felt, if made again now, she would accept and with that acceptance drift unresistingly along the tide of a life turned to story.
"I should have taken him," Daisy murmured to herself, as she turned softly the knob of the side door of Harrison's, "while I had the chance. He would have turned out all right, for he's a gentleman, and he's old enough to know his own mind."
A thin thread-line of illumination at the bottom of the inner door showed that there was a light in the Harrison kitchen. Daisy was glad Jean had remained up for her; for, although she knew the way to the bedroom, she felt a little like a thief, prowling around the big house, on this her first unfamiliar night in it.
She opened the kitchen door. The snarl of a heavy foot turning on linoleum followed the click of the latch. Daisy saw that the tenant of the kitchen was not Jean, but Sir Thomas Harrison himself, standing in his shirt-sleeves near the faucet, drawing some water in a tumbler. Sir Thomas did not look so young with his tailor-built coat off. The slight sag in the shoulders and bulge at the waist became apparent when in his shirt-sleeves.
"We-ell, well," he said, holding up the glass and measuring the minim of water in it with his eye, "look who's with us, will yuh! Just in from keepin' the little date, hey?—he-ey, littul one? Work don't worry us none, does it? Well, little stranger, you're just in time for to have one, on me.Suddown!"
This last with a raise of his voice and a motion of his forefinger—his thick, blunt forefinger—toward one of the two chairs that stood by the table. Daisy, her dimples and twinkles leaping into place with a celerity that might have warned Harrison if he had known her better, sat down obediently and demurely in the chair.
Sir Thomas Harrison took another tumbler, put in it a small amount of water, brought it over to the table, and set it down alongside the other glass. Then he took a cut-glass decanter he had brought from a cabinet in the dining-room, unstoppered it, and filled each of the drinking vessels. Finally, wrinkling up his eyes until one was quite closed, and the other nearly so, he tilted his head on one side, pulled an empty chair close to and facing Daisy, and sat down in it.
"Well, chookie," he said, "here we are—just the two of us, hey? Everybody else in bed, but—we sh'd worry. Come on, now, an' have a little drink. C'm on!"
Daisy, as though she intended to drink, put out a hand and drew her glass toward her. In her eyes two vigilant and mischievous points of light danced keen as stars. Sir Thomas Harrison tipped his glass joltingly against hers, set it to the lips that bulged red and coarse-textured, below his clipped moustache; and tossed off his liquor. Then he smacked his glass down on the table, where Daisy's still stood untouched.
"Well," he said, "why don't y' drink? But don't if yuh don't wantah. Maybe 'taint good for little girls. Apt to make 'em fr-risky, hey? I know somethin' is better for 'em. O you baby, yousassybabee—come on to Poppa," and, with a sudden movement, Sir Thomas Harrison caught his new dining-room girl by the wrist and drew her upon his fleshy knee.
"There," he said,—in his voice the hoarse burr, and in his manner the incoherence, of a man fast nearing the irresponsible edge of passion, "how's that—better. Hey? Uh?" He slipped an arm around her waist.
Daisy caught her lip under her teeth to keep from laughing outright as she glanced around into his red, flaming face. She leaned a little away from him, one toe alertly on the floor, the other dangling.
"I suppose," she said, coolly, "you think you're pretty smart, don't you? Is this why the last girl left?"
"I guess no-ot," Harrison's voice had the emphasis of truth as he had a momentary mental picture of Alice sitting where Daisy sat now, "that sour-mugged English rake-handle! I—I couldn't love a girl with a face like that, little one. You know that, don't y'? Uh?" The arm about Daisy's waist squeezed her. "C'm on—give us a little baby kiss."
"Nothing slow about you, is there?" commented Daisy, the two watchful points of light in her eyes dancing like dagger-tips. Her employer's answer to this apparent compliment was to bring his other arm off the table and place it about her.
Daisy never, even for the space of one lid-flash, ceased to watch the red intemperate face whose skin was now commencing to twitch in places like the hide of a horse under fly-bites. Passion had the man beyond speech now. Presently there would be a contraction of the eyelids, making the eyes small and round and wicked and ugly. Then there would be a leap of flame in the constricted irises, the sign that lust's madness had broken loose. Daisy, to whom these signals, in their course and succession, were familiar from many a perusal of many a masculine face, watched Harrison's features as keenly, and almost as coolly, as a doctor-specialist watches the lineaments of a patient in a crisis.
At the moment when she saw restraint was going, just before the warning flame leapt, Daisy Nixon leaned away and put her palm against his chest.
"I won't kiss you," she said, flashing her lids up and down, "for nothing."
Harrison took his right hand from about her and thrust it into his pocket. He pulled out a great roll of bills, and made to strip one off.
"Give me it all!" cried Daisy, keeping her palm against his chest, where she could feel the powerful, lustful heart hammering.
"All!" Harrison managed to blurt, huskily, throwing his brows up in oaf-like protest, "all! Why, there's fifteen hundred dollars in that bunch!"
"Give it to me," repeated Daisy, clear-toned, "or else let me go."
Harrison was too far advanced in his midnight madness to accept the saner alternative. He thrust the roll of bills into her hand.
"Now take away your hands a minute," said Daisy Nixon. As Harrison, all his attention concentrated on the mastering impulse of the moment, half-involuntarily obeyed the brisk request, she sprang with a lightning movement off his knee and away.
