Jap Herron Part 25

She arose and wandered through the rooms that occupied the lower floor of the building, stepping from a hasty and uncomprehending glance at the press room and the composing room to dwell with critical eye on the big, bare office.

"You need a little fixing up," she commented. "You should have a nice rug and shades, and a roll-top desk and swivel chair."

"So we should," lamented Bill, looking around with an air of disapproval. "But not having anybody to tell us----" He stopped short, embarra.s.sed.

"I guess that I will have to keep house for j.a.ppie, and boss the office too. That is, if you want me, j.a.ppie," she appealed. "Mrs. Hastings died last March, and I have been with f.a.n.n.y ever since. My foster-mother left me well provided for. I won't be a burden, j.a.ppie,"

she cried. "We have all made good. We must rejoice together."

Bill was half way across the office in his excitement.

"You can take Flossy's house," he burst out. "It's ready any time, because Pap had it completely overhauled after the tenants moved out.

It's the only ready-furnished house in Bloomtown and----" His voice lowered and there was a note of wistfulness in it. "j.a.p, Flossy would be so happy!"

j.a.p surveyed his erstwhile desperate friend with a gleam of merriment.

As yet, Bill did not know but that his sacrificing partner was a fugitive from the law. He had not even remembered to ask about the well-being of Wilfred Jones and his wife.

"Perhaps Aggie--Mabelle," he hastily corrected, "is just joking. She would hardly like to bury herself in this little town after New York.

There would be so little to compensate."

"Oh, I don't fear that I will regret New York," said Mabelle, letting her blue eyes dwell on Bill's ingenuous countenance for a throbbing moment. "Really, j.a.ppie, there's nothing to regret."

Bill's heart turned over twice. His face was appealing. He met j.a.p's dancing eyes defiantly.

"Well," said j.a.p, "you might get the keys and show the cottage to Ag--Mabelle, and see how much enthusiasm it provokes. Perhaps it would make a better first impression by electric light. Here, put an extra bulb in your pocket, if one happens to be missing," and he drew out the table drawer, where many things lay hidden.

Bill was helping Mabelle on with her coat, his well-set body charged with electricity that was strangely illuminating to j.a.p. As the two left the office, a few minutes later, a teasing voice called after them:

"Remember, Bill, that you took on a pile of orders this evening, and we were loaded to the guards with job work already."

CHAPTER XXIII

j.a.p looked up as a shadow fell across the door of the composing room.

"Well," he queried quizzically, "what about it?"

"Well," Bill repeated, drawing the girl into the room after him, "Mabelle thinks that the cottage needs a bathroom and about a wagon load of plumbing, besides paint and paper. Otherwise, it's all right."

Mabelle slipped past him and approached the case. Standing on tiptoe beside the high stool, she laid a hand coaxingly on the strong, angular shoulder.

"Now, j.a.ppie, boy, iron out that worry-frown. I am going to do the fixing up myself. It shan't cost you a cent."

"No!" j.a.p exploded.

"Now, dear boy, forget your pride. I have lots and lots of money, and this is to be my home."

"The firm is not insolvent," suggested Bill.

"It isn't a matter for the firm," j.a.p said gravely. "The cottage belongs to me, and we can't allow our finances to get mixed. I'm willing to have you put in all the repairs that I can afford."

His mind reverted to Flossy, happy and clean without a bathroom.

"Let me take a mortgage on the property for whatever the work costs,"

Mabelle pleaded, her lips puckering irresistibly.

j.a.p descended from the stool and caught her in his arms. Somehow she had, all at once, become his baby sister again. The episode of the straw stack loomed before him. She had puckered her lips just like that when she fled to him for protection. With little coquettish touches, she slipped one arm around his neck, while she smoothed his red locks gently. Bill, looking on, was overcome by an unaccountable restlessness.

"What a pity Isabel isn't home!" he blurted. And Bill never knew why he had recourse to Isabel at that moment. The observation bore the desired fruit. Mabelle freed herself from her brother's embrace, with the pained exclamation:

"Isabel not at home! Oh, j.a.ppie, I have just been waiting for you to tell me about her. Ever since we read in the paper--and the one little reference to her in your letter to f.a.n.n.y----"

She stopped, her blue eyes filling with tears.

"They went away just after the election was over," Bill explained. "Iz wouldn't leave j.a.p while the thing was in doubt, not even for her mother."

