CHAPTER III.
A SUDDEN COUNTERMARCH
Roger Stanisfield was plodding wearily along the avenue. He was not aware what an exquisite summer evening it was. He carried his own troubled atmosphere with him.
Slowly going up the broad flight of steps leading to his house, he drew out his latch-key. As he unlocked the door, a bevy of girls came trooping through the hall—some of his wife’s friends. His face cleared as he took off his hat and stood aside for them to pass.
For a minute the air was gay with merry parting, then the girls were gone, and he went slowly up to his room.
“Mrs. Stanisfield is in the dining-room, sir,” said a servant, addressing him a few minutes later, as he stood in the hall with an air of great abstraction. “Dinner has just been served.”
“Oh, Roger,” said his wife, as he entered the room where she sat at the table, “I didn’t know you’d come! You told me not to wait for you. I shall be glad when you take up your old habit of coming home in the middle of the afternoon.”
“I am very busy now,” he muttered, as he took his place.
“Does your head ache?” inquired Margaretta, when several courses had been passed through in silence on his part.
“Yes, it is splitting.”
Young Mrs. Stanisfield bent her fair head over her plate, and discreetly made only an occasional remark until the pudding was removed, and the table-maid had withdrawn from the room. Then she surreptitiously examined her husband’s face.
He was thoughtfully surveying the fruit on the table.
“Margaretta,” he said, boyishly, “I don’t care much for puddings and pastry.”
“Neither do I,” she said, demurely.
“I was wondering,” he said, hesitatingly, “whether we couldn’t do without puddings for awhile and just have nuts and raisins, or fruit—What are you laughing at?”
“At your new rôle of housekeeper. You usually don’t seem to know what is on the table.”
“I have a good appetite.”
“Yes, but you don’t criticize. You just eat what is set before you. I am sure it has escaped your masculine observation that for several weeks past we have had only one dish in the pastry course.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, we always used to have two or three—pudding, pie, and jelly or creams. Now we never have pudding and pie at the same time.”
“What is that for?” he asked.
“Oh, for something,” she said, quietly. “Now tell me what has gone wrong with you.”
“Nothing has gone wrong with me,” he said, irritably.
“With your business then.”
He did not reply, and, rising, she said, “This sitting at table is tiresome when one eats nothing. Let us go to the drawing-room and have coffee.”
“I don’t want coffee,” he said, sauntering after her.
“Neither do I,” she replied. “Shall we go out in the garden? It was delightfully cool there before dinner.”
“What a crowd of women you had here,” he said, a little peevishly, as he followed her.
“Hadn’t I?” and she smiled. “They had all been at a garden-party at the Everests, and as I wasn’t there they came to find out the reason.”
“You don’t mean to say you missed a social function?” said her husband, sarcastically.
“Yes, dear boy, I did, and I have before, and I am going to again.”
Mr. Stanisfield laughed shortly. “You sound like your sister Berty.”
“Well, I should love to be like her. She is a dear little sister.”
“But not as dear as her sister.”
“Thank you,” said Margaretta, prettily, turning and curtseying to him, as he followed her along the garden paths. “Now, here we are among the roses. Just drag out those two chairs from the arbour, or will you get into the hammock?”
“I’ll take the hammock,” he said, wearily. “I feel as if I were falling to pieces.”
“Let me arrange some cushions under your head so—this cool breeze will soon drive the business fog from your brain.”
“No, it won’t—the fog is too heavy.”
“What kind of a fog is it?” asked Margaretta, cautiously.
Her husband sat up in the hammock, and stared at her with feverish eyes. “Margaretta, I think we had better give up this house and take a smaller one.”
“I knew it,” said Margaretta, triumphantly. “I knew you were worried about your affairs!”
“Then you won’t feel so surprised,” he said, “when I tell you that we can’t stand this pace. We’ve had some heavy losses down at the iron works lately—mind you don’t say anything about it.”
“Indeed I won’t,” she replied, proudly.
