Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.
While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an afternoonen famillewith her uncle and her brother Ted.
Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her uncle's chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for a couple of hours.
"My goodness! It is most four o'clock. Dick will be here in a minute. MayI call up the garage and ask them to send the car around? I'm dying for aride. We can go over to South Hadley and get the twins, if you'd like.I'm sure they must have had enough of Mt. Holyoke by this time."
"Car's out of commission," grunted Ted from behind his sporting sheet.
"Out of commission? Since when?" inquired Doctor Holiday. "It was all right when you took it to the garage last night."
"I went out for a joy ride and had a smash up," explained his nephew nonchalantly, and still hidden behind the newspaper.
"Oh Ted! How could you when you know we want to use the car every minute?" There was sharp dismay and reproach in Tony's voice.
"Well, I didn't smash it on purpose, did I?" grumbled her brother, throwing down the paper. "I'm sorry, Tony. But it can't be helped now. You'd better be thankful I'm not out of commission myself. Came darn near being."
"Oh Ted!" There was only concern and sympathy in his sister's exclamation this time. Tony adored her brothers. She went over to Ted now, scrutinizing him as if she half expected to see him minus an arm or a leg. "You weren't hurt?" she begged reassurance.
"Nope—nothing to signify. Got some purple patches on my person and a twist to my wrist, but that's all. I was always a lucky devil. Got more lives than a cat."
He was obviously trying to carry matters off lightly, but never once did he meet his uncle's eyes, though he was quite aware they were fixed on him.
Tony sighed and shook her head, troubled.
"I wish you wouldn't take such risks," she mourned. "Some day you'll get dreadfully hurt. Please be careful. Uncle Phil," she appealed to the higher court, "do tell him he mustn't speed so. He won't listen to me."
"If Ted hasn't learned the folly of speeding by now, I am afraid that nothing I can say will have much effect. I wonder—"
Just here the telephone interrupted with an announcement that Mr. Carson was waiting downstairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder on her nose.
"Since we can't go riding I think I'll take Dick for a walk in Paradise," she announced into the mirror. "Will you come, too, Uncle Phil?"
"No, thank you, dear. Run along and tell Dick we expect him back to supper with us."
The doctor held open the door for his niece, then turned back to Ted, who was also on his feet now, murmuring something about going out for a stroll.
"Wait a bit, son. Suppose you tell me first precisely what happened last night."
"Did tell you." The boy fumbled sulkily at the leaves of a magazine that lay on the table. "I took the car out and, when I was speeding like Sam Hill out on the Florence road, I struck a hole. She stood up on her ear and pitched u—er—meout in the gutter. Stuck her own nose into a telephone pole. I telephoned the garage people to go after her this morning. They told me a while ago she was pretty badly stove up and it will probably take a couple of weeks to get her in order." The story came out jerkily and the narrator kept his eyes consistently floorward during the recital.
"Is that all?"
"What more do you want?" curtly. "I said I was sorry, if that is what you mean."
"It isn't what I mean, Ted. I assume you didn't deliberately go out to break my car and that you are not particularly proud of the outcome of your joy ride. I mean, exactly what I asked. Have you told me the whole story?"
Ted was silent, mechanically rolling the corner of the, rug under his foot. His uncle studied the good-looking, unhappy young face. His mind worked back to that inadvertent "u—er—me" of the confession.
"Were you alone?" he asked.
A scarlet flush swept the lad's face, died away, leaving it a little white.
"Yes."
The answer was low but distinct. It was like a knife thrust to the doctor. In all the eight years in which he had fathered Ned's sons, both before and since his brother's death, never once to his knowledge had either one lied to him, even to save himself discomfort, censure or punishment. With all their boyish vagaries and misdeeds, it had been the one thing he could count on absolutely, their unflinching, invariable honesty. Yet, surely as the June sun was shining outside, Ted had lied to him just now. Why? Rash twenty was too young to go its way unchallenged and unguided. He was responsible for the lad whose dead father had committed him to his charge.
Only a few weeks before his death Ned had written with curious prescience, "If I go out any time, Phil, I know you will look after the children as I would myself or better. Keep your eye on Ted especially. His heart is in the right place, but he has a reckless devil in him that will bring him and all of us to grief if it isn't laid."
Doctor Holiday went over and laid a hand on each of the lad's hunched shoulders.
"Look at me, Ted," he commanded gently.
The old habit of obedience strong in spite of his twenty years, Ted raised his eyes, but dropped them again on the instant as if they were lead weighted.
"That is the first time you ever lied to me, I think, lad," said the doctor quietly.
A quiver passed over the boy's face, but his lips set tighter than ever and he pulled away from his uncle's hands and turned, staring out of the window at a rather dusty and bedraggled looking hydrangea on the lawn.
"I wonder if it was necessary," the quiet voice continued. "I haven't the slightest wish to be hard on you. I just want to understand. You know that, son, don't you?"
The boy's head went up at that. His gaze deserted the hydrangea, for the first time that day, met his uncle's, squarely if somewhat miserably.
"It isn't that, Uncle Phil. You have every right to come down on me. I hadn't any business to have the car out at all, much less take fool chances with it. But honestly I have told you all—all I can tell. I did lie to you just now. I wasn't alone. There was a—a girl with me."
Ted's face was hot again as he made the confession.
"I see," mused the doctor. "Was she hurt?"
"No—that is—not much. She hurt her shoulder some and cut her head a bit." The details came out reluctantly as if impelled by the doctor's steady eyes. "She telephoned me today she was all right. It's a miracle we weren't both killed though. We might have been as easy as anything. You said just now nothing you could say would make me have sense about speeding. I guess what happened last night ought to knock sense into me if anything could. I say, Uncle Phil—"
"Well?" as the boy paused obviously embarrassed.
"If you don't mind I'd rather not say anything more about the girl.She—I guess she'd rather I wouldn't," he wound up confusedly.
"Very well. That is your affair and hers. Thank you for coming halfway to meet me. It made it easier all around."
The doctor held out his hand and the boy took it eagerly.
"You are great to me, Uncle Phil—lots better than I deserve. Please don't think I don't see that. And truly I am awfully ashamed of smashing the car, and not telling you, as I ought to have this morning, and spoiling Tony's fun and—and everything." Ted swallowed something down hard as if the "everything" included a good deal. "I don't see why I have to be always getting into scrapes. Can't seem to help it, somehow. Guess I was made that way, just as Larry was born steady."
