Part 15

“Well, this is my yard,” Daisy reminded them severely. “I guess as long as you’re in my yard, you’ll please be p’lite enough to play what I say. I guess I got _some_ rights in my own yard, haven’t I?”

“I guess you better remember you ast us over here to play with you,” Laurence Coy retorted, and his severity was more than equal to hers. “We never came an’ ast you if we _could_, did we? You better learn sense enough to know that long as you ast _us_, we got a right to play what we want to, because we’re company, an’ we aren’t goin’ to play have you scalp us!”

“You _haf_ to,” Daisy insisted. “I got a perfect right to play what I want to in my own yard.”

“You go on play it, an’ scalp yourself, then,” Laurence returned ungallantly. “Elsie, what _you_ want to play?”

“I doe’ want to play rough games,” Elsie said. “I doe’ like those fighting games.”

“Well, what do you like?”

“Well, nice quiet games,” she replied. “I’d be willing to play school.”

“How do you play it?”

“Well, I’d be willing to be the teacher,” she said. “You all sit down in a row, an’ I’ll say what punishments you haf to have.”

Daisy instantly objected. “No, _I’ll_ be the teacher!”

“You won’t!” Laurence said. “Elsie’s got to be the teacher because she’s company, an’ anyway she said so first.” And the majority agreeing to this, it was so ordered; whereupon Daisy, after some further futile objections, took her place with the boys. They sat in a row upon the grass, facing Elsie, who stood on the steps confronting them.

“Now, the first thing to do,” she said, “I better find out who’s the worst; because you every one been very, very naughty an’ deserve the terrablest punishments I can think of. I haf to think what I’m goin’ to do to you.” She paused, then pointed at Laurence. “Laurence Coy, you’re the very worst one of this whole school.”

“What did I do?” Laurence inquired.

“You said you hated girls.”

“Well, I did say that,” he admitted; and then, lest his comrades suspect him of weakening, he added: “I hate every last thing about ’em!”

“I bet you don’t,” said Daisy Mears, giggling.

Laurence blushed. “I _do_!” he shouted. “I hate every last——”

“Hush!” said the teacher. “That’s very, very, very naughty, and you haf to be punished. You haf to be—well, I guess you haf to be spanked.”

“I doe’ care!” Laurence said, seeming to forget that this was only a game. “I hate girls and every last thing about ’em!”

“Hush!” Elsie said again. “I ’point Robert Eliot and Freddie Mears monitors. Robert must hold you while Freddie spanks you.”

But Daisy jumped up, uncontrollably vociferous. “No, no!” she shouted. “_I’m_ goin’ to be a monitor! This is my yard, an’ I guess I got _some_ rights around here! Robert can hold him, but I got to spank him.”

“Very well,” said Elsie primly. “I ’point Daisy in Freddie’s place.”

Master Coy did not take this well; he rose and moved backward from the enthusiastic Daisy. “I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t let her spank me.”

“You _haf_ to,” Daisy told him, clapping her hands. “You haf to do whatever Elsie says. You said so yourself; you said she had to be the teacher, an’ we haf to do whatever she tells us.”

“I won’t!” he responded doggedly, for now he felt that his honour was concerned. “I won’t do it!”

“Robert Eliot!” Elsie said reprovingly. “Did you hear me ’point you a monitor to hold Laurence while he’s punished?”

“You better keep away from me,” Laurence warned Robert, as the latter approached, nothing loth. “I won’t do it!”

“_I’m_ goin’ to do it,” said Daisy. “All you haf to do is hold still.”

“I won’t!” said Laurence.

“I guess I better do it with this,” Daisy remarked, and, removing her left slipper as she and Robert continued their advance upon Laurence, she waved it merrily in the air. “What you so ’fraid of, Laurence?” she inquired boastingly. “This isn’t goin’ to hurt you—_much_!”

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “And you better put it back where it was if you ever want to see it again. I’ll take that ole slipper, an’ I’ll——”

“Teacher!” Daisy called, looking back to where Elsie stood. “Didn’t you say this naughty boy had to be spanked?”

“Yes, I did,” Elsie replied. “You hurry up and do it!”

