294CHAPTER XXXISALLY DECIDES
The clarion call of Mrs. Halliday’s big red rooster announcing fervently his discovery of a thin streak of silver light in the east brought Don to his elbow with a start. For a moment he could not place himself, and then, as he realized where he was and what this day meant for him, he took a long deep breath.
“In the morning,” she had said.
Technically it was now morning, though his watch informed him that it was not yet five. By now, then, she had made her decision. Somewhere in this old house, perhaps within sound of his voice, she was waiting with the verdict that was to decide whether he was going back to New York the happiest or the unhappiest man in all Christendom. No, that was not quite right either. Even if she said “No” that would not decide it. It would mean only another day of waiting, because he was going to keep right on trying to make her295understand––day after day, all summer and next winter and the next summer if necessary. He was going to do that because, if he ever let go of this hope, then he would be letting go of everything.
He found it quite impossible to sleep again and equally impossible to lie there awake. Jumping from bed he dressed, shaved, and went downstairs, giving Mrs. Halliday the start of her life when he came upon her as she was kindling the kitchen fire.
“Land sakes alive,” she gasped, “I didn’t expect to see you for a couple hours.”
“I know it’s early,” he answered uncomfortably; “I don’t suppose Sally is up?”
Mrs. Halliday touched a match to the kindling and put the stove covers back in place.
“There isn’t anything lazy about Sally, but she generally does wait until the sun is up,” she returned.
She filled the teakettle and then, adjusting her glasses, took a more critical look at Don.
“Wasn’t ye warm enough last night?” she demanded.
“Plenty, thank you,” he answered.
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“Perhaps bein’ in new surroundings bothered you,” she suggested; “I can’t ever sleep myself till I git used to a place.”
“I slept like a log,” he assured her.
“Is this the time ye ginerally git up in New York?”
“Not quite as early as this,” he admitted. “But, you see, that rooster––”
“I see,” she nodded. “And ye kind of hoped it might wake up Sally too?”
“I took a chance,” he smiled.
“Well, now, as long as ye seem so anxious I’ll tell ye something; maybe it did. Anyhow, I heard her movin’ round afore I came down. Draw a chair up to the stove and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thanks.”
The dry heat from the burning wood was already warming the room. Outside he heard the morning songs of the birds. It no longer seemed early to him. It was as though the world were fully awake, just because he knew now that Sally was awake. For a few minutes Mrs. Halliday continued her tasks as though unmindful that he was about. It was such a297sort of friendly acceptance of him as part of the household that he began to feel as much at home here as though it were his usual custom to appear at this hour. There was something more friendly about even Mrs. Halliday’s back than about the faces of a great many people he knew. It looked as though it had borne a great many burdens, but having borne them sturdily was ready for more. It invited confidences. Then the teakettle began to bubble and sing and that invited confidences too. He was choking with things he wished to say––preferably to Sally herself, but if that were not possible, then Mrs. Halliday was certainly the next best confidante. Besides, being the closest relative of Sally’s it was only fitting and proper that she should be told certain facts. Sooner or later she must know and now seemed a particularly opportune time. Don rose and moved his chair to attract her attention.
“Mrs. Halliday––” he began.
“Wal?” she replied, without turning. She was at that moment busy over the biscuit board.
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“There’s something I think I ought to tell you.”
She turned instantly at that––turned, adjusted her spectacles, and waited.
“I––I’ve asked Sally to marry me,” he confessed.
For a moment her thin, wrinkled face remained immobile. Then he saw a smile brighten the shrewd gray eyes.
“You don’t say!” she answered. “I’ve been wonderin’ just how long ye’d be tellin’ me that.”
“You knew? Sally told you?” he exclaimed.
“Not in so many words, as ye might say,” she answered. “But laws sake, when a girl wakes me up to say she doesn’t think a young man has blankets enough on his bed in this kind of weather––”
“She did that?” interrupted Don.
“Thet’s jest what she did. But long afore thet you told me yourself.”
“I?”
“Of course. It’s jest oozin’ out all over you.”
She came nearer. For a second Don felt as299though those gray eyes were boring into his soul.
“Look here, young man,” she said. “What did Sally say?”
“She said she’d let me know this morning,” he answered.
“And you’ve been blamin’ my old rooster for gettin’ you up?”
