Chapter II: Part 2

In the yard he looked thoughtfully upon the grass, which was rather long and had not been cut since the spring had enlivened it to a new growing. The lot seemed longer than it had the day before; he saw that it must be two hundred feet from the street on which it fronted to the alley in the rear; it was a hundred feet wide, at least, and except for the area occupied by the house, which was of modest proportions, all of this was grass. He sighed profoundly: “Oh, Gosh!” he mourned. But he meant to do the work, and began it manfully.

With the mower rolling before him, reversed, the knives upward, he went to the extreme front of the lot, turned the machine over, and, surveying the prospect, decided to attack the lawn with long straight swathes, running from the front clear through to the alley—though, even before he began, the alley seemed far, far away. However, he turned up the sleeves of his ancient coat an inch or two, and went at his task with a good heart. That is to say, he started with a good heart, but the lawn-mower was neither new nor sharp; the grass was tough, the sun hot, and his sense of unwellness formidable. When he had gone ten feet, he paused, wiped his forehead with a sleeve, and leaned upon the handle of the mower in an attitude not devoid of pathos. But he was yet determined; he thought of the blue eyes in the kitchen and resolved that they should not grow scornful again. Once more he set the mower in motion.

Mrs. Pinney heard the sound of it in her room upstairs, looked from the window, and with earnest pleasure beheld the workman at his toil. Her heart rejoiced her to have been the cause of a reformation, and presently she went down to the kitchen to gloat gently over a defeated antagonist in argument.

“Yes’m,” Tilly admitted meekly. “He fooled me.”

“You see I was right, Tilly. We always ought to have faith that the best part of our natures will conquer.”

“Yes’m; it looks so.”

“Have we some buttermilk in the refrigerator, Tilly?”

“Yes’m.”

“Then I think you might have some ready for him, if he gets too hot. I don’t think he looks very well and you might ask him if he’d like some. You might ask him now, Tilly.”

“Now?” Tilly asked, and coloured a little. “You mean right now, Mrs. Pinney?”

“Yes. It might do him good and help keep him strong for his work.”

“All right,” Tilly said, and turned toward the ice-box; but at a thought she paused. “I don’t hear the lawn-mower,” she said. “It seems to me I ain’t heard it since we began talking.”

“Perhaps he’s resting,” Mrs. Pinney suggested, but her voice trembled a little with foreboding. “We might just go out and see.”

They went out and saw. Down the full length of the yard, from the street to the alley, there was one long swathe of mowed grass; and but one, though it was perfect. Particularly as the trail of a fugitive it was perfect, and led straight to the alley, which, being paved with brick, offered to the searchers the complete bafflement of a creek to the bloodhound. A brick alley shows no trace of a reversed lawn-mower hurrying over it—yet nothing was clearer than that such a hurrying must have taken place. For Arthur T. De Morris was gone, and so was the lawn-mower.

“Mr. Pinney’ll laugh at me I guess, too!” Mrs. Pinney said, swallowing, as she stood with Tilly, staring at the complete vacancy of the brick alley.

“Yes’m, he will,” said Tilly, and laughed again, a little harshly.

• • • • • • •

The fugitive, already some blocks distant, propelled the ravished mower before him, and went so openly through the streets in the likeness of an honest toiler seeking lawns to mow that he had to pause and decline several offers, on his hurried way. He took note of these opportunities, however, remembering the friend he was on his way to see, and, after some difficulty, finding him in a negro pool-room, proffered him the lawn-mower in exchange for five dollars, spot cash.

“I ain’ got it,” replied Bojus, flaccid upon a bench. “I ain’ feelin’ like cuttin’ nobody’s grass to-day, nohow, an’ besides I’m goin’ stay right here till coas’ clear. Mamie ain’ foun’ out who make all her trouble, ’cause I clim’ out the window whiles she was engage’ kickin’ on celluh do’; but neighbours say she mighty s’picious who ’twas. I don’ need no lawn-mo’ in a pool-room.”

“Well, you ain’t goin’ to stay in no pool-room forever; you got to git out and earn your livin’ some time,” Tuttle urged him. “Every man that’s got the gumption of a man, he’s got to do that!” And upon Bojus’s lifeless admission of the truth of this statement, the bargaining began. It ended with Bojus’s becoming the proprietor of the lawn-mower and Tuttle’s leaving the pool-room after taking possession of everything in the world that Bojus owned except a hat, a coat, a pair of trousers, a shirt, two old shoes and four safety-pins. The spoil consisted of seventy-eight cents in money, half of a package of bent cigarettes, a pair of dice, a “mouth-organ” and the peculiar diamond ring.

This latter Mr. Tuttle placed upon his little finger, and as he walked along he regarded it with some pleasure; but he decided to part with it, and carried it to a pawn-shop he knew, having had some acquaintance with the proprietor in happier days.

He entered the place with a polite air, removing his hat and bowing, for the shop was a prosperous one.

“Golly!” said the proprietor, who happened to be behind a counter, instructing a new clerk. “I believe it’s old George the hackman.”

“That’s who, Mr. Breitman,” Tuttle responded. “Many’s the cold night I yousta drive you all over town and——”

“Never mind, George,” the pawnbroker interrupted crisply. “You payin’ me just a social call, or you got some business you want to do?”

“Business,” said Tuttle. “If the truth must be told, Mr. Breitman, I got a diamon’ ring worth somewheres along about five or six thousand dollars, I don’t know which.”

Breitman laughed, “Oh, you got a ring worth either five or six thousand, you don’t know which, and you come in to ask me to settle it. Is that it?”

