The pale end of sunset was framed in the dining-room windows, and Mr. and Mrs. Baxter and the rehabilitated Jane were at the table, when William made his belated return from the afternoon's excursion. Seating himself, he waived his mother's references to the rain, his clothes, and probable colds, and after one laden glance at Jane denoting a grievance so elaborate that he despaired of setting it forth in a formal complaint to the Powers—he fell into a state of trance. He took nourishment automatically, and roused himself but once during the meal, a pathetic encounter with his father resulting from this awakening.
“Everybody in town seemed to be on the streets, this evening, as I walked home,” Mr. Baxter remarked, addressing his wife. “I suppose there's something in the clean air after a rain that brings 'em out. I noticed one thing, though; maybe it's the way they dress nowadays, but you certainly don't see as many pretty girls on the streets as there used to be.”
William looked up absently. “I used to think that, too,” he said, with dreamy condescension, “when I was younger.”
Mr. Baxter stared.
“Well, I'll be darned!” he said.
“Papa, papa!” his wife called, reprovingly.
“When you were younger!” Mr. Baxter repeated, with considerable irritation. “How old d' you think you are?”
“I'm going on eighteen,” said William, firmly. “I know plenty of cases—cases where—” He paused, relapsing into lethargy.
“What's the matter with him?” Mr. Baxter inquired, heatedly, of his wife.
William again came to life. “I was saying that a person's age is different according to circumstances,” he explained, with dignity, if not lucidity. “You take Genesis's father. Well, he was married when he was sixteen. Then there was a case over in Iowa that lots of people know about and nobody thinks anything of. A young man over there in Iowa that's seventeen years old began shaving when he was thirteen and shaved every day for four years, and now—”
He was interrupted by his father, who was no longer able to contain himself. “And now I suppose he's got WHISKERS!” he burst forth. “There's an ambition for you! My soul!”
It was Jane who took up the tale. She had been listening with growing excitement, her eyes fixed piercingly upon William. “He's got a beard!” she cried, alluding not to her brother, but to the fabled Iowan. “I heard Willie tell ole Mr. Genesis about it.”
“It seems to lie heavily on your mind,” Mr. Baxter said to William. “I suppose you feel that in the face of such an example, your life between the ages of thirteen and seventeen has been virtually thrown away?”
William had again relapsed, but he roused himself feebly. “Sir?” he said.
“What IS the matter with him?” Mr. Baxter demanded. “Half the time lately he seems to be hibernating, and only responds by a slight twitching when poked with a stick. The other half of the time he either behaves like I-don't-know-what or talks about children growing whiskers in Iowa! Hasn't that girl left town yet?”
William was not so deep in trance that this failed to stir him. He left the table.
Mrs. Baxter looked distressed, though, as the meal was about concluded, and William had partaken of his share in spite of his dreaminess, she had no anxieties connected with his sustenance. As for Mr. Baxter, he felt a little remorse, undoubtedly, but he was also puzzled. So plain a man was he that he had no perception of the callous brutality of the words “THAT GIRL” when applied to some girls. He referred to his mystification a little later, as he sat with his evening paper in the library.
“I don't know what I said to that tetchy boy to hurt him,” he began in an apologetic tone. “I don't see that there was anything too rough for him to stand in a little sarcasm. He needn't be so sensitive on the subject of whiskers, it seems to me.”
Mrs. Baxter smiled faintly and shook her head.
It was Jane who responded. She was seated upon the floor, disporting herself mildly with her paint-box. “Papa, I know what's the matter with Willie,” she said.
“Do you?” Mr. Baxter returned. “Well, if you make it pretty short, you've got just about long enough to tell us before your bedtime.”
“I think he's married,” said Jane.
“What!” And her parents united their hilarity.
“I do think he's married,” Jane insisted, unmoved. “I think he's married with that Miss Pratt.”
“Well,” said her father, “he does seem upset, and it may be that her visit and the idea of whiskers, coming so close together, is more than mere coincidence, but I hardly think Willie is married, Jane!”
