THE WAYS OF MARIAN
The historian may not always wait for the last grain of sand to mark the
passing of an hour; he must hasten the flight of time frequently by
abrupt reversals of the glass. Much competent evidence (to borrow from
the lawyers) we must reject as irrelevant or immaterial to our main
issue. Harwood was admitted to practice in the United States courts
midway of his third year in Bassett's office. The doors of the state
courts swing inward to any Hoosier citizen of good moral character who
wants to practice law,--a drollery of the Hoosier constitution still
tolerated. The humor of being a mere "constitutional" lawyer did not
appeal to Harwood, who revered the traditions and the great names of his
chosen profession, and he had first written his name on the rolls of the
United States District Court.
His work for Bassett grew more and more congenial. The man from Fraser
was concentrating his attention on business; at least he found plenty of
non-political work for Dan to do. After the troubled waters in Ranger
County had been quieted and Bassett's advanced outpost in the Boordman
Building had ceased to attract newspaper reporters, an important
receivership to which Bassett had been appointed gave Harwood
employment of a semi-legal character. Bassett had been a minor
stockholder in a paper-mill which had got into difficulties through
sheer bad management, and as receiver he addressed himself to the task
of proving that the business could be made to pay. The work he assigned
to Harwood was to the young man's liking, requiring as it did
considerable travel, visits to the plant, which was only a few hours'
journey from the capital, and negotiations which required the exercise
of tact and judgment. However, Harwood found himself ineluctably drawn
into the state campaign that fall. Bassett was deeply engaged in all the
manoeuvres, and Harwood was dispatched frequently on errands to county
chairmen, and his aid was welcomed by the literary bureau of the state
committee. He prepared a speech whose quality he tested at small
meetings in his own county, and his efforts having been favorably
received he acted as a supply to fill appointments where the regular
schedule failed. Toward the end of the campaign his assignments
increased until all his time was taken. By studying his audiences he
caught the trick of holding the attention of large crowds; his old
college sobriquet of "Foghorn" Harwood had been revived and the
newspapers mentioned his engagements with a casualness that implied
fame. He enjoyed his public appearances, and the laughter and applause
were sweet to him.
After the election Bassett admonished him not to neglect the law.
"I want you to make your way in the profession," he said, "and not let
my affairs eat up all your time. Give me your mornings as far as
possible and keep your afternoons for study. If at any time you have to
give me a whole day, take the next day for yourself. But this work
you're doing will all help you later. Lawyers these days have got to be
business men; you understand that; and you want to get to the top."
Dan visited his parents and brothers as often as possible on the
infertile Harrison County acres, to which the mortgage still clung
tenaciously. He had felt since leaving college that he owed it to the
brothers who had remained behind to wipe out the old harassing debt as
soon as possible. The thought of their struggles often made him unhappy,
and he felt that he could only justify his own desertion by freeing the
farm. After one of these visits Bassett drew from him the fact that the
mortgage was about to mature, and that another of a long series of
renewals of the loan was necessary. Bassett was at once interested and
sympathetic. The amount of the debt was three thousand dollars, and he
proposed that Dan discharge it.
"I've never said so, but at the conclusion of the receivership I've
intended paying you for your additional work. If everything goes well my
own allowance ought to be ten thousand dollars, and you're entitled to a
share of it. I'll say now that it will be not less than two thousand
dollars. I'll advance you that amount at once and carry your personal
note for the other thousand in the Fraserville bank. It's too bad you
have to use your first money that way, but it's natural for you to want
to do it. I see that you feel a duty there, and the folks at home have
had that mortgage on their backs so long that it's taken all the spirit
out of them. You pay the mortgage when it's due and go down and make a
little celebration of it, to cheer them up. I'll carry that thousand as
long as you like."
Miss Rose Farrell, nigh to perishing of ennui in the lonely office of
the absentee steel construction agents, had been installed as
stenographer in Room 66 a year earlier. Miss Farrell had, it appeared,
served Bassett several terms as stenographer to one of the legislative
committees of which he was chairman.