“Father and I finished going over the books to-day with Mackintosh. We’ve got to put on the brakes. I—I hate to tell you,” and he averted his face. “You are so young.”
Margaretta did not reply to him, and, eager to see her face, he presently turned his own.
The sun had set, but she was radiant in a kind of afterglow.
“Margaretta, you don’t understand,” he faltered. “It will be a tremendous struggle for you to give up luxuries to which you have been accustomed, but we’ve either got to come down to bare poles here, or move to a smaller house.”
“What a misfortune!” she said.
His face fell.
“For you to have a headache about this matter,” she went on, gleefully. “I don’t call it a small one, for it isn’t, but if you knew everything!”
“I know enough to make me feel like a cheat,” he blurted, wriggling about in the hammock. “I took you from a good home. I never wanted you to feel an anxiety, and now the first thing I’ve got to put you down to rigid economy. You see, father and I have to spend a certain amount on the business, or we’d be out of it in the war of competition, and we’ve both decided that expenses must be curtailed in our homes rather than in the iron works.”
“That shows you are good business men,” said Margaretta, promptly. “You are as good business men as husbands.”
“Margaretta,” said her husband, “you puzzle me. I expected a scene, and upon my word you look happy over it—but you don’t realize it, poor child!”
Margaretta smiled silently at him for a few seconds, then she said, roguishly, “I am going to give you a little surprise. You didn’t see me snatch this sheet of paper from my new cabinet when we left the house?”
“No, I did not.”
“Oh, what a nice little paper! What a precious little paper!” said Margaretta, gaily, clasping it. “Can you see what is written on it, Roger? No, you can’t very well in this light.”
“Yes, I can,” said the young man, with a weary, amused smile. “Give it to me.”
She drew her seat closer to the hammock, and both bent their heads over the paper.
“Animus saved by Mrs. Roger Stanisfield during the month of July,” read Roger, stumblingly—“to be poured on my head, I suppose.”
“No, no, not animus—amounts.”
“Oh, I see, you want to comfort me by showing what an economist you are. I dare say you have saved five whole dollars through the month. What is the first item? Saved on new dress, one hundred dollars. Good gracious—how much did the dress cost?”
“I didn’t get it,” she replied, with immense satisfaction. “I needed one, or thought I did, and Madame Bouvard, that French dressmaker from New York, who came here last year, said she would make me one for one hundred dollars. Now some time ago, just after dear Grandma lost her money, she gave me a great shock.”
“Grandma did?” asked her husband, in surprise.
“No, she didn’t, she made me give it to myself. That is Grandma’s way, you know. She doesn’t preach. Well, after this electric shock I was horrified to find out that I was a frivolous, extravagant person. I began to think hard, then I got this little piece of paper—and, oh, Roger, won’t you get me a regular business book, and make red lines down the sides, and show me how to keep proper accounts?”
“I will, but what about the dress?”
“I had ordered it, but I went to Madame Bouvard. I said, frankly, ‘I can’t pay as much as a hundred dollars for a gown.’
“‘You shall have it for eighty,’ she said.
“I said, ‘Please let me off altogether. I want to save a little on my outfit this summer, but I promise to come to you the first time I want a gown.’
“As soon as I said it I bit my lip. ‘Oh, Madame Bouvard,’ I said, ‘you are the most satisfactory dressmaker I have ever had, but I don’t know whether I can afford to come to you again.’
“She is just a plain little woman, but when she saw how badly I felt, her face lighted up like an angel’s. ‘Madame,’ she said, ‘do not take your custom from me. You have been the best lady I have worked for in Riverport. Why, my girls say when your fair head passes the glass door of the workroom that it casts a ray of sunshine in upon them’—just think of that, Roger,—a ray of sunshine. I was quite pleased.”
CHAPTER IV.
A LIFTED BURDEN
He laid a hand on the fair head, then hastily bent over the paper.