“Well, then,” she returned, thoughtfully, “he's almost married. I know that much, anyway.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, because! I KIND of thought he must be married, or anyways somep'm, when he talked to Mr. Genesis this mornin'. He said he knew how some people got married in Pennsylvania an' India, an' he said they were only seven or eight years old. He said so, an' I heard him; an' he said there were eleven people married that were only seventeen, an' this boy in Iowa got a full beard an' got married, too. An' he said Mr. Genesis was only sixteen when HE was married. He talked all about gettin' married when you're seventeen years old, an' he said how people thought it was the best thing could happen. So I just KNOW he's almost married!”
Mr. Baxter chuckled, and Mrs. Baxter smiled, but a shade of thoughtfulness, a remote anxiety, tell upon the face of the latter.
“You haven't any other reason, have you, Jane?” she asked.
“Yes'm,” said Jane, promptly. “An' it's a more reason than any! Miss Pratt calls you 'mamma' as if you were HER mamma. She does it when she talks to Willie.”
“Jane!”
“Yes m, I HEARD her. An' Willie said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother.' He said, 'I don't know what you'll think about mother,' to Miss Pratt.”
Mrs. Baxter looked a little startled, and her husband frowned. Jane mistook their expressions for incredulity. “They DID, mamma,” she protested. “That's just the way they talked to each other. I heard 'em this afternoon, when Willie had papa's cane.”
“Maybe they were doing it to tease you, if you were with them,” Mr. Baxter suggested.
“I wasn't with 'em. I was sailin' my boat, an' they came along, an' first they never saw me, an' Willie looked—oh, papa, I wish you'd seen him!” Jane rose to her feet in her excitement. “His face was so funny, you never saw anything like it! He was walkin' along with it turned sideways, an' all the time he kept walkin' frontways, he kept his face sideways—like this, papa. Look, papa!” And she gave what she considered a faithful imitation of William walking with Miss Pratt. “Look, papa! This is the way Willie went. He had it sideways so's he could see Miss. Pratt, papa. An' his face was just like this. Look, papa!” She contorted her features in a terrifying manner. “Look, papa!”
“Don't, Jane!” her mother exclaimed.
“Well, I haf to show papa how Willie looked, don't I?” said Jane, relaxing. “That's just the way he looked. Well, an' then they stopped an' talked to me, an' Miss Pratt said, 'It's our little sister.'”
“Did she really?” Mrs. Baxter asked, gravely.
“Yes'm, she did. Soon as she saw who I was, she said, 'Why, it's our little sister!' Only she said it that way she talks—sort of foolish. 'It's our ittle sissy'—somep'm like that, mamma. She said it twice an' told me to go home an' get washed up. An' Miss Pratt told Willie—Miss Pratt said, 'It isn't mamma's fault Jane's so dirty,' just like that. She—”
“Are you sure she said 'our little sister'?” said Mrs. Baxter.
“Why, you can ask Willie! She said it that funny way. 'Our 'ittle sissy'; that's what she said. An' Miss Pratt said, 'Ev'rybody would love our little sister if mamma washed her in soap an' water!' You can ask Willie; that's exackly what Miss Pratt said, an' if you don't believe it you can ask HER. If you don't want to believe it, why, you can ask—”
“Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Baxter. “All this doesn't mean anything at all, especially such nonsense as Willie's thinking of being married. It's your bedtime.”
“Well, but MAMMA—”
“Was that all they said?” Mr. Baxter inquired.
Jane turned to him eagerly. “They said all lots of things like that, papa. They—”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Baxter in interrupted. “Come, it's bedtime. I'll go up with you. You mustn't think such nonsense.”
“But, mamma—”
“Come along, Jane!”
Jane was obedient in the flesh, but her spirit was free; her opinions were her own. Disappointed in the sensation she had expected to produce, she followed her mother out of the room wearing the expression of a person who says, “You'll SEE—some day when everything's ruined!”
Mr. Baxter, left alone, laughed quietly, lifted his neglected newspaper to obtain the light at the right angle, and then allowed it to languish upon his lap again. Frowning, he began to tap the floor with his shoe.
He was trying to remember what things were in his head when he was seventeen, and it was difficult. It seemed to him that he had been a steady, sensible young fellow—really quite a man—at that age. Looking backward at the blur of youthful years, the period from sixteen to twenty-five appeared to him as “pretty much all of a piece.” He could not recall just when he stopped being a boy; it must have been at about fifteen, he thought.