Her voice was sweet; yet she spoke with sharpness, even with a hint of acidity, which the grown-up observer, forgotten by the children, noted with some surprise. Renfrew had been sure that he detected in Master Coy the symptoms of a tender feeling for Elsie. Laurence had deferred to her, had been the first to appeal to her when she sat aloof, had insisted that she should choose the game to play, and when she had chosen, hotly championed her claim to be the “teacher.” Above all was the difference in his voice when he spoke to her, and that swallowing of air, that uneasiness of the neck. Renfrew was sure, too, that Elsie herself must be at least dimly aware of these things, must have some appreciation of the preference for her that they portended—and yet when she was given authority, her very first use of it was to place Master Coy in a position unspeakably distasteful to himself. Sometimes children were impossible to understand, Renfrew thought—and so were some grown people, he added, in his mind, with a despondent glance across the street.

Having glanced that way, his eyes came to rest upon the open window of a room upstairs, where the corner of a little satinwood writing-table was revealed—Muriel’s, he knew. Branches of a tall maple tree gave half the window a rococo frame, and beyond this bordering verdure sometimes he had caught glimpses of a graceful movement, shadowy within the room—a white hand would appear for an instant moving something on the desk, or adjusting the window-shade for a better light; or at the best, it might be half revealed, half guessed, that Muriel was putting on her hat at a mirror. But this befell only on days when she was in a gentle mood with him, and so it was seldom. Certainly it was not to-day, though she might be there; for when she was gloomiest about her environment (of which he was so undeniably a part) she might indeed sit at that charming little satinwood table to write, but sat invisible to him, the curtains veiling her. Of course, at such times, there was only one thing left for Renfrew to do, and legend offers the parallel of the niggardly mother who locked up the butter in the pantry, but let her children rub their dry bread on the knob of the pantry door. Renfrew could look at the window.

The trouble was that when he looked at it, he was apt to continue to look at it for an indefinite period of time, during which his faculties lost their usefulness; people whom he knew might pass along the sidewalk, nod graciously to him, and then, not realizing his condition, vow never to speak again to so wooden a young snob. And into such a revery—if revery it were that held no thoughts, no visions, but only the one glamorous portrait of an empty window—he fell to-day. The voices of the children, sharp with purpose, shrill with protest, but died in his tranced ear as if they came from far away. The whole summer day, the glancing amber of the sunshine, the white clouds ballooning overhead between the tree-tops, the warm touch and smell of the air—these fell away from his consciousness. “He’s nothing,” the lonely poetess brusquely wrote of him; and now, for the time, it was almost true, since he was little more than a thought of a vacant window.

When Renfrew was in this jellied state, something rather unusual was needed to rouse him—though a fire-department ladder-truck going by, with the gong palavering, had done it. What roused him to-day were sounds less metallic, but comparable in volume and in certain ways more sensational. As he stood, fixed upon the window, he slowly and vaguely became aware that the children seemed to be excited about something. Like some woodland dreamer who discovers that a crow commune overhead has been in hot commotion for some time without his noticing it, he was not perturbed, but gradually wakened enough to wonder what the matter was. Then he turned and looked mildly about him.

His sister Daisy still held her slipper, but it was now in her left hand; in her right she had a shingle. Accompanied by Robert Eliot, she was advancing in a taunting manner upon Laurence Coy; and all three, as well as the rest of the children, may be described as continuously active and poignantly vociferous. Master Coy had armed himself with a croquet mallet, and his face expressed nothing short of red desperation; he was making a last stand. He warned the world that he would not be responsible for what he did with this mallet.

Master Eliot also had a mallet; he and Daisy moved toward Laurence, feinting, charging and retreating, while the other children whooped, squealed, danced and gave shrill advice how the outlaw might best be taken.

Daisy was the noisiest of all. “_I’ll_ show you, Mister Laurence Coy!” she cried. “You went an’ tore my collar, an’ you hit me with your elbow on my nose, an’——”

“I’m glad I did!” Laurence returned.

“It _hurts_ me, too!” Daisy proclaimed.

