CHAPTER VIHIGH LIGHTS
“THERE!” said Jane Ray, turning on one last golden electric bulb cunningly concealed. “I’ve used every device I know to make the showing tell.Isit effective?Doesit all count, Mrs. Burns? I’ve studied it so much I don’t know any more.”
Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns stood beside Miss Ray at one end of the long shop—a shop no longer—and looked down it silently for a full minute before she spoke. Then:
“It’s very wonderful,” she said, in her low, pleasant voice. “I shouldn’t have dreamed that even you could do it. Itiseffective—itdoescount. The appeal, even at the first glance, is—astonishing.”
“The question is—where has the shop gone?”
This was Miss Lockhart, who was on Mrs. Burns’ other side. All three were in semi-evening dress of a quiet sort; and the evening hour was just before that set for the showing of the posters. Jane Ray had decided against making a public thing of her exhibition; she had argued that that would mean a large crowd and little money. A more exclusive affair, with invitations discreetly extended, ought to fill just comfortably her limited space, and bring the dollars she coveted for her Belgians.
“It isn’t a shop now—it’s a salon,” declared Mrs. Burns. Jane glowed at this—as well she might. Mrs. Burns,with her wealth, her experience of the world, her personality of exceeding charm, knew whereof she spoke. Jane knew well that she could not have found a patroness of her exhibition whose influence could help her more than that of the wife of Red Pepper Burns.
“Yes, that’s the word,” Nan agreed. “Miss Ray has done wonders. The shop has always been a perfectly charming place—as a shop; but to-night it’s a colourful spot to solicit not only the eye but the heart. The pocket-books and purses will fly open—I’m sure of it. And with Doctor Burns to tell us what wemustdo—— Oh, no doubt but every poster will be sold to-night.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jane said. “They might be, if the prices bid run low. But I don’t want small prices—I want big ones—oh, very big! If people will only understand—and care.”
The shop door opened, and R. P. Burns and Tom Lockhart came in together, both in evening dress. Tom’s face was exultant.
“I got him!” he called. “I put out the office lights, chloroformed the office nurse, hauled him upstairs, drew his bath, and put his clothes upon him—and for a finishing touch, to make all tight, disconnected the telephone. First occasion ever known where he was present at any party before the guests arrived—not to mention being properly dressed!”
Red was laughing. He loomed above the group, every shining red hair in place, his eyes sparkling with eagerness for the fray. Not in a long time had he had a part to play, outside his profession, which suited him so well. Himself war mad from the beginning, impatient a thousand times over at the apathy of his fellow-citizens under the constantly growing needs and demands of the world struggle,he was welcoming the chance to try his hand and voice at warming the cold hearts, firing the imaginations, and reaching the pocket-books thus far mostly shoved deep down in the prosperous pockets. To be here to-night he had worked like a fiend all day to cover his lists of calls, to tie up every possible foreseen demand. At the last moment he had cut half a dozen strings which threatened to bind him, instructed his office to take no calls for him for the coming three hours, and had fled away with Tom, determined for once to do his duty as he saw it, and not as any persistent patient might see it.
“Jolly, but this is a stunning show!” he commented, gazing round him. “What lighting! Why, you must have run wires everywhere, Jane! That fellow in blue on the horse, at the far end, looks as if he were galloping straight out at us. You must have been on a hanging committee at some art gallery some time or other.”
“Never. And Mr. Black is responsible for the first inspiration about the lighting. He has taken such an interest. Did you know he got all these Raemakers cartoons down at the end for me? They just came to-day—he had to wire and wire to have them here in time. They’re so splendid—and so terrible—I’ve put them all by themselves.”
Red strode down the room. Nobody joined him while he stared with intense concentration at the merciless arraignment of a merciless foe which was in each Raemakers stroke. He came back with a fresh fire in his eye.
“What can I say that will sell those? People will turn away in holy horror, and say the Dutchman lies. He hasn’t told half the truth—it can’t be told. I want that one last on the line myself. I can’t hang it, but I can put it away—and get it out, now and then, when my pityslackens. Oh, lord—how long! Two years and more those people have been bleeding, and still we stand on the outside and look on, like gamins at a curbstone fight! Shame on us!” And Red ran his hand through his thick, coppery locks again and again, till they stood on end above his frowning brows.
“Hush, dear! Here come the first people—and you are one of the receiving hosts. You mustn’t look so savage. Smooth down your hair—and smile again!” His wife spoke warningly.