"You needn't be afraid of my telling anything," she said in reply to
Dan's cautioning. "Those winters I worked at the State House I learned
enough to fill three penitentiaries with great and good men, but you
couldn't dig it out of me with a steam shovel. They were going to have
me up before an investigating committee once, but I had burned my
shorthand notes and couldn't remember a thing. Your little Irish Rose
knows a few things, Mr. Harwood. I was on to your office before the
'Advertiser' sprung that story and gave it away that Mr. Bassett had a
room here. I spotted the senator from Fraser coming up our pedestrian
elevator, and I know all those rubes that have been dropping up to see
him--struck 'em all in the legislature. He won't tear your collar if you
put me on the job. And if I do say it myself I'm about as speedy on the
machine as you find 'em. All your little Rose asks is the right to an
occasional Wednesday matinée when business droops like a sick oleander.
You needn't worry about me having callers. I'm a business woman, I am,
and I guess I know what's proper in a business office. If I don't
understand men, Mr. Harwood, no poor working girl does."
Bassett was pleased with Dan's choice of a stenographer. He turned over
to Rose the reading of the rural newspapers and sundry other routine
matters. There was no doubt of Miss Farrell's broad knowledge of the
world, or of her fidelity to duty. Harwood took early opportunity to
subdue somewhat the pungency of the essences with which she perfumed
herself, and she gave up gum-chewing meekly at his behest. She assumed
at once toward him that maternal attitude which is peculiar to office
girls endowed with psychological insight. He sought to improve the
character of fiction she kept at hand for leisure moments, and was
surprised by the aptness of her comments on the books she borrowed on
his advice from the Public Library. She was twenty-four, tall and trim,
with friendly blue-gray eyes and a wit that had been sharpened by
adversity.
It cannot be denied that Mrs. Bassett and Marian found Harwood a
convenient reed upon which to lean. Nor was Blackford above dragging his
father's secretary (as the family called him) forth into the bazaars of
Washington Street to assist in the purchase of a baseball suit or in
satisfying other cravings of his youthful heart. Mrs. Bassett, scorning
the doctors of Fraserville, had now found a nerve specialist at the
capital who understood her troubles perfectly.
Marian, at Miss Waring's school, was supposed to be preparing for
college, though Miss Waring had no illusions on the subject. Marian made
Mrs. Owen her excuse for many absences from school: what was the use of
having a wealthy great-aunt living all alone in a comfortable house in
Delaware Street if one didn't avail one's self of the rights and
privileges conferred by such relationship? When a note from Miss Waring
to Mrs. Bassett at Fraserville conveyed the disquieting news of her
daughter's unsatisfactory progress, Mrs. Bassett went to town and dealt
severely with Marian. Mrs. Owen was grimly silent when appealed to; it
had never been her idea that Marian should be prepared for college; but
now that the girl's mother had pledged herself to the undertaking Mrs.
Owen remained a passive spectator of the struggle. Mrs. Owen was not so
dull but that she surmised what had inspired this zeal for a collegiate
training for Marian; and her heart warmed toward the dark young person
at Wellesley, such being the contrariety of her kindly soul. To Miss
Waring, a particular friend of hers and one of her admirations, Mrs.
Owen said:--
"I want you to do the best you can for Marian, now that her mother's
bitten with this idea of sending her to college. She's smart enough, I
guess?"
"Too much smartness is Marian's trouble," replied Miss Waring. "There's
nothing in the gymnasium she can't do; she's become the best French
scholar we ever had, but that's about all. She's worked hard at French
because she thinks it gives her a grand air. I can't imagine any other
reason. She's adorable and--impossible!"
"Do the best you can for her; I want her to go to college if she can."
Miss Waring had the reputation of being strict, yet Marian slipped the
cords of routine and discipline with ease. She had passed triumphantly
from the kitchen "fudge" and homemade butterscotch period of a girl's
existence into the realm of _marrons glacés_. Nothing bored her so much
as the afternoon airings of the school under the eye of a teacher; and
these she turned into larks when she shared in them. Twice in one winter
she had hopped upon a passing street car and rolled away in triumph from
her meek and horrified companions and their outraged duenna. She
encouraged by means the subtlest, the attentions of a strange young
gentleman who followed the school's peregrinations afar off. She carried
on a brief correspondence with this cavalier, a fence corner in
Pennsylvania Street serving as post-office.