“I was pleased, Roger, because I didn’t know that dressmakers or their sewing-girls ever cared for the people they work for; and what do you think she went on to say?—‘Madame, don’t go to a second-class establishment. I know you like first-class things. Come to me when you want a gown, and it shall be given to you at cost price, with just a trifle to satisfy you for my work’—wasn’t that sweet in her, Roger? I just caught her hand and squeezed it, and then she laid a finger on her lips—‘Not a word of this to any one, madame.’ I sent her a basket of flowers the next day.”
“You are a good child,” said her husband, huskily.
“Now go on to the next item,” said Margaretta, jubilantly.
“‘Butter, twenty dollars’—what in the name of common sense does that mean?”
“Queer, isn’t it?” laughed Margaretta. “I’ll go back to the beginning and explain. You know, Roger, I am not such a terribly strong person, and I do love to lie in bed in the morning. It is so delicious when you know you ought to get up, to roll yourself in the soft clothes and have another nap! You remember that I had got into a great way of having my breakfast in bed. Well, madam in bed meant carelessness in the kitchen. We have honest servants, Roger, but they are heedless. After my shock from Grandma about economy, I said, ‘I will reform. I will watch the cents, and the cents will watch the dollars.’
“Now, to catch the first stray cent, it was necessary to get up early. I just hated to do it, but I made myself. I sprang out of bed in the morning, had my cold plunge, and was down before you, and it was far more interesting to have company for breakfast than to have no one, wasn’t it?”
“Well, rather.”
“You good boy. You never complained. Well, cook was immensely surprised to have a call from me before breakfast. One morning I found her making pastry, and putting the most delicious-looking yellow butter in it. ‘Why, that’s our table butter,’ I said, ‘isn’t it, that comes from Cloverdale, and costs a ridiculous amount?’
“She said it was.
“‘Why don’t you use cooking-butter, Jane?’ I asked; ‘it’s just as good, isn’t it?’
“‘Well, ma’am, there’s nothing impure about it,’ she said, ‘but I know you like everything of the best, so I put this in.’
“‘Jane,’ I said, ‘never do it again. I’m going to economize, and I want you to help me. If you can’t, I must send you away and get some one else.’
“She laughed—you know what a fat, good-natured creature she is—and seemed to think it a kind of joke that I should want to economize.
“‘Jane,’ I said, ‘I’m in earnest.’
“Then she sobered down. ‘Truth, and I’ll help you, ma’am, if you really want me to. There’s lots of ways I can save for you, but I thought you didn’t care. You always seem so open-handed.’
“‘Well, Jane,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be mean, and I don’t want adulterated food, but my husband and I are young, and we want to save something for old age. Now you’ll help us, won’t you?’
“‘Honour bright, I will, ma’am,’ she said, and I believed her. I can’t stay in the kitchen and watch her, but she watches herself, and just read that list of groceries and see what else she has saved.”
“How have you found out the exact list of your economies?” asked Roger, curiously.
“By comparing my bills of this month with those of the month before. For instance, sugar was so many dollars in June; in July it is so many dollars less. Of course, we must take into account that we have been entertaining less. Have you noticed it?”
“Yes, but I thought it only a passing whim.”
“Some whims don’t pass, they stay,” said Margaretta, shaking her head. “Go on, Roger.”
“One hundred and fifty dollars saved in not entertaining Miss Gregory—pray who is Miss Gregory?”
“That society belle from Newport who has been staying with the Darley-Jameses.”
“How does she come into your expenditures?”
“She doesn’t come in,” said Margaretta, with satisfaction. “I haven’t done a thing for her beyond being polite and talking to her whenever I get a chance, and, oh, yes—I did give her a drive.”
“Well, but—”
“Let me explain. If I hadn’t been taken with a fit of economy, I would, in the natural order of things, have made a dinner for Miss Gregory. I would have had a picnic, and perhaps a big evening party. Think what it would have cost—you remember Mrs. Handfell?”
Her husband made a face.
