Part 2

"Sam!" Mrs. Sam pressed his hand with her plump arm against her side. "Please be civil to Sylvester for Stephen's sake and the children's. Don't let him or them see signs of the quarrel--not at Christmas, dear."

"I won't shake hands with him," growled Samuel. "Not with Stephen himself looking on."

"Yes, you will, dear, on Christmas Eve," whispered Mrs. Sam.

By which it may be seen that the mothers of many children have large hearts, and that Mr. Stephen Kingsley had with him one more ally than he knew.

Although Mr. Samuel Kingsley may have infinitely preferred, according to his own declaration, to be hung, drawn and quartered than to enter the great, old-fashioned doorway within which somewhere awaited him an encounter with one of his own flesh and blood, nobody would have guessed it from his demeanour. Long training in what James Dent, Junior, mentally characterized, as he watched Uncle Samuel make his entrance, as the art of bluffing--acquired by men of prominence in the world everywhere--enabled that gentleman to appear upon the scene with an expression of affability mingled with pleasure on his handsome countenance, and his accustomed bearing of dignity and distinction well in evidence. As it happened, Mr. Sylvester Kingsley was at the moment close by his brother Stephen's side, although he had by no means intended to be there when his brother Samuel should arrive. How this happened it is possible that only the "sheep-dog" could have told.

"Samuel, this is giving me great happiness," said Stephen, and held his brother's strong hand for a moment in both his weak ones. Then he looked at Sylvester, who was on his farther side. Samuel also looked at Sylvester. Sylvester looked back at Samuel. Blades of steel could not have crossed with a sharper clang.

"How are you, Sylvester?" inquired Samuel, and his glance dropped to Sylvester's chin as he said it. His hand remained in Stephen's, where it received a weak pressure, a quite involuntary one, born of anxiety.

"How are you, Samuel?" inquired Sylvester in return, and his glance lowered to the expensive scarfpin in Samuel's neckwear.

Jim Dent said "Good heavens!" somewhere inside of him, and the incident was closed by his uncle Sylvester's rising and walking away out of the room. The brothers had spoken--if this were speech. They had not shaken hands. An apprehending onlooker, betting on the probabilities, would have staked a considerable sum on the proposition that they would not shake hands within the next twenty-four hours--or twenty-four years.

"Well, well--here's Anne!" cried Jim Dent joyfully. He had been looking about him for first-aid to his uncle Stephen's wounded heart. Anne was no longer of the group of children who were accustomed to leap upon Cousin Jim and demand instant sport with him. Anne, being now eighteen, and lately returned from a two-years' absence at a boarding-school somewhere abroad, had allowed James Dent, Junior, to be in the house for a full half-hour before she emerged from some upstairs retreat and came to greet him. Being Mrs. Sam's eldest daughter she was naturally extraordinarily pretty, looking much as her mother had looked twenty years before. As Mrs. Sam was still a beauty, and as she was his favourite aunt--by marriage--it will be easy to imagine that when her nephew James had greeted her he had not failed to inquire for Anne. Still, he had had no possible idea that the change in Anne was going to be so great.

Anne held out her hand with a delightful smile. But Jim Dent would have none of such a sudden accession of reserve, and promptly kissed her, as of old. Whereupon her colour, always interesting to observe, became even more attractive, though she only said, reproachfully:

"Don't you see I'm grown up, Cousin Jim?"

Cousin Jim looked her over, from the crown of her charming dark head to the tips of her modishly shod little feet. "Bless your heart, so you are!" he exclaimed. "But will you tell me what that has to do with it?"

"Everything. I no longer can be kissed as a matter-of-course," declared Miss Anne Kingsley. "Only by special dispensation."

"Well, what do I think of that?" he demanded. "Sure, an' I don't know what I think! Still, as I see plenty of mistletoe about"--he had only to reach up a sinewy arm to secure a piece--"I can easily obtain that special dispensation."

Whereupon he kissed her again, and with appreciably more fervour than before, having discovered, between the first kiss and the second, that Anne, grown up, was unquestionably more alluring than Anne as he had last seen her, although he remembered that even then he had had premonitions as to her future which he was now not at all surprised to find had been well founded.