Luck favored her astonishingly in her efforts to escape the rigors of
school discipline. Just when she was forbidden to leave Miss Waring's to
spend nights and Sundays at Mrs. Owen's, her mother came to town and
opportunely (for Marian) fell ill, at the Whitcomb. Mrs. Bassett was
cruising languidly toward the sombre coasts of Neurasthenia, and though
she was under the supervision of a trained nurse, Marian made her
mother's illness an excuse for moving down to the hotel to take care of
her. Her father, in and out of the city caring for his multiplying
interests, objected mildly but acquiesced, which was simpler and more
comfortable than opposing her.
Having escaped from school and established herself at the Whitcomb,
Marian summoned Harwood to the hotel on the flimsiest pretexts, many of
them most ingeniously plausible. For example, she avowed her intention
of carrying on her studies at the hotel during her enforced retirement
from Miss Waring's, and her father's secretary, being a college man,
could assist her with her Latin as well as not. Dan set tasks for her
for a week, until she wearied of the pretense. She insisted that it was
too stupid for her to go unattended to the hotel restaurant for her
meals, and it was no fun eating in her mother's room with that lady in
bed and the trained nurse at hand; so Harwood must join her for luncheon
and dinner at the Whitcomb. Mrs. Owen was out of town, Bassett was most
uncertain in his goings and comings, and Mrs. Bassett was beyond
Harwood's reach, so he obeyed, not without chafing of spirit, these
commands of Marian. He was conscious that people pointed her out in the
restaurant as Morton Bassett's daughter, and he did not like the
responsibility of this unauthorized chaperonage.
Mrs. Bassett was going to a sanatorium as soon as she was able to move;
but for three weeks Marian was on Harwood's hands. Her bland airs of
proprietorship amused him when they did not annoy him, and when he
ventured to remonstrate with her for her unnecessary abandonment of
school to take care of her mother, her pretty _moue_ had mitigated his
impatience. She knew the value of her prettiness. Dan was a young man
and Marian was not without romantic longings. Just what passed between
her and her mother Harwood could not know, but the hand that ruled
indulgently in health had certainly not gained strength in sickness.
This was in January when the theatres were offering an unusual variety
of attractions. Dan had been obliged to refuse--more harshly than was
agreeable--to take Marian to see a French farce that had been widely
advertised by its indecency. Her cool announcement that she had read it
in French did not seem to Harwood to make an educational matter of it;
but he was obliged finally to compromise with her on another play. Her
mother was quite comfortable, she averred; there was no reason why she
should not go to the theatre, and she forced the issue by getting the
tickets herself.
That evening when they reached their seats Dan observed that Allen
Thatcher sat immediately in front of them. He turned and nodded to Dan,
and his eyes took in Marian. In a moment she murmured an inquiry as to
who the young man was; and Harwood was aware thereafter that Marian
divided her attention between Allen and the stage. Allen turned once or
twice in the entr'actes with some comment on the play, and Marian was
pleased with his profile; moreover he bore a name with which she had
long been familiar. As the curtain fell she whispered to Harwood:--
"You must introduce me to Mr. Thatcher,--please--! His father and papa
are friends, and I've heard so much about the family that I just have
to know him."
Harwood looked down at her gravely to be sure it was not one of her
jokes, but she was entirely serious. He felt that he must take a stand
with her; if her father and mother were unaware of her venturesome
nature he still had his responsibility, and it was not incumbent on him
to widen her acquaintance.
"No!" he said flatly.
But Marian knew a trick or two. She loitered by her seat adjusting her
wrap with unnecessary deliberation. Allen, wishing to arrange an
appointment with Dan for luncheon the next day, waited for him to come
into the aisle. Dan had not the slightest idea of introducing his charge
to Allen or to any one else, and he stepped in front of her to get rid
of his friend with the fewest words possible. But Marian so disposed
herself at his elbow that he could not without awkwardness refuse her.
She murmured Allen's name cordially, leveling her eyes at him smilingly.
"I've often heard Mr. Harwood speak of you, Mr. Thatcher! He has a great
way of speaking of his friends!"
Allen was not a forthputting person, and Dan's manner was not
encouraging; but the trio remained together necessarily through the
aisle to the foyer.
Marian took advantage of their slow exit to discuss the play and with
entire sophistication, expressing astonishment that Allen was lukewarm
in his praise of it. He could not agree with her that the leading woman
was beautiful, but she laughed when he remarked, with his droll
intonation, that the star reminded him of a dressed-up mannikin in a
clothing-store window.
