Part 6

"It's Robbie," said Carroll in an awed whisper; "his mother's whipping him with that butter-paddle o' hers. She does that when he's awful bad."

"I'd bite her!" murmured Doris between her clenched teeth. "I'd--I'd--scratch her!" She burst into excited tears. "I'd just--hate my mother if she--if she hurt me like that!"

"Pooh! Rob don't care so very much," Carroll assured her; "he says he hollers jus' as loud as he can so his mother'll stop quicker. I s'pose," he continued after a thoughtful pause, "Robbie'll be up to dinner jus' the same, an' we'll be here eatin' bread and milk."

XII

Elizabeth's promised explanation to the father of the culprits above stairs led to a spirited discussion between the husband and wife, after Miss Tripp had retired to her apartment.

"Poor little kids," Sam Brewster said whimsically. "I believe I'm glad I'm not your child, Betty,--I mean, of course, that I'm glad I'm your husband," he amended quickly, as her unsmiling eyes reproached him. "Don't you think you were a little hard on them, though?"

"Hard on them?" she echoed indignantly. "You're much more severe with the children than I am, Sam,--when you're at home. You know you are."

He smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two before replying. "Look here, Betty," he said at last, "you're right in a way. I'm not half so patient as you are, I'll admit. But I wonder if we don't all miss the mark when it comes to disciplining children?--Wait--just a minute before you answer. I've been thinking a whole lot about this business of home rule since we--er--discussed it the other day, and I've come to the conclusion that the only thing to do is to let universal law take its course with them. They are human beings, my dear, and they've got to come up against the law in its broader sense sooner or later. Let 'em begin right now."

She was eyeing him pityingly. "And by that you mean----?"

"I mean," he went on, warming to his subject, "that you've got to teach a child what it means to reap what he sows. If Richard wants to put his finger on the stove and investigate the phenomenon of calorics, let him. He won't do it twice."

"And if he wants to paddle in the aquarium of a cold winter day, you'd----"

"Let him--of course," said Sam stoutly. "He'd feel uncomfortably damp and chilly after a while."

"Yes; and have the croup or pneumonia that same night."

"You're hopelessly old-fashioned, Betty," he laughed; "you shouldn't introduce the croup or pneumonia idea into the infant consciousness. But seriously, my dear, I believe I'm right. If you don't teach the children to recognise the relation between cause and effect now--so that it becomes second nature to them, how are they going to understand the subject when they're put up against it later? You'll find the mother bird and the mother bear, and, in fact, all the animal creation carefully instilling the idea of cause and effect into their offspring from the very beginning; while human parents are as constantly protecting their children from the effects of the causes which the children ignorantly set in motion. In other words we persist in undoing the work of old 'Mother Be-done-by-as-you-did.' It's a blunder, in my opinion. But of course, I'm a mere man and my ideas are not entitled to much consideration."

Elizabeth gazed at her husband with open admiration. "Of course they are entitled to consideration," she said decidedly. "And I believe what you have said--with reservations. Suppose Baby Dick, for example, should lean out of the window too far--a second-story window, I mean--and I should see him doing it and feel pretty certain he was going to pitch out head first and cripple himself for life. Do you think I ought to stand still and let the law of gravitation teach him not to do it a second time?"

Sam Brewster laid down his pipe and gazed steadfastly at his wife. She was looking extremely young and bewitchingly pretty as she leaned toward him, her cheeks pink, her brown eyes glowing with earnestness in which he thought he detected a spark of her old girlish mischief.

"'And still the wonder grew,'" he quoted solemnly, "'that one small head could carry all she knew!'"

"Please answer me, Sam," she insisted.

"Well, of course you've got me. You'd have to haul in the young person by the heels, and----"

"And what, exactly, if you please?"

"You might illustrate--with some fragile, concrete object, like an egg--as to what would happen if he fell out," said Sam, with exceeding mildness, "and----"

"In other words," she interrupted him triumphantly, "I ought to interfere _some_ of the time between cause and effect. The question being when to interfere and when not to."

"Exactly!" he said, planting an irrelevant kiss on the pink cheek nearest him. "And that, my dear Betty, is your job--and, of course, mine, when I'm here. But I still hold that the natural penalty is best--when it's convincingly painful yet entirely innocuous."