All at once he sat up stiffly in his chair, and the paper slid from his knee. He remembered an autumn, long ago, when he had decided to abandon the educational plans of his parents and become an actor. He had located this project exactly, for it dated from the night of his seventeenth birthday, when he saw John McCullough play “Virginius.”
Even now Mr. Baxter grew a little red as he remembered the remarkable letter he had written, a few weeks later, to the manager of a passing theatrical company. He had confidently expected an answer, and had made his plans to leave town quietly with the company and afterward reassure his parents by telegraph. In fact, he might have been on the stage at this moment, if that manager had taken him. Mr. Baxter began to look nervous.
Still, there is a difference between going on the stage and getting married. “I don't know, though!” Mr. Baxter thought. “And Willie's certainly not so well balanced in a GENERAL way as I was.” He wished his wife would come down and reassure him, though of course it was all nonsense.
But when Mrs. Baxter came down-stairs she did not reassure him. “Of course Jane's too absurd!” she said. “I don't mean that she 'made it up'; she never does that, and no doubt this little Miss Pratt did say about what Jane thought she said. But it all amounts to nothing.”
“Of course!”
“Willie's just going through what several of the other boys about his age are going through—like Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and Wallace Banks. They all seem to be frantic over her.”
“I caught a glimpse of her the day you had her to tea. She's rather pretty.”
“Adorably! And perhaps Willie has been just a LITTLE bit more frantic than the others.”
“He certainly seems in a queer state!”
At this his wife's tone became serious. “Do you think he WOULD do as crazy a thing as that?”
Mr. Baxter laughed. “Well, I don't know what he'd do it ON! I don't suppose he has more than a dollar in his possession.”
“Yes, he has,” she returned, quickly. “Day before yesterday there was a second-hand furniture man here, and I was too busy to see him, but I wanted the storeroom in the cellar cleared out, and I told Willie he could have whatever the man would pay him for the junk in there, if he'd watch to see that they didn't TAKE anything. They found some old pieces that I'd forgotten, underneath things, and altogether the man paid Willie nine dollars and eighty-five cents.”
“But, mercy-me!” exclaimed Mr. Baxter, “the girl may be an idiot, but she wouldn't run away and marry a boy just barely seventeen on nine dollars and eighty-five cents!”
“Oh no!” said Mrs. Baxter. “At least, I don't THINK so. Of course girls do as crazy things as boys sometimes—in their way. I was thinking—” She paused. “Of COURSE there couldn't be anything in it, but it did seem a little strange.”
“What did?”
“Why, just before I came down-stairs, Adelia came for the laundry; and I asked her if she'd seen Willie; and she said he'd put on his dark suit after dinner, and he went out through the kitchen, carrying his suit-case.”
“He did?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Baxter went on, slowly, “I COULDN'T believe he'd do such a thing, but he really is in a PREPOSTEROUS way over this little Miss Pratt, and he DID have that money—”
“By George!” Mr. Baxter got upon his feet. “The way he talked at dinner, I could come pretty near believing he hasn't any more brains LEFT than to get married on nine dollars and eighty-five cents! I wouldn't put it past him! By George, I wouldn't!”
“Oh, I don't think he would,” she remonstrated, feebly. “Besides, the law wouldn't permit it.”
Mr. Baxter paced the floor. “Oh, I suppose they COULD manage it. They could go to some little town and give false ages and—” He broke off. “Adelia was sure he had his suit-case?”
She nodded. “Do you think we'd better go down to the Parchers'? We'd just say we came to call, of course, and if—”
“Get your hat on,” he said. “I don't think there's anything in it at all, but we'd just as well drop down there. It can't HURT anything.”
“Of course, I don't think—” she began.
“Neither do I,” he interrupted, irascibly. “But with a boy of his age crazy enough to think he's in love, how do WE know what 'll happen? We're only his parents! Get your hat on.”
But when the uneasy couple found themselves upon the pavement before the house of the Parchers, they paused under the shade-trees in the darkness, and presently decided that it was not necessary to go in. Suddenly their uneasiness had fallen from them. From the porch came the laughter of several young voices, and then one silvery voice, which pretended to be that of a tiny child.
“Oh, s'ame! S'ame on 'oo, big Bruvva Josie-Joe! Mus' be polite to Johnny Jump-up, or tant play wiv May and Lola!”