"That is a spineless jellyfish point of view, Ted. Don't fool yourself with it. There is no earthly reason why you should keep drifting from one escapade to another. Get some backbone into you, son."
Ted's face clouded again at that, though he wasn't sulky this time. He was remembering some other disagreeable confessions he had to make before long. He knew this was a good opening for them, but somehow he could not drive himself to follow it up. He could only digest a limited amount of humble pie at a time and had already swallowed nearly all he could stand. Still he skirted warily along the edge of the dilemma.
"I suppose you think I made an awful ass of myself at college this year," he averred gloomily.
"I don't think it. I know it." The doctor's eyes twinkled a little. Then he grew sober. "Why do you, Ted? You aren't really an ass, you know. If you were, there might be some excuse for behaving like one."
Ted flushed.
"That's what Larry told me last spring when he was pitching into me about—well about something. I don't know why I do, Uncle Phil, honest I don't. Maybe it is because I hate college so and all the stale old stuff they try to cram down our throats. I get so mad and sick and disgusted with the whole thing that I feel as if I had to do something to offset it—something that is real and live, even if it isn't according to rules and regulations. I hate rules and regulations. I'm not a mummy and I don't want to be made to act as if I were. I'll be a long time dead and I want to get a whole lot of fun out of life first. I hate studying. I want to do things, Uncle Phil—"
"Well?"
"I don't want to go back to college."
"What do you want to do?"
"Join the Canadian forces. It makes me sick to have a war going on and me not in it. Dad quit college for West Point and everybody thought it was all right. I don't see why I shouldn't get into it. I wouldn't fall down on that. I promise you. I'd make you proud of me instead of ashamed the way you are now." The boy's voice and eyes were unusually earnest.
His uncle did not answer instantly. He knew that there was some truth in his nephew's analysis of the situation. It was his uneasy, superabundant energy and craving for action that made him find the more or less restricted life of the college, a burden, a bore and an exasperation, and drove him to crazy escapades and deeds of flagrant lawlessness. He needed no assurance that the boy would not "fall down" at soldiering. He would take to it as a duck to water. And the discipline might be the making of him, prove the way to exorcise the devil. Still there were other considerations which to him seemed paramount for the time at least.
"I understand how you feel, Ted," he said at last. "If we get into the war ourselves I won't say a word against your going. I should expect you to go. We all would. But in the meantime as I see it you are not quite a free agent. Granny is old and very, very feeble. She hasn't gotten over your father's death. She grieves over it still. If you went to war I think it would kill her. She couldn't bear the strain and anxiety. Patience, laddie. You don't want to hurt her, do you?"
"I s'pose not," said Ted a little grudgingly. "Then it is no,Uncle Phil?"
"I think it ought to be no of your own will for Granny's sake. We don't live to ourselves alone in this world. We can't. But aside from Granny I am not at all certain I should approve of your leaving college just because it doesn't happen to be exciting enough to meet your fancy and means work you are too lazy and irresponsible to settle down to doing. Looks a little like quitting to me and Holidays aren't usually quitters, you know."
He smiled at the boy but Ted did not smile back. The thrust aboutHolidays and quitters went home.
"I suppose it has got to be college again if you say so," he said soberly after a minute. "Thank heaven there are three months ahead clear though first."
"To play in?"
"Well, yes. Why not? It is all right to play in vacation, isn't it?" the boy retorted, a shade aggressively.
"Possibly if you have earned the vacation by working beforehand."
Ted's eyes fell at that. This was dangerously near the ground of those uncomfortable, inevitable confessions which he meant to put off as long as possible.
"Do you mind if I go out now?" he asked with unusual meekness after a moment's rather awkward silence.
"No, indeed. Go ahead. I've had my say. Be back for supper with us?"
"Dunno." And Ted disappeared into the adjoining room which connected with his uncle's. In a moment he was back, expensive panama hat in one hand and a lighted cigarette held jauntily in the other. "I meant to tell you you could take the car repairs out of my allowance," he remarked casually but with his eye shrewdly on his guardian as he made the announcement.
"Very well," replied the latter quietly. Then he smiled a little seeing his nephew's crestfallen expression. "That wasn't just what you wanted me to say, was it?" he added.
"Not exactly," admitted the boy with a returning grin. "All right, UnclePhil. I'm game. I'll pay up."
A moment later his uncle heard his whistle as he went down the driveway apparently as care free as if narrow escapes from death were nothing in his young life. The doctor shook his head dubiously as he watched him from the window. He would have felt more dubious still had he seen the boy board a Florence car a few minutes later on his way to keep a rendezvous with the girl about whom he had not wished to talk.
Three quarters of an hour later Ted was seated on a log, near a small rustic bridge, beneath which flowed a limpid, gurgling stream. On a log beside him sat a girl of perhaps eighteen years, exceedingly handsome with the flaming kind of beauty like a poppy's, striking to the eye, shallow-petaled. She was vividly effective against the background of deep green spruces and white birch in her bright pink dress and large drooping black hat. Her coloring was brilliant, her lips full, scarlet, ripely sensuous. Beneath her straight black brows her sparkling, black eyes gleamed with restless eagerness. An ugly, jagged, still fresh wound showed beneath a carefully curled fringe of hair on her forehead.
"I don't like meeting you this way," Ted was saying. "Are you sure your grandfather would have cut up rough if I had come to the house and called properly?"
"You betcher," said his companion promptly. "You don't know grandpa. He's death on young men. He won't let one come within a mile of me if he can help it. He'd throw a fit if he knew I was here with you now. We should worry. What he don't know won't hurt him," she concluded with a toss of her head. Then, as Ted looked dubious, she added, "You just leave grandpa to me. If you had had your way you would have spilled the beans by telephoning me this morning at the wrong time. See how much better I fixed it. I told him a piece of wood flew up and hit me when I was chopping kindling before breakfast and that my head ached so I didn't feel like going to church. Then the minute he was out of the yard I ran to the 'phone and got you at the hotel. It was perfectly simple that way—slick as grease. Easiest thing in the world to make a date. We couldn't have gotten away with it otherwise."
Ted still looked dubious. The phrase "gotten away with it" jarred. At the moment he was not particularly proud of their mutual success in "getting away with it." The girl wasn't his kind. He realized that, now he saw her for the first time in daylight.
She had looked all right to him on the train night before last. Indeed he had been distinctly fascinated by her flashing, gypsy beauty, ready laughter and quick, keen, half "fresh" repartee when he had started a casual conversation with her when they chanced to be seat mates from Holyoke on.