"Now, Mr. Man," she said, "you just dare to lay a finger on me, or to try to get this money back, and I'llyell. Jean the cook is sleeping just overhead, and she'd be down here before you could say 'Jack Robi'son'."
At the change that came over Harrison's face, Daisy let loose the laugh that had been bobbing at her lips ever since the beginning of the encounter. She laughed until she sank into a chair helpless. She knew that Harrison had had the theory most men of his type held, that a man needonly force a girl up to a certain point and her own answering passion would do the rest. She laughed so hard that she missed the gradations by which Sir Thomas Harrison passed from lust to wrath. When, finally, she straightened from her paroxysm, he was leaning forward, elbow on table, his chin thrust out ready for speech, and on his face a sneer—such a sneer!—Daisy had never imagined even Harrison could look so ugly!
"So-me little schemer!" he slid, out of the side of his mouth. Words came easily enough now. "But don't think you win—oh, no-o! D'ye know what I'm going to do, if you don't hand over that money?"
"Oh," Daisy stood up, tilting her head aside, and dimpling, "the money is all that's bothering you now, is it? I thought maybe you were going to say you were sorry."
"I'm mighty sorry," Harrison snarled, "that you got that good money in your thief's fist. That's all I'm sorry about. But, as I say, you're going to hand it over, an' you're a-going to hand it over quick. D'ye hear!"
"I hear," said the girl, "and I'm going to showyousomething now. Here's all I care for your dirty money."
With these words, and before Harrison, watching in bewilderment, realized what she intended to do, Daisy Nixon lifted the lid of the big kitchengas and coal range, thrust the roll of bills into the coals, and gave it a quick stab with the poker. A fifteen-hundred dollar flame leaped up at the same moment as Harrison, with a sound like a lion's coughing roar, leaped up too. Words failed him for several seconds, as he stood above the transient fire-flicker, with its heart of worthless ashes.
"Well," he said, at length, in a level hard snarl, "now Iamgoin' to fix you, you low-life heifer. You could 'a stopped me before by handin' over the money, and I'd have let the matter drop. But now I'm goin' to lay information against you for stealin' that money—see? I'm a-goin to have you arrested—see? I got the pull an' the infloo'nce in this town for to do it," the contractor thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his vest, "and you—who are you? Nobody, nobody! Still, I may be easy with you yet, if—"
"Ay, ye may, if ye're canny." The answer came not from Daisy, but from Jean the Scotch cook, who came out of the door at the foot of the bedroom stair. "It's a gude thing y'r clackin' woke me up, Sir Thomas Harrison. I've been bidin' behind the door here quite a wee while, an' I've heard a grand lot o' your proposin' and so forth. Now, ye'll juist tak your crooked mouth awa' to y'r bed—that's what you'll do!"
"An' you," Harrison, at first taken aback, hadrecovered himself and had stood, a thick finger levelled at her, waiting for her to finish speaking, "you will take notice. So will you," pointing to Daisy. "I'll clean my kitchen o' the crowd that's runnin' things in it now, if we have to get down and do the cookin' ourselves till we get decent help. Neither of you's worth a hurra——"
"I'll tak' no notice from you," Jean rejoined, calmly, "I'll not inconvenience your good leddy that far. Na, na, Sir Thomas. We'll bide here, and do our work weel, and draw our fair pay when it's due, an' keep to our end of the hoose, and you'll just keep to yours. Come awa to y'r bed, lassie."
Harrison regarded the speaker a moment, his head down and brow thrust forward, as though appraising Jean's capacity for a "come-back." She returned his belligerent scrutiny with a flinty look in her blue Scotch eyes under their sandy lashes. He felt in his upper vest-pocket for a cigar, bit it, and stuck it between his teeth; then spun on his heel.
"I can't waste no more time arguin' with the help," he said, as he passed through the swinging door, "I'll see about this in the morning."
"Ey, ye'll see bonnier when ye sleep over the notion," Jean said, as the door swung to behind him. She put an arm, ridged with muscle like a man's, about Daisy's shoulders and propelled herthrough the stair-door and up the steps to the bedroom.
"He'll no trouble us, I'm thinkin'," she said, as she closed the bedroom door behind her and turned the key in the lock; "he kens weel there's folk on this street w'd be after Jean McTavish like a fair swarm o' bees, if they heard she was needin' a situation. An' he'll no dischairge you, bairnie, for he'll be wantin' to get his ain back—he's that kind, ye see. Forbye, he kens fine we could put him in his place wi' a word, after this nicht's goings-on. He's braw material for a 'beltit knicht', as oor Bawby Burrns has it—is he no?"
"He's a bad, bad man," Daisy murmured, dimpling down reflectively, "so bad, I almost like him. I'm going to have some more fun with him, before I'm through."
"Ey, ye're just gabbin', lassie," Jean kicked off her night-slippers, thrust her feet into bed, lay back, drew the coverlet up over a chest broad and flat as a man's, and, with a hand thrust under the back of her head, regarded Daisy from the pillow. "Ye'r no sic a trollop as ye'd mak' yersel' oot to be. If I catch ye in any capers—any mischief, I mean, for I ken there's nae bad in ye—I'll skelp ye as I would a bairn. Mind that. Get y'r duddies off, now, an' get to bed, for to-morrow's house-cleanin' day."