“All right—I’ll try. Where’s the minister? I thought he was going to stand by to-night? He has a better grip on his feelings than I have. He keeps his hair where it belongs. I’m too Irish for that.”
“I’m here.” And Black came up to shake hands, ahead of the guests who were alighting from a big car outside. “I was after just one more poster—and got it out of the express office at the last minute. No, I’m not going to show it yet. I think it comes later.”
“Now we’re all six here—I’m so glad,” whispered Nan Lockhart. “Do you know, somehow, I was never so proud in my life of being one of a receiving group. Nothing ever seemed so worth while. Mr. Black, it’s fine of you to give so much time to this.”
“Fine! It’s just an escape valve for me, Miss Lockhart. Besides, what could be better worth doing than this, just now?”
“Nothing that I can think of. But it took Jane Ray to conceive it. Isn’t she looking beautifully distinguished to-night, in that perfectly ripping smoke-blue gown, and her hair so shiningly smooth and close?”
“Ripping?” repeated Black, his eyes following Miss Ray as she went forward to welcome her first guests. “It’svery plain—and unobtrusive. I shouldn’t have noticed it. She does look distinguished, as you say, but it isn’t the dress, is it?”
Nan laughed. “How that would please her! The dress is plain and unobtrusive—and absolutely perfect in every line! It makes what I’m wearing look so fussy I want to go home and change it! Jane has a genius for knowing how to look like a picture. I suppose that’s the artist in her. Do you know, I think the people who are asked here to-night feel particularly flattered by an invitation from Jane? Isn’t that quite an achievement—for a shopkeeper?”
“That word doesn’t seem to apply to her, somehow,” said Black, and changed the subject rather abruptly. Two minutes later he had left Miss Lockhart, to greet one of his elderly parishioners, a rich widow who bore down upon him in full sail. Nan Lockhart looked after him with an amused expression about her well-cut mouth.
“You didn’t like my calling her a shopkeeper. And you don’t intend to discuss any girl with me or anybody else, do you, Mr. Black?” she said to herself. “All right—be discreet, like the saint you are supposed to be—and really are, for the most part, I think. But you’re pretty human, too. And Fanny Fitchiswearing a frock and hat to-night that I think even you will be forced to notice.”
It was not long before she had an opportunity to test the truth of this prediction. The room filled rapidly, the narrow street outside becoming choked with cars. Among the early comers were Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Lockhart and Miss Fitch. As Fanny appeared in the ever lengthening line of arrivals, Nan found herself waiting with interest for the moment when she should reach Jane Rayand Robert Black, who, as it chanced just then, stood near each other.
No doubt but Miss Fitch was a charmer. Even Nan was forced to admit that she had never seen Fanny more radiant. As she glanced from Fanny to Jane and back again the comparison which occurred to her was that between a gray-blue pigeon and a bird of Paradise! And yet—there was nothing dull about Jane—and nothing flaunting about Fanny. It was not a matter of clothes and colour after all, it was an affair of personality. Jane was beautifully distinguished in appearance—Nan had chosen the right words to describe her—and Fanny was exquisitely lovely to look at. And there you were—simply nowhere in estimating the two, unless you had something more to go by than looks. Nan, with intimate knowledge of Fanny Fitch and an acquaintance with Jane Ray which offered one of the most interesting attractions she had ever felt toward a member of her own sex, found herself wondering how any man who should chance on this evening to meet them both for the first time might succeed in characterizing them, afterward, for the benefit, say, of an invalid mother!
It was great fun, and as good as a play, she reflected, to see Jane and Fanny meet. If there was the slightest touch of condescension in Fanny’s manner as she approached her hostess, it had no choice but to disappear before Jane’s adorable poise. Nobody could condescend to Jane. It wasn’t that she didn’t permit it—it simply couldn’t exist in the presence of that straightforward young individuality of hers. From the top of her satiny smooth, high-held, dark head, to the toe of the smart little slipper which matched the blue of her gown, she was quietly sure of herself. And beside her some of the town’smost aristocratic matrons and maids looked decidedly less the aristocrat than Jane!
Around the edges of the room moved the guests, in low-voiced smiling orderliness, scanning the posters, large and small, so cunningly displayed, with every art of concealed lighting to show them off. The appeal of some was only in the flaming patriotism of the vigorous lines and brilliant colouring; in others all the cunning of the painter’s brush had wrought to produce a restrained yet thrilling effect hardly second to that of a finished picture. The subjects were taken from everywhere; from the trenches, from No Man’s Land, from civilian homes, from the cellars of the outcasts and exiles. And as the people whom Jane had invited to this strange exhibit moved on and on, past one heart-stirring sketch to another, the smiles on many lips died out, and now and then one saw more than a hint of rising tears quickly suppressed. Those who could look at that showing, unmoved, were few.