Casual conversations were apt to turn into casual flirtations with Ted Holiday. Afterward he wasn't sure whether she had dared him or he had dared her to plan the midnight joy ride which had so narrowly missed ending in a tragedy. Anyway it had seemed a jolly lark at the time—a test of the mettle and mother wit of both of them to "get away with it."
And she had looked good to him last night when he met her at the appointed trysting place after "As You Like It." She had come out of the shadows of the trees behind which she had been lurking, wearing a scarlet tam-o'-shanter and a long dark cloak, her eyes shining like January stars. He had liked her nerve in coming out like that to meet him alone at midnight. He had liked the way she "sassed" him back and put him in his place, when he had tried impudently enough to kiss her. He had liked the way she laughed when he asked her if she was afraid to speed, on the home stretch. It was her laugh that had spurred him on, intoxicated him, made him send the car leaping faster and still faster, obeying his reckless will.
Then the crash had come. It was indeed a miracle that they had not both been killed. No thanks to the rash young driver that they had not been. It would be many a day before Ted Holiday would forget that nightmare of dread and remorse which took possession of him as he pulled himself to his feet and went over to where the girl's motionless form lay on the grass, her face dead white, the blood flowing from her forehead.
Never had he been so thankful for anything in his life as he was when he saw her bright eyes snap open, and heard her unsteady little giggle as she murmured, "My, but I thought I was dead, didn't you?"
Game to her fingertips she had been. Ted acknowledged that, even now that the glamour had worn off. Never once had she whimpered over her injuries, never hurled a single word of blame at him for the misadventure that had come within a hair's breadth of being the last for them both.
"It wasn't a bit more your fault than mine," she had waived aside his apologies. "And it was great while it lasted. I wouldn't have missed it for anything, though I'm glad I'm not dead before I've had a chance to really live. All I ask is that you won't tell a soul I was out with you. Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if he knew."
"I won't," Ted had promised glibly enough, and had kept his promise even at the cost of lying to his uncle, a memory which hurt like the toothache even now.
But looking at the girl now in her tawdry, inappropriate garb he suffered a revulsion of feeling. What he had admired in her as good sport quality seemed cheap now, his own conduct even cheaper. His reaction against himself was fully as poignant as his reaction against her. He was suddenly ashamed of his joy ride, ashamed that he had ever wished or tried to kiss her, ashamed that he had fallen in with her suggestion for a clandestine meeting this afternoon.
Possibly Madeline sensed that he was cold to her charms at the moment.She flashed a shrewd glance at him.
"You don't like me as well to-day as you did last night," she challenged.
Caught, Ted tried half-heartedly to make denial, but the effort was scarcely a success. He had yet to learn the art of lying gracefully to a lady.
"You don't," she repeated. "You needn't try to pretend you do. You can't fool me. You're getting cold feet already. You're remembering I'm just—just a pick-up."
Ted winced again at that. He did not like the word "pick-up" either, though to his shame he hadn't been above the thing itself.
"Don't talk like that, Madeline. You know I like you. You were immense last night. Any other girl I know, except my sister Tony, would have had hysterics and fainting fits and lord knows what else with half the excuse you had. And you never made a bit of fuss about your head, though it must have hurt like the deuce. I say, you don't think it is going to leave a scar, do you?"
He leaned forward with genuine concern to examine the red wound.
"I think it is more than likely. Lot you'll care, Ted Holiday. You'll never come back to see whether it leaves a scar or not. See that bee over there nosing around that elderberry. Think he'll come back next week? Not much. I know your kind," scornfully.
That bit into the lad's complacency.
"Of course, I care and of course, I'll come back," he protested, though a moment before he had had not the slightest wish or purpose to see her again, rather to the contrary.
"To see whether there is a scar?"
"To see you," he played up gallantly.
Her hard young face softened.
"Will you, honest, Ted Holiday? Will you come back?"
She put out her hand and touched his. Her eyes were suddenly wistful, gentle, beseeching.
"Sure I'll come back. Why wouldn't I?" The touch of her hand, the new softness, almost pathos of her mood touched him, appealed to the chivalry always latent in a Holiday.
He heard her breath come quickly, saw her full bosom heave, felt the warm pressure of her hand. He wanted to put his arm around her but he did not follow the impulse. The code of Holiday "noblesse oblige" was operating.
"I wish I could believe that," Madeline sighed, looking down into the water which whirled and eddied in white foam and splash over the rocks. "I'd like to think you really wanted to come—really cared about seeing me again. I know I'm not your kind."
He started involuntarily at her voicing unexpectedly his own recent thought.
"Oh, you needn't be surprised," she threw at him half angrily. "Don't you suppose I know that better than you do. Don't you suppose I know what the girls you are used to look like? Well, I do. I've watched 'em, on the street, on the campus, in church, everywhere. I've even seen your sister and watched her, too. Somebody pointed her out to me once when she had made a hit in a play and I've seen her at Glee Club concerts and at vespers in the choir. She is lovely—lovely the way I'd like to be. It isn't that she's any prettier. She isn't. It's just that she's different—acts different—looks different—dresses different from me. I can't make myself like her and the rest, no matter how I try. And I do try. You don't know how hard I try. I got this dress because I saw your sister Tony wearing a pink dress once. I thought maybe it would make me look more like her. But it doesn't. It makes me look morenotlike her than ever, doesn't it?" she appealed rather disconcertingly. "It's horrid. I hate it."
"I don't know much about girls' dresses," said Ted. "But, now you speak of it, maybe it would be prettier if it were a little—" he paused for a word—"quieter," he decided on. "Do you ever wear white? Tony wears it a lot and I think she looks nice in it."
"I've got a white dress. I thought about putting it on to-day. But somehow it didn't look quite nice enough. I thought—well, I thought I looked handsomer in the pink. I wanted to look pretty—for you." The last was very low—scarcely audible.
"You look good to me all right," said the boy heartily and he meant it. He thought she looked prettier at the moment than she had looked at any time since he had made her acquaintance.
Perhaps he was right. She had laid aside for once her mask of hard boldness and was just a simple, humble, rather pathetic little girl, voicing secret aspirations toward a fineness life had denied her.
"I say, Madeline," Ted went on. "You don't—meet other chaps the way you met me to-day, do you?" Set the blind to lead the blind! If there was anything absurd in scapegrace Ted's turning mentor he was unconscious of the absurdity, was exceedingly in earnest.
