CHAPTER IX

ROSALIND’S REWARD.

“I should like to know what you mean by that, Mr. Morgan?”

Rosalind Thornton stood before Dade Morgan, her pretty lips trembling.

He had made an evening call on her at the residence of her aunt, and was now on the point of taking an early leave. They were standing together at the foot of the stairs, under the red globe of the swinging hall-lamp near the outer door.

“You don’t know how pretty you are in that mood, Rose! But perhaps you do know? It tempts me to steal a kiss.”

Rosalind Thornton was, indeed, a pretty girl, and never more so than at that moment. A flash of hurt pride made her winsomely attractive—so attractive that Morgan almost relented from the purpose he had formed in his heart.

She drew back and put out a little hand.

“You have no right to say such things to me!”

There was a glow of fire behind the unshed tears. Morgan laughed in his usual reckless, nonchalant way, and hurt Rose by saying roughly:

“Well, I didn’t call to take you out riding this afternoon, as I promised to do—because I didn’t care to!”

How handsome he was as he stood there looking at her with eyes as dark as her own. She was as fully alive to his good looks as he was to hers. There was a mysterious something in his strong, athletic form; in the resolute face, smiling mouth, and white, even teeth. Dade Morgan was undeniably a handsome youth, aside from a trick he had of dropping his lids down over his eyes, to shut out the strange glitter that occasionally took the beauty out of them.

It was the magnetism of his beauty and strength that had made pretty Rosalind Thornton willing to hurt the honest heart of big Dick Starbright—had made her willing to turn from him and accept the pleasant company of this man, who was his confessed and deadly enemy.

Rosalind’s affections were warm and womanly, but they were not of an enduring type. She was, besides, of a petulant, jealous disposition. She had at first accepted Dade’s attentions in the thought that this would bring Dick Starbright to her feet as a willing and devoted subject. Then she had suddenly found herself captivated by Dade’s good looks and winning smile, and wavered in her affection for Starbright, telling herself that, if Dick did not care to come back, Morgan would be as acceptable, perhaps more so.

“I suppose I’m a fool, Rose!”

He again moved toward her. Once more she put out a detaining hand.

“Yes, I think you are; but do not call me Rose, please!”

“Rosalind!”

“Nor that!”

He laid his hand on his heart in mock gallantry.

“Miss Thornton, any fellow is a fool who doesn’t fall in love with you!”

“Thanks!”

The laughing smile which he so admired and which he hoped to coax back to her eyes did not make its reappearance.

“You are quite angry?”

“You didn’t care to keep your word this afternoon!”

Her lips again trembled as she thought of it—thought of the pride and pleasure with which she had gowned herself—the triumphant pride, which had made her desire to sweep in Dade’s carriage in grand style past her former lover, Dick Starbright, whom she was still anxious to draw after her, as a conquering captor draws a captive.

Dade laughed and dropped the lids over his eyes.

“Well, to tell the truth, I came up here to-night principally to say that I don’t care to go out driving that way any more.”

The girl’s cheeks paled.

“You’re an awfully pretty girl, Miss Thornton——”

She put out her hand again, but he went on.

“I don’t need to tell you that, for you know it. But there’s no use of keeping this thing up, you see. You might begin to think that I—I care for you. To be frank, I don’t. I suppose you’ll say that’s brutal.”

She dropped into a seat on the stairs. Dade looked at her a moment, still handsome and smiling.

“I hope you aren’t crying,” he said, crossing to her side. “When you seem so distressed, you know, it makes me—makes me almost lo—care for you!”

He tried to take her hand. She dashed it away, and turned toward him. She was undeniably crying now. A strange thrill came to his heart. He began to think he had been blunt and harsh. His pride was flattered. It was something to make a pretty girl cry—it evidenced the fact that he was attractive to women. And he began to ask himself why he had not been content to go on and make her believe that he cared for her? His vanity was lashing him, not his conscience.

“I don’t think you care to talk to me any longer,” she declared, in a low, icy voice. “At least, I don’t care to continue the conversation. I thought you something which you are not—a gentleman! You were going, I believe?”

“But perhaps I don’t care to go. Perhaps I—perhaps I prefer to stay. If we can go on with the understanding that what we’re doing is just for fun, just for a jolly time and to make Dick Starbright——”

“You were going, I believe!” she icily repeated.

Her eyes were very bright now, and, with the exception of a red spot glowing in each cheek, her face was white. The tears had dried.

A step was heard on the outer step, making Dade start. He stood in a listening attitude and heard footsteps departing. Some one had been on the piazza, and was now going away. Morgan stood a moment in silence, then opened the door and looked out. The electric light was more than half a block distant, and the light in front of the house was not good. Yet he saw a tall form moving down the street.

“If I didn’t know that he couldn’t be guilty of such a thing, I should say that our good friend Starbright had followed me here this evening and had been eaves-dropping,” he said, as he withdrew his head and shoulders from the doorway and closed the door.

“I don’t want to leave until we have settled this matter!” he continued, still feeling that perhaps he had acted too hastily, and that Rosalind was altogether too pretty and winsome a girl to be thrown over in that manner, even if he did not care for her.

