A Hoosier Chronicle Part 37

"I'm about due to go over there and look over the linen," remarked Mrs.

Owen, with an air of making a memorandum of a duty neglected.

"Well, I guess it's comfortable enough," said Marian. "But I should think you could do better than that, Sylvia. You'll have to eat at the same table with some typewriter pounder. With all your education I should think it would bore you."

"Sylvia will have to learn about it for herself, Marian," said Mrs.

Ba.s.sett. "I've always understood that the executive board is very careful not to admit girls whose character isn't above reproach."

Mrs. Owen turned the key of her old-fashioned coffee urn sharply upon the cup she was filling and looked her niece in the eye.

"Oh, we're careful, Hallie; we're careful; but I tell 'em not to be _too_ careful!"

"Well, of course the aim is to protect girls," Mrs. Ba.s.sett replied, conscious of a disconcerting acidity in her aunt's remark.

"I'm not afraid of contamination," observed Sylvia.

"Of course not _that_," rejoined Mrs. Ba.s.sett hastily. "I think it's fine that with your culture you will go and live in such a place; it shows a beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice."

"Oh, please don't say that! I'm going there just because I want to go!"

And then, smiling to ease the moment's tension, "I expect to have the best of times at Elizabeth House."

"Sylvia"--remarked Mrs. Owen, drawling the name a trifle more than usual--"Sylvia can do what she pleases anywhere."

"I think," said Ba.s.sett, who had not before entered into the discussion, "that Aunt Sally has struck the right word there. In these days a girl can do as she likes; and we haven't any business to discuss Miss Garrison's right to live at Elizabeth House."

"Of course, Sylvia, we didn't mean to seem to criticize you. You know that," said Mrs. Ba.s.sett, flushing.

"You are my friends," said Sylvia, glancing round the table, "and if there's criticizing to be done, you have the first right."

"If Sylvia is to be criticized,--and I don't understand that any one has tried it," remarked Mrs. Owen,--"I want the first chance at her myself."

And with the snapping of her spectacle case they rose from the table.

They had barely settled themselves in the parlor when Harwood and Allen arrived in Allen's motor. Dan had expected his friend to resent his part in the convention, and he had sought Allen at Luders's shop to satisfy himself that their personal relations had not been disturbed. He had found Allen, at the end of a day's work, perched upon a bench discoursing to the workmen on the Great Experiment. Allen had, it seemed, watched the convention from an obscure corner of the gallery. He p.r.o.nounced Dan's speech "immense"; "perfectly bully"; he was extravagant in his praise of it. His father's success in naming the ticket had seemed to him a great triumph. Allen viewed the whole matter with a kind of detachment, as a spectator whose interest is wholly impersonal. He thought there would be a great fight between the combatants; his dad hadn't finished yet, he declared, sententiously. The incidents of the convention had convinced him that the Great Experiment was progressing according to some predestined formula. He and Harwood had dined together at the University Club and he was quite in the humor to call on the Ba.s.setts at Mrs. Owen's; and the coming of Sylvia, as to whom Mrs. Owen had piqued his curiosity, was not to be overlooked.

He cleared the air by brushing away the convention with a word, addressed daringly to Ba.s.sett:--

"Papa's come back from fishing! _My_ papa is digging bait," and they all laughed.

"Miss Garrison, you must be the greatest of girls, for you have my own ideas! Our invincible young orator here has been telling me so!"

"That was a grand speech; many happy returns of the day!" was Marian's greeting to Dan.

"You certainly have a great voice, Daniel," remarked Mrs. Owen, "and you had your nerve with you."

"You were effective from the first moment, Mr. Harwood. You ought to consider going on the lecture platform," said Mrs. Ba.s.sett.

"Oh, Dan hasn't come to that yet; its only defeated statesmen who spout in the Chautauquas," Ba.s.sett remarked.