"What's that to you?" She snapped the mask back into place.
"Nothing—that is—I wouldn't—that's all."
She laughed shrilly.
"You're a pretty one to talk," she scoffed.
Ted flushed.
"I know I am. See here, Madeline. You're dead right. I ought not to have taken you out last night. I ought not to have let you meet me here to-day."
"I made you—I made you do both those things."
Ted shook his head at that.
"A man's to blame always," he asserted.
"No, he isn't," denied Madeline. "A girl's to blame always."
They stared at each other a moment while the brook tinkled through the silence. Then they both laughed at the solemnity of their contradictions.
"But there isn't a bit of harm done," went on Madeline. "You see, I knew that first night on the train that you were a gentleman."
"Some gentlemen are rotters," said Ted Holiday, with a wisdom beyond his twenty years.
"But you are not."
"No, I'm not; but some other chap might be. That is why I wish you would promise not to go in for this sort of thing."
"With anybody but you," she stipulated.
"Not with anybody at all," corrected Ted soberly, remembering his own recent restrained impulse to put his arm around her.
"Well, I don't want to—at least not with anybody but you. I never did it before with anybody. Honest, Ted, I never did."
"That's good. I felt sure that you hadn't."
"Why?"
He grinned sheepishly and stooped to break off a dry twig from a nearby bush.
"By the way you didn't let me kiss you," he admitted. "A fellow likes that in a girl. Did you know it?" He tossed away the twig and looked back at the girl as he asked the question.
"I thought they liked—the other thing."
"They do and they don't," said Ted, his paradox again betraying a scarcely to be expected wisdom. "But that is neither here nor there. What I started out to say was that I'm glad you don't make a practice of this pick-up business. It—it's no good," he summed up.
"I know." Madeline nodded understanding of the import of his warning. She was far too handsome and too prematurely developed physically to be devoid of experience of the ways of the opposite sex. Like Ophelia she knew there were tricks in the world and she liked frank Ted Holiday the better for reminding her of them. "I won't do it," she promised. "That is, unless you don't ever come back yourself. I don't know what I'll do then—something awful, maybe."
"I'll come fast enough. I'll come to-morrow." he added obeying a sudden impulse, Ted fashion.
"Will you?" The girl's face flushed with delight. "When?"
"To-morrow afternoon. I can't dodge the ivy stuff in the morning. Will four o'clock do all right?"
"Yes. Come here to this same place."
"I say, Madeline, can't I come to the house? I hate doing it like this."
"No, you can't. If you want to see me you'll have to do it this way. It's lots nicer here than in the house, anyway."
Ted acquiesced, since he had no choice, and rose, announcing that it was time to go now.
"We don't have to go yet. I told Grandpa I was going to spend the evening with my friend, Linda Bates. He won't know. We can stay as long as we like."
"I am afraid we can't," said Ted decidedly. "Come on, my lady." He held out both hands and Madeline let him draw her to her feet, though she was pouting a little at his gainsaying of her wishes.
"You may kiss me now," she said suddenly, lifting her face to his.
But Ted backed away. The code was still on. A girl of his own kind he would have kissed in a moment at such provocation, or none. But he had an odd feeling of needing to protect this girl from herself as well as from himself.
"You had more sense than I did last night. Let's follow your lead instead of mine," he said. "It's better."
"But Ted, you will come to-morrow?" she pleaded. "You won't forget or go back on your promise?"
"Of course, I'll come," promised Ted again readily.
Five minutes later they parted, he to take his car, and she to stroll in the opposite direction toward her friend Linda's house.
"He is a dear," she thought. "I'm glad he wouldn't kiss me, so there," she said aloud to a dusty daisy that peered up at her rather mockingly from the gutter.
An automobile horn honked behind her. She stepped aside, but the car stopped.
"Well, here is luck. Where are you going, my pretty maid?" called a gay, bold voice.
She turned. The speaker was one Willis Hubbard, an automobile agent by profession, lady's man and general Lothario by avocation. His handsome dark face stood out clearly in the dusk. She could see the avid shine in his eyes. She hated him all of a sudden, though hitherto she had secretly rather admired him, though she had always steadily refused his invitations.
For Madeline was wary. She knew how other girls had gone out with Willis in his smart car and come back to give rather sketchy accounts of the evening's pleasure jaunt. Her friend Linda had tried it once and remarked later that Willis was some speed and that Madeline had the right hunch to keep away from him.
But it happened that Madeline Taylor was the particular peach that Willis Hubbard hankered after. He didn't like them too easy, ready to drop from the bough at the first touch. All the same, he meant to have his way in the end with Madeline. He had an excellent opinion of his powers as a conquering male. He had, alas, plenty of data to warrant it in his relations with the fair and sometimes weak sex.
"What's your hurry, dearie?" he asked now. "Come on for a spin. It's the pink of the evening."
But she thanked him stiffly and refused, remembering Ted Holiday's honest blue eyes.
"What are you so almighty prunes and prisms for, all of a sudden? It's the wrong game to play with a man, I can tell you, if you want to have a good time in the world. I say, Maidie, be a good girl and come out with me to-morrow night. We'll have dinner somewhere and dance and make a night of it. Say yes, you beauty. A girl like you oughtn't to stay cooped up at home forever. It's against nature."
But again Madeline refused and moved away with dignity.
"Your grandfather will never know. You can plan to stay with Linda afterward. I'll meet you by the sycamore tree just beyond the Bates' place at eight sharp—give you the best time you ever had in your life. Believe me, I'm some little spender when I get to going."
"No, thank you, Mr. Hubbard. I tell you I can't go."
He stared at the finality of her manner. He had no means of knowing that he was being measured up, to his infinite disadvantage, with a blue eyed lad who had stirred something in the girl before him that he himself could never have roused in a thousand years. But he did know he was being snubbed and the knowledge disturbed his fond conceit of self.
"Highty tighty with your 'Mr. Hubbards'! You will sing another tune by to-morrow night. I'll wait at the sycamore and you'll be there. See if you won't. You're no fool, Maidie. You want a good time and you know I'm the boy to give it to you. So long! See you to-morrow night." He started his motor, kissed his hand impudently to her and was off down the road, leaving Madeline to follow slowly, in his dust.
Across the campus the ivy procession wound its lovely length, flanked by rainbow clad Junior ushers immensely conscious of themselves and their importance as they bore the looped laurel chains between which walked the even more important Seniors, all in white and each bearing an American Beauty rose before her proudly, like a wand of youth.