“You never liked her, and I did wrong to have her here so much. Well, Roger, do you know I spent a large sum of money in entertaining that woman? I am ashamed to tell you how much. I had her here, morning, noon, and night. I took her up the river—you remember the decorated boats and the delightful music. It was charming, but we could not afford it, and when I went to New York she met me on Fifth Avenue, and said, ‘Oh, how do you do—so glad to see you. Be sure to call while you are here. My day is Friday.’ Then she swept away. That was a society woman who had graciously allowed me to amuse her during her summer trip to Maine. I was so hurt about it that I never told you.”
“What an empty head,” said Roger, picking up the list.
“It taught me a lesson,” continued his wife. “Now go on—do read the other things.”
His eyes had run down to the total. “Whew, Margaretta!—you don’t mean to say you have saved all this in a month?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I haven’t felt any tightening in your household arrangements. Why, at what a rate were we living?”
“At a careless rate,” said Margaretta, seriously, “a careless, slipshod rate. I bought everything I wanted. Flowers, in spite of our greenhouse, fruit and vegetables out of season, in spite of our garden, but now I look in the shop windows and say with a person I was reading about the other day, ‘Why, how many things there are I can do without,’—and with all my economy I have yet managed to squeeze out something for Grandma. I just made her take it.”
Roger’s face flushed. “Margaretta, if you will keep this thing going, we won’t have to give up this house.”
“I’ll keep it going,” said Margaretta, solemnly, “you shall not leave this house. It would be a blow to your honest pride.”
The young man was deeply moved, and, lifting his face to the pale, rising young moon, he murmured, “Thank God for a good wife.” Then he turned to her. “I wish some other men starting out in life had such a helper as you.”
“Oh, wish them a better one,” said Margaretta, humbly; “but I know what you mean, Roger. A man cannot succeed unless his wife helps him.”
“Sometimes it makes me furious,” said Roger, warmly. “I see fellows down-town, young fellows, too, working early and late, straining every nerve to keep up the extravagance of some thoughtless young wife. Why don’t the women think? Men hate to complain.”
Margaretta hung her head. Then she lifted it, and said, apologetically, “Perhaps they haven’t had wise grandmothers.”
Roger smiled. “Upon my word, a man in choosing a wife ought to look first at the girl’s grandmother.”
“‘My grandma lives on yonder little green,
Fine old lady as ever was seen.’”
chanted a gay voice.
“Bonny,” exclaimed Margaretta, flying out of her seat.
They were a remarkable pair as they came up the gravel walk together—the tall lad and the tall girl, both light-haired, both blue of eyes, and pink, and white, and smooth as to complexion like a pair of babies.
The elder man stared at them admiringly. Bonny was the baby of the orphan family that the sterling old grandmother had brought up. Strange that the grandson of such a woman had so little character, and Roger sighed slightly. Bonny was a mere boy, thoughtless, fond of fun, and too much of a favourite with the gay lads about the town. However, he might develop, and Roger’s face brightened.
“Oh, you dear Bonny,” said Margaretta, pressing his arm, “it was so good in you to remember your promise to come and tell me about your afternoon on the river. You had a pleasant time, of course.”
“Glorious,” said the lad. “The water was like glass, and we had a regular fleet of canoes. I say, Margaretta, I like that chap from Boston. Do something for him, won’t you?”
“Certainly, Bonny, what do you want me to do?”
“Make him some kind of a water-party.”
Margaretta became troubled. “How many people do you want to invite?”
“Oh, about sixty.”
“Don’t you think if we had three or four of your chosen friends he would enjoy it just as much?”
“No, I don’t; what do you think, Roger?”
“I don’t know about him. I hate crowds myself.”
“I like them,” said Bonny. “Come, Margaretta, decide.”
“Oh, my dear, spoiled boy,” said the girl, in perplexity, “I would give a party to all Riverport if it would please you, but I am trying dreadfully hard to economize. Those large things cost so much.”
Bonny opened wide his big blue eyes. “You are not getting mean, Margaretta?”
