The Man Thou Gavest Part 31

"Men never grow up!" Lynda pressed her face to his shoulder, "they make a bluff at caring for us and defending us and all the rest--but we understand, we understand! I think women mother men always even when they rely upon them most, as I do upon you! It's so splendid to think, when we go home, of the great things we are going to do--together."

A letter from Brace, eventually, made them turn their faces homeward. It was late July then.

LYN, DEAR:

When you can conveniently give me a thought, do. And when are you coming back? I hope I shall not shock you unduly--but it's that little sister of the Morrells that is the matter, Elizabeth Arnold--Betty we call her. I've got to marry her as soon as I can.

I'll never be able to do any serious business again until I get her behind the coffee-urn. She haunts me day and night and then when I see her--she laughs at me! We've been over to look at that church where you and Con were married. Betty likes it, but prefers her own folk to stray old women and lost kids. We think September would be a jolly month to be married in, but Betty refuses to set a day until she finds out if she approves of my people! That's the way _she_ puts it. She says she wants to find out if you believe in women's voting, for if you don't, she knows she never could get on with you. She believes that the thing that makes women opposed, does other things to them--rather unpleasant, unfriendly things.

I told her your sentiments and then she asked about Con. She says she wouldn't trust the freest woman in the East if she were married to a slave-believing man.

By all this you will judge what a comical little cuss Betty is, but all the same I am quite serious in urging you to come home before I grow desperate.

BRACE.

Truedale looked at Lynda in blank amazement. "I'd forgotten about the sister," he said, inanely.

"I think, dear, we'll _have_ to go home. I remember once when we were quite little, Brace and I, mother had taken me for a visit and left him at home. He sent a letter to mother--it was in printing--'You better come back,' he said; 'You better come in three days or I'll do something.' We got there on the fourth day and we found that he had broken the rocking chair in which mother used to put him to sleep when he was good!"

"The little rowdy!" Truedale laughed. "I hope he got a walloping."

"No. Mother cried a little, had the chair mended, and always said she was sorry that she had not got home on the third day."

"I see. Well, Lyn, let's go home to him. I don't know what he might break, but perhaps we couldn't mend it, so we'll take no chances."

Truedale and Lynda had walked rather giddily upon the heights; the splendour of stars and the warm touch of the sun had been very near them; but once they descended to the paths of plain duty they were not surprised to find that they lay along a pleasant valley and were warmed by the brightness of the hills.

"It's--home, now!" whispered Truedale as he let himself and Lynda in at the front door, "I wish Uncle William were here to welcome us. How he loved you, Lyn."

Like a flood of joy memory overcame Lynda. This was how William Truedale had loved her--this luxury of home--and then she looked at Truedale and almost told him of the money, the complete a.s.surance of the old man's love and trust. But of a sudden it became impossible, though why, Lynda could not have said. She shrank from what she had once believed would be her crowning joy; she decided to leave the matter entirely with Dr.

McPherson.

After all, she concluded, it should be Con's right to bring to her this last touching proof of his uncle's love and desire. How proud he would be! How they would laugh over it all when they both knew the secret!

So the subject was not referred to and a day or so later Betty Arnold entered their lives, and so intense was their interest in her and her affairs that personal matters were, for the moment, overlooked.

Lynda went first to call upon Betty alone. If she were to be disappointed, she wanted time to readjust herself before she encountered other eyes. Betty Arnold, too, was alone in her sister's drawing room when Lynda was announced. The two girls looked long and searchingly at each other, then Lynda put her hands out impulsively:

"It's really too good to be true!" was all she could manage as she looked at the fair, slight girl and cast doubt off forever.

"Isn't it?" echoed Betty. "Whew! but this is the sort of thing that ages one."

"Would it have mattered, Betty, whether I was pleased or not?"

"Lynda, it would--awfully! You see, all my life I've been independent until I met Brace and now I want everything that belongs to him. His love and mine collided but it didn't shock us to blindness, it awakened us--body and soul. When that happens, everything matters--everything that belongs to him and me. I knew you liked Mollie, and John is an old friend; they're all I've got, and so you see if you and I hadn't--liked each other, it would have been--tragic. Now let's sit down and have tea.