And yet, presently when Burns was upon his platform, offering his first poster for sale, though it went quickly, it was at no high price. Following this, he took the least appealing; and so on, in due course, and the bids still ran low. Little by little, however, he forced them up—considerably more by the tell-tale expression upon his face, when he was dissatisfied with a bid, than by what he said. As an auctioneer, Red had begun his effort a little disappointingly to those who expected his words, backed by his personality, to do great things from the start. The explanation he gave to Jane Ray, in a minute’s interval, was undoubtedly the true one.
“If they were all men, I could bully them into it. Somehow, these well-dressed women stifle me. I’m not usedto facing them, except professionally. What’s the matter? Shall I let go and fire straight, at any risk of offending? They ought to be offering five times as much, you know. They simply aren’t taking this thing seriously, and I don’t know how to make them.”
“If you can’t make them, I don’t know who could. Yes, speak plainly—why not? We ought not to be getting tens and twenties for such posters as those last three—each one should have brought a hundred at least. Try this one next, please.”
Burns stood straight again. He held up the sheet Jane offered him. It was a bit of wonderful colouring, showing a group of French peasants staring up at an airplane high overhead—the first British flier on his way to the Front. The awe, the faith in those watching eyes, was touching.
“Give me a hundred for this, won’t you?” he called. “Start the bid at that, and then send it flying. Never mind whether you want the poster or not. Some day it will be valuable—if not in money, then in sentiment. Now, then, who speaks?”
Nobody spoke. Then: “Oh, come, Doctor,” said one rotund gentleman, laughing, “you can’t rob us that way. The thing’s a cheap, machine-coloured print—interesting, certainly, but no more. I’ll give you ten for it—that’s enough. There’s just one poster in the whole show that’s worth a hundred dollars—and that’s the man on the horse. When you offer that I’ll be prepared to see you.”
“The man on the horse goes for not a cent under five hundred,” declared Burns, fiercely. “Starts at that—and ends at seven—eight—nine—a thousand! Meanwhile——”
But he couldn’t do it. It was a polite, suburban company, no great wealth in it, just comfortably prosperouspeople, not particularly patriotic as yet. The time was to come when they would see things differently, but at that period of the Great War they were mostly cold to the needs of the sufferers three thousand miles away. They saw no reason why Jane Ray should invite them to an exclusive showing of her really quite entertaining collection, and then expect them to open their pocket-books into her lap. Each one intended to buy one poster, of course, out of courtesy to Jane, but—the lower priced the better. And all the lower-priced ones were sold. The bidding went slack, all but died. Burns took out his big white handkerchief and wiped his brow, smiling ruefully down at Jane, who nodded encouragingly back. But even that encouraging nod couldn’t tell Red how to do it.
Before this distressing stage in the proceedings had been reached, Black, with a lightning-like working of the mind, had been making plans of his own in case they should be needed. He had stood beside Nan Lockhart, at the back of the room, his arms folded, his eyes watching closely the scene before him. He did not look at all, as he stood there, like a man who could take an auctioneer’s place and “get away with it,” as the modern expressive phrase goes. In his clerical dress, his dark hair very smooth above his clear brow, his eyes intent, his lips unconsciously pressed rather firmly together under the influence of his anxiety for Burns’ success in the difficult task, Black’s appearance suggested rather that of a restrained onlooker at a race who watches a favourite jockey, than that of one who longs to leap into the saddle and dash round the course himself, to win the race. But this was precisely what he was aching to do.
Deeply as he admired the clever surgeon, much as he hoped for the friendship of the highly intelligent man,he was not long in finding out that Red had not been built for a persuader in public places. If the red-headed doctor had been confronted with a desperate case of emergency surgery, he could have flung off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, commandeered an amateur nurse for an assistant, and achieved a victory as brilliant as it was spectacular. Doubtless, Black reflected, if it had been a matter of partisan politics, and an enemy to the good of the state had met Red in open debate, the doctor could have downed him in three rounds by sheer force of clean-cut argument and an arm thrown high in convincing gesture. But—given a roomful of well-to-do people, not overmuch interested in Belgian orphans, and a man trying to sell them something they didn’t want for more than they had any idea of paying for it—well—Red simply couldn’t do it, that was all. And Miss Ray, in picking him out for the job on account of his popularity and his well-known fearlessness in telling people what they must do—Miss Ray had simply missed it, that was all. It was an error in judgment, and nobody was seeing that more clearly than Jane herself, as Black discovered by each glance at her.
