_ The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight
closed round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed
round about the heart of the anxious little man patrolling the
fan-shaped zone of firelight. But as the mantel clock struck wheezily
six there was the rattle of an outer door, and a rich and beautiful
peal of laughter went ringing through the house. Thus cheerfully did
Mary Vertrees herald her return with her mother from their expedition
among the barbarians.
She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair
by the hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes.
Mrs. Vertrees followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the
contrary, she looked vaguely disturbed, as if she had eaten something
not quite certain to agree with her, and regretted it.
"Papa! Oh, oh!" And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief
upon her eyes. "I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed
it--"
Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. "I suppose I'm very dull," she said,
gently. "I didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and
the house is altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--"
"Papa!" Mary cried, breaking in. "They asked us to DINNER!"
"What!"
"And I'm GOING!" she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms.
"Think of it! Never in their house before; never met any of them
but the daughter--and just BARELY met her--"
"What about you?" interrrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon
his wife.
She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten
would not agree with her. "I couldn't!" she said. "I--"
"Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!"
cried Mary, choking. "And then she--she realized it, and tried to
turn it into a cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like
--like a squeal!"
"I suppose," said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, "that Mary will have
an uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--"
Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel
and, leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of
her shoe, twinkling in the firelight.
"THEY didn't notice anything," she said. "So far as they were
concerned, mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed."
"Who were 'they'?" asked her father. "Whom did you see?"
"Only the mother and daughter," Mary answered. "Mrs. Sheridan is
dumpy and rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by
the fashion magazines and talks about New York people that have their
pictures in 'em. She tutors the mother, but not very successfully--
partly because her own foundation is too flimsy and partly because
she began too late. They've got an enormous Moor of painted plaster
or something in the hall, and the girl evidently thought it was to
her credit that she selected it!"
"They have oil-paintings, too," added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of
gentle price at the Landseers. "I've always thought oil-paintings in
a private house the worst of taste."
"Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!" said Mr. Vertrees, finishing
the implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. "Go on,
Mary. None of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan
or--" He paused and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately
with the poker. "Or one of the sons?"
Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter
comprehension. He turned instantly away, but she had begun to
laugh again.
"No," she said, "no one except the women, but mamma inquired about
the sons thoroughly!"
"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.
"Oh, most adroitly, too!" laughed the girl. "Only she couldn't help
unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!"
"Mary Vertrees!"
"Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM
could help unconsciously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the
same time! They all three kept looking at me and talking about the
oldest son, Mr. James Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father
is very anxious 'to get Jim to marry and settle down,' and she assured
me that 'Jim is right cultivated.' Another of the sons, the youngest
one, caught me looking in the window this afternoon; but they didn't
seem to consider him quite one of themselves, somehow, though Mrs.
Sheridan mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he had been 'right
sick,' and had been to some cure or other. They seemed relieved to
bring the subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at me!
The other brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns
the new house across the street, where that young black-sheep of
the Lamhorns, Robert, goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man
standing on the porch with Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I
suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim' still lurks in the mists, but I shall
meet him to-night. Papa--" She stepped nearer to him so that he had
to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he did. There may have
been a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their surface merry
with laughter. "Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and Bibbs
--to the best of our information--is a lunatic. Roscoe is married.
Papa, does it have to be Jim?"
"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. "You're outrageous! That's
a perfectly horrible way of talking!"
"Well, I'm close to twenty-four," said Mary, turning to her. "I
haven't been able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him,
and maybe I never shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything
I ever wanted in my life--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's
about time I began to pay back. Unfortunately, I don't know how to
do anything--but something's got to be done."
"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother,
plaintively. "It's not--it's not--"
"No, it's not," said Mary. "I know that!"
"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired,
uneasily. "'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"
"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it. "We were so very cordial
and easy! I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as
any kind old woman on a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss
Sheridan who did it. She played around it awhile; you could see she
wanted to--she's in a dreadful hurry to get into things--and I fancied
she had an idea it might impress that Lamhorn boy to find us there
to-night. It's a sort of house-warming dinner, and they talked about
it and talked about it--and then the girl got her courage up and
blurted out the invitation. And mamma--" Here Mary was once more
a victim to incorrigible merriment. "Mamma tried to say yes, and
COULDN'T! She swallowed and squealed--I mean you coughed, dear! And
then, papa, she said that you and she had promised to go to a lecture
at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her daughter would be delighted
to come to the Big Show! So there I am, and there's Mr. Jim Sheridan
--and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!"
And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a
gesture of flying grace as she sped.
When she came down, at twenty munutes after seven, her father stood in
the hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through
the dark. He looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze
was fond and proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and
nodded gaily, and, when she reached the floor, put a hand on his
shoulder.
"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said. "I LOOK rich,
don't I, papa?"
She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called
"regal." A head taller than her father, she was as straight and
jauntily poised as a boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown
eyes were like her mother's, but for the rest she went back to some
stronger and livelier ancestor than either of her parents.
"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.
"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.
"And my dress?" She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a
splendor of white and silver. "Anything better at Nice next winter,
do you think?" She laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the
cloak again. "Two years old, and no one would dream it! I did it
over."
"You can do anything, Mary."
There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a
significance not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if
he suggested something to her and begged her forgiveness in the same
breath.
And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She
lifted her hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly,
so that he should feel the reassurance of its pressure.
"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely. "I know exactly
what you want me to do." _