Isn't it great that we won't have to choke over it?"

Betty presided at the small table so daintily and graciously that her occasional lapses into slang were like the dartings of a particularly frisky little animal from the beaten track of conventions. She and Lynda grew confidential in a half hour and felt as if they had known each other for years at the close of the call. Just as Lynda was reluctantly leaving, Mrs. Morrell came in. She was darker, more dignified than her sister, but like her in voice and laugh.

"Mollie, I wish I had told you to stay another hour," Betty exclaimed, going to her sister and kissing her. "And oh! Mollie, Lynda likes me!

I'll confess to you both now that I have lain awake nights dreading this ordeal."

When Lynda met Brace that evening she was amused at his drawn face and tense voice.

"How did you like her?" he asked feebly and at that moment Lynda realized how futile a subterfuge would have been.

"Brace, I love her!"

"Thank G.o.d!"

"Why, Brace!"

"I mean it. It would have gone hard with me if you hadn't."

To Truedale, Betty presented another aspect.

"You can trust women with your emotions about men," she confided to Lynda, "but not men! I wouldn't let Brace know for anything how my love for him hobbles me; and if your Con--by the way, he's a great deal nicer than I expected--should guess my abject state, he'd go to Brace and--put him wise! That's why men have got where they are to-day--standing together. And then Brace might begin at once to bully me. You see, Lynda, when a husband gets the upper hand it's often because he's reinforced by all the knowledge his male friends hand out to him."

Truedale met Betty first at the dinner--the little family dinner Lynda gave for her. Morrell and his wife. Brace and Betty, himself and Lynda.

In a trailing blue gown Betty looked quite stately and she carried her blond head high. She sparkled away through dinner and proved her happy faculty of fitting in, perfectly. It was a very merry meal, and later, by the library fire, Conning found himself tete-a-tete with his future sister-in-law. She amused him hugely.

"I declare," he said teasingly, "I can hardly believe that you believe in the equality of the s.e.xes." They were attacking that problem at the moment.

"I--don't!" Betty looked quaintly demure. "I believe in the superiority of men!"

"Good Lord!"

"I do. That's why I want all women to have the same chance that men have had to get superior. I--I want my sisters to get there, too!"

"There? Just where?" Truedale began to think the girl frivolous; but her charm held.

"Why, where their qualifications best fit them to be. I'm going to tell you a secret--I'm tremendously religious! I believe G.o.d knows, better than men, about women; I want--well, I don't want to seem flippant--but truly I'd like to hear G.o.d speak for himself!"

Truedale smiled. "That's a common-sense argument, anyway," he said. "But I suppose we men are afraid to trust any one else; we don't want to--lose you."

"As if you could!" Betty held her small, white hand out to the dog lying at her feet. "As if we didn't know, that whatever we don't want, we do want you. Why, you are our--job."

Truedale threw his head back and laughed. "You're like a whiff of your big mountain air," he said.

"I hope I always will be," Betty replied softly and earnestly, "I must keep--free, no matter what happens. I must keep what I am, or how can I expect to keep--Brace? He loved _this_ me. Marriage doesn't perform a miracle, does it--Conning? please let me call you that. Lynda has told me how she and you believe in two lives, not one narrow little life.

It's splendid. And now I am going to tell you another secret. I'll have to let Lynda in on this, too, she must help me. I have a little money of my very own--I earned every cent of it. I am going to buy a tiny bit of ground, I've picked it out--it's across the river in the woods. I'm going to build a house, not much of a one, a very small one, and I'm going to call it--The Refuge. When I cannot find myself, when I get lost, after I'm married, and am trying to be everything to Brace, I'm going to run away to--The Refuge!" The blue eyes were shining "And n.o.body can come there, not even Brace, except by invitation. I think"--very softly--"I think all women should have a--a Refuge."

Truedale found himself impressed. "You're a very wise little woman," he said.

"One has to be, sometimes," came the slow words. And at that moment all doubt of Betty's serious-mindedness departed.

Brace joined them presently. He looked as if he had been straining at a leash since dinner time.