“Yes. I don’t want to hock her; I jest want to git a notion if I ever do decide to sell her.” He set the ring upon the glass counter before Breitman. “Ain’t she a beauty?”

Breitman glanced at the ring and laughed, upon which the owner hastily protested: “Oh, I know the ring part ain’t gold: you needn’t think I don’t know that much! It’s the diamon’ I’m talkin’ about. Jest set your eye on her.”

The pawnbroker set his eye on her—that is, he put on a pair of spectacles, picked up the ring and looked at it carelessly, but after his first glance his expression became more attentive. “So you say I needn’t think you don’t know the ‘ring part’ ain’t gold, George? So you knew it was platinum, did you?”

“Of course, I knowed it was plapmun,” Tuttle said promptly, rising to the occasion, though he had never before heard of this metal. “I reckon I know plapmun when I see it.”

“I think it’s worth about ten or twelve dollars,” Breitman said. “I’ll give you twelve if you want to sell it.”

Eager acceptance rushed to Tuttle’s lips, but hung there unspoken as caution checked him. He drew a deep breath and said huskily, “Why, you can’t fool me on this here ring, Mr. Breitman. I ain’t worryin’ about what I can git fer the plapmun part; all I want to know is how much I ought ast fer the diamon’. I ain’t fixin’ to sell it to you; I’m fixin’ to sell it to somebody else.”

“Oh, so that’s it,” said Breitman, still looking at the ring. “Where’d you get it?”

Tuttle laughed ingratiatingly. “It’s kind of funny,” he said, “how I got that ring. Yet it’s all open and above-board, too. If the truth must be told, it belonged to a lady-cousin o’ mine in Auburndale, Wisconsin, and her aunt-by-marriage left it to her. Well, this here lady-cousin o’ mine, I was visitin’ her last summer, and she found I had a good claim on the house and lot she was livin’ in, account of my never havin’ knowed that my grandfather—he was her grandfather, too—well, he never left no will, and this house and lot come down to her, but I never made no claim on it because I thought it had be’n willed to her till I found out it hadn’t, when I went up there. Well, the long and short of it come out like this: the house and lot’s worth about nine or ten thousand dollars, but she didn’t have no money, so she handed me over this ring to settle my claim. Name’s Mrs. Moscoe, Mrs. Wilbur N. Moscoe, three-thirty-two South Liberty Street, Auburndale, Wisconsin.”

“I see,” Breitman said absently. “Just wait here a minute, George; I ain’t going to steal it.” And, taking the ring with him, he went into a room behind the shop, remaining there closeted long enough for Tuttle to grow a little uneasy.

“Hay!” he called. “You ain’t tryin’ to eat that plapmun ring are you, Mr. Breitman?”

Breitman appeared in the doorway. There was a glow in his eyes, and although he concealed all other traces of a considerable excitement, somehow Tuttle caught a vibration out of the air, and began to feel the presence of Fortune. “Step in here and sit down, George,” the pawnbroker said. “I wanted to look at this stone a little closer, and of course I had to go over my lists and see if it was on any of ’em.”

“What lists?” Tuttle asked as he took a chair.

“From the police. Stolen goods.”

“Looky here! I told you how that ring come to me. My cousin ain’t no crook. Her name’s Mrs. Wilbur N. Moscoe, South Liberty Street, Auburnd——”

“Never mind,” Breitman interrupted. “_I_ ain’t sayin’ it ain’t so. Anyway, this ring ain’t on any of the lists and——”

“I should say it ain’t!”

“Well, don’t get excited. Now look here, George”—Breitman seated himself close to his client and spoke in a confidential tone—“George, you know I always took a kind of interest in you, and I want to tell you what you need. You ought to go get yourself all fixed up. You ought to go to a barber’s and get your hair cut and your whiskers trimmed. Don’t go to no cheap barber’s; go to a good one, and tell ’em to fix your whiskers so’s you’ll have a Van Dyke——”

“A what?”

“A Van Dyke beard. It’s swell,” said Breitman. “Then you go get you a fine pearl-gray Fedora hat, with a black band around it, and a light overcoat, and some gray gloves with black stitching, and a nice cane and a nobby suit o’ clo’es and some fancy top shoes——”

“Listen here!” Tuttle said hoarsely, and he set a shaking hand on the other’s knee, “how much you willin’ to bid on my plapmun ring?”

“Don’t go so fast!” Breitman said, but his eyes were becoming more and more luminous. He had the hope of a great bargain; yet feared that Tuttle might have a fairly accurate idea of the value of the diamond. “Hold your hosses a little, George! You don’t need so awful much to go and get yourself fixed up like I’m tellin’ you, and you’ll have a lot o’ money left to go around and see high life with. I’ll send right over to the bank and let you have it in cash, too, if you meet my views.”

“How much?” Tuttle gasped. “How much?”

Breitman looked at him shrewdly. “Well, I’m takin’ chances: the market on stones is awful down these days, George. Your cousin must have fooled you _bad_ when she talked about four or five thousand dollars! That’s ridiculous!”

“How _much_?”

“Well, I’ll say!—I’ll say seven hundred and fifty dollars.”

Tuttle’s head swam. “Yes!” he gasped.

• • • • • • •

No doubt as he began that greatest period in his whole career, half an hour later, he thought seriously of a pair of blue eyes in a white kitchen;—seven hundred and fifty dollars, with a competent Swedish wife to take care of it and perhaps set up a little shop that would keep her husband out of mischief and busy—— But there the thought stopped short and his expression became one of disillusion: the idea of orderliness and energy and profit was not appetizing. He had seven hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket; and Tuttle knew what romance could come to him instantly at the bidding of this illimitable cash: he knew where the big crap games were; he knew where the gay flats and lively ladies were; he knew where the fine liquor gurgled—not White Mule; he knew how to find the lights, the lights and the music!