“Not blaming him exactly,” he apologized.
“And you aren’t sure whether she’s goin’ to say yes or goin’ to say no?”
Don’s lips tightened.
“I’m not sure whether she’s going to say yes or no this morning. But, believe me, Mrs. Halliday, before she dies she’s going to say yes.”
Mrs. Halliday nodded approvingly. She went further; she placed a thin hand on Don’s shoulder. It was like a benediction. His heart warmed as though it had been his mother’s hand there.
“Don,” she said, as naturally as though she had been saying it all her life, “I don’t know much about you in one way. But I like your face and I like your eyes. I go a lot by a man’s eyes. More’n that, I know Sally, and there300was never a finer, honester girl made than she is. If she has let you go as far as this, I don’t think I’d worry myself to death.”
“That’s the trouble,” he answered. “She didn’t let me go as far as this. I––I just went.”
Mrs. Halliday smiled again.
“Mebbe you think so,” she admitted.
“You see––” he stammered.
But at that moment he heard a rustle of skirts behind him. There stood Sally herself––her cheeks very red, with a bit of a frown above her eyes. It was Mrs. Halliday who saved the day.
“Here, now, you two,” she stormed as she went back to her biscuit board. “Both of you clear out of here until breakfast is ready. You belong outdoors where the birds are singing.”
“I’ll set the table, Aunty,” replied Sally grimly.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” replied Mrs. Halliday.
She crossed the room and, taking Sally by one arm she took Don by the other. She led them to the door.
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“Out with you,” she commanded.
Alone with her Don turned to seek Sally’s eyes and saw the frown still there.
“I––I told her,” he admitted; “I couldn’t help it. I’ve been up for an hour and I had to talk to some one.”
He took her arm.
“You’ve decided?” he asked.
His face was so tense, his voice so eager, that it was as much as she could do to remain vexed. Still, she resented the fact that he had spoken to her aunt without authority. It was a presumption that seemed to take for granted her answer. It was as though he thought only one answer possible.
“Heart of me,” he burst out, “you’ve decided?”
“You––you had no right to tell her,” she answered.
“Come down the road a bit,” he pleaded.
He led her down the path and along the country road between fields wet with dew. The air was clean and sweet and the sky overhead a spotless blue. It was the freshest and cleanest world he had ever seen and she was one with it.
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“I only told her what she already knew,” he said.
“She knew?”
He spoke in a lower voice––a voice gentle and trembling.
“She said you came in last night after she had gone asleep––”
Sally covered her face with her hands.
“Oh,” she gasped, “she––she told you that?”
He reached up and gently removed her hands. He held them tight in both of his.
“It was good of you to think of me like that. It was like you,” he said.
All the while he was drawing her nearer and nearer to him. She resisted. At least she thought she was resisting, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Nearer his eyes came to hers; nearer his lips came to hers. She gave a quick gasp as one before sudden danger. Then she felt his warm lips against hers and swayed slightly. But his arms were about her. They were strong about her, so that, while she felt as though hanging dizzily over a precipice, she at the same moment never felt safer303in her life. With his lips against her lips, she closed her eyes until, to keep from losing herself completely, she broke free. Her cheeks scarlet, her breath coming short, her eyes like stars, she stared at him a moment, and then like a startled fawn turned and ran for the house. He followed, but her feet were tipped with wings. He did not catch her until she had burst into the kitchen, where in some fear Mrs. Halliday gathered her into her arms.
“She hasn’t answered me even yet,” he explained to Mrs. Halliday.
“Oh, Don,” cried the trembling girl, her voice smothered in Mrs. Halliday’s shoulder. “You dare say that after––”
“Well, after what?” demanded Mrs. Halliday.
304CHAPTER XXXIIBARTON APPEARS
The details of the wedding Mrs. Halliday decided to take over into her own hands.
“You two can just leave that to me,” she informed them.
“But look here,” protested Don, “I don’t see why we need bother with a lot of fuss and––”
“What business is this of yours?” Mrs. Halliday challenged him.
“Only we haven’t much time,” he warned.
“There’s going to be time enough for Sally to be married properly,” she decided.
That was all there was to it. It seems that tucked away up in the attic there was an old trunk and tucked away in that a wedding dress of white silk which had been worn by Sally’s mother.