“It is settled, I think!” she declared; then turned from him and began to mount the stairs.

He looked after her, flushed and angry. He had come to the house with the deliberate intention of telling her that he did not care to take her driving any more, or to continue their further intimate acquaintance, and had half-broken down in it because of her beauty and evident distress. Dade Morgan loved himself better than anything else in the world, and his self-pride had been hurt. Some way he did not feel as care-free about the matter as he had fancied he would. He had never cared for Rosalind Thornton, and had used her merely as a weapon with which to strike Starbright, but this was somewhat like the weapon striking back at him when he sought to discard it.

Yet he did not try to speak to her again, though a strange and fiery light came into his eyes, which, through force of habit, he besought to conceal. Then he put on his hat, opened the door without saying “Good night!” and was soon trailing down the street after the person he had fancied was Dick Starbright.

“Well, she’s off my hands!” he reflected, as he hurried on. “I guess it’s better that way, though she is deucedly handsome, and I might come to like her in time, if I could ever like anybody! But that finishes it, unless I really want to go back. I think I can do that, if I care to try the trick. Likely I sha’n’t care to try it. I wonder if that was Starbright? It would be a joke if she’s been playing double, and Starbright has been calling here all the time. But, no, he wouldn’t do that. Starbright isn’t a chump, whatever else he is!”

He failed to see Starbright or any one resembling him.

“Taken an electric for down-town, I suppose!”

Then his thoughts went back to Rosalind.

“Umph! Women cry easily; but crying sometimes makes them pretty!”

Hurt, angered, humiliated, Rosalind had rushed into her room, thrown herself on her bed, and was crying as if her foolish little heart were about to break.

CHAPTER XHAZERS IN MERRY MOOD.

The youth who had stood for a moment on the steps of the residence of Mrs. Virgil Throckmorton had indeed been Dick Starbright. He had chanced to pass along the street, and a sudden impulse had taken him to the door. His friend, Bert Dashleigh, had told him that Rosalind was soon to leave New Haven. A desire to see her and have a few words with her before she went away sent him up the steps, where he became an unwilling listener to some of the words spoken by her and Morgan, for Morgan had spoken louder than he knew.

“I guess I’ve made a mistake!” he had grumbled to himself, his heart flaming against the conduct of the youth whose words he had overheard; and he had beaten a quick retreat to the street, mentally raging against Morgan, and assuring himself that he had been an idiot for yielding to the temptation to speak again to Rosalind.

His thought, as he went down the street toward the car-line, was to wait for Morgan and demand an explanation; but he did not do this, and, flinging himself into the first electric that came along, he rode back to the campus. The recent snow had passed away in a rain-storm, which had been followed by a return of sharp, frosty weather.

He found the famous quadrangle filled with college men, who seemed to be having a high old time about something. Dashleigh caught him by the arm.

“What’s up?” Dick demanded.

“I don’t know. They’re roping in the freshmen. Perhaps we’d better make ourselves scarce.”

But Starbright had already been sighted.

“Oh, Starbright! Come bow to the golden image!” was shouted from the crowd.

Dashleigh started to run, but he found himself opposed by Bingham and Jack Ready, who cleverly tripped him as he put his nimble legs in motion.

“Refuse me!” said Ready, thrusting out his right hand in a wiggling way as he planted himself before Starbright. “Will you go of your own ’cord, or shall we cord you?”

He had an arm linked through one of Dashleigh’s, while Bingham was holding Dashleigh up on the other side.

“What’s up?” Dick calmly asked.

“We are! It isn’t late, you see!”

He saw other sophomores gathering round him, but made no attempt to run. Down near the fence was a howling mob of students, mostly sophomores and freshmen, who seemed to be dancing a war-dance about a captive.

“There was a fellow in the Scripture——” Ready began.

“Oh, there was!” Dick interrupted.

“No impertinence, freshman!” cried Ready, blowing out his red cheeks. “There was a fellow in Scripture who was commanded to bow before the image of Somebody-or-other, and he refused, and awful things happened to him!”

“Yes; I remember that he came out all right in the end!”

“Oh, did he? I’ll have to quit quoting Scripture, or go to studying it. But you’ll not come out all right in the end.”

Dashleigh tripped Bingham and tried to break away.

“Oh, gentle friend, why dost thou try to flee?” Ready purred, holding onto Bert with iron grip. “Dost thou not see that the enemy surrounds thee?”

“What’s up?” Starbright again asked.

“Morgan! Morgan!” came as if in answer; and it seemed strange to Starbright, too, for he was thinking more of Morgan at the moment than he was of what Ready was saying, or of the antics of the rollicking sophomores near the fence.

For the sophomores, he cared little enough, having long ago made up his mind that the only way to deal with them was to let them have their way, if it was not too rough, and so get rid of them in the shortest order.

Morgan, following Starbright toward the campus, had been suddenly surrounded by a lot of sophomores who seemed to be lying in wait near the entrance to capture straggling freshmen. Morgan was in an ugly mood, because of the events of the evening; and, instead of gracefully submitting, he began to fight, using his fists freely. In consequence of this he was roughly thrown down, tied snug and tight with a stout cord, and then carried bodily toward the rioting mob near the fence, who seemed to be waiting for just such obstreperous victims.