Forthwith he approached that imperial orgy of one heaped and glorious week, all of high-lights, that summit of his life to be remembered with never-failing pride when he went back, after it was all over, to his limousine and the shavings.

It was glorious straight through to the end, and the end was its perfect climax: the most dazzling memory of all. He forgave automobiles, on that last day, and in the afternoon he hired a splendid, red new open car, with a curly-haired chauffeur to drive it. Then driving to a large hardware store he spent eighteen dollars, out of his final fifty, upon the best lawn-mower the store could offer him. He had it placed in the car and drove away, smoking a long cigar in a long holder. Such was his remarkable whim; and it marks him as an extraordinary man.

That nothing might be lacking, his destiny arranged that Mrs. Pinney was superintending Tilly in the elimination of dandelions from the front yard when the glittering equipage, to their surprise, stopped at the gate. Seated beside the lawn-mower in the tonneau they beheld a superb stranger, portly and of notable presence. His pearl-gray hat sat amiably upon his head; the sleeves of his fawn-coloured overcoat ran pleasantly down to pearl gloves; his Van Dyke beard, a little grizzled, conveyed an impression of distinction not contradicted by a bagginess of the eyelids; for it is strangely true that dissipation sometimes even adds distinction to certain types of faces. All in all, here was a man who might have recalled to a student of courts some aroma of the entourage of the late King Edward at Hombourg. There was just that about him.

He alighted slowly—he might well have been credited with the gout—and entering the yard, approached with a courteous air, being followed by the chauffeur, who brought the lawn-mower.

“Good afternoon, lady and Tilly,” he said, in a voice unfortunately hoarse; and he removed his pearl-gray hat with a dignified gesture.

They stared incredulously, not believing their eyes.

“I had a little trouble with your lawn-mower, so I up and got it fixed,” he said. “It’s the same one. I took and got it painted up some.”

“Oh, me!” Tilly said, in a whisper. “Oh, me!” And she put her hand to her heart.

He perceived that he dazzled her; that she felt deeply; and almost he wished, just for this moment, to be sober. He was not—profoundly not—yet he maintained his dignity and his balance throughout the interview. “I thought you might need it again some day,” he said.

“Mis-ter De _Mor_-ris!” Mrs. Pinney cried, in awed recognition. “Why, what on earth——”

“Nothin’,” he returned lightly. “Nothin’ at all.” He waved his hand to the car. “One o’ my little automobiles,” he said.

With that he turned, and, preceded by the chauffeur, walked down the path to the gate. Putting his whole mind upon it, he contrived to walk without wavering; and at the gate, he paused and looked wistfully back at Tilly. “You certainly got a good build on you,” he said.

Then beautifully and romantically he concluded this magnificent gesture—this unsolvable mystery story that the Pinneys’ very grandchildren were to tell in after years, and that kept Tilly a maiden for many months in the hope of the miraculous stranger’s return—at least to tell her who and what he was!

He climbed into the car, placed the long holder of the long cigar in his mouth, and, as the silent wheels began to turn, he took off his hat again and waved it to them graciously.

“I kept the pledge!” he said.

THE PARTY

THE thoughts of a little girl are not the thoughts of a little boy. Some will say that a little girl’s thoughts are the gentler; and this may be, for the boy roves more with his tribe and follows its hardier leaders; but during the eighth or ninth year, and sometimes a little earlier, there usually becomes evident the beginning of a more profound difference. The little girl has a greater self-consciousness than the boy has, but conceals hers better than he does his; moreover, she has begun to discover the art of getting her way indirectly, which mystifies him and outrages his sense of justice. Above all, she is given precedence and preference over him, and yet he is expected to suppress what is almost his strongest natural feeling, and be polite to her! The result is that long feud between the sexes during the period running from the ages of seven and eight to fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, when reconciliation and reconstruction set in—often rapidly.

Of course the period varies with individuals;—however, to deal in averages, a male of five will play with females of similar age almost as contentedly as with other males, but when he has reached eight, though he may still at times “play with girls,” he feels a guilt, or at least a weakness, in doing so; for within him the long hatred has begun to smoulder.

Many a parent and many an aunt will maintain that the girls are passive, that it is the boys who keep the quarrel alive, though this is merely to deny the relation between cause and result, and the truth is that the boys are only the noisier and franker in the exchange of reciprocal provocations. And since adults are but experienced children, we find illumination upon such a point in examples of the feud’s revival in middle age; for it is indeed sometimes revived, even under conditions of matrimony. A great deal of coldness was shown to the suburban butcher who pushed his wife into his sausage vat. “Stay!” the philosopher protested. “We do not know what she had said to him.”

The feud is often desultory and intermittent; and of course it does not exist between every boy and every girl; a _Montagu_ may hate the _Capulets_ with all his vitals, yet feel an extraordinary kindness toward one exceptional _Capulet_. Thus, Master Laurence Coy, nine, permitted none to surpass him in hating girls. He proclaimed his bitterness, and made the proclamation in public. (At a party in his own house and given in his own honour, with girls for half his guests, he went so far as to state—not in a corner, whispering, but in the centre of the largest room and shouting—that he hated every last thing about ’em. It seemed that he wished to avoid ambiguity.) And yet, toward one exceptional little girl he was as water.