She was standing at Red’s elbow, handing him up posters one by one, and giving the buyer a charming glance of gratitude for each purchase as she moved forward to hand the poster spoken for. But her usually warm colour had receded a little, her lips, between the smiles, seemed a trifle set, and a peculiar sense of her disappointment reached across the room and impressed itself upon Black as definitely as if she had signalled to him. Just once he caught her eyes, as if in search of his, and he found himself giving her back a look of sympathy and understanding. He was longing to come to her aid. Would it be possible, in any way, to do that? He was accustomedto facing people, in the mass, as Red was not, and accustomed to handling them, to reading from their faces what would influence them; in plain words, to being master of them, and leading them whither they would not voluntarily go. Would the moment conceivably come when he could step into the breach and, without offending Red or seeming presumptuous, take his place?
At least he could be prepared. And as his mind worked, led by Red’s very mistakes into seeing what might offset them, a suggestion suddenly shaped itself. Instantly he acted upon it. He beckoned Tom Lockhart, took him quietly aside into the half-lighted rear shop where the big antique pieces removed from the larger room to make space crowded one another unmercifully, and spoke under his breath:
“Tom, you have more nerve than any fellow I know. Around the corner, on Seventh Street, at the Du Bois’s, there’s a Belgian baby—came to-day. Please go and ask them for it, will you?—and hurry back. Tell them to pick it out of the cradle just as it is, wrap a shawl around it, and let you bring it here. They’re French—they’ll understand—I was there to-day. Quick!”
With a smothered whoop Tom was off, and Black returned to the larger room, remaining, however, near the door of the back shop. Ten minutes later an eager whisper through a crack of that door summoned him and he slipped out to find Tom gingerly holding a bundle from one end of which protruded a dark little head.
“Here he is—poor little cuss! He’s about the most whipped looking specimen I ever saw. Think he’ll sell a poster? He’s sold one already—blamed if he hasn’t—at the best price Tommy Boy can afford.”
“Keep him quiet here for a bit, can you, Tom? I’llcome for him when I think his chance is ripe. Will he keep still?”
“Too used to shifting for himself not to keep still, I guess.” Tom gazed pityingly into the thin little face with its big eyes regarding him steadily in the dim light of the outer room. “All right, I’ll keep him quiet. But don’t hold off the crisis too long. R. P.’s about at the end of his wind. First time in my life I ever saw Doctor in a corner, but he’s sure in one now.”
“He’s done nobly; we just aren’t educated up to the idea yet, that’s all. Baby may not help out, but we’ll try.”
Black went back. Red turned and gave him a look as he came in which said, “I wish I were about a million miles away from here. How in thunder do you do it?” As if the thought were father to the demand he suddenly beckoned and spoke:
“Mr. Black, suppose you come up here and tell us about these last—and best—posters. My oratory has run out. I know you have one poster of your own you haven’t shown—isn’t it time for that now?”
Black smiled up at him—a friendly smile which answered: “I’d like nothing better than to help you out, old fellow!” But aloud he said: “Rather a telling one has just been brought in by Mr. Thomas Lockhart. With your permission I’ll be glad to show it to everybody.”
And with that he was out of the room and back again, and the baby—out of its wrappings, its thin, tiny frame, pinched face and claw-like hands showing with a dumb eloquence—was held cosily in the tall minister’s left arm, and his right hand was gently smoothing back the curly black locks from the wistful little brow. He took one step upon the platform Red was about to vacate, and lookeddown into the upturned faces. “Don’t go yet, please, Doctor,” he requested, in the other’s ear. Reluctantly Burns waited, scanning the baby.
“There isn’t anything I can say, ladies and gentlemen,” Black began, very quietly, and looking back into the small face as he went on. “It’s all said by this little chap. He’s just been brought over to this country, with scores more, by the Committee for Belgian Relief. A kind-hearted French family near by have offered to care for him until a home can be found. The father of this family was at the pier when the ship came in, saw this baby, and brought him home with him. It is for hundreds of such little forlorn creatures as he that Miss Ray wants to raise the largest sum we are able to give her. We can’t conceive how much money is needed, but we can’t possibly make the amount too large.”