“It’s been kept ag’in’ this very day,” explained Mrs. Halliday, “though I will say that I was beginnin’ to git discouraged.”
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The dress was brought out, and no more auspicious omen could have been furnished Mrs. Halliday than the fact that, except in several unimportant details, Sally could have put it on and worn it, just as it was. Not only did it fit, but the intervening years had brought back into style again the very mode in which it had been designed, so that, had she gone to a Fifth Avenue dressmaker, she could have found nothing more in fashion. Thus it was possible to set the wedding date just four days off, for Saturday. That was not one moment more of time than Mrs. Halliday needed in which to put the house in order––even with the hearty coöperation of Don, who insisted upon doing his part, which included the washing of all the upper windows.
Those were wonderful days for him. For one thing he discovered that not only had there been given into his keeping the clear-seeing, steady-nerved, level-headed woman who had filled so large a share of his life this last year, but also another, who at first startled him like some wood nymph leaping into his path. She was so young, so vibrant with306life, so quick with her smiles and laughter––this other. It was the girl in her, long suppressed, because in the life she had been leading in town there had been no playground. Her whole attention there had been given to the subjection of the wild impulses in which she now indulged. She laughed, she ran, she reveled in being just her care-free, girlish self. Don watched her with a new thrill. He felt as though she were taking him back to her early youth––as though she were filling up for him all those years of her he had missed.
At night, about the usual time he was dining in town, Mrs. Halliday insisted that Sally should go to bed, as she herself did, which, of course, left Don no alternative but to go himself. There was no possible object in his remaining up after Sally was out of sight. But the early morning belonged to her and to him. At dawn he rose and when he came downstairs, he found her waiting for him. Though Mrs. Halliday protested that Sally was losing her beauty sleep she was not able to produce any evidence to prove it. If any one could look any fresher or more wonderful than Sally, as307she stepped out of the house by his side into the light of the newborn day, then there was no sense in it, because, as she was then, she filled his eyes and his heart to overflowing. She wore no hat, but except for this detail he was never conscious of how she was dressed. There was always too much to occupy him in her brown eyes, in her mouth, which, while losing nothing of its firmness, had acquired a new gentleness. He had always thought of her lips as cold, but he knew them better now. At the bend in the road where he had kissed her first, he kissed her again every morning. She always protested. That was instinctive. But in the end she submitted, because it always seemed so many hours since she had seen him last, and because she made him understand that not until the next day could he expect this privilege.
“What’s the use of being engaged if I can’t kiss you as often as I wish?” he demanded once.
“We’re engaged in order to be married,” she explained.
“And after we are married––”
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“You wait and see,” she answered, her cheeks as red as any schoolgirl’s.
“But that’s three days off,” he complained.
Even to her, happy as she was, confident as she was, the interval to Saturday sometimes seemed like a very long space of time. For one thing, she felt herself at night in the grip of a kind of foreboding absolutely foreign to her. Perhaps it was a natural reaction from the high tension of the day, but at night she sometimes found herself starting to her elbow in an agony of fear. Before the day came, something would happen to Don, because such happiness as this was not meant for her. She fell a victim to all manner of wild fears and extravagant fancies. On the second night there was a heavy thunderstorm. She did not mind such things ordinarily. The majesty of the darting light and the rolling crash of the thunder always thrilled her. But this evening the sky was blotted out utterly and quick light shot from every point of the compass at once. As peal followed peal, the house shook. Even then it was not of herself she thought. She had no fear except for Don. This might be the explanation309of her foreboding. It happened, too, that his room was beneath the big chimney where if the house were hit the bolt would be most apt to strike. Dressing hastily in her wrapper and bedroom slippers, she stole into the hall. A particularly vicious flash illuminated the house for a second and then plunged it into darkness. She crept to Don’s very door. There she crouched, resolved that the same bolt should kill them both. There she remained, scarcely daring to breathe until the shower passed.
It was a silly thing to do. When she came back to her own room, her cheeks were burning with shame. The next morning she was miserable in fear lest he discover her weakness. He did not, though he marveled at a new tenderness in her that had been born in the night.
The fourth day broke fair and Don found himself busy until noon helping with the decorations of green and of wild flowers; for though only a dozen or so neighbors had been asked, Mrs. Halliday was thorough in whatever she undertook. Had she been expecting a hundred she could have done no more in the310way of preparation except perhaps to increase the quantity of cake and ices.