“That's Miss Pratt,” whispered Mrs. Baxter. “She's talking to Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and May Parcher. Let's go home; it's all right. Of course I knew it would be.”
“Why, certainly,” said Mr. Baxter, as they turned. “Even if Willie were as crazy as that, the little girl would have more sense. I wouldn't have thought anything of it, if you hadn't told me about the suit-case. That looked sort of queer.”
She agreed that it did, but immediately added that she had thought nothing of it. What had seemed more significant to her was William's interest in the early marriage of Genesis's father, and in the Iowa beard story, she said. Then she said that it WAS curious about the suit-case.
And when they came to their own house again, there was William sitting alone and silent upon the steps of the porch.
“I thought you'd gone out, Willie,” said his mother, as they paused beside him.
“Ma'am?”
“Adelia said you went out, carrying your suit-case.”
“Oh yes,” he said, languidly. “If you leave clothes at Schwartz's in the evening they have 'em pressed in the morning. You said I looked damp at dinner, so I took 'em over and left 'em there.”
“I see.” Mrs. Baxter followed her husband to the door, but she stopped on the threshold and called back:
“Don't sit there too long, Willie.”
“Ma'am?”
“The dew is falling and it rained so hard to-day—I'm afraid it might be damp.”
“Ma'am?”
“Come on,” Mr. Baxter said to his wife. “He's down on the Parchers' porch, not out in front here. Of course he can't hear you. It's three blocks and a half.”
But William's father was mistaken. Little he knew! William was not upon the porch of the Parchers, with May Parcher and Joe Bullitt and Johnnie Watson to interfere. He was far from there, in a land where time was not. Upon a planet floating in pink mist, and uninhabited—unless old Mr. Genesis and some Hindoo princes and the diligent Iowan may have established themselves in its remoter regions—William was alone with Miss Pratt, in the conservatory. And, after a time, they went together, and looked into the door of a room where an indefinite number of little boys—all over three years of age—were playing in the firelight upon a white-bear rug. For, in the roseate gossamer that boys' dreams are made of, William had indeed entered the married state.
His condition was growing worse, every day.
In the morning sunshine, Mrs. Baxter stood at the top of the steps of the front porch, addressing her son, who listened impatiently and edged himself a little nearer the gate every time he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Willie,” she said, “you must really pay some attention to the laws of health, or you'll never live to be an old man.”
“I don't want to live to be an old man,” said William, earnestly. “I'd rather do what I please now and die a little sooner.”
“You talk very foolishly,” his mother returned. “Either come back and put on some heavier THINGS or take your overcoat.”
“My overcoat!” William groaned. “They'd think I was a lunatic, carrying an overcoat in August!”
“Not to a picnic,” she said.
“Mother, it isn't a picnic, I've told you a hunderd times! You think it's one those ole-fashion things YOU used to go to—sit on the damp ground and eat sardines with ants all over 'em? This isn't anything like that; we just go out on the trolley to this farm-house and have noon dinner, and dance all afternoon, and have supper, and then come home on the trolley. I guess we'd hardly of got up anything as out o' date as a picnic in honor of Miss PRATT!”
Mrs. Baxter seemed unimpressed.
“It doesn't matter whether you call it a picnic or not, Willie. It will be cool on the open trolleycar coming home, especially with only those white trousers on—”
“Ye gods!” he cried. “I've got other things on besides my trousers! I wish you wouldn't always act as if I was a perfect child! Good heavens! isn't a person my age supposed to know how much clothes to wear?”
“Well, if he is,” she returned, “it's a mere supposition and not founded on fact. Don't get so excited, Willie, please; but you'll either have to give up the picnic or come in and ch—”
“Change my 'things'!” he wailed. “I can't change my 'things'! I've got just twenty minutes to get to May Parcher's—the crowd meets there, and they're goin' to take the trolley in front the Parchers' at exactly a quarter after 'leven. PLEASE don't keep me any longer, mother—I GOT to go!”
She stepped into the hall and returned immediately. “Here's your overcoat, Willie.”
His expression was of despair. “They'll think I'm a lunatic and they'll say so before everybody—and I don't blame 'em! Overcoat on a hot day like this! Except me, I don't suppose there was ever anybody lived in the world and got to be going on eighteen years old and had to carry his silly old overcoat around with him in August—because his mother made him!”
