Part 3

Henrietta had started toward the steps and the Watermelon turned to follow her, when he saw _her_ standing on the top step, looking straight at him across Henrietta's shoulder. His first impulse was to stand and stare, his second, to turn and run back to Mike and James and his old clothes, his third, which he followed blindly, was to stumble forward, hat in hand, not from any respect for woman in the abstract, but just for her, her tiny feet, her small white teeth, her dimple. She would not come up to his shoulder by at least six inches, she was very slender, and in her high-waisted, yellow frock, she seemed a mere wisp of a girl. Her hair and eyes were brown, her cheeks flushed like the petals of an apple blossom. She had a crooked little smile that brought a single dimple in one soft cheek. Her hat was a big, flapping affair, covered with buttercups and daisies.

The Watermelon, gazing at her, forgot everything, Henrietta, dinner, the general. He stared and she stared back. The brown suit with the pale green stripe and the faint suggestion of red, lent an undeniable improvement to the broad shoulders and long limbs of the graceful Watermelon. The admirable shave and hair-cut the village barber had given him in exchange for his own quarter, revealed the square-cut chin and the good-natured, careless mouth of the born ne'er-do-well. Under the brim of the soft expensive panama, were his woman's eyes, now tragic and unhappy, for who was he but a tramp, a frequenter of the highways and back streets, an associate of James and Mike?

"Billy," said Henrietta, "we have had an adventure and picked up another guest. Miss Bartlett, Mr. Batchelor."

"Were you part of the adventure?" asked Billy, holding out her hand.

"Yes," said the Watermelon, incapable of further speech.

Henrietta presented him to Mr. Bartlett, a stout, red-faced gentleman of middle age. Wealth, success, self-complacency radiated from him like the rays of the sun. He grasped the hard brown hand of the Watermelon and looked the young man up and down, noticing the pin in his tie, the panama and the silk socks without seeming fairly to notice the man.

"William Hargrave Batchelor?" he murmured questioningly.

"The same," answered the general heartily, feeling that he had done something praiseworthy in capturing the young man. He drew off his gloves and beamed at the Watermelon.

"He is a young one to beat us, Bartlett. We ought to be Oslerized."

Bartlett's eyes gleamed and he shook the Watermelon's hand with renewed pleasure. "Youth," said he oratorically, "is hard to beat, General, but we aren't deaduns yet. I have had an occasional try at the Street, myself, Mr. Batchelor. You may have heard of me."

"Oh, yes," said the Watermelon absent-mindedly, thinking of the girl with the single dimple and the turned-up nose.

"Father took me, once," said Billy. "It was terrible. Are you a broker, Mr. Batchelor?"

"Haven't you read yesterday's papers, Billy?" exclaimed Henrietta.

"I never read the papers," admitted Billy, with a charming smile. "Just the front page head-lines, sometimes."

"He was there," laughed the general. "In inch-high print. He broke the cotton ring, my dear." The general's tone was full of reflected glory as the host of the great man.

"Oh," cried Billy, "that's where father lost so much. He told me this morning, just as we left the house--"

Bartlett glanced sharply at the Watermelon and interrupted Billy with a laugh. "You get everything wrong, my dear," said he, tweaking her ear. "I said a good deal of money had been lost--"

"But, papa," protested Billy, "you said--"

"Come to dinner, everybody, please," interrupted Henrietta, in response to an appealing glance from Bartlett. "I am starving whether you others are or not."

"We had better," cried the general jocularly, "or this young man will become a bear instead of a bull." He laid his hand affectionately on the Watermelon's shoulder and walked down the hall with it resting there.

*CHAPTER V*

*A PLAN AND A TELEGRAM*

The big, cool dining-room, with tall palms and plants, snowy tables and gleaming silver, the crowd of well-dressed people, the talk and laughter, and the obsequious, hurrying waiters, was not a new experience to the Watermelon. For one short, painful week, he had essayed to be a waiter and had finally seen the folly of his ways and given it up after he had broken more china than his wages, which were withheld, could cover. His complete indifference as to what people thought of him made him entirely at his ease, while his scattered wits were coming back with a rush and his colossal self-assurance was growing every moment he was in the society of the charming Billy.