Don himself had asked no one except old Barton, of Barton & Saltonstall, and him he did not expect, although he had received no reply to his invitation. What, then, was his surprise when toward the middle of the forenoon, as he was going into the house with an armful of pine boughs, he heard a voice behind him,––
“How do, Don?”
Turning, he saw Barton in a frock coat and a tall hat that he might have worn last at Pendleton, Senior’s, wedding.
“For Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Don, dropping his pine boughs on the doorstep and rushing to meet him. “I call this mighty good of you.”
“I could hardly do less for Pendleton’s boy,” answered Barton.
“Well, sir, you’re mighty welcome. Come right in. Oh, Sally,” he called.
Sally came on the run, not knowing what had happened. She wore a calico apron and had not found time to do her hair since morning.311It was not exactly the costume she would have chosen in which first to meet Mr. Barton. Her cheeks showed it.
“Sally,” said Don, “this is Mr. Barton––my father’s lawyer. Mr. Barton, this is Miss Winthrop.”
Barton bowed low with old-fashioned courtesy. Then he allowed his keen gray eyes to rest a moment upon hers.
“I am very glad to meet you,” he said.
“Will you come in?” she asked. “I’m afraid the house is very much in disorder just now, but I want you to meet my aunt.”
Mrs. Halliday was scarcely more presentable than Miss Winthrop, but the latter found a certain relief in that fact.
“I’m glad to know you,” Mrs. Halliday greeted him cordially.
But what to do with him at just this time was a problem which would have baffled her had he not solved it for himself.
“Please don’t let me interrupt the preparations,” he begged. “I should not have ventured here––at just this time––except that I wanted to see Don about a few legal matters.”
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“Mr. Barton,” explained Don to Sally, “is the man who had the pleasant duty thrust upon him of telling me that I was cut off without a cent.”
“It was an unpleasant duty,” nodded Barton, “but I hope it may be my good fortune to make up for that.”
“I’m afraid the only place you can sit is on the front doorstep,” laughed Sally.
“As good a place as any,” answered Don, leading the way.
“Well,” asked Don good-naturedly as soon as they were seated there, “what’s the trouble now? I tell you right off it’s got to be something mighty serious to jar me any at just this time.”
“There was still another codicil to your father’s will,” explained Barton at once––“a codicil I have not been at liberty to read to you until now. It had, in fact, no point except in the contingency of your marriage.”
“I hope you aren’t going to take the house away from me,” scowled Don.
“No,” answered Barton slowly. “It has to do rather with an additional provision. The313substance of it is that in case you married any one––er––meeting with my approval, you were to be given an allowance of two thousand a year.”
“Eh?”
“Two thousand a year. After that, one thousand a year additional for each child born of that marriage until the total allowance amounts to five thousand dollars. At that point the principal itself is to be turned over to you.”
“Oh, Sally!” called Don.
She came running again. It was still four hours before they would be safely married and many things might happen in four hours.
“Sit down here and listen to this,” he commanded. “Now, do you mind saying that all over again?”
Barton repeated his statement.
“What do you think of that?” inquired Don. “It’s just as though I had my salary raised two thousand a year. Not only that––but the rest is up to you.”
“Don!”
“Well, it is.”
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“And besides,” she gasped, “Mr. Barton has not yet said he approves.”
Mr. Barton arose.
“May I say that at once?” he smiled. “I do not think I have always given Don as much credit for his good judgment as I feel he should have been given.”
“Good old Barton!” choked Don.
“There’s one thing more,” said Barton––“a––a little present for myself.”
He handed Don an envelope.
“Thank you, sir,” said Don, thrusting it unopened in his pocket. “And now it seems to me the least the bride can do is to let you kiss her.”
“I’m not a bride yet,” answered Sally demurely, “but––”
She came to Barton’s side and he kissed her on the cheek.
“It’s too bad that Pendleton couldn’t have lived to know his son’s wife,” he said.
A little later Don gave Sally the envelope to open. It contained a check for five hundred dollars.
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Don, “we’re315rolling in wealth. I guess when we get back to town we’ll have to buy a car.”
“When we get back to town we’ll open a bank account,” corrected Sally.