At the head of the procession, as president of the class, walked Antoinette Holiday, a little lady of quality, as none who saw her could have helped recognizing. Her uncle, watching the procession from the steps of a campus house, smiled and sighed as he beheld her. She was so young, so blithe-hearted, so untouched by the sad and sordid things of life. If only he could keep her so for a little, preserve the shining splendor of her shield of innocent young joy. But, even as he thought, he knew the folly of his wish. Tony would be the last to desire to have life tempered or kept from her. She would want to drain the whole cup, bitter, sweet and all.
Farther back in the procession was Carlotta, looking as heavenly fair and ethereal as if she had that morning been wafted down from the skies. Out of the crowd Phil Lambert's eyes met hers and smiled. Very sensibly and modernly these two had decided to remain the best of friends since fate prevented their being lovers. But Phil's eyes were rather more than friendly, resting on Carlotta, and, underneath the diaphanous, exquisite white cloud of a gown that she wore, Carlotta's heart beat a little faster for what she saw in his face. The hand that held her rose trembled ever so slightly as she smiled bravely back at him. She could not forget those "very different" kisses of his, nor, with all the will in the world, could she go back to where she was before she went up the mountain and came down again in the purple dusk. She knew she had to get used to a strange, new world, a world without Philip Lambert, a rather empty world, it seemed. She wondered if this new world would give her anything so wonderful and sweet as this thing that she had by her own act surrendered. Almost she thought not.
Ted, standing beside his uncle, watching the procession, suddenly heard a familiar whistle, a signal dating back to Holiday Hill days, as unmistakable as the Star Spangled Banner itself, though who should be using it here and why was a mystery. In a moment his roving gaze discovered the solution. Standing upon a slight elevation on the campus opposite he perceived Dick Carson. The latter beckoned peremptorily. Ted wriggled out of the group, descended with one leap over the rail to the lawn, and made his way to where the other youth waited.
"What in Sam Hill's chewing you?" he demanded upon arrival. "You've made me quit the only spot I've struck to-day where I had room to stand on my own feet and see anything at the same time."
"I say, Ted, what train was Larry coming on?" counterquestioned Dick.
"Chicago Overland. Why?"
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I am sure. He wired Tony. What in thunder are you driving at?Get it out for Pete's sake?"
"The Chicago Overland smashed into a freight somewhere near Pittsburgh this morning. There were hundreds of people killed. Oh, Lord, Ted! I didn't mean to break it to you like that." Dick was aghast at his own clumsiness as Ted leaned against the brick wall of the college building, his face white as chalk. "I wasn't thinking—guess I wasn't thinking about much of anything except Tony," he added.
Ted groaned.
"Don't wonder," he muttered. "Let's not let her get wind of it till we have to. Are you sure there—there isn't any mistake?" Ted put up his hand to brush back a refractory lock of hair and found his forehead wet with cold perspiration. "There's got to be a mistake. Larry—I won't believe it, so there!"
"You don't have to believe it till you know. Even if he was on the train it doesn't mean he is hurt." Dick would not name the harsher possibility to Larry Holiday's brother.
"Of course, it doesn't," snapped Ted. "I say, Dick, is it in the papers yet?"
"No, it will be in an hour though, as soon as the evening editions get out."
"Good! Dick, it's up to you to keep Tony from knowing. She is going to sing in the concert at five. That will keep her occupied until six. But from now till then nix on the news. Take her out on the fool pond, walk her up Sunset Hill, quarrel with her, make love to her, anything, so she won't guess. I don't dare go near her. I'd give it away in a minute, I'm such an idiot. Besides I can't think of anything but Larry. Gee!" The boy swept his hand across his eyes. "Last time I saw him I consigned him to the devil because he told me some perfectly true things about myself and tried to give me some perfectly sound advice. And now—I'm damned if I believe it. Larry is all right. He's got to be," fiercely.
"Of course, he is," soothed Dick. "And I'll try to do as you say about Tony. I'm not much of an actor, but I guess I can carry it through for—for her sake."
The little break in the speaker's voice made Ted turn quickly and stare at the other youth.
"Dick, old chap, is it like that with you? I didn't know."
Ted's hand went out and held the other's in a cordial grip.
"Nobody knows. I—I didn't mean to show it then. It's no good. I know that naturally."
"I'm not so sure about that. I know one member of the family that would be mighty proud to have you for a brother."
The obvious ring of sincerity touched Dick. It was a good deal coming from a Holiday.
"Thank you, Ted. That means a lot, I can tell you. I'll never forget your saying it like that. You won't give me away, I know."
"Sure not, old man. Tony is way up in the clouds just now, anyway. We are all mostly ants in our minor ant hills so far as she is concerned. Gee! I hope it isn't this thing about Larry that is going to pull her down to earth. If anything had to happen to any of us why couldn't it have been me instead of Larry. He is worth ten of me."
"We don't know that anything has happened to Larry yet," Dick reminded. "I say, Ted, they must have got the ivy planted. Everybody's coming back. Tony is lunching with me at Boyden's right away, and I'll see that she has her hands full until it is time for the concert. You warn Miss Carlotta, so she'll be on guard after I surrender her. I'm afraid you will have to tell your uncle."
"I will. Trot on, old man, and waylay Tony. I'll make a mess of things sure as preaching if I run into her now."
Tony thought she had never known Dick to be so entertaining or talkative as he was during that luncheon hour. He regaled her with all kinds of newspaper yarns and related some of his own once semi-tragic but now humorous misadventures of his early cub days. He talked, too, on current events and world history, talked well, with the quiet poise and assurance of the reader and thinker, the man who has kept his eyes and ears open to life.
It was a revelation to Tony. For once their respective roles were reversed, he the talker, she the listener.
"Goodness me, Dick!" she exclaimed during a pause in what had become almost a monologue. "Why haven't you ever talked like this before? I always thought I had to do it all and here you talk better than I ever thought of doing because you have something to say and mine is just chatter and nonsense."
He smiled at that.
"I love your chatter. But you are tired to-day and it is my turn. Do you know what we are going to do after luncheon?"
"No, what?"
"We are going to take a canoe out on your Paradise and get into a shady spot somewhere along the bank and you will lean back against a whole lot of becoming cushions and put up that red parasol of yours so nobody but me can see your face and then—"
"Dicky! Dicky! Whatever is in you to-day? Paradise, pillows and parasols are familiar symptoms. You will be making love to me next."
