Little Miss Grouch Part 12

What do you think a baby's stomach is, beautiful--er--example of misplaced generosity? Oranges would be more to the purpose."

"Very well, oranges, then. And we'll come twice a day and meet our protege here."

Thus it was arranged in the course of a talk with the mother. She was going back to the Fatherland, she explained, to exhibit her wonderful babe to its grandparents. And if the beautiful lady (here the Tyro shook his head vigorously) thought the captain wouldn't object, the youngster could be handed up over the rail for an occasional visit, and could be warranted to be wholly contented and peaceful. The experiment was tried at once, with such success that the Tyro was presently moved to complain of being wholly supplanted by the newcomer. Thereupon Little Miss Grouch condescended to resume the promenade.

"As our acquaintance bids fair to be of indefinite duration--" began the Tyro, when she cut in:--

"Why indefinite?"

"Since it is to last until I belie my better judgment and basely recant my opinion as to your looks."

"You were nearly caught while we were discussing our protege. Well, go on."

"I think you'd best tell me a little about yourself."

"Oh, my life is dull compared with yours," she returned. "Our only interesting problem has been a barn-storming of the doors of New York Society."

"And did you break in?"

For a moment her eyes opened wide. Then she remembered his confessed ignorance and laughed.

With such reservations as she deemed advisable, she sketched briefly for him one of those amazing careers so typical of the swiftly changing social conditions of America.

As she talked, he visualized her father, keen, restless, resolute, a money-hunter, who had bred out of a few dollars many dollars, and out of many dollars an overwhelming fortune; her mother, a woman of clean, fine, shrewd, able New England stock (the Tyro, being of the old America, knew the name at once); and the daughter, born to moderate means, in the Middle West, raised luxuriously on the basis of waxing wealth, educated abroad and in America in a school which shields its pupils from every reality of life and forces their growth in a hothouse atmosphere specially adapted to these human orchids, and then presented as a finished product for the acceptance of the New York circle which, by virtue of much painful and expensive advertising in the newspapers, calls itself Society.

Part of this she told him, qualifying the grossness of the reality by her own shrewd humor; part he read between the lines of the autobiography.

What she did not reveal to him was that she was the most flattered and pampered heiress of the season; courted by the great and shining ones, fawned on by the lesser members of the charmed circle, the pet and plaything of the Sunday newspapers--and somewhat bored by it all.

The siege of society had been of farcical ease. Not her prospective millions nor her conquering loveliness, either of which might eventually have gained the entree for her, would have sufficed to set her on the throne. Shrewd social critics ascribed her effortless success to what Lord Guenn called her "You-be-d----d" air.

The fact is, there was enough of her New England mother in Cecily to keep her chin up. She never fawned. She never truckled. She was direct and honest, and free from taint of sn.o.bbery, and a society perhaps the most restlessly, self-distrustfully sn.o.bbish in the world marveled and admired and accepted. Gay, high-spirited, kind in her somewhat thoughtless way, clever, independent of thought and standard, with a certain sweet and wistful vigor of personality, Cecily Wayne ruled, almost as soon as she entered; ruled--and was lonely.

For the Puritan in her demanded something more than her own circle gave her. And, true to the Puritan character, she wanted her price. That price was happiness. Hence she had fled from Remsen Van Dam.

"But what's become of your promenade deck court?" inquired the Tyro, when he found his attempts to elicit any further light upon her character or career ineffective.

"Scattered," she laughed. "I told them I wouldn't be up until after luncheon. Aren't you flattered?"

"I'm grateful," he said. "But don't forget that we have to call on Karl at four o'clock."

"Well, come and rescue me then from the 'court,' as you call it. Now I must make myself pretty--I mean less homely--for luncheon."

Leaden clogs held back the hands of the Tyro's watch after luncheon.