“No, no, my heart feels more generous than ever, but I see that this eternal entertaining on a big scale doesn’t amount to much. Once in awhile a huge affair is nice, but to keep it up week after week is a waste of time and energy, and you don’t make real friends.”
“All right,” said Bonny, good-naturedly. “I’ll take him for a swim. That won’t cost anything.”
“Now, Bonny,” said Margaretta, in an injured voice, “don’t misunderstand me. We’ll have a little excursion on the river, if you like, with half a dozen of your friends, and I’ll give you a good big party this summer—you would rather have it later on, wouldn’t you, when there are more girls visiting here?”
“Yes, indeed, let us wait for the girls,” said Bonny.
“And in the meantime,” continued Margaretta, “bring the Boston boy here as often as you like, to drop in to meals. I shall be delighted to see him, and so will you, Roger, won’t you?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the young man, who had gone off into a reverie, “but it’s all right if you say so.”
Bonny laughed at him, then, jumping up, said, “I must be going.”
“Where’s the dog, Margaretta?” asked Roger. “I’ll walk home with the boy.”
“But your headache,” said his wife.
“Is all gone—that prescription cured it,” said the young man, with a meaning glance at the sheet of note-paper clasped in his wife’s hand.
She smiled and waved it at him. “Wives’ cold cash salve for the cure of husbands’ headaches.”
“What kind of a salve is that?” asked Bonny, curiously.
“Wait till you have a house of your own, Bonny,” said his sister, caressingly, “and I will tell you.”
Then, as the man and the boy walked slowly away, she slipped into the hammock and turned her face up to the lovely evening sky.
“Little moon, I call you to witness I have begun a countermarch. I’m never more going to spend all the money I get, even if I have to earn some of it with my own hands!”
CHAPTER V.
THE TRAINING OF A BOY
Roger, sitting in his office at the iron works, from time to time raised his grave face to look at Bonny, who was fidgeting restlessly about the room.
Next to his wife, Roger loved his young brother-in-law,—the fair-haired, genial lad, everybody’s favourite, no one’s enemy but his own.
He wondered why the boy had come to him. Probably he was in some scrape and wanted help.
Presently the boy flung himself round upon him. “Roger—why don’t some of you good people try to reform me?”
Roger leaned back in his chair and stared at the disturbed young face.
“Come, now, don’t say that you don’t think I need reformation,” said the boy, mockingly.
“I guess we all need that,” replied his brother-in-law, soberly, “but you come of pretty good stock, Bonny.”
“The stock’s all right. That’s why I’m afraid of breaking loose and disgracing it.”
“What have you been doing?” asked Roger, kindly.
“I haven’t been doing anything,” said the boy, sullenly. “It’s what I may do that I’m afraid of.”
Roger said nothing. He was just casting about in his mind for a suitable reply, when the boy went on. “If you’ve been brought up just like a parson, and had all kinds of sentiments and good thoughts lived at you, and then don’t rise to the goodness you’re bursting with, it’s bound to rebel and give you a bad time.”
The man, having got a clue to the boy’s mental trouble, hastened to say, “You act all right. I shouldn’t say you were unhappy.”
“Act!” repeated the boy. “Act, acting, actors, actresses,—that’s what we all are. Now I’d like to have a good time. I don’t think I’m far out of the way; but there’s Grandma—she just makes me rage. Such goings on!”
“What has your grandmother been doing?”
“She hasn’t done much, and she hasn’t said a word, but, hang it! there’s more in what Grandma doesn’t say than there is in what other women do say.”
“You’re right there, my boy.”
“Now, what did she want to go give me a latch-key for?” asked the boy, in an aggrieved tone, “just after I’d started coming in a little later than usual? Why don’t she say, ‘My dear boy, you are on the road to ruin. Staying out late is the first step. May I not beg of you to do better, my dear young grandson? Otherwise you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.’”
“This is what she didn’t say?” asked Roger, gravely.