"What is the natural penalty for eating cookies out of the box when you've been forbidden to do it?" she wanted to know.

He chuckled as certain memories of his boyhood came back to him. "My word!" he said, "I wish I could ever taste anything half as good as the cookies out of Aunt Julia Brewster's crock--it was a cooky-crock in those days. Of course I was forbidden to go to it without permission, and also of course I did it."

"What happened?" she demanded, the mischief growing bolder in her eyes.

He reflected. "Aunt Julia wouldn't let me have any at table on several occasions; but I--er--regret to say that I was not duly impressed by the punishment. A cooky--one cooky--decorously taken from a china plate at the conclusion of a meal did not, in my youthful opinion, court comparison with six--eight--ten cookies, moist and spicy from their seclusion and eaten with an uncloyed appetite. Let's--er--change the subject for the moment, my dear. Of course I'm right, but I appear to be hopelessly treed. Tell me how our friend Miss Tripp is getting on. She appeared somewhat depressed at dinner-time, and I didn't like to ask for information for fear there was nothing doing."

Elizabeth sighed sympathetically. "Evelyn had a dreadfully disappointing day," she told him. "But"--her eyes dancing again--"she met Mr. Hickey down town, and he actually invited her to lunch with him."

Sam whistled softly. "Hickey is progressing," he said approvingly. "Did he take her to the business men's lunchroom? Hickey has conscientious scruples against going anywhere else. I asked him into Colby's one day and he declined on the ground of his duty as a constant patron of the B. M. L. He said his table was reserved for him there by the season, and----"

"How absurd!" laughed Elizabeth. "But, I was going to tell you; Evelyn remembered another engagement, and so----" she stopped short, her eyes growing luminous. "Sam," she said suddenly, "I don't know what to think of Evelyn; she really didn't have any lunch at all; she said so when she came. I made her a cup of tea; she looked so worn and tired. I wonder if Mr. Hickey could have said anything, or---- What do you think, Sam?"

Sam yawned behind his paper. "I'm really too sleepy to give to the question the profound attention which it merits; but to-morrow when my intellect is fresh and keen, I'll endeavour to----"

"You mean you don't care."

"Suppose I did care, my very dear Betty; suppose my whole career depended upon what Hickey said--or didn't say; what could I do about it?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Sam," said his Elizabeth meekly. But her eyes were still full of speculative curiosity as she went up-stairs.

XIII

The facts in the case, if known to Elizabeth, might have served to throw a clearer light upon Miss Tripp's somewhat unsatisfactory account of her day in the city. In the first place, the weather which had dawned bright and sunny had suddenly turned nasty, with a keen wind driving large, moist snowflakes into the faces of pedestrians. Evelyn had found herself without an umbrella and wearing her best hat and gown walking the long block which intervened between her destination and the car from which she had alighted.

Mrs. Baxter Crownenshield was known to the wide circle of her acquaintances as a large, funereal person, invariably clothed in black, and as perpetually exuding a copious and turgid sympathy upon all who came in contact with her, somewhat after the manner of a cuttle-fish. She lived in a mansion, large and dull like herself, on Beacon Street, where she occupied herself exclusively with those dubious activities euphemistically called "charitable work."

When Miss Evelyn Tripp was shown into Mrs. Crownenshield's chilly reception-room that morning in February, she shivered a little in her damp clothes as she sat down on a slippery chair and endeavoured vaguely to forecast the coming interview. Her mother had suggested Mrs. Crownenshield as a sort of _dernier resort_, with a fretful reminiscence of the days when the Baxter Crownenshields were poor and lived in a third-story back room of a fifth-rate boarding-house.

"I used to give Jane Crownenshield my gowns after I had worn them a season," Mrs. Tripp said querulously; "and glad enough she was to get them. As for her husband, he was not much of a man. Your father used to say Crownenshield couldn't be trusted to earn his salt at honest work in a counting-room; but when the war broke out he borrowed five hundred dollars of your father, and bought and sold army stores. After that he grew rich somehow, and we grew poor. But Jane Crownenshield ought to remember that she owes everything she has to-day to your father."