"I might, at that," murmured Dick. "But you did not hear the rest of my proposition. And then—I shall read you a story—a story that I wrote myself."
"Dick!" Tony nearly upset her glass of iced tea in her amazement at this unexpected announcement. "You don't mean you have really and truly written a story!"
"Honest to goodness—such as it is. Please to remember it is my maiden effort and make a margin of allowance. But I want your criticism, too—all the benefit of your superior academic training."
"Superior academic bosh!" scoffed Tony. "I'll bet it is a corking story," she added unacademically. "Come on. Let's go, quick. I can't wait to hear it."
Nothing loath to get away speedily before the newsboys began to cry the accident through the streets, Dick escorted his pretty companion back to the campus and on to Paradise, at which point they took a canoe and, finally selecting a shady point under an over-reaching sycamore tree, drifted in to shore where Tony leaned against the cushions, tilted her parasol as specified at the angle which forbade any but Dick to see her charming, expressive young face and commanded him to "shoot."
Dick shot. Tony listened intently, watching his face as he read, feeling as if this were a new Dick—a Dick she did not know at all, albeit a most interesting person.
"Why Dick Carson!" she exclaimed when he finished. "It is great—a real story with real laughter and tears in it. I love it. It is so—so human."
The author flushed and fidgeted and protested that it wasn't much—just a sketch done from life with a very little dressing up and polishing down.
"I have a lot more of them in my head, though," he added. "And I'm going to grind them out as soon as I get time. I wish I had a bigger vocabulary and knew more about the technical end of the writing game. I am going to learn, though—going to take some night work at the University next fall. Maybe I'll catch up a little yet if I keep pegging away."
"Catch up! Dick, you make me so ashamed. Here Larry and Ted and I have had everything done for us all our lives and we've slipped along with the current, following the line of least resistance. And you have had everything to contend with and you are way ahead of the rest of us already. But why didn't you tell me before about the story? I think you might have, Dicky. You know I would be interested," reproachfully.
"I—I wasn't talking much about it to anybody till I knew it was any good. But I—just took a notion to read it to you to-day. That's all."
It wasn't all, but he wanted Tony to think it was. Not for anything would he have betrayed how reading the story was a desperate expedient to keep her diverted and safe from news of the disaster on the Overland.
He escorted Tony back to the campus house at the latest possible moment and Carlotta, in the secret, pretended to upbraid her roommate for her tardiness and flew about helping her to get dressed, talking continuously the while and keeping a sharp eye on the door lest some intruder burst in and say the very thing Tony Holiday must not be permitted to hear. It would be so ridiculously easy for somebody to ask, "Oh, did you hear about the awful wreck on the Overland?" and then the fat would be in the fire.
But, thanks to Carlotta, nobody had a chance to say it and later Tony Holiday, standing in the twilight in front of College Hall's steps, sang her solo, Gounod's beautiful Ave Maria, smiled happily down into the faces of the dear folks from her beloved Hill and only regretted that Larry was not there with the rest—Larry who, for all the others knew, might never come again.
After dinner Ted rushed off again to the telegraph office which he had been haunting all the afternoon to see if any word had come from his brother, and Doctor Holiday went on up to the campus to escort his niece to the informal hop. He had decided to go on just as if nothing was wrong. If Larry was safe then there was no need of clouding Tony's joy, and if he wasn't—well, there would be time enough to grieve when they knew. By virtue of his being a grave and reverend uncle he was admitted to the sacred precincts of his niece's room and had hardly gotten seated when the door flew open and Ted flew in waving two yellow telegraph blanks triumphantly, one in each hand, and announcing that everything was all right—Larry was all right, had wired from Pittsburgh.
Before Tony had a chance to demand what it was all about the door opened again and a righteously indignant house mother appeared on the threshold, demanding by what right an unauthorized male had gone up her stairway and entered a girl's room, without permission or escort.
"I apologize," beamed Ted with his most engaging smile. "Come on outside, Mrs. Maynerd and I'll tell you all about it." And tucking his arm in hers the irrepressible youth conveyed the angry personage out into the hall, leaving his uncle to explain the situation to Tony.
In a moment he was back triumphant.
"She says I may stay since I'm here, and Uncle Phil is here to play dragon," he announced. "She thought at first Carlotta would have to be expunged to make it legal, but I overruled her, told her you and I had played tiddle-de-winks with each other in our cradles," he added with an impish grin at his sister's roommate. "Of course I never laid eyes on you till two years ago, but that doesn't matter. I have a true tiddle-de-winks feeling for you, anyway, and that is what counts, isn't it, sweetness?"
Carlotta laughed and averred that she was going to expunge herself anyway as Phil was waiting for her downstairs. She picked up a turquoise satin mandarin cloak from the chair and Ted sprang to put it around her bare shoulders, stooping to kiss the tip of her ear as he finished.
"Lucky Phil!" he murmured.
Carlotta shook her head at him and went over to Tony, over whom she bent for an instant with unusual feeling in her lovely eyes.
"Oh, my dear," she whispered. "I wish I could tell you how I feel. I'm so glad—so glad." And then she was gone before Tony could answer.
"Oh me!" she sighed. "She has been so wonderful. You all have. Ted—UnclePhil! Come over here. I want to hold you tight."
And, with her brother on one side of her and her uncle on the other, Tony gave a hand to each and for a moment no one spoke. Then Ted produced his telegrams one of which was addressed to Tony and one to her uncle. Both announced the young doctor's safety. "Staying over in Pittsburgh. Letter follows," was in the doctor's message. "Sorry can't make commencement. Love and congratulations," was in Tony's.
"There, didn't I tell you he was all right?" demanded Ted, as if his brother's safety were due to his own remarkably good management of the affair. "Gee! Tony! If you knew how I felt when Dick told me this morning. I pretty nearly disgraced myself by toppling over, just like a girl, on the campus. Lord! It was fierce."
"I know." Tony squeezed his hand sympathetically. "And Dick—why Dick must have kept me out in Paradise on purpose."
"Sure he did. Dick's a jim dandy and don't you forget it."
"I shan't," said Tony, her eyes a little misty, remembering how Dick had fought all day to keep her care-free happiness intact. "I don't know whether to be angry at you all for keeping it from me or to fall on your necks and weep because you were all so dear not to tell me. And oh! If anything had happened to Larry! I don't see how I could have stood it. It makes us all seem awfully near, doesn't it?"