“This is what she didn’t say,” repeated the boy, crossly, “but this is what she felt. I know her! The latch-key was a bit of tomfoolery. An extra lump of sugar in my coffee is more tomfoolery.”
“Do you want her to preach to you?”
“No,” snarled the handsome lad. “I don’t want her to preach, and I don’t want you to preach, and I don’t want my sisters to preach, but I want some one to do something for me.”
“State your case in a more businesslike way,” said the elder man, gravely. “I don’t understand.”
“You know I’m in the National Bank,” said Bonny, shortly.
“Certainly I know that.”
“Grandma put me there a year ago. I don’t object to the bank, if I’ve got to work. It’s as easy as anything I could get, and I hate study.”
Roger nodded.
“Being in the bank, I’d like to rise,” Bonny went on, irritably, “but somehow or other there seems a little prejudice in the air against me. Has any one said anything to you?”
“Not a word.”
The boy drew a long breath. “Perhaps it’s partly imagination. They’re very down on fun in our bank. Now when hours are over, and I come out, there’s a whole gang of nice fellows ready to do anything that’s going. Sometimes we play billiards. On fine days we’re always on the river. There’s no harm in that, is there?”
“Not that I see,” observed Roger, cautiously.
“Then, when evening comes, and we want to sit down somewhere, we have a quiet little game of cards. There’s no harm in that, is there?”
“Do you play for money?”
“Sometimes—well, perhaps nearly always, but there’s no harm in that, is there?”
“Let me hear the rest of your story.”
“Sometimes I’m late getting home. We get interested, but that’s nothing. I’m almost a man. Five hours’ sleep is enough for me.”
A long pause followed, broken finally by Roger, who said, calmly, “You have given an account of your time. What is wrong with it?”
“It’s all wrong,” blurted the boy, “and you know it.”
“I haven’t said so.”
“But you feel it. You’re just like Grandma—bother it! Don’t I know she thinks I ought to spend my evenings at home, reading about banking, so as to work myself up to a president’s chair?”
“Don’t you get any time for reading through the day?”
“How can I?” said the boy, eloquently, “when I was almost brought up out-of-doors, and as soon as the bank closes every square inch of flesh of me is squealing to get on the river. Now what do you think I ought to do?”
“It’s a puzzling case,” said Roger, with a slow shake of his head. “According to your own account, you are leading a blameless life. Yet, according to the same account, you are not happy in it, though no one is finding fault with you.”
“No one finding fault!” said the boy, sulkily. “Why, the very stones in the street stare at me and say, ‘Animal! Animal! you don’t care for anything but fun. You’d skip the bank every day if you dared.’”
“Why don’t you?”
Bonny gave himself a resounding thwack on the chest. “Because,” he said, “Grandma has planted something here that won’t be downed. Something that won’t let me have a good time when I know she isn’t pleased with me. Sometimes I get so mad that I think I will run away, but that wouldn’t do any good, for she’d run with me. She’d haunt my dreams—I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
Roger, carefully concealing all signs of compassion, gazed steadily at the distressed face. “Do you want to break away from your set?” he asked, at last.
“No, I don’t. They’re good fellows.”
“Well, what are you going to do about that bad feeling inside of you?”
“I don’t know,” said Bonny, bitterly. “I know Grandma thinks I’m going to be like Walt Everest, big and fat and jolly, and everybody’s chum, who can sing a song, and dance a jig, and never does any business, and never will amount to anything.”
“Did she ever say so?”
“No,” growled the boy, “but don’t I tell you I know what Grandma’s thinking about?”
“How does your sister Berty take you?” asked Roger.
“Just like Grandma,” blazed the boy, in sudden wrath, “never says a word but a pleasant one, catches me in a corner and kisses me—kisses me!—just think of it!”
Roger thought deeply for a few minutes, while Bonny took up his miserable ramble about the room.
“Look here, boy,” he said, finally. “You do as I tell you for a week. Begin from this minute. Read that magazine, then go home with me to dinner. After dinner come back here and help me. I’m working on some accounts for a time. That will be an excuse to the boys for not playing cards.”