"That is just the kind of thing I imagined you would say. My aunt, Mrs.
Owen, says that you always say something different."
"Oh, Aunt Sally! She's the grandest of women. I wish she were my aunt. I
have aunts I could trade for her."
At the door Allen paused. Marian, running on blithely, gave him no
opportunity to make his adieux.
"Oh, aren't you going our way?" she demanded, in a tone of invitation.
"Yes; come along; it's only a step to the hotel where Miss Bassett is
staying," said Harwood, finding that they blocked the entrance and not
seeing his way to abandoning Allen on the spot. He never escaped the
appeal that lay in Allen; he was not the sort of fellow one would wound;
and there could be no great harm in allowing him to walk a few blocks
with Marian Bassett, who had so managed the situation as to make his
elimination difficult. It was a cold, clear night and they walked
briskly to the Whitcomb. When they reached the hotel, Dan, who had left
the conversation to Marian and Allen, breathed a sigh that his
responsibility was at an end. He and Allen would have a walk and talk
together, or they might go up to the Boordman Building for the long
lounging parleys in which Allen delighted and which Dan himself enjoyed.
But Dan had not fully gauged the measure of Marian's daring.
"Won't you please wait a minute, Mr. Harwood, until I see if poor mama
needs anything. You know we all rely on you so. I'll be back in just a
moment."
"So that's Morton Bassett's daughter," observed Allen when Marian had
fluttered into the elevator. "You must have a lot of fun taking her
about; she's much more grown-up than I had imagined from what you've
said. She's almost a dangerous young person."
The young men found seats and Allen nursed his hat musingly. He had
nothing whatever to do, and the chance meeting with Harwood was a bright
incident in a bleak, eventless day.
"Oh, she's a nice child," replied Harwood indifferently. "But she finds
childhood irksome. It gives her ladyship a feeling of importance to hold
me here while she asks after the comfort of her mother. I suppose a girl
is a woman when she has learned that she can tell a man to wait."
"You should write a book of aphorisms and call it 'The Young Lady's Own
Handbook.' Perhaps I ought to be skipping."
"For Heaven's sake, don't! I want you as an excuse for getting away."
"I think I'd better go," suggested Allen. "I can wait for you in the
office."
"Then I should pay the penalty for allowing you to escape; she can be
very severe; she is a much harder taskmaster than her father. Don't
desert me."
Allen took this at face value; and it seemed only ordinary courtesy to
wait to say good-night to a young woman who was coming back in a moment
to report upon the condition of a sick mother. In ten minutes Marian
reappeared, having left her wraps behind.
"Mama is sleeping beautifully. And that's a sign that she's better."
Here clearly was an end of the matter, and Dan had begun to say
good-night; but with the prettiest grace possible Marian was addressing
Allen:--
"I'm terribly hungry and I sent down an order for just the smallest
supper. You see, I took it for granted that you would both be just as
hungry as I am, so you must come and keep me company." And to anticipate
the refusal that already glittered coldly in Dan's eye, she continued,
"Mama doesn't like me to be going into the restaurant alone, but she
approves of Mr. Harwood."
The head waiter was already leading them to a table set for three in
accordance with the order Manan had telephoned from her room. She had
eliminated the possibility of discussion, and Harwood raged in his
helplessness. There was no time for a scene even if he had thought it
wise to precipitate one.
"It's only a lobster, you know," she said, with the careless ease of a
young woman quite habituated to midnight suppers.
Harwood's frown of annoyance had not escaped her; but it only served to
add to her complete joy in the situation. There were other people about,
and music proceeded from a screen of palms at the end of the
dining-room. Having had her way, Marian nibbled celery and addressed
herself rather pointedly to Allen, unmindful of the lingering traces of
Harwood's discomfiture. By the time the lobster was served she was on
capital terms with Allen.
In his own delight in Marian, Allen failed utterly to comprehend
Harwood's gloomy silence. Dan scarcely touched his plate, and he knew
that Marian was covertly laughing at him.
"Do you know," said Allen, speaking directly to Dan, "we're having great
arguments at Lüders's; we turn the universe over every day."
"You see, Miss Bassett," Allen explained to Marian; "I'm a fair
carpenter and work almost every day at Louis Lüders's shop. I earn a
dollar a day and eat dinner--dinner, mind you!--at twelve o'clock, out
of a tin pail. You can see that I'm a laboring man--one of the toiling
millions."