316CHAPTER XXXIIIA BULLY WORLD
As Sally came down the stairs at a quarter of three in her white silk wedding gown the wonder was how, after a morning of such honest hard work as she had put in, it was possible for her to look so fresh. Many a town bride, after spending the entire morning resting in preparation for such an event, has at the last moment failed to turn up with such apple-red cheeks or brilliant eyes. There was a gently serious expression about her mouth, to be sure, but that was not due to fatigue. In spite of her light-heartedness during the last few days she had been all the while keenly conscious that she was accepting a great responsibility. She was about to marry not only a lover, but a man whose future was to be in her keeping. Among other things he was to be a future partner in the firm of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, and that meant several years of very hard work ahead of them. Then there317were the secret responsibilities––the unborn responsibilities. These were not very definite, to be sure, but she felt them, timidly, gravely, in queer little tuggings at her heart.
When finally she stood in front of the clergyman with Don by her side, she felt, not that she was in a bower of wild flowers, but before an altar. The ritual for her had a deeply religious significance. She made her responses in a steady voice heard by every one in the room. When she made the promise “to love, cherish, and obey,” she spoke it as though she meant it. It did not disturb her in the slightest to utter the word “obey,” because she knew well that whatever commands came to her from Don would be of her own inspiring. To her this promise was no more than an agreement to obey her own best impulses.
The service seemed almost too brief for so solemn an undertaking, but when it was over, she reached for Don’s hand and took it in a hearty grip that was more of a pledge than the ring itself. It sent a tingle to his heart and made his lips come together––the effect, a hundred times magnified, of the coach’s slap318upon the back that used to thrill him just before he trotted on the field before a big game. He felt that the harder the obstacles to be overcome for her dear sake, the better. He would like to have had a few at that moment as a relief to his pent-up emotions.
He remembered in a sort of impatient daze the congratulations that followed––with the faces of Mrs. Halliday and Barton standing out a trifle more prominently––and then the luncheon. It seemed another week before she went upstairs to change into her traveling-dress; another week before she reappeared. Then came good-byes and the shower of rice, with an old shoe or so mixed in. He had sent her trunk the day before to the mountain hotel where they were to be for a week, but they walked to the station, he carrying her suitcase. Then he found himself on the train, and in another two hours they were at the hotel. It was like an impossible dream come true when finally they stood for the first time alone––she as his wife. He held out his arms to her and she came this time without protest.
“Heart of mine,” he whispered as he kissed319her lips again and again,––“heart of mine, this is a bully old world.”
“You’ve made it that, Don.”
“I? I haven’t had anything to do about it except to get you.”
320CHAPTER XXXIVDON MAKES GOOD
They had not one honeymoon, but two or three. When they left the hotel and came back to town, it was another honeymoon to enter together the house in which she had played so important a part without ever having seen it. When they stepped out of the cab she insisted upon first seeing it from the outside, instead of rushing up the steps as he was for doing.
“Don,” she protested, “I––I don’t want to have such a pleasure over with all at once. I want to get it bit by bit.”
There was not much to see, to be sure, but a door and a few windows––a section similar to sections to the right and left of which it was a part. But it was a whole house, a house with lower stories and upper stories and a roof––all his, all hers. To her there was something still unreal about it.
He humored her delay, though Nora was321standing impatiently at the door, anxious to see the Pendleton bride. But when she finally did enter, Nora, at the smile she received, had whatever fears might have been hers instantly allayed.
“Gawd bless ye,” she beamed.
Sally refused to remove her wraps until she had made her inspection room by room, sitting down in each until she had grasped every detail. So they went from the first floor to the top floor and came back to the room which he had set apart for their room.
“Does it suit you, wife of mine?” he asked.
With the joy of it all, her eyes filled.
“It’s even more beautiful than I thought it would be,” she trembled.
For him the house had changed the moment she stepped into it. With his father alive, it had been his father’s home rather than his; with his father gone, it had been scarcely more than a convenient resting-place. There had been moments––when he thought of Frances here––that it had taken on more significance, but even this had been due to Sally. When he thought he was making the house ready for another,322it had been her dear hand who had guided him. How vividly now he recalled that dinner at the little French restaurant when he had described his home to her––the home which was now her home too. It was at that moment she had first made her personality felt here.