Feeling that nothing could be better for that heavy heart of his uncle Stephen's than the application of such balm as lay in a girl's sweetness, Jim Dent conducted his adorable cousin in to spend the next half-hour beside the invalid's chair. In this act he showed the difference between himself and the average young man--between the sheep-dog, so to speak, always under the sway of a sense of duty to send his charges where they belong, and the sportive terrier, who thinks of nothing but his own diversion. It must be acknowledged, however, lest this young man be thought quite unnaturally altruistic, that he himself shared with his cousin Anne the pleasant task of making a dear and gentle elderly man forget for a time the load upon his breast, and that the pair of them, while they made merry for the benefit of Uncle Stephen, also laughed into each other's eyes quite as often as they did into his. Which, of course, gave him fully as much pleasure as it did themselves.

"Mother," said Jim Dent in a corner somewhere, "why not take a day off from the fuss and show Aunt Clara how to narrow, or widen, or double up, or whatever she seems to be trying to do, on that pink silk thing she's knitting? It's Christmas Eve, and she's finishing it up to give to Uncle Sam's baby, and she's all balled up. She never knit socks before. Somebody else helped her on the other one."

"James," said his mother sternly, but not as sternly as she might have spoken if her son's lips had not lightly kissed her ear before they murmured these words into it, "it is impossible to ignore your aunt's manner to me."

"It's not so awfully different, though, mother, from your manner to her. Still, let's see, how did the thing begin?" mused Jim. "She wrote that they'd all come out in July for a month, and you wrote back----"

"I said the simple truth, James, that my kitchen was quite as hot in the country as hers in the city, in July."

"It certainly was the simple truth, mother. Somewhat undecorated by a garnish of hospitality, though--eh?"

"I had not accepted your aunt's invitations to visit her in town in the winter."

"You'd had 'em, though. Don't unaccepted invitations count any?"

Isabel Dent stirred in her chair. "She had visited me time and again without invitation."

"How far back did all this happen? When I was in my cradle? I've forgotten."

"It was seven years ago last July."

"Seven years outlaws an unpaid account. Let's start another. I'll back you up if you'll go over and offer to fix up that sock. If you do, the late unpleasantness will fix itself up. It's just as easy as that. And--Uncle Steve wants it."

"James," his mother's tone was firm, "if your Aunt Clara comes to me I will not repulse her."

"She won't come. You said the last hard word."

"James!"

"All right," said Jim Dent with apparent resignation. "But even enemies declare a truce--on Christmas Eve."

Then two small boys and four girls of various sizes romped into the corner after him and he went away with them. It was difficult to do otherwise, with all six twined about his arms and pulling lustily.

"'_He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?_'"

Stephen spoke the words thoughtfully.

"Steve," said Samuel, with a flushing face, "it's a mighty sight easier to love a God a fellow hasn't seen than some men he has seen. Whatever the Almighty is He's square. Sylvester isn't."

"Sam," said Stephen gently, yet with a quiet firmness which made Samuel look at him curiously, "are you absolutely certain Sylvester was not square? Admitting that his methods were peculiar, annoying, without seeming reason or justification, are you sure they were not square?"

"I'm as confident he meant to deceive me as I sit here."

"But do you _know_ it? Could you prove it in a court of law?"

Samuel hesitated. That was a question not to be answered quite so easily. "I believe I could."

"But you don't _know_ you could?"

"Great Caesar, Steve, I'm not omnipotent. I don't _know_ I could. But----"

"Then there is a possibility--just a possibility--that you might be mistaken in your judgment of Sylvester."

"If there is it's so small that--"

"The smaller it is the more danger of losing sight of it. Yet, if it exists----"

Samuel rose abruptly. "See here, brother," he said with an effort to command his usual manner, "why not let well enough alone? I've treated Sylvester civilly here under your roof. What more can you ask? What's the use of stirring up strife on Christmas Day?"

"Am I trying to stir up strife?" breathed Stephen Kingsley, his delicate face turning even a shade paler than was its wont. "I--Sam, I'd give my right hand--not that it's worth much--to see strife end between you and Syl, here--on Christmas Day.... _What was that, Sam? What was that?_"

Samuel ran heavily to the door, opened it, looked out, glanced back, then rushed through and shut the door sharply on the outside.