“I’m glad it does! You had no business to grab me, an’ I’m glad I——”

“_We’ll_ show you!” she promised him. “Soon as we get hold of you I’m goin’ to spank you till this shingle’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’ to keep on till my slipper’s all wore out, an’ then I’m goin’ to take off my _other_ slipper an’——”

“_Look_, Daisy!” Elsie Threamer cried. “While Robert keeps in front of him, why don’t you go round behind him? Then you could grab his mallet, and Robert could throw him down.”

At this the dreamy Renfrew looked at Elsie in a moderate surprise. Elsie, earlier so aloof upon her higher plane, was the lady who had objected to roughness; it was she who said she didn’t like “those fighting games.” Yet here she was now, dancing and cheering on the attack, as wolfish as the rest, as intent as any upon violence to the unfortunate Laurence. Nay, it was she who had devised and set in motion the very engine for his undoing.

“Get behind him, Daisy,” she squealed. “That’ll fix him!”

“She better _not_ get behind me!” the grim Laurence warned them. “Her ole nose got _one_ crack already to-day, an’ if it gets another——”

“I’ll take care o’ that, Mister Laurence Coy!” Daisy assured him. “I’ll look after my own nose, I kinely thank you.”

“Yes, you will!” he retorted bitterly. “It ain’t hardly big enough to see it, an’ I bet if it comes off on this mallet, nobody could tell it was gone.”

“I’ll—I’ll show you!” Daisy returned, finding no better repartee, though she evidently strove. “I’ll pay you with this paddle for every one of your ole insulks!”

“Run _behind_ him!” Elsie urged her. “Why didn’t you run behind and grab him?”

“You watch!” Daisy cried. “You keep pokin’ at him in front, Robert.” And she darted behind Laurence, striking at the swinging mallet with her shingle.

But Laurence turned too, pivoting; and as he did, Robert Eliot, swinging his own weapon, rushed forward. The two mallets clattered together; there was a struggle—a confused one, for there were three parties to it, Daisy seeming to be at once the most involved and the most vigorous of the three. Her left arm clung about Laurence’s neck, with the sole of her slipper pressed against his face, which he strove hard to disengage from this undesirable juxtaposition; her right arm rose and fell repeatedly, producing a series of muffled sounds.

“I’ll show you!” she said. “I’ll show you whose nose you better talk about so much!”

“Ya-a-ay, Laurence!” the other children shouted. “Gettin’ spanked by a _girl_! Ya-ay, Laur-_runce_!”

They uproariously capered between Renfrew and the writhing group; but it struck him that the two mallets, which were both moving rather wildly, might do damage; and he moved toward the mêlée.

“Here!” he called. “What’s all this nonsense? Put down those mallets.”

He spoke too late. The maddened Laurence’s feelings differed little from those of a warrior manhandled by a squaw in the midst of the taunting tribe; and in his anguish his strength waxed exceedingly. His mallet described a brief arc in the air, and not Daisy’s nose, but the more evident nose of fat Robert Eliot, was the recipient. Contact was established audibly.

Robert squawked. He dropped his mallet, clasped his nose, and lay upon the good earth. Then when he looked at his ensanguined fingers, he seemed to feel that his end was hard upon him. He shrieked indeed.

Daisy also complained, an accident having befallen her, though she took it for no accident. “_Ooh!_” she said. “You made your elbow hit me in the stummick, Laurence Coy!” She stood as a semicircle, and clasped herself, while the noise of the other children was hushed—except the extreme noise of Robert—and the discomfort of sudden calamity fell upon them. Their silent mouths were all open, particularly that of Laurence Coy, whom Daisy did little to reassure.

“I bet I haf to have the doctor,” she prophesied ominously; and then, pointing to the fallen, she added: “An’ I bet Robert’s goin’ to _die_.”

“Nonsense!” her brother said, bending over Robert. “Nonsense!”

But Laurence Coy did not hear this optimistic word. Laurence had no familiarity with mortal wounds;—to his quaking eye, Robert bore a fatal appearance, and Daisy’s chill prophecy seemed horribly plausible. Laurence departed. One moment he stood there, pallid and dumfounded, but present; and the next, no one could have defined his whereabouts with certainty. All that could be known was that he had gone, and from the manner of his going, it might well be thought that he was shocked to find himself forgetting a rendezvous appointed for this very moment at some distant spot;—he had a hurried air.