Sally removed her hat and tidied her hair before the mirror in quite as matter-of-fact a fashion as though she had been living here ever since that day instead of only the matter of a few minutes. When she came downstairs, Nora herself seemed to accept her on that basis. To her suggestions, she replied, “Yes, Mrs. Pendleton,” as glibly as though she had been saying it all her life.
They returned on a Saturday. On Monday Don was to go back to the office. Sally had sent in her resignation the day of her marriage and had received nice letters from both Carter and Farnsworth, with a check enclosed from the former for fifty dollars and from the latter for twenty-five dollars.
“What I’ll have to do,” said Don, as he retired Sunday night, “is to get a larger alarm-clock. It won’t do to be late any more.”
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“You’re right,” agreed Sally. “But you won’t need an alarm-clock.”
“Eh?”
“You wait and see.”
Sally was awake at six the next morning and Don himself less than one minute after.
“Time to get up,” she called.
“I’m sleepy,” murmured Don.
“Then to-morrow night you’ll get to bed one hour earlier. But––up with you.”
“Right-o,” he answered as he sprang from bed. “But there’s no need of your getting up.”
“I’d be ashamed of myself if I didn’t.”
She had breakfast with him that first work morning as she planned to do every morning of her life after that.
“Now, Don,” she warned as he was ready to leave, “mind you don’t say anything about a raise in salary for a little while yet. I know Farnsworth, and he’ll give it to you the moment he feels you’ve made good. Besides, we can afford to wait and––I don’t know as I want you to have any more money than you have now. It’s ridiculous for you to have that two thousand from your father.”
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“I guess we can use it, little woman,” he laughed.
“We can save it,” she insisted. “And, of course, it’s pretty nice to have an emergency fund, only it sort of takes half the fun out of life to be so safe.”
“It takes half the worry with it, too,” he reminded her.
She thought a moment. Then she kissed him.
“Maybe it’s good for people to worry a bit,” she answered.
“You’ve already done your share,” he returned. “You’re going to meet me for lunch at twelve?”
“Yes, Don.”
“Sure?”
“Of course, it’s sure.”
“I wish it were twelve now.”
“You’re not to think of me again until twelve comes––not once. You’re to tend to business.”
“I know, but––”
She kissed him again.
“Along with you.”
She took his arm and led him to the door and325there––where, for all he cared, the whole street might have seen him––he turned quickly and kissed her once more.
Don was decidedly self-conscious when he stepped briskly into the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, with a brave attempt to give the impression that nothing whatever out of the ordinary had happened to him during his brief vacation. But Blake, as he expressed it to her later, was there with bells on. He spied him the moment he came through the door and greeted him with a whistled bar from the “Wedding March.” Not content with that, he tore several sheets of office stationery into small bits and sprinkled him with it. He seemed to take it as more or less of a joke.
“You certainly put one over on us,” exclaimed Blake.
“Well, let it go at that,” Don frowned.
He was willing to take the horse-play, but there was something in the spirit with which it was done that he did not like.
“Always heard bridegrooms were a bit touchy,” returned Blake.
Don stepped nearer.
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“Touchy isn’t the word, Blake,” he said; “proud comes nearer it. Remember that I’m proud as the devil of the girl you used to see here. Just base your future attitude toward her and me on that.”
A few minutes later Farnsworth restored his good humor. As he came into the private office, Farnsworth rose and extended his hand.
“I want to congratulate you, Pendleton,” he said sincerely.
“Thank you,” answered Don.
“We feel almost as though we had lost a partner in the firm,” he smiled. “But I’m mighty glad for both of you. She was fitted for something a whole lot bigger than Wall Street.”
“She taught me all I know about the game,” confessed Don.
“You couldn’t have had a better teacher. Sit down. I want to talk over a change I have in mind.”
Don felt his heart leap to his throat.
“I’ve wanted for some time another man to go out and sell,” said Farnsworth. “Do you think you can handle it?”
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“You bet,” exclaimed Don.
Farnsworth smiled.
“You see,” ran on Don in explanation, “I’ve been selling bonds to Sally––er––Mrs. Pendleton, for a month or more now.”
“Selling her?”
“Imaginary bonds, you know.”
Farnsworth threw back his head and laughed.
“Good! Good! But the true test will come when you try to sell her a real one. I’ll bet it will have to be gilt-edged.”
“And cheap,” nodded Don.