"You don't mean that seriously, Mr. Thatcher; not really!"
"Oh, why will you say that? Every one says just that! No one ever
believes that I mean what I say!"
This was part of some joke, Marian surmised, though she did not quite
grasp it. It was inconceivable that the son of the house of Thatcher
should seriously seek a chance to do manual labor. Allen in his dinner
jacket did not look like a laborer: he was far more her idea of a poet
or a musician.
"I went to Lüders's house the other evening for supper," Allen was
saying. "I rather put it up to him to ask me, and he has a house with a
garden, and his wife was most amusing. We all talked German, including
the kids,--three of them, fascinating little fellows. He's a
cabinetmaker, Miss Bassett,--a producer of antiques, and a good one;
and about the gentlest human being you ever saw. He talks about existing
law as though it were some kind of devil,--a monster, devouring the
world's poor. But he won't let his wife spank the children,--wouldn't,
even when one of them kicked a hole in my hat! I supposed that of course
there would be dynamite lying round in tomato cans; and when I shook the
pepper box I expected an explosion; but I didn't see a gun on the place.
He's beautifully good-natured, and laughed in the greatest way when I
asked him how soon he thought of blowing up some of our prominent
citizens. I really believe he likes me--strange but true."
"Better not get in too deep with those fellows," warned Dan. "The police
watch Lüders carefully; he's considered dangerous. It's the quiet ones,
who are kind to their families and raise cabbages, that are the most
violent."
"Oh, Lüders says we've got to smash everything! He rather favors
socialism himself, but he wants to tear down the court-houses first and
begin again."
"You'd better be careful or you'll land in jail, Mr. Thatcher," remarked
Marian, taking an olive.
"Oh, if anything as interesting as that should happen to me, I should
certainly die of joy!"
"But your family wouldn't like it if you went to jail," persisted
Marian, delighting in the confidences of a young gentleman for whom
jails had no terrors.
"The thought of my family is disturbing, it's positively disturbing,"
Allen replied. "Lüders has given me a chance in his shop, and really
expects me to work. Surprising in an anarchist; you'd rather expect him
to press a stick of dynamite in your hand and tell you to go out and
blow up a bank. Lüders has a sense of humor, you know: hence the
antiques, made to coax money from the purses of the fat rich. There are
more ways than one of being a cut-purse."
The lobster had been consumed, and they were almost alone in the
restaurant. Marian, with her elbows on the table, was in no haste to
leave, but Dan caught the eye of the hovering waiter and paid the check.
"You shouldn't have done that," Marian protested; "it was my party. I
sign my own checks here."
But having now asserted himself, Dan rose, and in a moment he and Allen
had bidden her good-night at the elevator door.
"You didn't seem crazy about your lobster, and you were hardly more than
polite to our hostess. Sorry to have butted in. But why have you kept
these tender recreations from me!"
"Oh, that child vexes my spirit sometimes. She's bent on making people
do things they don't want to do. Of course the lobster was a mere excuse
for getting acquainted with you; but you needn't be too set up about it:
I think her curiosity about your family is responsible,--these fake
newspaper stories about your sister--which is it, Hermione or
Gwendolen--who is always about to marry a count. Countesses haven't been
common in Indiana. We need a few to add tone to the local gossip."
"Oh," murmured Allen dejectedly: "I'm sorry if you didn't want me in the
party. It's always the way with me. Nobody ever really loves me for
myself alone. What does the adorable do besides midnight lobsters? I
thought Aunt Sally said she was at Miss Waring's school."
"She is, more or less," growled Dan. "Her mother wants to put her
through college, to please the wealthy great-aunt. Mrs. Owen has shown
interest in another girl who is now at Wellesley; hence Marian must go
to college, and the bare thought of it bores her to death. She's as
little adapted to a course in college as one of those bright goddesses
who used to adorn Olympus."
"She doesn't strike me as needing education; she's a finished product. I
felt very young in the divine presence."
"She gives one that feeling," laughed Dan, his mood of impatience
dissolving.
"Who's this rival who has made the higher education seem necessary for
Morton Bassett's daughter?"
