His Family Part 16

"Right--O," he answered slowly. "I'll call up to-morrow night."

Roger followed him downstairs.

"Come into my den and smoke a cigar!" he proposed in hearty ringing tones.

Allan thanked him and came in, but the puzzled expression was still on his face, and through the first moments of their talk he was very absent-minded. Roger's feeling of guilt increased, and he cursed himself for a meddlesome fool.

"Look here, Baird," he blurted out, "there's something I think you ought to know." Allan slightly turned his head, and Roger reddened a little. "The worst thing about living in a house chock full of meddling women is that you get to be one yourself," he growled. "And the fact is--" he cleared his throat--"I've put my foot in it, Baird," he said. "I was fool enough the other day to quote you to Edith."

"To what effect?"

"That if Deborah keeps on like this she'll be an old woman at thirty-five."

Allan sat up in his chair:

"Was Edith here this afternoon?"

"She was," said Roger.

"Say no more."

Baird had a wide, likable, generous mouth which wrinkled easily into a smile. He leaned back now and enjoyed himself. He puffed a little cloud of smoke, looked over at Roger and chuckled aloud. And Roger chuckled with relief. "What a decent chap he is," he thought.

"I'm sorry, of course," he said to Baird. "I thought of trying to explain--"

"Don't," said Allan. "Leave it alone. It won't do Deborah any harm--may even do her a little good. After all, I'm her physician--"

"Are you?" Roger asked with a twinkle. "I thought upstairs you were dismissed."

"Oh no, I'm not," was the calm reply. And the two men went on smoking.

Roger's liking for Baird was growing fast. They had had several little talks during Deborah's illness, and Roger was learning more of the man.

Raised on a big cattle ranch that his father had owned in New Mexico, riding broncos on the plains had given him his abounding health of body, nerve and spirit, his steadiness and sanity in all this feverish city life.

"Are you riding these days?" he inquired.

"No," said Roger, "the park is too hot--and they don't sprinkle the path as they should. I've had my cob sent up to the mountains. By the way," he added cordially, "you must come up there and ride with me."

"Thanks, I'd like to," Allan said, and with a little inner smile he added dryly to himself, "He's getting ready to meddle again." But whatever amus.e.m.e.nt Baird had in this thought was concealed behind his sober gray eyes. Soon after that he took his leave.

"Now then," Roger reflected, with a little glow of expectancy, "if Edith will only leave me alone, she may find I'm smarter then she thinks!"

One evening in the following week, after Edith had left town, Roger had Bruce to dine at his club, a pleasant old building on Madison Square, where comfortably all by themselves they could discuss Baird's chances.

"A. Baird and I have been chums," said Bruce, "ever since we were in college. Take it from me I know his brand. And he isn't the kind to be pushed."

"Who wants to push him?" Roger demanded, with a sudden guilty twinge.

"Edith does," Bruce answered. "And I tell you that won't do with A. Baird.

He has his mind set on Deborah sure. He's been setting it harder and harder for months--and he knows it--and so does she. But they're both the kind of people who don't like interference, they've got to get to it by themselves.

Edith must keep out of the way. She mustn't take it on herself to ask him up to the mountains." Roger gave a little start. "If she does, there'll be trouble with Deborah."

Roger smoked for a moment in silence and then sagely nodded his head.

"That's so," he murmured thoughtfully. "Yes, my boy, I guess you're right."

Bruce lifted his mint julep:

"G.o.d, but it's hot in here to-night. How about taking a spin up the river?"

"Delighted," replied his father-in-law.

And a half hour later in Bruce's new car, which was the pride and joy of his life, they were far up the river. On a long level stretch of road Bruce "let her out to show what she could do." And Roger with his heart in his mouth and his eye upon the speedometer, saw it creep to sixty-three.

"Almost as good as a horse," remarked Bruce, when the car had slowed a little.

"Almost," said Roger, "but not quite. It's--well, it's dissipation."

"And a horse?"

"Is life," was the grave reply. "You'll have a crash some day, my boy, if you go on at your present speed. It gets me worried sometimes. You see you're a family man."

"I am and I'm glad of it. Edith and the kiddies suit me right down to the ground. I'm crazy about 'em--you know that. But a chap with a job like mine," Bruce continued pleadingly, as he drove his car rushing around a curve, "needs a little dissipation, too. I can't tell you what it means to me, when I'm kept late at the office, to have this car for the run up home.

Lower Broadway's empty then, and I know the cops. I swing around through Washington Square, and the Avenue looks clear for miles, nothing but two long rows of lights to the big hump at Murray Hill. It's the time between crowds--say about ten. And I know the cops."

"That's all right," said Roger. "No one was more delighted than I when you got this car. You deserve it. It's the _work_ that I was speaking of.

You've got it going at such a speed--"

"Only way on earth to get on--to get what I want for my family--"

"Yes, yes, I know," muttered Roger vaguely. Bruce began talking of his work for the steel construction concern downtown.

"Take it from me," he declared at the end, "this town has only just begun!"

"Has, eh," Roger grunted. "Aren't the buildings high enough?"

"My G.o.d, I wish they were twenty times higher," Bruce rejoined good-humoredly. "But they won't be--we've stopped going up. We've done pretty well in the air, and now we're going underground. And when we get through, this old rock of Manhattan will be such a network of tunnels there'll be a hole waiting at every corner to take you wherever you want to go. Speed? We don't even know what it means!"

And again Bruce "let her out" a bit. It was _quite_ a bit. Roger grabbed his hat with one hand and the side of the car with the other.

"They'll look back on a mile a minute," said Bruce, "as we look back on stage coach days! And in the rush hour there'll be a rush that'll make you think of pneumatic tubes! Not a sound nor a quiver--_just pure speed!_ Shooting people home at night at a couple of hundred miles an hour! The city will be as big as that! And there won't be any accidents and there won't be any smoke. Instead of coal they'll use the sun! And, my G.o.d, man, the boulevards--and parks and places for the kids! The way they'll use the River--and the ocean and the Sound! The Catskills will be Central Park!

Sounds funny, don't it--but it's true. I've studied it out from A to Z.

This town is choking itself to death simply because we're so d.a.m.n slow! We don't know how to spread ourselves! All this city needs is speed!"

"Bruce," said Roger anxiously, "just go a bit easy on that gas. The fact is, it was a great mistake for me to eat those crabs to-night."

Bruce slowed down compa.s.sionately, and soon they turned and started home.

And as they drew near the glow of the town, other streets and boulevards poured more motors into the line, until at last they were rushing along amid a perfect bedlam made up of honks and shrieks of horns. The air grew hot and acrid, and looking back through the bluish haze of smoke and dust behind him Roger could see hundreds of huge angry motor eyes. Crowding and jamming closer, pell mell, at a pace which barely slackened, they sped on, a wild uproarious crew, and swept into the city.