Harwood was in fine fettle. Many men had expressed their approval of him; at the club he had enjoyed the chaffing of the young gentlemen with whom he ate luncheon daily, and whose tolerance of the universe was tinged with a certain cynicism. They liked Harwood; they knew he was a "smart" fellow; and because they liked and admired him they rallied him freely. The president of a manufacturing company had called at the Boordman Building to retain him in a damage suit; a tribute to his growing fame. Dan was a victim of that error to which young men yield in exultant moments, when, after a first brush with the pickets, they are confident of making their own terms with life. Dan's att.i.tude toward the world was receptive; here in the Ba.s.sett domestic circle he felt no shame at being a Ba.s.sett man. All but Sylvia had spoken to him of his part in the convention, and she turned to him now after a pa.s.sage with Allen that had left the young man radiant.

"You have a devoted admirer in Mr. Thatcher. He must be a difficult friend to satisfy," said Sylvia.

"Then do you think I don't satisfy him?"

"Oh, perfectly! He's a combination of optimist and fatalist, I judge. He thinks nothing matters much, for everything is coming out all right in the end."

"Then where do you place me in his scheme of things?"

"That depends, doesn't it," she replied carelessly, "on whether you are the master of the ship or only a prisoner under the hatches."

He reddened, and she added nothing to relieve his embarra.s.sment.

"You think, then--?" And he stopped, uneasy under her gaze.

"Some of the time I don't think; I just wonder. And that's very different, isn't it?"

He realized now how much he had counted on the kind things he had expected her to say. He had plainly lost ground with her since their talk on the Madison campus, and he wanted to justify himself, to convince her of his rect.i.tude, and of her failure to understand his part in the convention, but the time and place were unpropitious.

Allen was calling attention to the moonlight and proposing an automobile flight into the country. His car would hold them all, and he announced himself the safest of chauffeurs. Mrs. Owen declined, on the double plea that she had business to attend to and did not ride in motor cars even to please Allen Thatcher; Ba.s.sett also excused himself; so the rest set off presently under Mrs. Ba.s.sett's chaperonage.

"Are you going downtown, Morton?" asked Mrs. Owen, as they watched the motor roll away.

"No; I'd like to see you on a business matter, Aunt Sally, if you can give me a few minutes."

"Certainly, Morton; come right in."

She flashed on the lights in her office where Thomas A. Hendricks still gazed benevolently at Maud S. breaking her record.

"I owe you an apology, Aunt Sally," Ba.s.sett began at once. "I'm sorry I got you into a lawsuit, but things moved so fast that I didn't have a chance to pull you out of the way. Thatcher and I have agreed to disagree, as you doubtless know."

Mrs. Owen drew her spectacle case from her pocket (there were pockets and deep ones in all her gowns), wiped her gla.s.ses and put them on.

"You and Edward do seem to be having a little trouble. When I got home I found that summons the sheriff left here. Let me see; it was away back in '82 that I was sued the last time. Agent for a cornplanter sued me for a machine I never ordered and it wasn't worth a farthing anyhow.

That was on my Greene County place. Just for that I had him arrested for trespa.s.s for going on the farm to take away the machine. He paid the costs all right, and I hope he learned better manners."

This reminiscence, recalled with evident enjoyment, was not wholly encouraging. It seemed darkly possible that she had cited a precedent applicable to every case where she was haled before a court. The chairs in Mrs. Owen's office were decidedly uncomfortable; Ba.s.sett crossed and recrossed his legs, and pressed his hand nervously to his pocket to make sure of his check-book; for he was prepared to pay his wife's aunt for her shares in the "Courier" newspaper to facilitate her elimination as a co-defendant in the suit at bar.

"It was contemptible of Thatcher to drag you into this, for he knew you took those shares merely to help me out. I'm sorry it has turned out this way, but I'm anxious to make it right with you, and I'm ready to buy your shares--at your own price, of course."

She chose a letter from the afternoon's mail, and opened it with a horn-handled paper-cutter, crumpling the envelope and dropping it over her shoulder into a big waste-paper basket. She was not apparently overcome by his magnanimity.

"Well, well," she said, glancing over the letter; "that man I've got at Waupegan is turning out better than I expected when I put him there; or else he's the greatest living liar. You never can tell about these people. Well, well!--Oh, yes, Morton; about that lawsuit. I saw Edward this afternoon and had a little talk with him about it."

"You saw Thatcher about the suit!"

"I most certainly did, Morton. I had him go down to the bank to talk to me."

"I'm sorry you took the trouble to do that. If you'd told me--"