"I was a hash-slinger once," said he, gazing at her across the table.

Her small nose wrinkled with pleasure and the single dimple flashed forth and was gone.

"That's right," said the general, who grew more fond of his guest with every passing remark. "Don't be ashamed of the past just because you have money now."

"You blacked boots, too, I believe?" questioned Bartlett, the results of that unfortunate cotton deal he had participated in still rankling. "Quite interesting."

The Watermelon had ears only for Billy. She spoke and it was as if the others had been silent.

"Was it fun?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," drawled the Watermelon sarcastically. "It was fun all right. Everybody wanted to be waited on first and everybody wanted the white meat."

"What did they do when they didn't get waited on?" asked Billy.

"Yelled at me," said the Watermelon, "as if I was their servant. This is a free country and we are all equal. I said that to one old gent once and it raised Cain."

"What'd he say?"

"He said that might be, but we didn't remain equal."

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'I know it and I am sorry for you, sir. Don't blame yourself too much,' I said. 'Was it drink that did it?' When I left they didn't give me any pay."

"Why not?" asked Billy, eagerly amused.

"They said I had broken too many dishes. I said if I had known they were going to keep my pay, I would have broken twice as many."

"Why didn't you do it, then?" asked Billy, whose ideas of vengeance were young and drastic.

"Too much work," explained the Watermelon. "If I wasn't extra strong, I wouldn't have been able to break what I did."

"I presume you return to the city to-night?" questioned Bartlett.

The Watermelon thought of the shivering wretch who was trying to hide his nakedness in the forest depths and shook his head. "I'm leaving about three," said he, putting the parting off as long as possible because of Billy. It hurt him to think of leaving her, even then, charming, dainty Billy.

"Tell me some other things you have done," teased Billy.

"If I sat over that side," said the Watermelon with the boldness of desperation. In two short hours they would part for good, so why not make the most of the short time allowed? "If I sat over that side, I could tell you so much better the sad, sweet story of my life."

"Come on," laughed Billy. And the Watermelon rose, to the amusement of those nearest, went around the table and drew up a chair beside Billy, with the general on the other side of him.

Henrietta made vain attempts to take a hostess' part in the conversation, and both Billy and the Watermelon made equally polite and good-natured endeavors to include her, but when two are young, and one is pretty and the other handsome, a third person assumes the proportions of not a crowd so much as a mob. The general was enjoying himself sufficiently with his dinner. He and Bartlett had gone to the same school and he felt as much right to neglect Bartlett as though he had been a brother. Henrietta turned to Bartlett and they chatted on the trivial affairs of the day, while Henrietta wondered if she did seem so very old to the Watermelon and Bartlett matured a plan that had come to him like an inspiration as he watched the Watermelon's frank admiration for Billy.

In the crash on the Street which had broken the cotton ring and had brought a comparatively young and hitherto unknown man into prominence, Bartlett had lost more than he cared to think about. Though his name had not appeared, he had been heavily involved. The ring had needed but a week, a day, more to bring it to perfection, then in a night, from whence hardly a soul knew, having worked quietly, steadily, persistently, this unforeseen factor had arisen and defeat stared the ring in the face. Another week would bring complete collapse unless this William Hargrave Batchelor could be suppressed. They had tried to see him, but he would not be seen. Clearly he had no price, preferring to fight to a finish, which was an admirable quality in one so young, but hardly to be desired in an opponent who unfortunately had every chance to win. Voluntarily, he would not leave the fight, but if he could be suppressed? The following Saturday was the crucial time. If he did not return until the day after?

Bartlett had left the city late the previous afternoon to spend Sunday with Billy, away from the heat and worry of the scene of battle, and here was William Hargrave Batchelor, apparently doing the same thing. Clearly it was a dispensation of Providence. There was Billy, and after all William Hargrave Batchelor was young and human. He had probably never known girls like Billy before, or dined with them as equals. He certainly had made no attempt to hide his admiration for this particular one. Bartlett chatted gaily with Henrietta and watched the two opposite, trying to decide if it would be possible to kidnap the young man for a week, take him farther into the country, get him away from Wall Street at any cost. Were Billy's charms equal to the attempt?