Miss Tripp perched uncomfortably on the unyielding surface of the inhospitable hair-cloth chair she had chosen, gazed attentively at the portrait of the late lamented Crownenshield which hung over the mantle-piece, and at the bronze representation of the same large and self-satisfied countenance smirking at her from a shadowy corner, while she repeated nervously the opening words with which she hoped to engage his widow's friendly interest. It seemed an interminable period before she heard the slow and ponderous footfall which presaged the majestic approach of Mrs. Crownenshield; as a matter of fact, it was almost exactly half an hour by the dismal-voiced black marble clock surmounted by an urn.

Miss Tripp arose upon the entrance of the large lady in black and held out her hand with a feeble effort after the sprightly ease of her old society manner. "Good morning, Mrs. Crownenshield," she began, in a voice which in spite of herself sounded weak and timid in the gloomy, high-ceiled room. "I do hope I haven't interrupted any important labour--I know you are always so much occupied with--charities, and----"

Mrs. Crownenshield stared meditatively at Miss Tripp's small, slight figure, her gaze appearing to concern itself particularly with her head-gear from which drooped two large dispirited plumes.

"Tripp--Tripp? I don't place you," she said at last,--"unless you are Mary Tripp's daughter. She had a daughter, I believe." The Crownenshield voice was loud and authoritative; it appeared to demand information as something due, upon which interest had accumulated.

"I am Mary Tripp's daughter," Evelyn informed her, in a sudden panic lest she be mistaken for an object of charity; then she hesitated, at a loss for something to say next.

Mrs. Crownenshield sighed heavily. "Poor woman," she observed lugubriously. "Mary Tripp has had many trials to support."

Evelyn's small, sensitive face grew a shade paler. "Yes," she agreed, "my dear mother has had more than her share of sorrow and loss. I wonder if you knew that we--that mother lost all of her remaining property in the failure of the Back-Bay Security Company?"

Mrs. Crownenshield's cold grey eyes opened a little wider upon her visitor. "How regrettable!" she observed. "No; I had not heard of it. But I fear many others have suffered with Mary Tripp. Fortunately for me, my dear late husband's investments were conservative and safe. Mr. Crownenshield did not approve of Trust Companies--except those which he controlled himself. If John Tripp had seen fit to leave his money in trust with Mr. Crownenshield--and I have always felt surprised and hurt to think that he did not do so, after all the business relations of the past--Mary Tripp would be quite comfortable to-day. Pray convey to your poor afflicted mother my condolences, and tell her that I was greatly grieved to learn of her misfortunes."

Evelyn murmured incoherent thanks.

"I--came this morning to ask--your advice," she added after a heavy pause. "I thought--that is, mother thought--that perhaps you--might know of something I could do to--to earn money. I must do something, you know." She had grown hot and cold with the shame of this confession under the unwinking gaze of Mrs. Crownenshield's colourless eyes.

That lady folded her large white hands upon which glittered several massive rings.

"I shall be very glad to advise you," she said, "if you will acquaint me with your qualifications for service. I have frequent opportunities to place indigent but worthy females, such as you appear to be. Are you a good seamstress?"

"I fear not, Mrs. Crownenshield," faltered Evelyn. "I never liked sewing."

"You could earn a dollar a day as a skilled seamstress," intoned the female philanthropist inexorably. "Whether you like sewing or not is of very little consequence in view of your necessities."

"I thought I should prefer teaching, or----"

Mrs. Crownenshield glanced abstractedly at the massive watch which depended from some sort of funereal device in black enamel upon her ample bosom, and compared its silent information with that of the black marble time-piece on the mantle. Then she arose with a smile, which appeared to have been carven upon her large pallid face with the effect of a mask.

"I am very sorry indeed that I can not give you more of my time this morning," she said mournfully. "But I have a board-meeting of The Protestant Evangelical Refuge for aged, indigent and immoral females at half-past eleven o'clock; and at one I am due at a luncheon of the Federated Woman's Charitable Associations of Boston, at which I shall preside."

She arose and enfolded both of Miss Tripp's small cold hands in her large, moist clasp, with an air of fervid emotion.