"O, Lord, dear Lord, not any of the children, on Christmas Day!" pleaded a low voice inside.

It was Jim Dent who had reached young Syl first when he fell through the well from the third story to the first of Uncle Stephen's spacious old halls. Young Syl, Samuel's twelve-year-old son, named for his Uncle Sylvester at a period when the brothers had been business partners and close friends, had been having a lively scuffle with his cousin Harold, Uncle George's fourteen-year-old athlete. The set-to had raged all over the house, had reached the third story, and had arrived at a point where any means for either to get the better of the other had prevailed. Harold had succeeded in forcing his adversary into a position where he could throw him, after some schoolboy method, and, blinded by the excitement of the affair, had not realized just where he was. He had thrown Syl with such success that the younger boy had lost his clutch upon his antagonist and had gone over the low rail before Harold knew what had happened.

"Keep cool!" was Jim's first command, learned in many an emergency on school and college athletic fields. "A boy can stand a lot, and he landed on the rug."

They tried hard to obey him. His mother succeeded best, his father least. Samuel Kingsley could not wait to see his boy return to consciousness, could not wait after he had summoned a physician--two physicians--by telephone, but must needs rush out to get the gray roadster, with its sixty-horse-power cylinders, declaring that he would meet Graham on the way. Graham ran only a turtle of a forty-horsepower machine and would never get there.

His mechanician, Evans, was not on the ground. He, with Ledds, Sylvester's chauffeur, had gone off on some Christmasing of their own. With hands that trembled Samuel got his motor throbbing--it took time, because of the stiffening cold of all the mechanism. Then he leaped into his car.

"Better take time to put on your coat and gloves," said a voice behind him. "You'll drive faster, warm."

His brother Sylvester climbed in beside him, himself in fur-lined garments. He held Samuel's coat for him, and handed his brother the heavy motoring gloves of which Samuel had not stopped to think.

"I'll look out where you back; let her go," commanded Sylvester, and Samuel backed his car out of the narrow space where it had stood between Sylvester's big brown limousine and Stephen's modest phaeton. Samuel used care until he had made the curves from barn to road, between trees and hedges and the brown remains of a garden, out through the old stone-posted gateway. Then, with a straight turnpike road before him and the city only twenty miles away, Samuel opened his throttle. The slim, powerful machine, its exhaust, unmuffled, roaring a deep note of power, shot away down the road like the wind.

At a window inside Mr. William Kingsley was watching excitedly. A tall figure of the general proportions of his sister Isabel's husband, James Dent, was at his elbow. "By George!" he ejaculated, "Syl's gone with Sam!"

Mr. George Kingsley, partially deaf, caught his own first name. "What's that, Will?" he responded eagerly.

William wheeled and saw whom he was addressing. George, his anxious eyes peering down the road, was plainly not thinking of family quarrels. Why should anybody think of family quarrels with Sam's young Syl lying upstairs looking as if the life had been knocked out of him by that terrific fall? William found himself unable to answer this question.

"Sylvester's gone with Sam after Doctor Graham," he announced in George's interrogative best ear.

"You don't say!" responded George. "Well, it's a good thing."

It certainly was. Not a member of the family but would admit that. Also, if it was a good thing for Sylvester and Sam to tear down the road together in a sixty-horse-power car, after a quarrel the proportions of which anybody must concede were far more serious than those of the difficulty between George and William, it would seem rather forced, at least until the truth was known about young Syl, for two other brothers looking out of the same window to cling to outward signs of estrangement.

"Sam's got an extremely powerful machine," observed William, continuing to gaze down the road, though the aforesaid machine was already probably a mile away and far out of sight.

"I guess he has. Must go faster than Sylvester's, I should say."

"Sylvester's isn't made so much for speed as for getting about the city warm and comfortable for his wife. Syl's not much on speed, as I remember. Shouldn't wonder if Sam's pace going to meet the doctor would make Syl hang on some."

"It's Sam's boy," said George in a lower tone.

