A Poor Wise Man Part 10

"You'll have to ask me, the next time."

"I certainly will. But I think I'd better let your family look me over first, just so they'll know that I don't customarily steal the silver spoons when I'm asked out to dinner. Or anything like that."

"We're just--folks."

"So am I, awfully--folks! And pretty lonely folks at that. Something like that pup that has adopted me, only worse. He's got me, but I haven't anybody."

"You'll not be lonely long." She glanced up at him.

"That's cheering. Why?"

"Well, you are the sort that makes friends," she said, rather vaguely. "That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings you're there--they're crazy about you. They like to hear you talk."

"Great Scott! I suppose I've been orating all over the place!"

"No, but you've got ideas. You give them something to think about when they go home. I wish I had a mind like yours."

He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement. "My Scottish blood," he said despondently. "A Scot is always a reformer and a preacher, in his heart. I used to orate to my mother, but she liked it. She is a Scot, too. Besides, it put her to sleep. But I thought I'd outgrown it."

"You don't make speeches. I didn't mean that."

But he was very crestfallen during the remainder of the way, and rather silent. He wondered, that night before he went to bed, if he had been didactic to Lily Cardew. He had aired his opinions to her at length, he knew. He groaned as he took off his coat in his cold little room at the boarding house which lodged and fed him, both indifferently, for the sum of twelve dollars per week.

Jinx, the little hybrid dog, occupied the seat of his one comfortable chair. He eyed the animal somberly.

"Hereafter, old man," he said, "when I feel a spell of oratory coming on, you will have to be the audience." He took his dressing gown from a nail behind the door, and commenced to put it on. Then he took it off again and wrapped the dog in it.

"I can read in bed, which you can't," he observed. "Only, I can't help thinking, with all this town to pick from, you might have chosen a fellow with two dressing gowns and two chairs."

He was extremely quiet all the next day. Miss Boyd could hear him, behind the part.i.tion with its "Please Keep Out" sign, fussing with bottles and occasionally whistling to himself. Once it was the "Long, Long Trail," and a moment later he appeared in his doorway, grinning.

"Sorry," he said. "I've got in the habit of thinking to the fool thing.

Won't do it again."

"You must be thinking hard."

"I am," he replied, grimly, and disappeared. She could hear the slight unevenness of his steps as he moved about, but there was no more whistling. Edith Boyd leaned both elbows on the top of a showcase and fell into a profound and troubled thought. Mostly her thoughts were of w.i.l.l.y Cameron, but some of them were for herself. Up dreary and sordid by-paths her mind wandered; she was facing ugly facts for the first time, and a little shudder of disgust shook her. He wanted to meet her family. He was a gentleman and he wanted to meet her family. Well, he could meet them all right, and maybe he would understand then that she had never had a chance. In all her young life no man had ever proposed letting her family look him over. Hardly ever had they visited her at home, and when they did they seemed always glad to get away. She had met them on street corners, and slipped back alone, fearful of every creak of the old staircase, and her mother's querulous voice calling to her:

"Edie, where've you been all this time?" And she had lied. How she had lied!

"I'm through with all that," she resolved. "It wasn't any fun anyhow.

I'm sick of hating myself."

Some time later w.i.l.l.y Cameron heard the telephone ring, and taking pad and pencil started forward. But Miss Boyd was at the telephone, conducting a personal conversation.

"No.... No, I think not.... Look here, Lou, I've said no twice."

There was a rather lengthy silence while she listened. Then: "You might as well have it straight, Lou. I'm through.... No, I'm not sick. I'm just through.... I wouldn't.... What's the use?"

w.i.l.l.y Cameron, retreating into his lair, was unhappily conscious that the girl was on the verge of tears. He puzzled over the situation for some time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature, and it had dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her nails out of a pasteboard box during the slack portion of every day was troubled. In his abstraction he commenced again his melancholy refrain, and a moment later she appeared in the doorway:

"Oh, for mercy's sake, stop," she said. She was very pale.

"Look here, Miss Edith, you come in here and tell me what's wrong.

Here's a chair. Now sit down and talk it out. It helps a lot to get things off your chest."

"There's nothing the matter with me. And if the boss comes in here and finds me--"

Quite suddenly she put her head down on the back of the chair and began to cry. He was frightfully distressed. He poured some aromatic ammonia into a medicine gla.s.s and picking up her limp hand, closed her fingers around it.

"Drink that," he ordered.

She shook her head.

"I'm not sick," she said. "I'm only a fool."

"If that fellow said anything over the telephone--!"

She looked up drearily.

"It wasn't him. He doesn't matter. It's just--I got to hating myself."

She stood up and carefully dabbed her eyes. "Heavens, I must be a sight.

Now don't you get to thinking things, Mr. Cameron. Girls can't go out and fight off a temper, or get full and sleep it off. So they cry."

Some time later he glanced out at her. She was standing before the little mirror above the chewing gum, carefully rubbing her cheeks with a small red pad. After that she reached into the show case, got out a lip pencil and touched her lips.

"You're pretty enough without all that, Miss Edith."

"You mind your own business," she retorted acidly.

CHAPTER VIII

Lily had known Alston Denslow most of her life. The children of that group of families which formed the monied aristocracy of the city knew only their own small circle. They met at dancing cla.s.ses, where governesses and occasionally mothers sat around the walls, while the little girls, in handmade white frocks of exquisite simplicity, their shining hair drawn back and held by ribbon bows, made their prim little dip at the door before entering, and the boys, in white Eton collars and gleaming pumps, bowed from the waist and then dived for the masculine corner of the long room.

No little girl ever intruded on that corner, although now and then a brave spirit among the boys would wander, with a.s.sumed unconsciousness but ears rather pink, to the opposite corner where the little girls were grouped like white b.u.t.terflies milling in the sun.

The pianist struck a chord, and the children lined up, the girls on one side, the boys on the other, a long line, with Mrs. Van Buren in the center. Another chord, rather a long one. Mrs. Van Buren curtsied to the girls. The line dipped, wavered, recovered itself. Mrs. Van Buren turned. Another chord. The boys bent, rather too much, from the waist, while Mrs. Van Buren swept another deep curtsey. The music now, very definite as to time. Glide and short step to the right. Glide and short step to the left. Dancing school had commenced. Outside were long lines of motors waiting. The governesses chatted, and sometimes embroidered.

Mademoiselle tatted.

Alton Denslow was generally known as Pink, but the origin of the name was shrouded in mystery. As "Pink" he had learned to waltz at the dancing cla.s.s, at a time when he was more attentive to the step than to the music that accompanied it. As Pink Denslow he had played on a scrub team at Harvard, and got two broken ribs for his trouble, and as Pink he now paid intermittent visits to the Denslow Bank, between the hunting season in October and polo at eastern fields and in California. At twenty-three he was still the boy of the dancing cla.s.s, very careful at parties to ask his hostess to dance, and not noticeably upset when she did, having arranged to be cut in on at the end of the second round.

Pink could not remember when he had not been in love with Lily Cardew.