"I feel for you," she sighed, "I do indeed! and my heart bleeds for your unfortunate mother. Mary Tripp was always accustomed to every luxury and extravagance. She must feel the change to abject poverty; but I trust she will endeavour to lift her thoughts from the sordid cares of earth toward that better land where--I feel sure--my dear late husband is enjoying the rest that remaineth. After all, my poor girl, the consolations of religion are the only sure refuge in this sad world. I always strive to point the way to those situated like yourself."

"Thank you, Mrs. Crownenshield," said Evelyn stonily.

"If there is anything I can do to assist you further, don't fail to call upon me freely!" warbled the lady, as Evelyn passed out into the hall. "I will send you copies of the literature illustrating the work of our various refuges and asylums. You may be glad to refer to them later."

Evelyn found herself in the street, she hardly knew how, her little feet carrying her swiftly away from the Crownenshield residence. She felt hurt and outraged in every fibre of her being, and her tear-blurred eyes took little note of the weather which had changed from a wet clinging snow to mingled rain and sleet, which beat upon her unprotected face like invisible whips. She did not know where to go, or what to do next; but she hurried blindly forward, her limp skirts gathered in one hand, her head bent against the piercing wind.

Then, strangely enough, the stinging blast seemed suddenly shut away and she looked up to find a stout umbrella interposed between her and the storm. The handle of the umbrella was grasped by a large, masterful-looking hand in a shabby brown glove, and a broad shoulder hove into view from behind the hand.

"Where is your umbrella, Miss Tripp?" inquired a voice, as masterful in its way as the hand.

"Oh!--I--that is, I forgot it," she faltered, looking up into Mr. George Hickey's eyes, with a belated consciousness of the tears in her own. "The rain--is--wet," she added, with startling originality.

"Hum; yes," assented Mr. Hickey thoughtfully. He was striving in his dull masculine way to account for the wan, woe-begone expression of Miss Tripp's face and for the telltale drops on her thick brown lashes. "I was on my way to luncheon when I saw you," he went on. "--Er--have you--lunched, Miss Tripp?"

Evelyn shook her head. "Is it as late as that?" she said. "I ought to go----"

"Not back to Mrs. Brewster's," he said; "it's too late for that.--Er--won't you give me the--er--the pleasure of lunching with you? I--er--in fact, I'm exceedingly hungry myself, and----"

Mr. Hickey stopped short and looked about him somewhat wildly. It had just occurred to him that he could not invite Miss Tripp to accompany him to the business men's lunchroom where he usually took his unimportant meal, and he wondered what sort of a place women went to anyway, and what they ate?

The experienced Miss Tripp smiled; she appeared to read his thoughts with an ease which astonished while it frightened him a little.

"It is very good of you to ask me, Mr. Hickey," she said prettily, "and I shall be very happy to take lunch with you. Do you go to Daniels'? It is such a nice place, I think, and not far up the street."

"Oh--er--yes; certainly. I like Daniels' exceedingly. A good place, very. We'll--ah--just step across and---- Oh, I beg your pardon!"

Mr. Hickey was so agitated by the sudden and unprecedented position in which he found himself that he almost knocked Miss Tripp's hat off with a sudden swoop of his umbrella, as they crossed the street.

"How stupid of me!" he cried, as she put it straight with one little hand, smiling up at him forgivingly as she did it. "I'm an awkward sort of a chap, anyway," he went on with another illustrative jab of the umbrella. "I guess I'm hopeless as--er--a ladies' man."

"Oh, no, you aren't," contradicted Miss Tripp sweetly. "I never felt more relieved and--and happy than when I looked up to find your big umbrella between my head and the storm. I went off to town in such a hurry this morning that I left my umbrella in the rack in Elizabeth's hall."

He tried not to look his curiosity; then blurted out his uppermost thought. "You looked awfully done up when I overtook you; what--er----"

"I was," she confessed. "I was ready to weep with rage and disappointment. Have you ever felt that way?"

"Well, no," said Mr. Hickey candidly; "I can't say that I've ever got to the point you mention. I don't believe I've shed a tear since--since my mother died. She was the only person in the world who cared a rap whether I sank or swam, survived or perished, and after she went. I---- But I've been angry enough to--er--cuss a little now and then. Of course ladies can't do that, so----"

Evelyn smiled appreciatively. "It might have relieved my feelings if you had been there to use a little--strong language for me," she said. Then she told him something of her visit to Mrs. Crownenshield and its outcome.