Was what he felt for Elsie Threamer love? Naturally, the answer must depend upon a definition of the word; and there are definitions varying from the frivolous _mots_ tossed off by clergymen to the fanatical dogmas of coquettes. Mothers, in particular, have their own definitions, which are so often different from those of their sons that no one will ever be able to compute the number of mothers who have informed sons, ranging in age from fourteen to sixty-two, that what those sons mistook for love, and insisted was love, was not love. Yet the conclusion seems to be inevitable that behind all the definitions there is but one actual thing itself; that it may be either a force, or a condition produced by a force, or both; and that although the phenomena by which its presence may be recognized are of the widest diversity, they may be somewhat roughly classified according to the ages of the persons affected. Finally, a little honest research will convince anybody that these ages range from seven months to one hundred and thirty-four years; and if scriptural records are accepted, the latter figure must be much expanded.

Hence there appears to be warranted accuracy in the statement that Laurence Coy was in a state of love. When he proclaimed his hatred of all girls and every last thing about ’em, that very proclamation was produced by his condition—it was a phenomenon related to the phenomena of crime, to those uncalled-for proclamations of innocence that are really the indications of guilt. He was indeed inimical to all other girls; but even as he declared his animosity, he hoped Elsie was noticing him.

Whenever he looked at her, he swallowed and had a warm but sinking sensation in his lower chest. If he continued to be in her presence for some time—that is, for more than four or five minutes—these symptoms were abated but did not wholly disappear; the neck was still a little uneasy, moving in a peculiar manner at intervals, as if to release itself from contact with the collar, and there was a feeling of looseness about the stomach.

In absence, her image was not ever and always within his doting fancy shrined; far from it! When he did think of her, the image was fair, doubtless; yet he had in mind nothing in particular he wished to say to its original. And when he heard that she had the scarlet fever, he did not worry. No, he only wondered if she could see him from a window as he went by her house, and took occasion to pass that way with a new kite. Truth to say, here was the gist of his love in absence; it consisted almost entirely of a wish to have her for an audience while he performed; and that’s not so far from the gist of divers older loves.

In her presence it was another matter; self-consciousness expanded to the point of explosion, for here was actually the audience of his fragmentary day-dreams, and great performances were demanded. Just at this point, however, there was a difficulty;—having developed neither a special talent nor even a design of any kind, he was forced back upon the more rudimentary forms of self-expression. Thus it comes about that sweet love itself will often be found the hidden cause of tumults that break up children’s parties.

The moment of Elsie’s arrival at Laurence’s party could have been determined by an understanding person even if Elsie had been invisible to that person. Until then Laurence was decorous, greeting his arriving guests with a little arrogance natural to the occasion, since this was his own party and on his own premises; but the instant his glance fell upon the well-known brazen glow of apparently polished curls, as Elsie came toward him from the hall where she had left her pretty hat and little white coat, his decorum vanished conspicuously.

The familiar symptoms had assailed him, and automatically he reacted to prevent their unmanning him. Girls, generically, had been mentioned by no one, and he introduced the topic without prelude, stating at the top of his voice that he hated every last thing about ’em. Then, not waiting for Elsie to greet him, not even appearing to be aware of her approach, or of her existence, he ran across the room, shouting, “Hay, there, Mister!” and hurled himself against a boy whose back was toward him. Rebounding, he dashed upon another, bumping into him violently, with the same cry of “Hay, there, Mister!” and went careening on, from boy to boy, repeating the bellow with the bumping as he went.

Such easy behaviour on the part of the host immediately dispersed that formal reticence which characterizes the early moments of most children’s parties; the other boys fell in with Laurence’s idea and began to plunge about the room, bumping one another with a glad disregard of little girls who unfortunately got in their way. “Hay, there, Mister!” was the favoured cry, shouted as loudly as possible; and the bumping was as vigorous as the slogan. Falls were many and uproarious; annoyed little girls were upset; furniture also fell; the noise became glorious; and thus Laurence Coy’s party was a riot almost from the start.

* * * * *

Now when boys at a party get this mob mood going, the state of mind of the little girls is warrantably that of grown ladies among drunken men. There is this difference, of course: that the adult ladies leave the place and go home as soon as they can extricate themselves, whereas the little girls are incapable of even imagining such a course of action; they cannot imagine leaving a party before the serving of “refreshments,” at the earliest. For that matter, children of both sexes sometimes have a miserable time at a party yet remain to the bitter end for no reason except that their minds are not equal to the conception of a departure. A child who of his own impulse leaves a party before it is over may be set down as either morbid or singularly precocious—he may be a genius.

When the bumping and bellowing broke out at Laurence’s party, most of the little girls huddled discontentedly close to the walls or in corners, where they were joined by those who had been overturned; and these last were especially indignant as they smoothed down their rumpled attire. It cannot be said, however, that the little girls reduced the general clamour; on the contrary, they increased it by the loudest criticism.

Every one of the rumpled naturally singled out the bellowing bumper who had overturned herself, and declared him to be the worst of the malefactors bent upon “spoiling the party.” But as the rioting continued, the ladies’ criticism shifted in a remarkable way, and presently all of it became hotly concentrated upon one particular rioter. The strange thing about this was that the individual thus made the centre of odium was not Laurence, the founder of the objectionable game and the ringleader of the ruffians; not fat Bobby Eliot, the heaviest and most careless of his followers; not Thomas Kimball, the noisiest; not any of the boys, indeed, but on the peculiar contrary, a person of the resentful critics’ own sex.