“Willie,” said Mrs. Baxter, “you don't know how many thousands and thousands of mothers for thousands and thousands of years have kept their sons from taking thousands and thousands of colds—just this way!”
He moaned. “Well, and I got to be called a lunatic just because you're nervous, I s'pose. All right!”
She hung it upon his arm, kissed him; and he departed in a desperate manner.
However, having worn his tragic face for three blocks, he halted before a corner drug-store, and permitted his expression to improve as he gazed upon the window display of My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes, the Package of Twenty for Ten Cents. William was not a smoker—that is to say, he had made the usual boyhood experiments, finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, “Well,I'll tackle one o' your ole coffin-nails,” he had never made a purchase of tobacco in his life. But it struck him now that it would be rather debonair to disport himself with a package of Little Sweethearts upon the excursion.
And the name! It thrilled him inexpressibly, bringing a tenderness into his eyes and a glow into his bosom. He felt that when he should smoke a Little Sweetheart it would be a tribute to the ineffable visitor for whom this party was being given—it would bring her closer to him. His young brow grew almost stern with determination, for he made up his mind, on the spot, that he would smoke oftener in the future—he would become a confirmed smoker, and all his life he would smoke My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes.
He entered and managed to make his purchase in a matter-of-fact way, as if he were doing something quite unemotional; then he said to the clerk:
“Oh, by the by—ah—”
The clerk stared. “Well, what else?”
“I mean,” said William, hurriedly, “there's something I wanted to 'tend to, now I happen to be here. I was on my way to take this overcoat to—to get something altered at the tailor's for next winter. 'Course I wouldn't want it till winter, but I thought I might as well get it DONE.” He paused, laughing carelessly, for greater plausibility. “I thought he'd prob'ly want lots of time on the job—he's a slow worker, I've noticed—and so I decided I might just as well go ahead and let him get at it. Well, so I was on my way there, but I just noticed I only got about six minutes more to get to a mighty important engagement I got this morning, and I'd like to leave it here and come by and get it on my way home, this evening.”
“Sure,” said the clerk. “Hang it on that hook inside the p'scription-counter. There's one there already, b'longs to your friend, that young Bullitt fella. He was in here awhile ago and said he wanted to leave his because he didn't have time to take it to be pressed in time for next winter. Then he went on and joined that crowd in Mr. Parcher's yard, around the corner, that's goin' on a trolley-party. I says, 'I betcher mother maje carry it,' and he says, 'Oh no. Oh no,' he says. 'Honest, I was goin' to get it pressed!' You can hang yours on the same nail.”
The clerk spoke no more, and went to serve another customer, while William stared after him a little uneasily. It seemed that here was a man of suspicious nature, though, of course, Joe Bullitt's shallow talk about getting an overcoat pressed before winter would not have imposed upon anybody. However, William felt strongly that the private life of the customers of a store should not be pried into and speculated about by employees, and he was conscious of a distaste for this clerk.
Nevertheless, it was with a lighter heart that he left his overcoat behind him and stepped out of the side door of the drug-store. That brought him within sight of the gaily dressed young people, about thirty in number, gathered upon the small lawn beside Mr. Parcher's house.
Miss Pratt stood among them, in heliotrope and white, Flopit nestling in her arms. She was encircled by girls who were enthusiastically caressing the bored and blinking Flopit; and when William beheld this charming group, his breath became eccentric, his knee-caps became cold and convulsive, his neck became hot, and he broke into a light perspiration.
She saw him! The small blonde head and the delirious little fluffy hat above it shimmered a nod to him. Then his mouth fell unconsciously open, and his eyes grew glassy with the intensity of meaning he put into the silent response he sent across the picket fence and through the interstices of the intervening group. Pressing with his elbow upon the package of cigarettes in his pocket, he murmured, inaudibly, “My Little Sweetheart, always for you!”—a repetition of his vow that, come what might, he would forever remain a loyal smoker of that symbolic brand. In fact, William's mental condition had never shown one moment's turn for the better since the fateful day of the distracting visitor's arrival.