"So it is," agreed William. "Couldn't blame him if he took some chances. Don't know as he'll get Graham here more'n five minutes quicker'n he could get here with his own car, but it'll relieve the strain for Sam a little to be doing something."

"That's so," admitted George.

At this moment Harold, George's boy, with a pale, frightened face and a pair of very red eyes, came into the room and up to his father. He had no eyes for his Uncle William standing half within the long, crimson folds of the library curtains.

"Dad," said the boy, "did you know I----"

"Eh?" said his father, turning his best ear. Then he saw his son's face. "Why, what's the matter?" he asked anxiously. "Is Syl----"

"Dad," burst out the boy, "I--I was the one that did it. _I--threw--Syl!_"

He buried his head against his father's arm.

"Why, Harry--Harry, boy----" began his father in consternation.

Uncle William came out from behind the curtain. He thought he had better get out of the room. But as he passed Harold his hand patted the young head. He stooped to the boy's ear. "We all know it was an accident," he whispered.

A nursemaid knocked upon the door of Mr. Stephen Kingsley's room. In her arms was Mrs. Sam's baby, the prettiest baby of the three who were in the house.

"Mr. Kingsley," said the maid, "Mr. Dent--the young man--said I should bring Dorothy to you and ask you to take care of her for a little while, if you didn't mind. He has something for me to do."

"Yes, yes--yes, yes," answered the invalid. "I'll keep her." He reached out his arms. "How is the boy now, do you know?" he asked. He had had a bulletin within the last five minutes, but minutes go slowly under suspense.

"They think he may not be badly hurt, sir," said the maid.

But this was what they had told him from the beginning. He felt that they could not know. They were afraid to alarm him. Fall so far and not be badly hurt? It was not possible.

He took the baby, and laid his white cheek against hers of rose-leaf pink. So Jim had sent him the baby to take up his mind. Was there anything Jim didn't think of? And one certainly cannot look after an eight-months-old baby and not give the matter considerable attention.

Young Sylvester Kingsley, Samuel's son, opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was his mother's face, which smiled at him. Mothers can always smile, if necessary, thank God! The next thing noticeable was his Cousin Jim's bright blue eyes looking rather brighter than usual. He heard a caught breath somewhere near and then a whisper: "Sh-h--don't startle him!" It sounded like his Aunt Clara's rather sibilant whisper. Aunt Clara had the tiniest sort of a lisp. There was a strong smell of camphor in the air, and Syl's forehead seemed to be oppressed by something heavy and cold. He attempted to put up his hand to his head, but the thing didn't work, somehow. He was conscious that his arm hurt, besides. He didn't feel exactly like speaking, so he stared questioningly into his Cousin Jim's face.

"All right, old man," replied Cousin Jim instantly, in a quiet, cheerful sort of way which was most reassuring. "You've had a bit of a knockout, but we'll soon have you fixed up. Yes, I know that arm hurts--that'll be all right presently."

Out in the upper hall Aunt Clara, who had crept out of the room lest the relief of seeing the lad alive, and the wonder of watching Syl's mother smile at her boy like that, should make the sob in her own throat burst out, ran blindly into a figure at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, he's come to!" she whispered loudly.

"He has? Thank the Lord!" came back in another joyful whisper. "But he must be awfully hurt, just the same. We can't know till the doctors come. Don't you suppose it must be time for them now?"

"I don't know. Who's with him?"

"His mother and that angel Jim. I never saw anybody like Jim Dent. He's the dearest fellow, so cool and cheerful, thinks of everything and everybody. No wonder Stephen adores him."

"Thank you, Clara," whispered the other woman. Clara hastily wiped her eyes. The hall was dim and her eyes had been thick with tears. She had been exchanging whispers with Isabel.

It didn't matter. She was glad of it. The mother of Jim Dent deserved recognition, if she had said her kitchen was hot in summer. Clara put out her arms. Isabel came into them. Clara's plump cheek touched Isabel's thin shoulder. Isabel's hand patted Clara's back. Jim Dent opened the door. Seeing the affair outside he closed it again and went to find something he wanted, by a different exit. His anxiety was still great, but a side issue like this one must not be upset.