One little girl alone, among those overturned, had neither fled to the wall nor sought the protection of a corner; she remained upon the floor where Laurence, too blindly bumping, had left her; and it must be related that, thus recumbent, she kicked repeatedly at all who happened to pass her way. “Hay there, Mister!” she said. “_I’ll_ show you!”

Her posture had no dignity; her action lacked womanliness; she seemed unconventional and but little aware of those qualities which a young female appearing in society should at least affect to possess. Hence it is no wonder that even before she decided to stop kicking and rise from the floor, she was already being censured. And what indeed was the severity of that censure, when after rising, she bounced herself violently against Laurence, ricocheted upon Thomas Kimball, and shrilling, “Hay, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!” proceeded to enter into the game with an enthusiasm surpassing that of any other participant!

It cannot be said that she was welcomed by the male players; they made it as clear as possible that they considered her enthusiasm gratuitous. “Here, you!” the fat Eliot boy objected sternly, as she caromed into him. “You ole Daisy Mears, you! You ought to know you might ruin a person’s stummick, doing like that with your elbow.”

But Miss Mears was not affected by his severity; she projected herself at him again. “Hay, there, Mister!” she whooped. “_I’ll_ show you!” And so bounced on to the next boy.

Her voice, shrill beyond compare, could be heard—and by a sensitive ear heard painfully—far above the bellowing and the criticism. Her “Hay-there-Mister-_I’ll_-show-you!” was both impetuous and continuous; and she covered more ground than any of the boys. Floored again, not once but many times, she recovered herself by a method of her own; the feet were quickly elevated as high as possible, then brought down, while a simultaneous swing of the shoulders threw the body forward; and never for an instant did she lose her up-and-at-’em spirit. She devised a new manner of bumping—charging upon a boy, she would turn just at the instant of contact, and back into him with the full momentum acquired in the charge. Usually they both fell, but she had the advantage of being the upper, which not only softened the fall for her but enabled her to rise with greater ease because of her opponent’s efforts to hoist her from him.

Now, here was a strange thing: the addition of this blithe companion seemed to dull the sport for those who most keenly loved it. In proportion as her eagerness for it increased, their own appeared to diminish. Dozens of times, probably, she was advised to “cut it out,” and with even greater frankness requested to “get on out o’ here!” Inquiries were directed to her, implying doubts of her sanity and even of her consciousness of her own acts. “Hay, listen!” several said to her. “Do you think you know what you’re doin’?”

Finally she was informed, once more by implication, that she was underweight—though here was a paradox, for her weight was visibly enough to have overthrown the informer, who was Laurence. But this was the second time she had done it, and his warmth of feeling was natural.

“Get off o’ me,” he said, and added the paradoxical appraisement of her figure. His words were definite, but to the point only as reprisal for her assault; Daisy Mears was properly a person, not a “thing”; neither was she “old,” being a month or so younger than Laurence; nor did his loose use of another adjective do credit to his descriptive accuracy. It was true that Daisy’s party manners had lacked suavity, true that her extreme vivacity had been uncalled-for, true that she was not beautiful; but she was no thinner than she was stout, and she must have wished to insist upon a recognition of this fact.

She was in the act of rising from a sitting posture upon Laurence when he used the inaccurate word; and he had struggled to his hands and knees, elevating her; but at once she sat again, with violence, flattening him. “_Who’s_ skinny?” she inquired.

“You get up off o’ me!” he said fiercely.

She rose, laughing with all her shrillness, and Laurence would have risen too, but Miss Mears, shouting, “Hay, there, Mister!” easily pushed him down, for the polished floor was slippery and gave no footing. Laurence tried again, and again the merry damsel aided him to prostrate himself. This mortifying process was repeated and repeated until it attracted the attention of most of the guests, while bumping stopped and the bumpers gathered to look on; even to take an uproarious part in the contest. Some of them pushed Daisy; some of them pushed Laurence; and the latter, furious and scarlet, with his struggling back arched, and his head lowering among his guests’ shoes and slippers, uttered many remonstrances in a strangled voice.

Finally, owing to the resentful activity of the fat Eliot boy, who remembered his stummick and pushed Daisy with ungallant vigour, the dishevelled Laurence once more resumed the upright position of a man, but only to find himself closely surrounded by rosily flushed faces, all unpleasantly mirthful at his expense. The universe seemed to be made of protuberant, taunting eyes and noisy open mouths.

“Ya-a-a-ay, Laur-runce!” they vociferated.

A lock of his own hair affected the sight of one of his eyes; a single hair of his late opponent was in his mouth, where he considered a hair of anybody’s out of place, and this one peculiarly so, considering its source. Miss Mears herself, still piercing every tympanum with her shrillness, rolled upon the floor but did not protract her hilarity there. Instead she availed herself of him, and with unabated disrespect, came up him hand-over-hand as if he had been a rope.

Then, as he strove to evade her too-familiar grasp, there fell a sorry blow. Beyond the nearer spectators his unhampered eye caught the brazen zigzag gleam of orderly curls moving to the toss of a dainty head; and he heard the voice of Elsie, incurably sweet in tone, but oh, how destroying in the words! Elsie must have heard some grown person say them, and stored them for effective use.

“Pooh! Fighting with that rowdy child!”

“Fightin’?” shouted Miss Mears. “_That_ wasn’t fightin’!”

“It wasn’t?” Thomas Kimball inquired waggishly. “What was it?” And he added with precocious satire: “I s’pose you call it makin’ love!”