Mr. Johnnie Watson and Mr. Joe Bullitt met him at the gate and offered him hearty greeting. All bickering and dissension among these three had passed. The lady was so wondrous impartial that, as time went on, the sufferers had come to be drawn together, rather than thrust asunder, by their common feeling. It had grown to be a bond uniting them; they were not so much rivals as ardent novices serving a single altar, each worshiping there without visible gain over the other. Each had even come to possess, in the eyes of his two fellows, almost a sacredness as a sharer in the celestial glamor; they were tender one with another. They were in the last stages.
Johnnie Watson had with him to-day a visitor of his own—a vastly overgrown person of eighteen, who, at Johnnie's beckoning, abandoned a fair companion of the moment and came forward as William entered the gate.
“I want to intradooce you to two of my most int'mut friends, George,” said Johnnie, with the anxious gravity of a person about to do something important and unfamiliar. “Mr. Baxter, let me intradooce my cousin, Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper, this is my friend, Mr. Baxter.”
The gentlemen shook hands solemnly, saying,
“'M very glad to meet you,” and Johnnie turned to Joe Bullitt. “Mr. Croo—I mean, Mr. Bullitt, let me intradooce my friend, Mr. Crooper—I mean my cousin, Mr. Crooper. Mr. Crooper is a cousin of mine.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Crooper,” said Joe. “I suppose you're a cousin of Johnnie's, then?”
“Yep,” said Mr. Crooper, becoming more informal. “Johnnie wrote me to come over for this shindig, so I thought I might as well come.” He laughed loudly, and the others laughed with the same heartiness. “Yessir,” he added, “I thought I might as well come, 'cause I'm pretty apt to be on hand if there's anything doin'!”
“Well, that's right,” said William, and while they all laughed again, Mr. Crooper struck his cousin a jovial blow upon the back.
“Hi, ole sport!” he cried, “I want to meet that Miss Pratt before we start. The car'll be along pretty soon, and I got her picked for the girl I'm goin' to sit by.”
The laughter of William and Joe Bullitt, designed to express cordiality, suddenly became flaccid and died. If Mr. Crooper had been a sensitive person he might have perceived the chilling disapproval in their glances, for they had just begun to be most unfavorably impressed with him. The careless loudness—almost the notoriety—with which he had uttered Miss Pratt's name, demanding loosely to be presented to her, regardless of the well-known law that a lady must first express some wish in such matters—these were indications of a coarse nature sure to be more than uncongenial to Miss Pratt. Its presence might make the whole occasion distasteful to her—might spoil her day. Both William and Joe Bullitt began to wonder why on earth Johnnie Watson didn't have any more sense than to invite such a big, fat lummox of a cousin to the party.
This severe phrase of theirs, almost simultaneous in the two minds, was not wholly a failure as a thumb-nail sketch of Mr. George Crooper. And yet there was the impressiveness of size about him, especially about his legs and chin. At seventeen and eighteen growth is still going on, sometimes in a sporadic way, several parts seeming to have sprouted faster than others. Often the features have not quite settled down together in harmony, a mouth, for instance, appearing to have gained such a lead over the rest of a face, that even a mother may fear it can never be overtaken. Voices, too, often seem misplaced; one hears, outside the door, the bass rumble of a sinister giant, and a mild boy, thin as a cricket, walks in. The contrary was George Crooper's case; his voice was an unexpected piping tenor, half falsetto and frequently girlish—as surprising as the absurd voice of an elephant.
He had the general outwardness of a vast and lumpy child. His chin had so distanced his other features that his eyes, nose, and brow seemed almost baby-like in comparison, while his mountainous legs were the great part of the rest of him. He was one of those huge, bottle-shaped boys who are always in motion in spite of their cumbersomeness. His gestures were continuous, though difficult to interpret as bearing upon the subject of his equally continuous conversation; and under all circumstances he kept his conspicuous legs incessantly moving, whether he was going anywhere or remaining in comparatively one spot.
His expression was pathetically offensive, the result of his bland confidence in the audible opinions of a small town whereof his father was the richest inhabitant—and the one thing about him, even more obvious than his chin, his legs, and his spectacular taste in flannels, was his perfect trust that he was as welcome to every one as he was to his mother. This might some day lead him in the direction of great pain, but on the occasion of the “subscription party” for Miss Pratt it gave him an advantage.