"You bet!" agreed Ted with more fervor than elegance. "If the old chap had been done for I'd have felt like making for the river, myself. Funny, now the scare is over and he is all safe, I shall probably cuss him out as hard as ever next time he tries to preach at me."
"You had better listen to him instead. Larry is apt to be right and you are apt to be wrong, and you know it."
"Maybe it is because I do know it and because he is so devilish right that I damn him," observed the youngest Holiday sagely, his eyes meeting his uncle's over his sister's head.
It wasn't until he had danced and flirted and made merry for three consecutive hours at the hop, and proposed in the exuberance of his mood to at least three different charmers whose names he had forgotten by the next day, that Ted Holiday remembered Madeline and his promise to keep tryst with her that afternoon. Other things of more moment had swept her clean from his mind.
"Thunder!" he muttered to himself. "Wonder what she is thinking when I swore by all that was holy to come. Oh well; I should worry. I couldn't help it. I'll write and explain how it happened."
So said, so done. He scribbled off a hasty note of explanation and apology which he signed "Yours devotedly, Ted Holiday" and went out to the corner mail box to dispatch the same so it would go out in the early morning collection, and prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind again.
Coming back into his room he found his uncle standing on the threshold.
"Had to get a letter off," murmured the young man as his uncle looked inquiring. He turned to light a cigarette with an air of determined casualness. He didn't care to have Uncle Phil know any more about the Madeline affair.
"It must have been important."
"Was," curtly. "Did you think I was joy riding again?"
"No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick. I haven't been able to get to sleep myself."
Seeing how utterly worn out his uncle looked, Ted's resentment took quick, shamed flight. Poor Uncle Phil! He never spared himself, always bore the brunt of everything for them all. And here he himself had just snapped like a cur because he suspected his guardian of desiring to interfere with his high and mighty private business.
"Too bad," he said. "Wish you'd smoke, Uncle Phil. It's great to cool off your nerves. Honest it is! Have one?" He held out his case.
Doctor Holiday smiled at that, though he declined the proffered weed. He understood very well that the boy was making tacit amends for his ungraciousness of a moment before.
"No, I'll get to sleep presently. It has been rather a wearing day."
"Should say it had been. I hope Aunt Margery doesn't know about the wreck. She'll worry, if she knew Larry was coming east."
"I wired her this evening. I didn't want to take any chance of her thinking he was in the smash."
Ted laid down his cigarette.
"You never forget anybody do you, Uncle Phil?" he said rather soberly for him.
"I never forget Margery. She is a very part of myself, lad."
And when he was alone Ted pondered over that last speech of his uncle's. He wondered if there would ever be a Margery for him, and, if so, what she would think of the Madelines if she knew of them.
After the family had reassembled on the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived. He was staying on so long as his services were needed. The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained to the uttermost the city's supply of doctors and nurses, and there was more than enough work for all. The writer spared them the details of the wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not anxious to relive the horrors on his own account. He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only. One of these was the instant death of a famous surgeon whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully wasteful to the young doctor. Another was the crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two children, had been happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America for a year. Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with the babies who reminded him of his small cousins, Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip's children.
A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman—just a mere girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring—who had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory entirely. She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises, nothing but what she would easily recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall.
"She tries pitifully hard to remember, and is so sweet and brave we are all devoted to her. I always stop and talk to her when I go by her. She seems to cling to me, rather, as if I could help her get things back. Lord knows I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile a morsel of humanity to be left to fight such a thing alone. She is a regular little Dresden shepherdess, with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must be about crazy, poor chap, not hearing from her. I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim her. I hope so. I don't know what will become of her if he does not.
"It is late and I must turn in. I don't know when I shall get home. I don't flatter myself Dunbury will miss me much when it has you. Give everybody my love and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn't get to commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself."
The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his nephew and junior assistant. With it came another epistle from the same city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself, grow up, and had immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he had discovered the relationship.
"You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head, steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality, Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, through and through, and you can tell him I said so when you see him."
The doctor smiled, well pleased at this tribute to Ned's son and this letter, like Larry's, he handed to his wife Margery to read.
The thirties had touched "Miss Margery" lightly. She was still slim and girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot blue shade which her husband particularly loved she seemed scarcely older than she had on that day, some eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a Fourth of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had begun to lose his heart to her then and there. It was not by shedding care and responsibility, however, that she had kept her youth. It was by no means the easiest thing in the world to be a busy doctor's wife, the mother of two lively children and faithful daughter to an invalid and rather "difficult" mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and an elastic household, which in vacation time included Ned Holiday's children and their friends. Needless to say she did not do any painting these days. But there is more than one way of being an artist, and of the art of simple, lovely, human living Margery Holiday was past mistress.
"Doesn't sound much like 'Lazy Larry' these days, does it?" she commented, giving the letters back to her husband. "I know you are proud of Doctor Fenton's letter, Phil. You ought to be. It is more than a little due to you that Larry is what he is."
"We are advertised by our loving wives," he misquoted teasingly. "I have always observed that the things we approve of in the younger generation are the fruit of seeds we planted. The things we disapprove of slipped in inadvertedly like weeds."
The same mail that brought Larry's letter brought one also to Ted from Madeline Taylor, a letter which made him wriggle a little internally, and pull his forelock, as was his habit when things were a bit perturbing.
Madeline had gone to bed that Sunday night after her meeting with Ted in the woods, full of the happiest kind of anticipations and shy, foolish, impossible dreams. Her mind told her it was the rankest of nonsense to dream about Ted Holiday, but her heart would do it. She knew the affair with Ted had begun wrong, but she couldn't help hoping it would come out beautifully right. She couldn't help making believe she had found her prince, a bonny laddie who liked her well enough to play straight with her and to come again to see her.
She meant to try so hard, so very hard, to make herself into the kind of girl he was used to and liked. She cut out the picture of Tony Holiday that Max Hempel and Dick Carson had studied that day on the train. She studied it even harder and hid it away among her very special treasures where she could take it out and look at it often and use it as a model. She even snatched her hitherto precious earrings from their pink cotton resting place and hurled them as far as she could into the night. She was very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings, and she was even surer she had seen Ted's eyes resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had to go. They had gone.