“Well,” said Farnsworth, “I want to try you on the selling staff for a while, anyway. Now, about salary––”
“Sally told me to forget that,” said Don.
“I guess because she knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t forget it. My intention is to pay men in this office what they are worth. Just what you may be worth in your new position I don’t know, but I’m going to advance you five hundred; and if you make good you’ll be paid in proportion as you make good. That satisfactory?”
“Absolutely.”
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“Then we’re off,” concluded Farnsworth.
Don met Sally at noon at the dairy lunch where they had gone so often.
“Come on, little woman,” he greeted her. “This place may be all right for the wife of a clerk, but now you’re the wife of a bond salesman.”
“Don!”
“On a five-hundred-dollar raise.”
“We’ll stay right here,” she said; “but I’m going to celebrate by having two chocolate éclairs.”
329CHAPTER XXXV“HOME, JOHN”
In December of the following year Frances came into her mother’s room one afternoon, drawing on her gloves.
“Your new gown is very pretty,” her mother said. “Where are you calling?”
“I have bridge at the Warrens’ at four,” she answered. “But I thought I might have time before that to drop in at Don’s. He has telephoned me half a dozen times to call and see his baby, and I suppose he’ll keep on until I go.”
“You really ought to go.”
Frances became petulant. “Oh, I know it, but––after all, a babyisn’tinteresting.”
“They say it’s a pretty baby. It’s a boy, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you come along with me?”
“I’m not dressed, dear, but please to extend my congratulations.”
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“Yes, mother.”
As John started to close the door of the limousine, Frances glanced at her watch.
“I wish to call at Mr. Pendleton’s, but I must be at the Warrens’ at four promptly. How much time must I allow?”
“A half hour, Miss.”
“Very well, John.”
Nora took her card, and came back with the request that she follow upstairs. “The baby’s just waked up,” Nora said.
Frances was disappointed. If she had to see a baby, she preferred, on the whole, seeing it asleep.
Mrs. Pendleton came to the nursery door with the baby in her arms––or rather a bundle presumably containing a baby.
“It’s good of you to come,” she smiled. “I think he must have waked up just to see you.”
She spoke unaffectedly and with no trace of embarrassment, although when Nora presented the card she had for a second become confused. She had hoped that Don would be at home when this moment came.
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“You’re sure it’s convenient for me to stay?” questioned Frances uneasily.
“Quite,” answered Mrs. Pendleton. “I––I want you to see him when he’s good-natured.”
She crossed the room to the window, and removed a layer of swaddling clothes very gently. And there, revealed, lay Don, Jr. His face was still rather red, and his nose pudgy; but when he opened his eyes Frances saw Don’s eyes. It gave her a start.
“He has his father’s eyes,” said the mother.
“There’s no doubt of that,” exclaimed Frances.
“And his nose––well, he hasn’t much of any nose yet,” she smiled.
“He seems very small––all over.”
“He weighed ten pounds this morning,” said the mother.
Don, Jr., was waving his arms about, rather feebly, but with determination.
“He is very strong,” the mother informed her. “Don declares that he has all the earmarks of a football player.”
It seemed odd to hear this other speak so332familiarly of Don. Frances glanced up quickly––and met Mrs. Pendleton’s eyes. It was as if the two challenged each other. But Frances was the first to turn away.
“Would you like to hold him a minute?” asked Mrs. Pendleton.
Frances felt her breath coming fast.
“I’m afraid I’d be clumsy.”
“Hold out your arms and I’ll put him in them.”
Frances held out her arms, and Mrs. Pendleton gently laid the baby across them.
“Now hold him up to you,” she said.
Frances obeyed. The sweet, subtle aroma of his hair reached her. The subtle warmth of his body met hers. As the mystic eyes opened below her eyes, a crooning lullaby hidden somewhere within her found its way to her throat and there stuck. She grew dizzy and her throat ached. Don, Jr., moved uneasily.
“He wants to come back now,” said the mother as she took him.
“Good-bye,” whispered Frances. “I may come again?”
“Come often,” smiled Mrs. Pendleton.
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Frances tiptoed from the room, and tiptoed all the way downstairs and through the hall.
As she stepped into the limousine, she said to John: “Home, please.”
“But you said you must be at the Warrens’ at four,” John respectfully reminded her.
She sank back wearily in the seat.
“Home, John, please,” she repeated.
THE END