“I guess I’ll go along and see the fun!” said Starbright good-humoredly, though his heart was panting against Dade Morgan. Then to himself, as he moved on with Dashleigh and another freshman who had been caught in the sophomore net, he said:

“I’ll see Morgan after this thing is over, whatever it may be. I’ll see him, ask him some questions, and get the answers, too!”

The howling mob gave way, and Starbright saw a large picture of the rotund proprietor of “Billie’s,” the freshman inn. It was a mere daub on wood, displaying the round stomach and the shining, bald head of the genial proprietor. It had been painted by some humorous student and placed in front of “Billie’s” one night in lieu of a sign-board which some other student or students had stolen. The proprietor, knowing the ways of college youths, had smiled his benediction on it and set it up over the show-case between his two front parlor windows.

And now this gem of art had been surreptitiously extracted from the tavern, and all the freshmen caught in the sophomore drag-net that jubilant, crisp evening were being made to go down on their knees before it and affectionately kiss the bald head.

Morgan was hurt and indignant. He somehow fancied that, because he was conspicuous as a leader of the freshmen and had done many things to draw about him a circle of adherents, he should not be forced to do so humiliating a thing as to kneel on the frosty sand and plant an unctuous kiss on the pictured bald head.

“Oh, you didn’t half-salute Billie!” Bingham declared, giving Morgan a push that almost drove his nose through the wood on which the portrait was drawn. “If you should plant a kiss like that on the ruby lips of your best girl she would have odious opinions of you.”

“Oh, let up!” Morgan growled. “This is too silly for anything!”

“Except freshmen!” said Bingham. “Salute the bald spot of the human billiard-cue in a respectful manner, or——”

Two or three sophomores caught Morgan by the neck and shoulders and forced his lips to the picture, and held him there, in spite of his protestations, while he kissed Billie’s bald head over and over again. When released he was mad clean through.

Starbright was pushed up to the daub, murmuring, though he was known never to drink:

“Oh, thou human punch-bowl, thou concocter of that nectar of the gods! How I love thee!”

He appeared to want to take the picture to his bosom in a rapturous embrace, but was dragged back.

“Thou varlet!” cried Ready, pleased with Starbright’s apparent nonchalance, which was in such marked contrast to Morgan’s fuming rage. “Avaunt, there! A dog is not privileged to embrace a king!”

“The dog was merely trying to bite him!” chattered Bingham.

“Your pardon!” said Starbright. “The dog mistook his baldness for a link of sausage!”

“And thought he recognized a kinship!” laughed Greg Carker.

At which sally from the solemn and philosophical Carker the boisterous sophomores cackled with glee.

The twang of a mandolin was heard, as Bert Dashleigh was made to waddle forward on all fours and kiss the shiny pate of the pictured host. It was Dashleigh’s own mandolin, produced by a student who had hastily invaded Dashleigh’s room for the purpose.

“How did you get in?” Bert coolly asked, stopping in the midst of his osculatory adorations.

“Fell through the transom,” said the student. “Why the dickens do you always keep your door locked? That transom is so contracted that I sprained my wish-bone.”

“Good thing if you had sprained your neck!” Bert flung back; and was then dragged away, lest in his fervent kissing he should lick all the paint off the wood.

Two stools were produced from some invisible source, and, while other freshmen were compelled to bow before and kiss the picture, Dashleigh and Starbright were made to sit on the stools and sing:

“Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe? Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, meerschaum pipe? Oh, who will smoke my meerschaum pipe, when I am far away?

“Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl? Oh, who will go to see my girl, see my girl? Oh, who will go to see my girl, when I am far away?

“Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips? Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, ruby lips? Oh, who will kiss her ruby lips, when I am far away?

“Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand? Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, snow-white hand? Oh, who will squeeze her snow-white hand, when I am far away?”

It was one of those popular college songs which can run on forever, like Tennyson’s brook, and never get weary; and while Dashleigh thumped away on the mandolin and he and Dick bawled out every variation and every verse they had ever heard of or could think of, the captured freshmen were, one by one, forced to crawl reluctantly forward and honor the proprietor of “Billie’s.”

It was all very funny—to the sophomores, and to students who, like Dick and Bert, could take the thing coolly and good-humoredly. To others it was gall and wormwood. Morgan was brought back three times and made to moisten the top of “Billie’s” head with his “roseate spoon-bill,” as Jack Ready facetiously termed Dade’s lips, and Dade grew madder and madder, until he was in a fighting-mood.

When released at last he stumbled blindly away, vowing vengeance on the whole tribe of Yale sophomores. As he pitched on in the semigloom, almost too blind to see which way he was going, he heard his name called, and, turning about, beheld what he took to be one of the tormenting sophomores.

“If you follow me any farther, I’ll spread your nose all over your face!” he threatened.

Whereupon the supposed sophomore drew nearer, laughing in a silent, mirthless way.

“My dear Dade, you are losing your customary calm!” came the warning in a familiar voice.

The supposed sophomore was Hector King.