William Hargrave Batchelor was said to be a cold, hard-headed youth, who had risen by sheer grit and determination to the place he now held, riding rough-shod over his own and every one else's desires and pleasures. A calm, imperturbable young man, with cruel keen eyes, the papers described him. Watching him across the table, Bartlett decided that his square jaw and thin mouth fitted the description fairly well, but that the eyes were a complete contradiction. They were neither keen nor cruel, but soft and mild and sleepy. The whole face was careless, indifferent, and if it were not for the jaw, Bartlett would have hardly believed it possible that Batchelor was sitting opposite him. His own jaw snapped and he swore to himself that he would keep him for a week, either through Billy or otherwise. So strong is the power of suggestion, it did not enter his head to question the youth's identity.

They were rising from the table now. The general, having dined to his satisfaction, was beaming with good humor and stories. Excusing himself a moment, Bartlett hurried to the telegraph station in the office. He hunted for his code, but could not find it and had to write the telegram in English. It would be safe enough. The operator was a raw country youth who wouldn't be able to understand it anyway, and it would go direct to his broker, who would be spending the day at his country place on Long Island.

"Have W.H.B.," wrote Bartlett. "Will take him for a week's tour in the country, with Billy's help. Eat them up."

"Rush it," he ordered sternly, "and bring me the answer. I will wait for it on the porch."

The news soon spread that the stranger dining with the general and his daughter was none other than the suddenly famous young stock broker, whose grim defiance of the Street was told in head-lines in the daily papers, and whose life from the cradle up was thrillingly recounted in the Sunday supplement. When he had changed his seat at the table, there had been a suppressed titter of amusement for the eccentricities of a great man, and those who made a study of human nature saw plainly an indication of that character which knew what it wanted and would get it and keep it, overriding all obstacles. A man like that, nothing could down.

As they stood on the porch after dinner, waiting for Bartlett to rejoin them, the four were soon surrounded by an ever-growing circle of friends and near friends, and to his pained surprise, the Watermelon was the admired center of the group. All looked on him much as the general did, not so much as a man but as a character out of the Sunday supplement. Bored to exhaustion, he shook hands limply with a score or more whom he did not know and did not want to know.

It was getting late and he would have to return the clothes and become once more merely the Watermelon. He had forgotten the beauty show and had no heart for it now. When he left Billy nothing more counted, nothing mattered. Old clothes or good, hobo or millionaire, without Billy, one was as desirable as the other. He would return the clothes and beat it up the line that evening. James and Mike could go to grass. Meanwhile, instead of getting the most out of the short space of time allotted to him and having Billy alone somewhere, here he was shaking hands with a frowsy bunch of highbrows.

"Mr. Batchelor, would you invest in copper, if you were I?" queried an elderly maiden whose hand he had weakly grasped and but just dropped.

The Watermelon looked around, desperately, miserably. Billy was gazing at him from the edge of the crowd, awe fighting with admiration and amusement on her small face. Henrietta had presented him gaily, to this one and that, and the general, thoroughly in his element, stood by and showed him off as though he were a new horse or the latest model motor-car.

"No," said the Watermelon. "I would not invest in copper."

"Have you any copper?" questioned another with a wink that the great man was caught.

"No," repeated the Watermelon with the animation of a hitching-post. "I have no copper. I have never had any, not even pennies," he added, thinking how fast the time was going and he would become a tramp again, with ragged clothes and empty pockets, while Billy would still be--Billy.

Every one laughed and the general essayed a joke on his own account. "Greenbacks are a better investment," said he, "and you have invested in them pretty well."

"How could you tear yourself away from the Street?" asked one impressionable young thing.

"I don't know," said the Watermelon. "Wall Street is practically my home." And he gazed languidly over their heads into the trees across the road.

"Oh, Mr. Batchelor, do you think the tariff will affect the cost of living?" inquired another of his new friends. "So many people claim that it will."

