Michael O'Halloran Part 14

"You won't mind waiting only a second until I run up to Mr. Bruce's offices?" she asked.

He was ready, so together they stopped at Mr. Minturn's door. Douglas whispered: "Watch the office boy. He is Minturn's Little Brother I told you about."

Leslie nodded and entered gaily.

"Please ask Mr. Minturn if he will see Miss Winton and Mr. Douglas Bruce a minute?" she said.

An alert, bright-faced lad bowed politely, laid aside a book and entered the inner office.

"Now let me!" said Leslie. "Good May, Mr. Minturn!" she cried.

"Positively enchanting! Take that forbidding look off your face. Come for a few minutes Maying! It will do you much good, and me more. All my friends are pleasuring me to-day. So I want as good a friend of Mr.

Bruce as you, to be in something we have planned. You just must!"

"Has something delightful happened?" asked Mr. Minturn, retaining the hand Leslie offered him as he turned to Douglas Bruce.

"You must ask Miss Winton," he said.

Mr. Minturn's eyes questioned her sparkling face, while again with closed lips she nodded. "My most earnest congratulations to each of you. May life grant you even more than you hope for, and from your faces, that is no small wish to make for you. Surely I'll come! What is it you have planned?"

"Something lovely!" said Leslie. "At Lowry's are three flower baskets that are rather bewildering. I am to have one for my betrothal gift, but I can't decide. I appealed to Mrs. Minturn to help me, and she agreed; she is waiting below. Mr. Bruce named you for him; so you two and Mr. Lowry are to choose the most artistic basket for me, then if I don't agree, I needn't take it, but I want to see what you think.

You'll come of course?"

Mr. Minturn's face darkened at the mention of his wife, while he hesitated and looked penetratingly at Leslie. She was guileless, charming, and eager.

"Very well," Mr. Minturn said gravely. "I'm surprised, but also pleased. Beautiful young ladies have not appealed to me so often of late that I can afford to miss the chance of humouring the most charming of her s.e.x."

"How lovely!" laughed Leslie. "Douglas, did you ever know Mr. Minturn could flatter like that? It's most enjoyable! I shall insist on more of it, at every opportunity! Really, Mr. Minturn, society has missed you of late, and it is our loss. We need men who are worth while."

"Now it is you who flatter," smiled Mr. Minturn.

"See my captive!" cried Leslie, as she emerged from the building and crossed the walk to the car. "Mr. Bruce and Mr. Minturn are great friends, so as we pa.s.sed his door we brought him along by force."

"It certainly would require that to bring him anywhere in my company,"

said Mrs. Minturn coldly.

The shock of the cruelty of the remark closed Douglas' lips, but it was Leslie's day to bubble, so she resolutely set herself to heal and cover the hurt.

"I think business is a perfect bugbear," she said as she entered the car. "I'm going to have a pre-nuptial agreement as to just how far work may trespa.s.s on Douglas' time, and how much belongs to me. I think it can be arranged. Daddy and I always have had lovely times together, and I would call him successful. Wouldn't you?"

"A fine business man!" said Mr. Minturn heartily.

"You could have had much greater advantages if he had made more money,"

said Mrs. Minturn.

"The advantage of more money--yes," retorted Leslie quickly, "but would the money have been of more advantage to me than the benefits of his society and his personal hand in my rearing? I think not! I prefer my Daddy!"

"When you take your place in society, as the mistress of a home, you will find that millions will not be too much," said Mrs. Minturn.

"If I had millions, I'd give most of them away, and just go on living about as I do now with Daddy," said Leslie.

"Leslie, where did you get bitten with this awful, common--what kind of an idea shall I call it? You haven't imbibed socialistic tendencies have you?"

"Haven't a smattering of what they mean!" laughed Leslie. "The 'istics'

scare me completely. Just _social_ ideas are all I have; thinking home better than any other place on earth, the way you can afford to have it. Merely being human, kind and interested in what my men are doing and enjoying, and helping any one who crosses my path and seems to need me. Oh, I get such joy, such delicious _joy_ from life."