"I don't think that's quite square," j.a.p interposed. "Mrs. Granger didn't want to go at all, and only consented when Dr. Hall told her how ill Isabel was. The rest of us knew that Mrs. Granger couldn't live through another winter here; but he had to make Isabel's poor health the pretext when he sent them to Florida for the cold weather."

"Is she--is she seriously sick?" Mabelle asked tremulously. "The mother, I mean."

"It's a desperate hope, a kind of last resort," Bill vouchsafed. "I heard Doc Hall talking to Tom Granger in the bank, the morning before they left. He said he didn't want to scare him, but he wanted to prepare him for the worst, I thought."

"I'm sure if Isabel were at home, she'd insist on your coming right to her," j.a.p said slowly. "Bill and I have been bunking together up there," he jerked his thumb in the direction of the ceiling. "We have a bedroom and a little combination living-room, dressing-room and library. The library's Bill's part. We take our meals at the hotel, down in the next block. The hotel isn't bad for a town of this size."

"Oh, I've already met the hotel," Mabelle laughed. "Bill--Mr. Bowers took me there to dinner this evening while we were waiting for you to come home."

"Aw, chuck that 'Mr. Bowers,'" Bill interrupted. "I'm plain Bill to everybody in this town, and I guess j.a.p's sister can call me that."

"The hotel, as I was saying," j.a.p resumed, "will have to take care of you for the present till you can get a bathroom attachment for the cottage. It'll probably be lonely for you, just at first."

"I'll see to it that Mabelle meets all the best people in town," Bill offered.

The temporary housing problem settled, they returned to the discussion of repairs necessary and repairs superfluous. After two hours of parley, j.a.p consented to let his energetic sister work her will on Flossy's cottage. It was after midnight when the girl had been established in her room at the hotel, and j.a.p and Bill tumbled into bed. The shank of that night had wrought miracles for unsuspecting Bloomtown. A vision of blue eyes, red lips and golden tresses kept floating through Bill's dreams, a vision that bore not the least resemblance to Rosy Raymond. Meanwhile j.a.p stalked through one dream controversy after another with plumbers, painters and the other defilers of Flossy's home.

By noon on Monday Mabelle had Bloomtown by the ears, and by the end of the week it was all up with Bill. j.a.p had to hire a boy to help get out the _Herald_. It consumed all of Bill's time threatening and cajoling merchants into the prompt delivery of supplies, and seeing to it that the workmen were on the job when Mabelle arrived at the cottage in the morning. Bloomtown carpenters, paper hangers and plumbers usually took their own sweet time. They had a great awakening when Mabelle employed them. With Bill to pour oil on the troubled waters, strikes were narrowly averted.

One morning, soon after the radiant one arrived, Kelly Jones wandered into the office, where a lively dispute with the boss plumber was under way. In ten minutes, Kelly had fallen a victim to the little tyrant.

"'Tain't no use talkin' about her gittin' along without a cellar," he confided to j.a.p. "I'll dig it myself, and that'll save all this row about how the pipes is got to run. I ain't got nothin' much to do, now the corn's all in. And it's lucky we ain't had a hard freeze. The ground's fine for diggin'," and the following morning he was on the job.

For two months Bloomtown was demoralized. A cellar made possible a furnace, and the elimination of stoves called for a fireplace in the living-room, a fireplace framed in by soft blue and yellow tiles. One by one Mabelle added her receipted bills to the packet of doc.u.ments that would go into the making of that mortgage on j.a.p's property. One by one the housewives of Bloomtown demanded of their paralyzed husbands bathrooms, cellars, furnaces, tiled fireplaces.

At last the agony was over. A load of furniture had arrived from the city, and Bill, as usual, left his stickful of type and hastened to superintend the transfer of it from the freight depot to the cottage.

The evening shadows were lengthening in the office when he returned.

j.a.p had gone up-stairs to get out a rush order on the job press, and there was a little commotion on the stairway just before Bill presented himself, his brown eyes full of trouble. j.a.p looked at him, and his heart sank. Had it come to this? Mabelle, in spite of her scanty years, was older than Bill. She must have known. The whole town knew.

"For goodness' sake, Bill, don't pi this galley," he shouted, bending over the imposing stone. "Look where you're going. I wish that Mabelle would wake to the fact that you have a half-hearted interest in this office. She thinks you have nothing to do but keep tagging on her errands."