Henrietta laughed. "Poor Mr. Batchelor," said she. "You can now realize some of the drawbacks to greatness."

"The tariff," said the Watermelon monotonously, "is all right. Take it from me."

He glanced again at Billy. The clock in the garage struck two and he hesitated no longer. "My car," he muttered vaguely, and made for the steps. He ran down them and started around the hotel toward the stables. As he passed near the place where Billy stood, he looked up straight into her eyes.

"Aren't you coming to see my car--Billy?" he asked, the odd little name below his breath, so that even she did not hear.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Billy.

He caught her hands and swung her down to the lawn beside him.

At the garage they did not stop. The Watermelon heard the general panting behind in the distance, but he did not pause. Ungratefully he led the way down a narrow path around the stable, into the deep, cool shade of the woods. It was two. He would give himself until the clock struck three, before he slunk away into the unknown again.

*CHAPTER VI*

*WHAT IS HEAVEN LIKE*

They found a little mossy knoll beside the brook and Billy made herself comfortable against a tree trunk, while the Watermelon sprawled at her feet.

"Say," said he, "what do those guys take me for? The editor of the 'Answer to correspondents' page?"

"I bet you know as much," said Billy with artless simplicity.

"Sure, I know as much," grinned the Watermelon. "But I'm not paid to tell what I know. It would be starvation rates for mine," he added.

Billy laughed. "Didn't you ever go to school?" she asked.

"Yes, I went to school, when father didn't forget."

"Didn't forget?"

"He had eight kids, you see, and he used to say a man couldn't be responsible for more than six. Two kids, he used to say, were a blessing, four a care, six a burden, and eight an affliction, and no man is responsible for his afflictions."

"I wish I had some relatives," said Billy wistfully. "There are only daddy and I. Don't you like relatives, some one who belongs to you?"

"Father used to say that relatives were an affliction, and he supposed a man had to have afflictions to make a man of him, but if he had had any influence with Providence, he would have preferred not to be a man."

"Who was your father?" asked Billy.

"A minister," answered the Watermelon, clasping his hands behind his head and staring up at the interlaced boughs overhead. "A country minister. He used to say that there was just one thing in this world more pitiful than a country minister, and that was his wife."

"Why," cried Billy, "the papers said he used to be a policeman."

"I thought you didn't read the papers?"

"I don't, just the Sunday supplements," said Billy frankly, as one to whom his intellectual development is of minor importance.

The Watermelon wheeled over with a laugh and caught her hand. "Hang dad!" he exclaimed. "Where'd you get your name?"

He drew himself up on the log beside her, as near as he dared. He wanted to put his arm around the slim waist, but decided that he had better not.

She jerked her hand away and laughed, her small nose wrinkled, the dimple coming and going. "Don't you like it?"

"Sure. It's classy, all right. But what is the long of it?"

"Wilhelmina. Dad's is William, just like yours. We're all Billies."

"Mine ain't William," sneered the Watermelon, edging a bit nearer.

Her eyes opened and she stared in frank surprise. "But the papers say--"

"The papers lie faster than I can," said the Watermelon, "and that's fairly speedy." He had only an hour and he did not care what she thought between him and the papers. "Billy is a darned cute little name, and a cute little girl," he added.

"I guess you can lie faster than the papers," said she.

"I can when I want to," admitted the Watermelon. "Father used to say that a man that couldn't lie was a fool and one who wouldn't, a bigger."

"I should think if your father was a minister that he wouldn't lie," said Billy severely.

"I know. But he used to say he had to in a business way. To tell a man that there was a bigger hell than this earth was a lie on the face of it."

"Why?"

"Because there couldn't be, he used to say."

"Don't you believe in Heaven?" demanded Billy.

"Sure," said the Watermelon.

"What do you think it's like?" asked Billy.

"A watermelon patch," said the Watermelon promptly. "Just when all the fruit is ripe. Don't you think so?"

"I think it's an ice-cream counter," said Billy.

"Naw. At an ice-cream counter you would have to have money."

"Not in Heaven, you wouldn't," said Billy. "It would all be free and you could have as much as you wanted."