“When do I get to meet that cutie?” he insisted, as Johnnie Watson moved backward from the cousinly arm, which threatened further flailing. “You intradooced me to about seven I can't do much FOR, but I want to get the howdy business over with this Miss Pratt, so I and she can get things started. I'm goin' to keep her busy all day!”
“Well, don't be in such a hurry,” said Johnnie, uneasily. “You can meet her when we get out in the country—if I get a chance, George.”
“No, sir!” George protested, jovially. “I guess you're sad birds over in this town, but look out! When I hit a town it don't take long till they all hear there's something doin'! You know how I am when I get started, Johnnie!” Here he turned upon William, tucking his fat arm affectionately through William's thin one. “Hi, sport! Ole Johnnie's so slow, YOU toddle me over and get me fixed up with this Miss Pratt, and I'll tell her you're the real stuff—after we get engaged!”
He was evidently a true cloud-compeller, this horrible George.
William extricated his arm, huskily muttering words which were lost in the general outcry, “Car's coming!” The young people poured out through the gate, and, as the car stopped, scrambled aboard. For a moment everything was hurried and confused. William struggled anxiously to push through to Miss Pratt and climb up beside her, but Mr. George Crooper made his way into the crowd in a beaming, though bull-like manner, and a fat back in a purple-and-white “blazer” flattened William's nose, while ponderous heels damaged William's toes; he was shoved back, and just managed to clamber upon the foot-board as the car started. The friendly hand of Joe Bullitt pulled him to a seat, and William found himself rubbing his nose and sitting between Joe and Johnnie Watson, directly behind the dashing Crooper and Miss Pratt. Mr. Crooper had already taken Flopit upon his lap.
“Dogs are always crazy 'bout me,” they heard him say, for his high voice was but too audible over all other sounds. “Dogs and chuldren. I dunno why it is, but they always take to me. My name's George Crooper, Third, Johnnie Watson's cousin. He was tryin' to intradooce me before the car came along, but he never got the chance. I guess as this shindig's for you, and I'm the only other guest from out o' town, we'll have to intradooce ourselves—the two guests of honor, as it were.”
Miss Pratt laughed her silvery laugh, murmured politely, and turned no freezing glance upon her neighbor. Indeed, it seemed that she was far from regarding him with the distaste anticipated by William and Joe Bullitt. “Flopit look so toot an' tunnin',” she was heard to remark. “Flopit look so 'ittle on dray, big, 'normous man's lap.”
Mr. Crooper laughed deprecatingly. “He does look kind of small compared with the good ole man that's got charge of him, now! Well, I always was a good deal bigger than the fellas I went with. I dunno why it is, but I was always kind of quicker, too, as it were—and the strongest in any crowd I ever got with. I'm kind of musclebound, I guess, but I don't let that interfere with my quickness any. Take me in an automobile, now—I got a racin'-car at home—and I keep my head better than most people do, as it were. I can kind of handle myself better; I dunno why it is. My brains seem to work better than other people's, that's all it is. I don't mean that I got more sense, or anything like that; it's just the way my brains work; they kind of put me at an advantage, as it were. Well, f'rinstance, if I'd been livin' here in this town and joined in with the crowd to get up this party, well, it would of been done a good deal diff'rent. I won't say better, but diff'rent. That's always the way with me if I go into anything, pretty soon I'm running the whole shebang; I dunno why it is. The other people might try to run it their way for a while, but pretty soon you notice 'em beginning to step out of the way for good ole George. I dunno why it is, but that's the way it goes. Well, if I'd been running THIS party I'd of had automobiles to go out in, not a trolley-car where you all got to sit together—and I'd of sent over home for my little racer and I'd of taken you out in her myself. I wish I'd of sent for it, anyway. We could of let the rest go out in the trolley, and you and I could of got off by ourselves: I'd like you to see that little car. Well, anyway, I bet you'd of seen something pretty different and a whole lot better if I'd of come over to this town in time to get up this party for you!”
“For US,” Miss Pratt corrected him, sunnily.
“Bofe strangers—party for us two—all bofe!” And she gave him one of her looks.
Mr. Crooper flushed with emotion; he was annexed; he became serious. “Say,” he said, “that's a mighty smooth hat you got on.” And he touched the fluffy rim of it with his forefinger. His fat shoulders leaned toward her yearningly.