To Laurence’s horror, Master Kimball’s waggish idea spread like a virulent contagion, even to Laurence’s most intimate friends. “Ya-a-ay, Laur-runce!” they shouted. “Daisy Mears is your _girl_! Daisy Mears is Laurunce’s _girl_! Oh, Laur-_runce_!”

He could only rage and bellow. “She is _not_! You hush up! I hate her! I hate her worse’n I do _any_body!”

But his protests were disallowed and shouted down; the tormentors pranced, pointing at him with hateful forefingers, making other dreadful signs, sickening him unutterably. “Day-zy Mears and Laur-runce Coy! Daisy Mears is Laurunce’s _girl_!”

“She is _not_!” he bawled. “You hush _opp_! I hate her! I hate her worse’n I do—worse’n I do—I hate her worse’n I do garbidge!”

It may have been that this comparison, so frankly unbowdlerized, helped to inspire Miss Daisy Mears. More probably what moved her was merely a continuation of the impulse propelling her from the moment of her first fall to the floor upon being accidentally bumped by Laurence. Surprisingly enough, in view of her present elations, Daisy had always been thought a quiet and unobtrusive little girl; indeed, she had always believed herself to be that sort of little girl. Never, until this afternoon, had she attracted special notice at a party, or anywhere else. Her nose, in particular, was almost unfortunately inconspicuous, her hair curled so temporarily, even upon artificial compulsion, that two small pigtails were found to be its best expression. She was the most commonplace of little girls; yet it has never been proved that commonplace people are content with their condition. Finding herself upon the floor and kicking, this afternoon, Daisy Mears discovered, for the first time in her life, that she occupied a prominent position and was being talked about. Then and there rose high the impulse to increase her prominence. What though comment were adverse, she was for once and at last the centre of it! And for some natures, to taste distinction is to determine upon the whole drunken cup: Daisy Mears had entered upon an orgy.

Laurence’s choice of a phrase to illustrate the disfavour in which he held her had a striking effect upon all his guests: the little girls were shocked, said “Oh!” and allowed their mouths to remain open indefinitely; the boys were seemingly maddened by their host’s free expression—they howled, leaped, beat one another; but the most novel course of action was that adopted by the newly ambitious Daisy. She ran upon Laurence from behind, and threw her arms about him in a manner permitting some question whether her intention might be an embrace or a wrestling match. Her indiscreet words, however, dismissed the doubt.

“He’s my dear little pet!” she shouted.

For a moment Laurence was incredulous; then in a dazed way he began to realize his dreadful position. He knew himself to be worse than compromised: a ruinous claim to him seemed upon the point of being established; and all the spectators instantly joined in the effort to establish it. They circled about him, leaping and pointing. They bawled incessantly within the very cup of his ear.

“She _is_! She is _too_ your girl! She says so _herself_!”

To Laurence the situation was simply what it would have been to Romeo had an unattractive hoyden publicly claimed him for her own, embracing him in Juliet’s presence, with the entire population of Verona boisterously insisting upon the hoyden’s right to him. Moreover, Romeo’s experience would have given him an advantage over Laurence. Romeo would have known how to point out that it takes two to make a bargain, would have requested the claimant to set forth witnesses or documents; he could have turned the public in his favour, could have extricated himself, and might have done so even with some grace. The Veronese would have respected his argument.

Not so with Laurence’s public—for indeed his whole public now surrounded him. This was a public upon whom evidence and argument were wasted; besides, he had neither. He had only a dim kind of reasoning, very hurried—a perception that his only way out was to make his conduct toward Daisy Mears so consistently injurious that neither she nor the public could pretend to believe that anything so monstrous as affection existed between them. And since his conception of the first thing to be done was frankly elemental, it was well for his reputation as a gentleman and a host that his mother and his Aunt Ella happened to come into the living-room just then, bringing some boxes of games and favours. The mob broke up, and hurried in that direction.

Mrs. Coy looked benevolently over their heads, and completely mistaking a gesture of her son, called to him smilingly: “Come, Laurence; you can play tag with little Daisy after a while. Just now we’ve got some other games for you.” Then, as he morosely approached, attended by Daisy, Mrs. Coy offered them a brightly coloured cardboard box. “Here’s a nice game,” she said, and continued unfortunately: “Since you want to play with Daisy, you can amuse yourselves with that. It’s a game for just two.”

“I won’t!” Laurence returned, and added distinctly: “I rather die!”

“But I thought you wanted to play with little Daisy,” Mrs. Coy explained in her surprise. “I thought——”

“I rather die!” said Laurence, speaking so that everybody might hear him. “I rather die a hunderd times!” And that no one at all might mistake his meaning, he concluded: “I’d rather eat a million boxes of rat-poison than play with her!”

So firm and loud a declaration of preference, especially in the unpreferred person’s presence, caused a slight embarrassment to Mrs. Coy. “But Laurence, dear,” she began, “you mustn’t——”

“I would!” he insisted. “I rather eat a million, _million_ boxes of rat-poison than play with her! She——”

“_She’s your girl!_”

The sly interruption stopped him. It came from a person to be identified only as one of a group clustering about his Aunt Ella’s boxes; and it was accompanied by a general giggle but half-suppressed in spite of the adult presences.

“You hush _opp_!” Laurence shouted.

“Laurence! Laurence!” said Mrs. Coy. “What _is_ the matter, dear? It seems to me you’re really not at all polite to poor little Daisy.”

Laurence pursued the line of conduct he had set for himself as his only means of safety. “I wouldn’t be polite to her,” he said; “I wouldn’t be polite to her if I had to eat a million——”

“Laurence!”