The next afternoon she had waited for a while patiently by the brook. The distant clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the full hour. No Ted Holiday. By this time her patience had long since evaporated and now blazed into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise, if indeed he had ever meant to keep it. He was with those other girls—his kind. Maybe he was laughing at her, telling them how "easy" she had been, how gullible. No, he wouldn't! He would be ashamed to admit he had had anything to do with her. Men did not boast of their conquest of one kind of girl to another. She had read enough fiction to know that.
In any case she hated Ted Holiday with a fine fury of resentment. She wanted to make him suffer, even as she was suffering, though she sensed vaguely that men couldn't suffer that way. It was only women who were capable of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free.
From her rage against her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut your eyes and have a good time.
Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Taylor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed her. She had done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted, that had been hurt. She discovered that too late.
The next morning had brought Ted's pleasant, penitent note, explaining his defection and expressing the hope that they might meet again soon, signed hers "devotedly." Poor Madeline! The cup of her regret was very bitter to the taste as she read that letter of Ted Holiday's.
Something of her misery and self-abasement crept into the letter to Ted, together with a passionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions was of course not written down for Ted's eyes; but he read quite enough to permit him to guess more than he cared to know. Hubbard was evidently something of a rotter. Maybe he was a bit of a rotter himself. If he hadn't taken the girl out joy riding himself she wouldn't have gone with the other two nights later. That was plain to be seen with half an eye and Ted Holiday was man enough to look at the fact straight and unblinking for a moment.
Well! He should worry. It wasn't his fault if Madeline had been fool enough to go out with Hubbard, when she knew what kind of a chap he was. He wasn't her keeper. He didn't see why she had to ask him to forgive her. It was none of his business. And he wished she hadn't begged so earnestly and humbly that he would see her again soon. He didn't want to see her. Yet, down underneath, Ted Holiday had an uneasy feeling he ought to want it, ought to try to make up to her in some way for something which was somehow his fault, even though he did disclaim the responsibility.
Two days later came another letter even more disturbing. It seemed Madeline was going to Holyoke again soon to visit her Cousin Emma and wanted Ted to join her. She was "dying" to see him. He could stay at Cousin Emma's, but maybe he wouldn't like that because there was a raft of children always under foot and Fred, Emma's husband, was a dreadful "ordinary" person who smoked a smelly pipe and sat round in his shirt sleeves. But if he would come and stay at a hotel they could have a wonderful time. She did want to see him so much. Besides, Willis pestered her all the time and said if she went away he would come down in his car every night to see her. So if Ted didn't want her to run around with Willis as he said in his last letter he had better come himself. She didn't like Willis the way she did Ted, though. Some ways she hated him and she wished awfully she hadn't ever had anything to do with him. And finally she liked Ted better than anybody in the world, and would he please, please come to Holyoke, because she wanted him to so very, very much?
And then the postscript. "The cut is going to leave a scar, I am most sure. I don't care. I like it. It makes me think of you and what a wonderful time we had together that night."
Ted read the letter coming up the Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to make him undeniably restless. Madeline's proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly. After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly killing her. He didn't like this Hubbard fellow, either. He rather thought it was his duty to go and send him about his business. Ted was a bit of a knight, at heart, and felt now the chivalric urge, combining with others less unselfish, to go to the rescue of the damsel and set her free of the false besieger.
Her undisguised admission of her caring for him was a bit disconcerting, although perhaps also a little sweet to his youthful male vanity. Her caring was a complication, made him feel as if somehow he ought to make up to her for failing her in the big thing by granting her the smaller favor.
By the time he had reached the top of the Hill he was rather definitely committed in his own mind to the Holyoke trip, if he could throw enough dust in his uncle's eyes to get away with it.
Arrived at the house he flung the other mail on the hall table and went upstairs. As he passed his grandmother's room he noticed that the door was ajar and stepped in for a word with her. She looked very still and white as she lay there in the big, old fashioned four-poster bed! Poor Granny! It was awfully sad to be old. Ted couldn't quite imagine it for himself, somehow.
"'Lo, Granny dear," he greeted, stooping to kiss the withered old cheek."How goes it?"
"About as usual, dear. Any word from Larry?" There was a plaintive note in Madame Holiday's voice. She was never quite content unless all the "children" were under the family roof-tree. And Larry was particularly dear to her heart.
"Yes, I just brought a letter for Uncle Phil. The very idea of your wanting Larry when you have Tony and me, and you haven't had us for so long." Ted pretended to be reproachful and his grandmother reached for his hand.
"I know, dear boy. I am very glad to have you and Tony. But Larry is a habit, like Philip. You mustn't mind my missing him."
"Course I don't mind, Granny. I was just jossing. I don't blame you a bit for missing Larry. He is a mighty good thing to have in the family. Wish I were half as valuable."
"You are, sonny. I am so happy to be having you here all summer."
"Maybe not quite all summer. I'll be going off for little trips," he prepared her gently.
"Youth! Youth! Never still—always wanting to fly off somewhere!"
"We all fly back mighty quick," comforted Ted. "There come the kiddies."
A patter of small feet sounded down the hall. In the next moment they were there—sturdy Eric, the six year old, apple-cheeked, incredibly energetic, already bidding fair to equal if not to rival his cousin Ted's reputation for juvenile naughtiness; and Hester, two years younger, a rose-and-snow creation, cherubic, adorable, with bobbing silver curls, delectably dimpled elbows and corn flower blue eyes.
Fresh from the tub and the daily delightful frolic with Daddy, they now appeared for that other ceremonial known as saying good-night to Granny.
"Teddy! Teddy! Ride us to Granny," demanded Eric hilariously, jubilant at finding his favorite tall cousin on the spot.
"'Es, wide us, wide us," chimed in Hester, not to be outdone.
"You fiends!" But Ted obediently got down on "all fours" while the small folks clambered up on his back and he "rode" them over to the bed, their bathrobes flying as they went. Arrived at the destination Ted deftly deposited his load in a giggling, squirming heap on the rug and then gathering up the small Hester, swung her aloft, bringing her down with her rose bud of a mouth close to Granny's pale cheeks.
"Kiss your flying angel, Granny, before she flies away again."
"Me! Me!" clamored Eric vociferously, hugging Ted's knees. "Me flying angel, too!"
"Not much," objected Ted. "No angel about you. Too, too much solid flesh and bones. Kiss Granny, quick. I hear your parents approaching."
Philip and Margery appeared on the threshold, seeking their obstreperous offspring.
There was another stampede, this time in the direction of the "parents."
"Ca'y me! Ca'y me, Daddy," chirruped Hester.