"Who would wait on you? Any one could pick a watermelon, but everybody can't mix an ice-cream soda."

"The bad people would. That would be hell, you see, always serving it to others and never allowed to taste any."

"That wouldn't work, either," objected the Watermelon. "Because there would be so many more to do the serving than there would be people to serve. No, we are both wrong. Heaven is a grove of trees back of a white garage. There's a fallen log and a couple sitting on it."

"I should think that would be monotonous," said Billy. "Do they talk?"

"Sure, they talk. Heaven ain't a deaf and dumb asylum."

"I should think they would get talked out during eternity."

"Ah," said the Watermelon, leaning a bit nearer, "eternity is but a minute."

"What do they talk about?"

"Heaven."

"Are they angels?"

"One is."

Billy laughed. "Who are you?" she asked, leaning toward him, one hand resting on the log between them, her steady eyes on his face.

The Watermelon again drew forth the card case, extracted a card and presented it to her with a flourish.

Holding it, she shook her head dubiously. "I mean are you a stock-broker? Are you on 'Change? Father has been nearly all his life, and he looks it. His eyes and--everything. Your eyes are different, quite different. I don't mean in color and size, for of course they would be, but in expression."

"How do you know?" asked the Watermelon. "You have only seen their expression when I have been looking at you, and a man doesn't look at a girl as if she were the tape from the ticker."

"I know," acknowledged Billy. "But I have known brokers all my life, and some have been young, and they--they aren't like you. I never sat on a log with one and talked about Heaven."

"Well, you see, I am a minister's son, and I had Heaven with every meal, as it were."

"Maybe that's it," agreed Billy.

A stick snapped behind them as though some one were approaching their retreat with stealthy tread under cover of the friendly bushes.

"Are you afraid of cows?" asked Billy, glancing over her shoulder fearfully.

"Not of female cows," said the Watermelon.

"A broker wouldn't have said that," objected Billy, pursing up her mouth. "A broker would say, 'No, indeed, Miss Bartlett. Don't be afraid. A cow is really harmless,' and smile as if I were young and half-witted, anyway."

A stick snapped again, nearer, and a woodpecker fled from a group of trees, scolding angrily.

Billy rose nervously. "If that's a male cow--"

"Sit down," ordered the Watermelon. "It's no cow, unfortunately. It's the general."

"Don't you like the general?" asked Billy, sitting down again, but ready to rise quickly, instantly.

"Yes, I like him, but I don't think I would if I were a motor-car."

"I have known him and Henrietta all my life," said Billy. "Henrietta has been like a mother to me," she added, a statement Henrietta would have denied, shortly but firmly. "Really, we ought to go back."

"Politeness is not politeness unless it comes from the heart," said the Watermelon, in the tones that had made Henrietta think of a minister, she knew not why.

"Did your father used to say that?"

"No, he never had any cause to. We never were polite."

Billy glanced around. "I thought I heard some one cough."

"So did I. It can't be the general. He wouldn't cough."

A hollow cough sounded distinctly from the bushes behind and the Watermelon rose to investigate. It was nearly three and at three he would have to go, or the man down yonder in the swimming hole might come after him to reclaim his clothes and motor-car. The Watermelon begrudged every precious moment.

"Wait, and I will see what the mutt wants," said he. "You will wait, won't you?" he pleaded, looking down at her where she sat on the log.

"We really ought to go," said Billy.

"All right, but don't run off until I've--I've cured that cough, will you?"

Billy nodded and the Watermelon strode to the bushes from whence had sounded the harsh, constrained cough. He pushed the branches aside and gazed into the small, pinched face of a thin youth of about eighteen, dressed in the uniform of the hotel.

"Hist," cautioned the boy, before the Watermelon could speak. "I want to tell you something important."

"All right, spit it out and be quick about it," ordered the Watermelon.

If the real William Hargrave Batchelor had managed to get word to the hotel about the impostor, the sooner he knew it the better. The boy had probably come to offer to help him escape in exchange for something, money most likely. Like all tramps, the Watermelon was quick to read faces, and in the crafty young face before him, he saw only the dollar mark.