“I wouldn’t!” he stoutly maintained. “Not if I had to eat a million, _million_——”

“Never mind!” his mother said with some emphasis. “Plenty of the other boys will be delighted to play with dear little Daisy.”

“No,” said Daisy brightly, “I _got_ to play with Laurence.”

Laurence looked at her. When a grown person looks at another in that way, it is time for the police, and Mrs. Coy was conscious of an emergency. She took Laurence by the shoulders, faced him about and told him to run and play with some one else; then she turned back to Daisy. “We’ll find some _nice_ little boy——” she began. But Daisy had followed Laurence.

She gave him a lively tap on the shoulder. “Got your tag!” she cried, and darted away, but as he did not follow, she returned to him. “Well, what _are_ we goin’ to play?” she inquired.

Laurence gave her another look. “You hang around me a little longer,” he said, “an’ I’ll—I’ll—I’ll——”

Again came the giggled whisper:

“_She’s your girl!_”

Laurence ran amuck. Head down, he charged into the group whence came the whisper, and successfully dispersed it. The component parts fled, squawking; Laurence pursued; boys tripped one another, wrestled, skirmished in groups; and, such moods being instantly contagious among males under twelve, many joined in the assault with a liveliness not remote, at least in appearance, from lunacy.

“Laurence! Laurence!” his mother exclaimed in vain, for he was the chief disturber; but he was too actively occupied in that capacity to be aware of her. She and Aunt Ella could only lament and begin to teach the little girls and two or three of the older and nobler boys to “play games,” while troups of gangsters swept out of the room, then through it and out again, through other rooms, through halls and then were heard whooping and thumping on the front stairway.

One little girl was not with the rather insulted players of the cardboard games in the living-room. She accompanied the gangsters, rioting with the best, her little muslin skirt fluttering with the speed of her going; while ever was heard, with slight intermission, her piercing battle-cry: “_Hay_, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!” But the male chorus had a new libretto to work from, evidently: all through the house, upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber, their merciless gaieties resounded:

“Ya-a-ay, Laur-runce! Wait for your _girl_! Your _girl_ wants you, Laurunce!”

“What a curious child that Daisy Mears is!” Aunt Ella said to Laurence’s mother. “I’d always thought she was such a quiet little girl.”

“‘_Quiet!_’” Mrs. Coy exclaimed. And then as a series of shocks overhead noticeably jarred the ceiling, she started. “Good heavens! They’re upstairs—they’ll have the roof on us!”

She hurried into the hall, but the outlaws were already descending. Just ahead of them plunged Laurence, fleeing like some rabid thing. Behind him, in the ruck of boys, Daisy Mears seemed to reach for him at the full length of her extended arms; and so the rout went on and out through the open front doors to the yard, where still was heard above all other cries, “_Hay_, there, Mister! _I’ll_ show you!”

Mrs. Coy returned helplessly to the guests of sweeter behaviour, and did what she could to amuse them, but presently she was drawn to a window by language without.

It was the voice of her son in frenzy. He stood on the lawn, swinging a rake about him circularly. “Let her try it!” he said. “Let her try it just once more, an’ _I’ll_ show her!”

For audience, out of reach of the rake, he had Daisy Mears and all his male guests save the two or three spiritless well-mannered at feeble play in the living-room; and this entire audience, including Miss Mears, replied in chanting chorus: “Daisy Mears an’ Laurunce Coy! She’s your _girl_!” Such people are hard to convince.

Laurence swung the rake, repeating:

“Just let her try it; that’s all I ast! Just let her try to come near me again!”

“_Laurence!_” said his mother from the window.

He looked up, and there was the sincerest bitterness in his tone as he said: “Well, I stood _enough_ around here this afternoon!”

“Put down the rake,” she said. “The idea of shaking a rake at a little girl!”

The idea she mentioned seemed reasonable to Laurence, in his present state of mind, and in view of what he had endured. “I bet _you’d_ shake it at her,” he said, “if she’d been doin’ to you what she’s been doin’ to me!”

Now, from Mrs. Coy’s standpoint, that was nothing short of grotesque; yet actually there was something in what he said. Mrs. Coy was in love with Mr. Coy; and if another man—one whom she disliked and thought homely and unattractive—had bumped into her at a party, upsetting her frequently, sitting on her, pushing her over repeatedly as she attempted to rise, then embracing her and claiming her as his own, and following her about, and pursuing her even when she fled, insisting upon his claim to her and upon embracing her again and again, causing Mr. Coy to criticize her with outspoken superiority—and if all this had taken place with the taunting connivance of absolutely every one of the best people she knew—why, under such parallel circumstances, Mrs. Coy might or might not have armed herself with a rake, but this would have depended, probably, on whether or not there was a rake handy, and supposing there was, upon whether or not she became too hysterical to use it.

Mrs. Coy had no realization whatever that any such parallel could be drawn; she coldly suggested that the party was being spoiled and that Laurence might well be ashamed of himself. “It’s really _very_ naughty of you,” she said; and at a word from Aunt Ella, she added: “Now you’ve all had enough of this rough romping and you must come in quietly and behave yourselves like little gentlemen—and like a little lady! The pianist from the dancing-school has come, and dear little Elsie Threamer is going to do her fancy dance for us.”

With that, under her eye, the procession filed into the house—and took seats in the living-room without any renewal of undesirable demonstrations. Laurence had the brooding air of a person who has been dangerously trifled with; but he seated himself in an orderly manner, and unfortunately did not observe which of his guests just afterward came to occupy the next chair. Elsie, exquisitely dainty, a lovely sight, was standing alone in the open space in the centre of the room.