"If I were undertaking wild-eyed reform, I'd sell my car and walk, and do settlement work," said Mrs. Minturn scornfully.

Then Leslie surprised all of them. She leaned forward, looked beamingly into the elder woman's face and cried enthusiastically: "I am positive you'd be stronger, and much happier if you would! You know there is no greater fun than going to the end of the car line and then walking miles into the country, especially now in bloom-time. You see sights no painter ever transferred even a good imitation of to canvas; you hear music--I wish every music lover with your trained ear could have spent an hour in that swamp this morning. You'd soon know where Verdi and Strauss found some of their loveliest themes, and where Beethoven got the bird notes for the brook scene of the Pastoral Symphony. Think how interested you'd be in a yellow and black bird singing the Spinning Song from Martha, while you couldn't accuse the bird of having stolen it from Flotow, could you? Surely the bird holds right of priority!"

"If you weren't a little fool and talking purposely to irritate me, you'd almost cause me to ask if you seriously mean that?" said Mrs.

Minturn.

"Why," laughed Leslie, determined not to become provoked on this her great day, "that is a matter you can test for yourself. If you haven't a score of Martha, get one and I'll take you where you can hear a bird sing that strain, then you may judge for yourself."

"I don't believe it!" said Mrs. Minturn tersely, "but if it were true, that would be the _most wonderful experience_ I ever had in my life."

"And it would cost you only ten cents," scored Leslie. "You needn't ride beyond the end of the car line for that, while a woman who can dance all night surely could _walk_ far enough, to reach any old orchard. That's what I am trying to _tell_ you. Money in large quant.i.ties isn't necessary to provide the _most interesting_ things in the world, while millions don't bring happiness. I can find more in what you would cla.s.s almost poverty."

"Why don't you try it?" suggested Mrs. Minturn.

"But I _have!_" said Leslie. "And I enjoy it! I could go with a man I love as I do Daddy, and make a home, and get joy I never have found in society, from just what we two could do with our own hands in the woods. I don't like a city. If Daddy's business didn't keep him here, I would be in the country this minute. Look at us poor souls trying to find pleasure in a basket from the swamp, when we might have the whole swamp. I'd be happy to live at its door. Now try a basket full of it.

There are three. You are to examine each of them carefully, then write on a slip of paper which you think the _most artistic_. You are not to say things that will influence each other's decisions, or Mr. Lowry's.

I want a straight opinion from each of you."

They entered the florist's, and on a gla.s.s table faced the orchids, the slippers, the fringed basket, and the moccasins. Mr. Winton and the squaw were waiting, while the florist was smiling in gratification, but the Minturns went to the flowers without a word. They simply stood and looked. Each of the baskets was in perfect condition. The flowers were as fresh as at home in the swamp. Each was a thing of wondrous beauty.

Each deserved the mute tribute it was exacting. Mrs. Minturn studied them with gradually darkening face. Mrs. Minturn repeatedly opened her lips as if she would speak, but did not. She stepped closer and gently turned the flowers and lightly touched the petals.

"Beautiful!" she said at last. "Beautiful!"

Another long silence.

Then: "_Honestly Leslie, did you hear a bird sing that strain from Martha?_"

"Yes!" said Leslie, "I did. And if you will go with me to the swamp where those flowers came from, you shall hear one sing a strain that will instantly remind you of the opening chorus, while another renders Di Provenza Il Mar from Traviata."

The lady turned again to the flowers. She was thinking something deep and absorbing, but no one could have guessed exactly what it might be.

Finally: "I have decided," she said. "Shall we number these one, two, and three, and so indicate them?"

"Yes," said Leslie a little breathlessly.

"Put your initials to the slips and I'll read them," offered Douglas.

Then he smilingly read aloud: "Mr. Lowry, one. Mrs. Minturn, two. Mr.

Minturn, three!"

"I cast the deciding vote," cried Leslie. "One!"

The squaw seemed to think of a war-whoop, but decided against it.