"Hum, yes!" he observed. "I fancy I know her sort, and I--er--despise it. What did you want her to do for you? There, now I've put my foot in! It's none of my business of course, Miss Tripp, and you needn't tell me."

Evelyn hesitated. "I shouldn't like you to think I'm whining or complaining," she said soberly; "but there's no reason why you--or anyone--shouldn't know that I am looking for work. I never have worked"--the brave voice faltered a little--"but that's no reason why I shouldn't work now. In fact, it's a reason why I must. Everything was different when I was a girl to what it is now," she went on, calmly ignoring her "feelings-on-the-subject-of-her-age" which had of late years been abnormally sensitive. "I wasn't brought up to do anything more useful than to sew lace on a pocket-handkerchief and play a few easy pieces on the piano. Of course I learned a little French--enough to chatter ungrammatically when we went abroad--and a little bad German, and a little--a very little execrable Italian--nothing of a usable quantity or quality, you see; so now I find myself----"

"But why? What has happened?" he urged in a low voice.

"The usual and what should have been the expected, I suppose," she told him. "We--that is mother and I--lost our money. We never thought of such a thing happening. We had always drawn checks for what we wanted, and that was all there was of it--till the bank closed, and then of course we had to think."

"I'm--Confound it; it's too bad!" he said strongly. "Banks have no business to close; it's--er--it's a national disgrace. There ought to be some law to--er--put a stop to such outrages on civilisation!"

Miss Tripp said nothing. She was experiencing a quite natural revulsion of feeling, and was now exceedingly sorry that she had confided anything of her affairs to Mr. Hickey. "He'll think of course that I am making a cheap bid for sympathy--perhaps trying to borrow money of him," she thought, while a painful scarlet crept up into her pale cheeks.

Mr. Hickey was not a tactful man. He did not observe the unwonted colour in Miss Tripp's face, nor the proud light in her eyes.

"I've got more money than I know what to do with," he said bluntly, "and--er--I wish you'd allow me to----"

Miss Tripp stopped short. "Oh, Mr. Hickey," she exclaimed regretfully, "I don't know what you will think of me for accepting your kind invitation to luncheon, and then leaving you--as I must. I'd entirely forgotten an important engagement to meet--a friend of mine. I shall have to ask you to excuse me. It's too bad, isn't it? But I am so forgetful. And--please don't worry about my absurd confidences. Really, I exaggerated; I always do. We are perfectly comfortable--mother and I--only of course it was hard to lose our _surplus_--the jam on our bread, as I tell mother. But one can live quite comfortably on plain bread, and it is far better for one; I know that. Good-bye! So kind of you to shelter me!--No; I couldn't think of taking your umbrella! Really; don't you see the rain is over; besides, I'm going to take this car. Good-bye, and thank you so much!"

Mr. Hickey stood quite still on the corner where she had left him and stared meditatively after the car, which bore her away, for the space of two unfruitful minutes. Then he turned squarely around and plodded down town to the business men's lunchroom. He did not care, he told himself, to change his habits by lunching at Daniels', which was a foolishly expensive place and haunted by crowds of women shoppers. Women were singular things, anyway. Mr. Hickey was satisfied, on the whole, that he was not obliged to meet them often. And later in the day he was selfishly pleased that he had not been obliged to loan his umbrella; for the rain, which had ceased a little, came down in icy torrents which froze as it fell on the sidewalks and branches of the trees.

XIV

Evelyn Tripp never informed anyone where she went on the car that bore her triumphantly away from Mr. Hickey and the conversation which had suddenly grown intolerable. The intolerable part of it was her own fault, she told herself. And--well, she realised that she was paying for it, as she jounced along over mile after mile of uneven track, through unfamiliar, yet drearily monotonous streets. Damp, uncomfortable-looking people came and went, and from time to time the conductor glanced curiously at the small lady in the fashionably-cut jacket and furs, who shrank back in her corner gazing with unseeing eyes out of the dripping windows.