The piano rippled out a tinkling run of little bells, and the graceful child began to undulate and pirouette. Her conscientious eyes she kept all the while downcast, with never a glance to any spectator, least of all to the lorn Laurence; but he had a miserable sense of what those veiled eyes thought about him, and he felt low and contaminated by the repulsive events connected with another of his guests. As he dumbly looked at Elsie, while she danced so prettily, beautiful things seemed to be floating about him in a summer sky: angels like pigeons with lovely faces, large glass globes in rainbow colours, and round, pure white icing cakes. His spiritual nature was uplifted; and almost his sufferings had left him, when his spine chilled at a sound behind him—a choked giggle and a hoarse but piercing whisper.

“Look at who Laurence is sittin’ by! _Oh_, oh!”

He turned and found Daisy in the chair next to his. Her small bright eyes were fixed upon him in an intolerable mirth; her shoulders were humped with the effect to control that same, and her right hand tensely covered her mouth. From behind him came further gurgles and the words:

“Sittin’ by his _girl_!”

At this moment Elsie was just concluding her dance with a series of charming curtseys. Laurence could not wait for them to be finished; he jumped from his chair, and crossed before the lovely dancer to a seat on the other side of the room, a titter following him. More than the titter followed him, in fact. Daisy walked on tiptoe just behind him.

But when she reached the centre of the room, she was suddenly inspired by the perception of a new way to increase her noticeableness. She paused before the curtseying _danseuse_ and also sank in curtseys as deep, though not so adept. Then she too began to dance, and the piano having stopped, accompanied herself by singing loudly, “Ti-didy-um-tum, dee-dee-dee!” She pirouetted, undulated, hopped on one leg with the other stiff and rather high before her; she pranced in a posture of outrageous convexity from one point of view, of incredible concavity from the other. Then she curtsied again, in recognizable burlesque of the original, and flounced into the chair next to Laurence’s, for he had been so shortsighted as to leave a vacancy beside him. This time his Aunt Ella had to take him out into the hall by force and talk to him.

A little later, when ice-cream, paper caps, and favours had been distributed, the party was over; and among those who presented themselves in the polite formalities of leavetaking was, naturally, Daisy Mears. On account of continued surveillance on the part of his Aunt Ella, Laurence was unable to respond in words, but his expression said a thousand eloquent things for him.

Daisy curtsied demurely. “G’by. Thank you for a wunnaful time, Laurence,” she said; and went out of the house with a character that had changed permanently during the brief course of a children’s party.

As for Laurence, he had been through a dog’s time; and he showed it. Every night, after he said his bedside prayers, there was an additional rite his mother had arranged for him; he was to say: “I know that I have a character, and I know that I am a soul.” But to-night he balked.

“Go on,” his mother bade him. “Say it, Laurence.”

“I doe’ want to,” he said dully.

Mrs. Coy sighed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you: you behave so queerly sometimes! Don’t you know you ought to appreciate what your mamma does for you—when she went to all the trouble to give you a nice party just to make you happy? Oughtn’t you to do what she wants you to, to pay her for all that happiness?”

“I guess so.” The poor child somehow believed it—but as he went through his formula and muttered that he knew he had a character, it is probable that he felt a strong doubt in the matter. This may have caused his aversion to saying it.

THE ONE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL

THE new one-hundred-dollar bill, clean and green, freshening the heart with the colour of springtime, slid over the glass of the teller’s counter and passed under his grille to a fat hand, dingy on the knuckles, but brightened by a flawed diamond. This interesting hand was a part of one of those men who seem to have too much fattened muscle for their clothes: his shoulders distended his overcoat; his calves strained the sprightly checked cloth, a little soiled, of his trousers; his short neck bulged above the glossy collar. His hat, round and black as a pot, and appropriately small, he wore slightly obliqued; while under its curled brim his small eyes twinkled surreptitiously between those upper and nether puffs of flesh that mark the too faithful practitioner of unhallowed gaieties. Such was the first individual owner of the new one-hundred-dollar bill, and he at once did what might have been expected of him.

Moving away from the teller’s grille, he made a cylindrical packet of bills smaller in value—“ones” and “fives”—then placed round them, as a wrapper, the beautiful one-hundred-dollar bill, snapped a rubber band over it; and the desired inference was plain: a roll all of hundred-dollar bills, inside as well as outside. Something more was plain, too: obviously the man’s small head had a sportive plan in it, for the twinkle between his eye-puffs hinted of liquor in the offing and lively women impressed by a show of masterly riches. Here, in brief, was a man who meant to make a night of it; who would feast, dazzle, compel deference, and be loved. For money gives power, and power is loved; no doubt he would be loved. He was happy, and went out of the bank believing that money is made for joy.

So little should we be certain of our happiness in this world: the splendid one-hundred-dollar bill was taken from him untimely, before nightfall that very evening. At the corner of two busy streets he parted with it to the law, though in a mood of excruciating reluctance and only after a cold-blooded threatening on the part of the lawyer. This latter walked away thoughtfully, with the one-hundred-dollar bill, now not quite so clean, in his pocket.

Collinson was the lawyer’s name, and in years he was only twenty-eight, but already had the slightly harried appearance that marks the young husband who begins to suspect that the better part of his life has been his bachelorhood. His dark, ready-made clothes, his twice-soled shoes and his hair, which was too long for a neat and businesslike aspect, were symptoms of necessary economy; but he did not wear the eager look of a man who saves to “get on for himself”: Collinson’s look was that of an employed man who only deepens his rut with his pacing of it.