Full half an hour before the appointed time he was on deck, a forehandedness which was like to have proved his undoing, for Judge Enderby, who had taken a fancy to the young man and was moreover amused by the incipient romance, swooped down upon him and inveigled him into a walk. Some five minutes before the hour, the Joyous Vision appeared, and made for her deck-throne attended by her entire court, including several new accessions.

Judge Enderby immediately tightened his coils around his captive.

Brought up in a rigid school of courtesy toward his elders, the Tyro sought some inoffensive means of breaking away; but when the other hooked an arm into his, alleging the roll of the vessel,--though not in the least needing the support,--he all but gave up hope. For an interminable quarter of an hour the marplot jurist teased his captive.

Then, with the air of one making a brilliant discovery, he said:--

"Why, there's your homely little friend."

"Who?" said the Tyro.

"Little Miss--what was it you called her?--oh, yes, Miss Grouch. Strange how these plain girls sometimes attract men, isn't it? Look at the circle around her. Suppose we join it."

The Tyro joyfully a.s.sented. The Queen welcomed Judge Enderby graciously, and ordered a chair vacated for him; young Mr. Sperry, whose chair it was, obeying with ill grace. The Tyro she allowed to stand, vouchsafing him only the most careless recognition. Was he not a good ten minutes late? And should the Empress of Hearts be kept waiting with impunity?

Punishment, mild but sufficient for a lesson, was to be the portion of the offender. She gave him no opportunity to recall their appointment.

And with a quiet suggestion she set young Sperry on his trail.

Now Mr. Diedrick Sperry, never notable for the most amiable of moods and manners, was nourishing in his rather dull brain a sense of injury, in that he had been ousted from his point of vantage. As an object of redress the Tyro struck him as eminently suitable. From Mrs. Denyse he had heard the story of the pushing young "haberdasher," and his suspicions identified the newcomer.

"Say, Miss Cecily," he said, "why 'n't you interdoose your friend to us?" In defense of the Sperry accent, I may adduce that, by virtue of his wealth and position he had felt at liberty to dispense with the lesser advantages of education and culture; therefore he talked the language of Broadway.

"What? To all of you?" she said lazily. "Oh, it would take much too long."

"Well, to me, anyway," insisted the rather thinly gilded youth. "I bin hearin' about him."

"Very well: Mr. Sperry, Mr. Daddleskink."

She p.r.o.nounced the abominable syllables quite composedly. But upon Mr.

Sperry they produced an immediate effect.

"Wha-at!" he cried with a broad grin. "What's the name?"

"Daddleskink," explained the Tyro mildly. "An umlaut over the K, and the final Z silent as in 'buzz.'"

"Daddleskink," repeated the other. "Daddle--Haw! haw! haw!!"

"Cut it, Diddy!" admonished young Journay, giving him a surrept.i.tious dig in the ribs. "Your work is coa.r.s.e."

Temporarily the trouble-seeker subsided, but presently above the conversation, which had again become general, his cackling voice was heard inquiring from Judge Enderby:--

"Say, Judge, how do you catch a diddleskink? Haw--haw--haw!"

This was rather further than the Empress intended that reprisals for _lese-majeste_ should go. Still, she was curious to see how her strange acquaintance would bear himself under the test. She watched him from the corner of an observant eye. Would he be disconcerted by the brusqueness of the attack? Would he lose his temper? Would he cheapen himself to answer in kind? What _would_ he do or say?

Habituation to a rough, quick-action life had taught the Tyro to keep his wits, his temper, and his speech. No sign indicated that he had heard the offensive query. He stood quietly at ease, listening to some comments of Lord Guenn on the European situation. Judge Enderby, however, looked the questioner up and down with a disparaging regard and snorted briefly. Feeling himself successful thus far, Sperry turned from a flank to a direct onset.

"Know Mrs. Denyse, Mr. Gazink?" he asked.

"I've met her."

"How? When you were peddlin' neckties and suspenders?"

"No," said the Tyro quietly.

"Doin' much business abroad?" pursued the other.