But by the second exit he found somebody else in his path. All the beautiful colour shaken out of her cheeks, her dark eyes wide with alarm, her lips pressed tight together in her effort at self-control, young Syl's sister, Anne, caught at Jim Dent's capable, blue-serge arm. She said not a word, but he answered her as if she had spoken:

"He's opened his eyes, dear. That means a good deal, I'm sure. Keep cool."

"If I could only _do_ something!"

"You can--what we're all doing."

"Oh, _yes_!" breathed little Anne. "O Jim!--do you think it helps--really?"

"Know it," asserted Jim Dent, as confidently as he had ever said anything in his life. He smiled at her and hurried on. That smile of his had been known to win games for his college teams which had been all but lost--why shouldn't it cheer a frightened girl and encourage her to go on doing that one thing which was the only thing she could do, and which Jim Dent was so sure would help?

The gray roadster came down the road at a speed which barely allowed it to slacken in time to make the curve at the gateway. It missed the stone post on the left by the width of a tenpenny nail. Sylvester, in the rumble, turned not a hair. Thirty miles of driving, with Sam's hand on the steering-wheel, had brought Sylvester to a condition of temporary paralysis as regarded danger.

The three of them were in the house in less time than it takes to tell it, Dr. Wilford Graham propelled by a hand on each arm. It would have been difficult for him to say which of his companions seemed the more eager to get him up the stairs.

Samuel opened the door of the room where he had left young Syl, his hand shaking on the knob. A somewhat feeble but decidedly cheerful voice greeted him.

"Say, dad, you'll tell me where I tumbled from, won't you? The rest of 'em have got me stung about it."

Samuel turned around to the doctor behind him. He pushed past the doctor and bolted out into the hall. He bumped smartly into his brother Sylvester, who had stopped to wait just outside the door. Sylvester put his hand on Samuel's shoulder.

"I heard, Sam, I heard," he murmured.

Samuel nodded. He could not speak. There was no particular need that he should.

Young Syl had a broken arm. But what is a broken arm, when by acquiring it one escapes injuring some vital part of one's body? He had, also, a large-sized contusion on his head, because on the rebound he had come somewhat forcibly into contact with the newel-post. But the contusion was precisely on the spot specially fortified by Nature for such emergencies, and the doctors feared no evil results from it.

"In short," declared Doctor Graham with great satisfaction, "the boy has managed to get out of his fall easier than many a football victim who is thrown only the distance of his own height. I won't say that a Turkey carpet with a leopard-skin rug on top of it doesn't make a fairly comfortable bed to fall on. If it had been one of our modern bare floors, now!--But it wasn't."

"Mayn't I have my dinner with the rest of 'em?" begged Syl.

Dinner! The Christmas dinner! They had all forgotten it except the hero of the day. "Because I'm awfully hungry," urged Syl.

In the deserted hall downstairs Jim Dent happily encountered Anne. He seized her hand.

"Come with me to tell Uncle Stephen!" he commanded. "But--stop crying first! Uncle Steve's a pretty wise man, but he can't be expected to tell the difference between tears of sorrow and tears of crazy joy--not at first sight."

"I don't know why I'm crying," sobbed Anne, breaking down completely and burying her face on the blue-serge shoulder which conveniently offered itself at the moment, just as she had done many times since she was a baby. Even when she was eight and Cousin Jim was fifteen, that shoulder of his had been one to hide one's unhappy eyes upon. "I didn't cry a drop--till I knew Syl was s-safe!"

"I know. Queer, isn't it? It always works that way. I confess I had some difficulty in seeing the way across the room myself, a few minutes ago. But wipe 'em away and come on! Uncle Stephen mustn't have to wait for his news. Look up here. Smile! Here--maybe this will help----" and for the third time within twenty-four hours he stooped and kissed her.

The tremulous lips broke suddenly into the smile he sued for. Through the tears shone a sudden mischievous light. "Cousin Jim," she observed, "you seem to have changed your methods a good deal. Always before it was chocolates. Are you out of chocolates?"

"No, I'm not out of chocolates." James Dent, Junior put his hand into his blue-serge pocket and produced a small box. "But you're too old for 'em," he explained, and put the box back.