Bonny’s face was clearing. “A good excuse, too,” he muttered. “If I said I was going with Grandma or the girls, they’d laugh at me.”
“You tell them you are working on my books, and I am paying you. That will shut their mouths, and you’ll not object to the extra money.”
“I guess I won’t. I’m hard pushed all the time.”
“Don’t you save anything from your salary for Grandma?” asked Roger, keenly.
“How can I?” said the boy, indignantly. “She has brought me up to be clean. It takes nearly everything I get to pay my laundry bill—I dare say you think I’m a brute to be so selfish.”
“I’ll send you home every night at ten, and mind you go to bed,” said Roger, calmly. “Five hours’ sleep is not enough for a boy of eighteen. Get up in the morning and go to the bank. As soon as it closes in the afternoon I’ll have business in Cloverdale that will take you on a drive there.”
“You’re a daisy, Roger,” said Bonny, in a low voice.
Roger cast down his eyes. That flushed, disturbed face reminded him of his own beautiful Margaretta. Pray Heaven, he would never see such trouble and dissatisfaction in her blue eyes.
Bonny had already thrown himself into a deep leather-covered armchair, and was apparently absorbed in the magazine. Presently he looked up. “Roger, don’t you tell the girls what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Nor Grandma.”
“No, nor Grandma.”
But Grandma knew. There was no hoodwinking that dear, shrewd old lady, and when next she met Roger, which was the following morning, as he was on his way to his office, and she was on her way to call on his wife, her deep-set eyes glistened strangely, and instead of saying “Good morning, dear grandson-in-law,” as she usually did, she said “Good morning, dear son.” She considered him as much one of the family as her three beloved orphan grandchildren.
Yes, Grandma knew, and Grandma approved of what he was doing for her poor, wilful, troubled Bonny.
Every evening for five evenings the lad came to the iron works, and steadfastly set his young face to the sober, unexciting examination of dull rows of figures, stretching indefinitely across white pages.
On the fifth night something went wrong with him. In the first place, he was late in coming. In the second place, his nerves seemed to be stretched to their utmost tension.
“What’s up with you?” asked Roger, when, after a few minutes’ work Bonny pushed aside the big books, and said, “I’m going home.”
“I’m tired,” said Bonny. “I hate this bookkeeping.”
“All right,” said his brother-in-law, composedly. “I’m tired myself. Let’s have a game of chess.”
“I hate chess,” said Bonny, sulkily.
“I wonder whether it’s too early for supper?” asked Roger, good-humouredly getting up and going to a closet.
He looked over his shoulder at Bonny as he spoke. Every night at half-past nine he was in the habit of producing cakes, candy, syrup, fruit, and nuts for the boy’s supper. It was not very long since he had been a boy himself, and he remembered his chronic craving for sweet things.
“You’re always stuffing me,” replied Bonny, disagreeably. “You think you’ll make me good-natured.”
“What’s the matter with you, Bonny?” asked Roger, closing the door and returning to his seat.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” snarled Bonny, miserably, rolling his head about on his folded arms resting on the table. “I hate everything and everybody. I could kill you, Roger.”
“All right—there’s a pair of Indian clubs over there in the corner,” said his brother-in-law, cheerfully.
“I thought I’d be an angel after a few nights’ association with you,” continued the lad, “and you make me feel worse than ever.”
“Looks as if I were a bad sort of a fellow, doesn’t it?” remarked Roger, philosophically.
“You’re not bad,” snapped Bonny. “You’re a tremendous good sort. I’m the brute. Roger, why don’t you preach to me?”
For some time Roger stared at him in silence; then he said, “Seems to me you can preach better to yourself. If I were going to set up for a preacher I’d only hold forth to the impenitent.”
“The fellows are going to a dance at Hickey’s to-night,” said Bonny, suddenly pounding on the table with his fist, “and I’m not in it, and then at midnight they’re going to see the circus arrive, and I’m not in that.”