“We'd cert'nly of had a lot better time sizzin' along in that little racer I got,” he said. “I'd like to had you see how I handle that little car. Girls over home, they say they like to go out with me just to watch the way I handle her; they say it ain't so much just the ride, but more the way I handle that little car. I dunno why it is, but that's what they say. That's the way I do anything I make up my mind to tackle, though. I don't try to tackle everything—there's lots o' things I wouldn't take enough interest in 'em, as it were—but just lemme make up my mind once, and it's all off; I dunno why it is. There was a brakeman on the train got kind of fresh: he didn't know who I was. Well, I just put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him down in his seat like this”—he set his hand upon Miss Pratt's shoulder. “I didn't want to hit him, because there was women and chuldren in the car, so I just shoved my face up close to him, like this. 'I guess you don't know how much stock my father's got in this road,' I says. Did he wilt? Well, you ought of seen that brakeman when I got through tellin' him who I was!”
“Nassy ole brateman!” said Miss Pratt, with unfailing sympathy.
Mr. Crooper's fat hand, as if unconsciously, gave Miss Pratt's delicate shoulder a little pat in reluctant withdrawal. “Well, that's the way with me,” he said. “Much as I been around this world, nobody ever tried to put anything over on me and got away with it. They always come out the little end o' the horn; I dunno why it is. Say, that's a mighty smooth locket you got on the end o' that chain, there.” And again stretching forth his hand, in a proprietor-like way, he began to examine the locket.
Three hot hearts, just behind, pulsated hatred toward him; for Johnnie Watson had perceived his error, and his sentiments were now linked to those of Joe Bullitt and William. The unhappiness of these three helpless spectators was the more poignant because not only were they witnesses of the impression of greatness which George Crooper was obviously producing upon Miss Pratt, but they were unable to prevent themselves from being likewise impressed.
They were not analytical; they dumbly accepted George at his own rating, not even being able to charge him with lack of modesty. Did he not always accompany his testimonials to himself with his deprecating falsetto laugh and “I dunno why it is,” an official disclaimer of merit, “as it were”? Here was a formidable candidate, indeed—a traveler, a man of the world, with brains better and quicker than other people's brains; an athlete, yet knightly—he would not destroy even a brakeman in the presence of women and children—and, finally, most enviable and deadly, the owner and operator of a “little racer”! All this glitter was not far short of overpowering; and yet, though accepting it as fact, the woeful three shared the inconsistent belief that in spite of everything George was nothing but a big, fat lummox. For thus they even rather loudly whispered of him—almost as if hopeful that Miss Pratt, and mayhap George himself, might overhear.
Impotent their seething! The overwhelming Crooper pursued his conquering way. He leaned more and more toward the magnetic girl, his growing tenderness having that effect upon him, and his head inclining so far that his bedewed brow now and then touched the fluffy hat. He was constitutionally restless, but his movements never ended by placing a greater distance between himself and Miss Pratt, though they sometimes discommoded Miss Parcher, who sat at the other side of him—a side of him which appeared to be without consciousness. He played naively with Miss Pratt's locket and with the filmy border of her collar; he flicked his nose for some time with her little handkerchief, loudly sniffing its scent; and finally he became interested in a ring she wore, removed it, and tried unsuccessfully to place it upon one of his own fingers.
“I've worn lots o' girls' rings on my watch-fob. I'd let 'em wear mine on a chain or something. I guess they like to do that with me,” he said. “I dunno why it is.”
At this subtle hint the three unfortunates held their breath, and then lost it as the lovely girl acquiesced in the horrible exchange. As for William, life was of no more use to him. Out of the blue heaven of that bright morning's promise had fallen a pall, draping his soul in black and purple. He had been horror-stricken when first the pudgy finger of George Crooper had touched the fluffy edge of that sacred little hat; then, during George's subsequent pawings and leanings, William felt that he must either rise and murder or go mad. But when the exchange of rings was accomplished, his spirit broke and even resentment oozed away. For a time there was no room in him for anything except misery.
Dully, William's eyes watched the fat shoulders hitching and twitching, while the heavy arms flourished in gesture and in further pawings. Again and again were William's ears afflicted with, “I dunno why it is,” following upon tribute after tribute paid by Mr. Crooper to himself, and received with little cries of admiration and sweet child-words on the part of Miss Pratt. It was a long and accursed ride.