The absolute simplicity of this little speech—for this was all he said—coupled with the touching appeal of the baby in his arms, was what did it; Mrs. Burns and Nan and Jane all said so afterward. With the instinct for the right course at the right moment which is the peculiar gift of the public speaker, Black divined, at the instant that he came upon the platform, that the fewer his words the more loudly would the tiny, silent figure do its own soliciting. And so it proved.
“Please show the Belgian posters, Doctor Burns,” Black suggested, and Red, taking them from Jane’s hands, held them up one by one without comment. And one by one they were bid off, while Black stood and held the baby and looked on, his eyes eloquent of his interest. Bid off at sums which ranged higher and higher, as the company, now as ardent in the cause of the living, breathing baby before them as they had been apathetic in that of hissmall compatriots across the sea of whom they had only heard, vied with each other to prove that they could be generous when they really saw the reason why.
“I’d certainly like a picture of Mr. Black and that baby at this minute,” murmured Fanny Fitch in the ear of Nan Lockhart, as she returned from a trip to the front of the room, where she had recklessly emptied a gold mesh-bag to buy that for which she did not care at all. She had looked up into Robert Black’s face as she stood below him, and had received one of those strictly impartial smiles which he was now bestowing upon everybody who asked for them; and she had come away thoroughly determined to secure for herself, before much more time had passed, a smile which should be purely personal.
“He does look dear with the baby,” admitted Nan, heartily. “He holds him as if he had held babies all his life. Oh, it’s splendid, the way things are going now. Howwashe inspired to get that child?”
“Eye for the dramatic, my dear,” suggested her friend. “All successful ministers have it. The unsuccessful ones lack it, and go around wondering why their schemes fail. It’s perfectly legitimate—and it makes them much more interesting. The Reverend Robert looks as innocent as the child in his arms, but he’s really a born actor.”
“Fanny Fitch! How ridiculous!”
“If he weren’t he would have rushed up there with the baby and harangued us for fifteen minutes about the needs of the Belgians. But he has the dramatic sense just to stand there looking like a young father angel, with those dark brows of his bent on the poor child, and we fall for him like the idiots we are—as he knew we would. I never dreamed of spending that last ten dollars. I didn’t spend it for the Belgians at all. I spent it for Robert Black!”
“I’m glad you’re frank enough to admit it.”
“What’s the use in trying to conceal anything from you, Sharp Eyes?” And Miss Fitch returned to her occupation of observing the events now transpiring up in front, with a pair of lustrous eyes which missed no detail.
Jane’s receptacle for the money handed her was nearly full now. It was a beautiful big bowl of Sheffield plate, one of the best in her collection, and it had called forth much admiring comment. Red sold his last poster—not all were for sale. This last one was the great “man on the horse,” galloping with sword upraised and mouth shouting—the most vivid and striking of all, though to the eye of the connoisseur worth far less than some of quieter and more subtle suggestion. It was promptly bid in by the rotund gentleman who had challenged Red half an hour before, and he named so high a figure that he had no contestants. He received his purchase with a large gesture of triumph and pleasure with himself, and Jane, accepting his check, written with a flourish, gave him the expression of gratitude he had coveted.
She took the baby from Black, then, saying: “Your poster—hasn’t the time come? Won’t you show it yourself, please?”
“I want to, if I may. But it’s not for sale.”
“Oh! Then we have all we are to get to-night.”
“I’m not sure. Yes—I think we have all we are to get—to-night. But—perhaps we have something to give.”
She didn’t understand—how should she? She watched him go back to the little platform, its boards covered with a fine rug and its backing a piece of valuable French tapestry above which hung the French and Belgian flags. Jane had conceived this effective setting for her auctioneer, but it was none the less effective for the man who hadtaken Burns’ place. Standing there he slowly unrolled the poster, and the people before him ceased their buzzing talk to watch, for something in his face told them that here was that which they must not miss.
Ah, but this was an original! How had he procured it? It was a strip of canvas which Black unrolled and silently held up before the hundred pairs of gazing eyes. And as they looked, the last whisper gave way to a stillness which was its own commentary on and tribute to the story told by an artist who was somehow different from the rest.
The colouring of the picture—it was a poster like the others—was all rich blues and browns, with a hint of yellow and one gleam of white. The background was a dim huddle of ruins and battle smoke. Close in the foreground were two figures—a stalwart British soldier in khaki and steel hat supporting a wounded Frenchman in the “horizon blue” of the French army, his bare head bandaged and drooping upon his chest. These two figures alone were infinitely touching, but that which gave the picture its thrilling appeal was that at which the Briton, his hand at the salute, was gazing over the bent head of his comrade. And of that, at the extreme left of the picture, all that one saw was a rough wooden post, and upon it, nailed to it by the rigid feet, two still, naked limbs. A roadside Calvary—or the suggestion of it—that was all one saw. But the look in the saluting soldier’s rugged face was one of awe—and adoration.