Others were almost as deeply affected by Daisy’s gloomy prophecy. As soon as she put the thought in their minds, Thomas Kimball, Freddie Mears and the remarkable Elsie were all convinced that Robert was near his passing, and with natural solicitude they had but the one thought in common: to establish an alibi.

“Well, _I_ never went anywhere near him,” Elsie said. “I never even _touched_ a mallet!”

“Neither’d I!” said Thomas Kimball. “I wasn’t in ten feet of him.”

“_I_ wasn’t in a hunderd!” said Freddie.

“It wasn’t _me_!” Thomas protested. “_I_ didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It was Laurence Coy,” said Freddie. “_That’s_ who it was.”

“It was every _bit_ Laurence Coy,” said Elsie. “I _told_ them not to play such rough games.”

Thus protesting, the three moved shyly toward various exits from the yard, and protesting still, went forth toward their several dwelling-places—and went unnoticed, for Robert was the centre of attention. The volume of sound he produced was undiminished, though the tone had elevated somewhat in pitch, and he seemed to intend words, probably of a reproachful nature; but as his excess of emotion enabled him to produce only vowels, the effect was confused, and what he wished to say could be little more than guessed.

“Hush, hush!” said Renfrew, trying to get him to stand up. “You’ll bring the whole town here!”

Robert became more coherent. “He _him_ me om my _mose_!”

“I know,” said Renfrew. “But you’re not much hurt.”

Appearing to resent this, Robert cried the louder. “I am, too!” he wailed. “I bet I _do_ die!”

“Nonsense!”

“_I_ bet he does,” said the gloomy Daisy. “He _is_ goin’ to die, Renfrew.”

Pessimism is useful sometimes, but this was not one of the times. When Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head down, Robert incarnadined Renfrew’s trousers at intervals, while the young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the swelling nose.

“If I—’f I—’f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process, “they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”

“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn’t even broken.”

“Well, my stummick is,” Daisy said, attending upon them and still in the semicircular attitude she had assumed for greater comfort. “I guess he broke _that_, if he never broke anything else, and whether he gets hung or not, I bet my mother’ll tell his mother she’s got to whip him, when she finds out.”

“When she finds out what?” Renfrew asked.

“When she finds out what he did to my stummick!”

“Pooh,” said Renfrew. “Both of you were teasing Laurence, and worrying him till he hardly knew what he was doing. Besides, there isn’t really anything to speak of the matter with either of you.”

Both resented his making light of injuries so sensational as theirs; and Robert released his voice in an intolerable howl. “There is, _too_! An’ if I got to _die_——”

“Stop that!” Renfrew commanded. “How many times must I tell you? You’re not any more likely to die than I am!”

With that he was aware of a furious maiden entering the gate and running toward them across the lawn, and even as she sped, completing a hasty “putting up” of her hair.

“If he isn’t ‘likely to die,’” she cried, “I’d be glad to know whose fault it is! Not yours, I think, Renfrew Mears!”

At sight of his sister, Master Eliot bellowed anew; he wanted to tell his troubles all over again; but emotion in the presence of sympathy was too much for him; and once more he became all vowels, so that nothing definite could be gathered. Muriel clasped him to her. “Poor darling Bobby!” she said. “Don’t cry, darling! _Sister’ll_ take care of you!”

“Here,” said Renfrew, proffering a fresh handkerchief. “Be careful. His nose isn’t _quite_——”

She took the handkerchief and applied it, but gave the donor no thanks. “I never in all my life saw anything like it!” she exclaimed. “I never saw anything to compare with it!”

“Why, it didn’t amount to so very much,” Renfrew said mildly, though he was surprised at her vehemence. “The children were playing, and they got to teasing, and Robert got tapped on the——”

“‘Tapped!’” she cried. “He might have been killed! But what I meant was _you_!”

“Me?”

“Certainly! You! I never saw anything like your behaviour, and I saw it all from the sofa in my room. If I hadn’t had to dress, I’d have been over here in time to stop it long before you did, Renfrew Mears!”

“Why, I don’t understand at all,” he protested feebly. “You seem angry with _me_! But all I’ve done was to put cold water on Robert’s nose.”

“That’s it!” she cried. “You stood there—I _saw_ you. You stood there, and never lifted a finger while those children were having the most dreadful fight _with croquet mallets_, not forty feet from you! They might _all_ have been killed; and my poor darling little brother almost _was_ killed——”

At this, Robert interrupted her with fresh outcries, and clung to her pitifully. She soothed him, and turned her flashing and indignant eyes upon Renfrew.

“You stood there, not like a man but like a block of wood,” she said. “You didn’t even _look_ at them!”

“Why, no,” said Renfrew. “I was looking at your window.”

Apparently he felt that this was an explanation that explained everything. He seemed to imply that any man would naturally demean himself like a block of wood while engaged in the act of observation he mentioned, even though surrounded by circumstances of murder.

It routed Muriel. She had no words to express her feeling about a person who talked like that; and giving him but one instant to take in the full meaning of her compressed lips, her irate colour and indignant breathing, she turned pointedly away. Then, with Robert clinging to her, she went across the lawn and forth from the gate, while Mr. Mears and his small sister watched in an impressed silence.

Some one else watched Muriel as she supported the feeble steps of the weeping fat boy across the street; and this was the self-styled woman-hater and celebrated malleteer, Master Laurence Coy. He was at a far distance down the street, and in the thorny middle of a hedge where no sheriff might behold him; but he could see, and he was relieved (though solely on his own account) to discover that Robert was still breathing. He was about to come out from the hedge when the disquieting afterthought struck him: Robert might have expressed a wish to be taken to die in his own home. Therefore Laurence remained yet a while where he was.

By the hydrant, Daisy was so interested in the departure of the injured brother and raging sister that she had forgotten her broken stummick and the semicircular position she had assumed to assuage it, or possibly to keep the broken parts together. She stood upright, watching the two emotional Eliots till they had disappeared round their own house in the direction of their own hydrant. Then she turned and looked up brightly at her brother.

“She’s fearful mad, isn’t she?” Daisy said, laughing. “She treats you awful, don’t she?”

“Never mind,” Renfrew said, and then he remembered something that had puzzled him not so painfully; and he wondered if Daisy might shed a light on this. “Daisy, what in the world made you pick on poor little Laurence the way you did?”

“Me?” she asked, surprised. “Why, it was Elsie told us to.”

“That’s it,” Renfrew said. “That’s what I want to know. Laurence was just as nice to her as he could be; he did everything he could think of to please her, and the first chance she got, she set the whole pack of you on him. What did she do a thing like that for?”

Daisy picked a dandelion from the grass and began to eat it. “What?” she inquired.

“What makes Elsie so mean to poor little Laurence Coy?”

“Oh, well,” said Daisy casually, “she likes him best. She likes him best of all the boys in town.” And then, swallowing some petals of the dandelion, she added: “She treats him awful.”

Renfrew looked at her thoughtfully; then his wondering eyes moved slowly upward till they rested once more upon the maple-embowered window over the way, and into his expression there came a hint of something almost hopeful.

“So she does!” he said.

MAYTIME IN MARLOW

IN MAY, when the maple leaves are growing large, the Midland county seat and market town called Marlow so disappears into the foliage that travellers, gazing from Pullman windows, wonder why a railroad train should stop to look at four or five preoccupied chickens in a back yard. On the other hand, this neighbourly place is said to have a population numbering more than three thousand. At least, that is what a man from Marlow will begin to claim as soon as he has journeyed fifteen or twenty miles from home; but to display the daring of Midland patriotism in a word, there have been Saturdays (with the farmers in town) when strangers of open-minded appearance have been told, right down on the Square itself, that Marlow consisted of upwards of four thousand mighty enterprising inhabitants.

After statistics so dashing, it seems fairly conservative to declare that upon the third Saturday of last May one idea possessed the minds and governed the actions of all the better bachelors of Marlow who were at that time between the ages of seventeen and ninety, and that the same idea likewise possessed and governed all the widowers, better and worse, age unlimited.

She was first seen on the Main Street side of the Square at about nine o’clock in the morning. To people familiar with Marlow this will mean that all the most influential business men obtained a fair view of her at an early hour, so that the news had time to spread to the manufacturers and professional men before noon.