Black held the canvas for a long minute, his own grave face turned toward it. Not even Fanny Fitch, in her cynical young heart, could dare to accuse him of “acting” now. The silence over the room was breathless—it was the hush which tells its story unmistakably. Before it could be broken, Black lowered the canvas.
“That’s all,” he said. “It brought it home to me so powerfully what is happening ‘over there’—I just wanted you to see it, too. That’s where the gifts you have given to-night are going.”
“Mr. Black——” It was Mr. Samuel Lockhart, speaking in a low voice from the front—“is that—to be bought?”
“It is mine, Mr. Lockhart. It is not for sale.”
“It is wonderful,” said the elder man, with reverence.
Black rolled the canvas, and crossing the room put it out of sight. When he came back a little crowd surrounded the Belgian baby, in Jane’s arms.
The assemblage took its leave with apparent reluctance. In the suburban town there had been nothing just like this evening in the memory of the oldest present. Those who carried posters with them held them rather ostentatiously; those who had none were explaining, some of them, that they had not been able to secure the ones they wanted, but that they had been happy to contribute something to so worthy a fund.
“Quite unique, and certainly very delightfully managed,” one stout matron said to Jane as she extended a cordial hand. “You had courage, my dear, to attempt this here. You must have raised more than you could have expected.”
“I haven’t counted it,” Jane answered. “It’s been a happy thing to try to do it—I’m very grateful to you all.”
When the last had gone, except the five who had been her helpers, she sat down with the Sheffield bowl in her lap, and Red took his place beside her, to help her count. Tom, having run home with the baby, was back again, eagerly hanging over Red’s shoulder as he put bills of the same denomination together, and sorted silver. The other three looked on, eagerly awaiting the result.
Red announced the sum total—it was a goodly sum, running well into the hundreds. He looked up at Black.
“Three fourths of that came in after you brought up that blamed little beggar,” he said. “And the things you didn’t say were what turned the trick! By George, you taught me a lesson to-night. Speech may be silver, but a silence like that of yours sure was golden. I didn’t know any man of your profession understood it so well. Hanged if I don’t keep my tongue between my teeth, after this!”
A burst of appreciatively skeptical laughter from those who knew him answered this. But Black, though he smiled too, answered soberly: “There’s a time for everything. You plowed—and the baby harrowed, that was all. The Belgian fund reaps. I know we’re all mighty happy about it.”
When he left, a few minutes later, Jane Ray gave him the sort of handshake, with her firm young hand closing with his in full reciprocity, which one man gives to another.
“I can’t thank you,” she said. “It was wonderfully done. But—do you mind telling?—you must have held many babies!”
How Black himself laughed then, his head thrown back, his white teeth gleaming. “Being a woman, that’s what you get out of it,” he said. “Yes—I’ve held every one I could ever get hold of. I like them a bit bigger than that—a regular armful. Poor ‘blamed little beggar’—as the Doctor called him! But he’ll be an armful some day. We’ll see to that.”
“You bet we will,” declared Tom, who had been lingering to get away with Black. “Night, Miss Ray. I’ll be around in the morning to help you move things back.Don’t you touch a darned thing till I come. Promise! I say, aren’t you grateful to me? I borrowed that baby, and brought him here, too. The attention I attracted was awful. I had about ten dozen street kids with me all the way. Maybe that wasn’t just as useful a stunt as standing up and saying things, under the Belgian flag—eh?”
She sent him her most adorable look. “Mr. Tom, you’re a trump. You have my deepest appreciation—and good-night!”
“I say,” said Tom, a minute later, when they were well away, “I call her some girl. She’s—she’s—well, she’s a regular fellow—and you know how I mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” replied Black, looking fixedly up the street, as if he saw there something which interested him very much. “I know how you mean that. I think you are—right. Tom, would you object to telling me what all those women meant about my holding that baby? How on earth did I hold it differently from the way any man would hold it?”
“Young Mrs. Germain told me,” said Tom, chuckling with glee, “that you held it in your left arm. They said nobody except an old hand would do that. To have your right free to do other things—see? I never understood about that before. I carried the kid on my right arm.”
“After this,” declared Robert McPherson Black, firmly, “if I ever have occasion to hold an infant in public, I shall do it withmyright arm!”