"She's an amazing girl; quite astonishing. If Mrs. Bassett were a wise
woman she wouldn't enter Marian in competition. And besides, I think her
fears are utterly groundless. Marian is delightful, with her waywardness
and high-handedness; and Mrs. Owen likes originals, not feeble
imitations. I should hate to try to deceive Mrs. Sally Owen--she's about
the wisest person I ever saw."
"Oh, Sylvia! Mrs. Owen has mentioned her. The girl that knows all the
stars and that sort of thing. But where's Morton Bassett in all this?
He's rather more than a shadow on the screen?"
"Same old story of the absorbed American father and the mother with
nerves"
* * * * *
Two afternoons later, as Harwood was crossing University Park on his way
to his boarding-house, he stopped short and stared. A little ahead of
him in the walk strolled a girl and a young man, laughing and talking
with the greatest animation. There was no questioning their identity. It
was five o'clock and quite dark, and the air was sharp. Harwood paused
and waited for the two loiterers to cross the lighted space about the
little park's central fountain. It seemed incredible that Marian and
Allen should be abroad together in this dallying fashion. His anger rose
against Allen, but he curbed an impulse to send him promptly about his
business and take Marian back to the Whitcomb. Mr. Bassett was expected
in town that evening and Dan saw his duty clearly in regard to Marian;
she must be returned to school willy-nilly.
The young people were hitting it off wonderfully, and Marian's laughter
rang out clearly upon the winter air. Her tall, supple figure, her head
capped with a fur toque, and more than all, the indubitable evidence
that such a clandestine stroll as this gave her the keenest delight,
drove home to Harwood the realization that Marian was no longer a child,
but a young woman, obstinately bent upon her own way. Allen was an
ill-disciplined, emotional boy, whose susceptibilities in the matter of
girls Dan had already noted. The combination had its dangers and his
anger rose as he followed them at a safe distance. They prolonged their
walk for half an hour, coming at last to the Whitcomb.
Harwood waylaid Allen in the hotel office a moment after Marian had gone
to her room. The young fellow's cheeks were unwontedly bright from the
cold or from the excitement of his encounter.
"Halloa! I was going to look you up and ask you to have dinner with me."
"You were looking for me in a likely place," replied Harwood coldly.
"See here, Allen, I've been laboring under the delusion that you were a
gentleman."
"Oh! Have we come to that?"
"You know better than to go loafing through town with a truant
school-girl you hardly know. I suppose it's my fault for introducing you
to her. I want you to tell me how you managed this. Did you telephone
her or write a note? Sit down here now and let's have it out."
They drew away from the crowd and found seats in a quiet corner of the
lobby.
Harwood, his anger unabated, repeated his question.
"Out with it; just how did you manage it?"
Allen was twisting his gloves nervously; he had not been conscious of
transgressing any law, but he would not for worlds have invited
Harwood's displeasure. He was near to tears; but he remained stubbornly
silent until Harwood again demanded to know how he contrived the meeting
with Marian.
"I'm sorry, old man," Allen answered, "but I can't tell you anything
about it. I don't see that my crime is so heinous. She has been cooped
up in the hotel all day with her sick mother, and a short walk--it was
only a few blocks--couldn't have done her any harm. I think you're
making too much of it."
"You were dallying there in the park, in a way to attract attention,
with a headstrong, silly girl that you ought to have protected from that
sort of thing. You know better than that."
Allen, enfolded in his long ulster, shuffled his feet on the tiling like
a school-boy in disgrace. Deep down in his heart, Harwood did not
believe that Allen had proposed the walk to Marian; it was far likelier
that Marian had sought the meeting by note or telephone. He turned upon
Allen with a slight relaxation of his sternness.
"You didn't write her a note or telephone her,--you didn't do either,
did you?"
Allen, silent and dejected, dropped his gloves and picked them up, the
color deepening in his cheeks.
"I just happened to meet her; that's all," he said, avoiding Dan's eyes.
"She wrote you a note or telephoned you?"
Silence.
"Humph," grunted Harwood.
"She's wonderfully beautiful and strong and so tremendously vivid! I
think those nice girls you read of in the Greek mythology must have been
like that," murmured Allen, sighing heavily.
"I dare say they were!" snapped Harwood, searching the youngster's
thin, sensitive face, and meeting for an instant his dreamy eyes. He was
touched anew by the pathos in the boy, whose nature was a light web of
finespun golden cords thrilling to any breath of fancy. The superb
health, the dash and daring of a school-girl that he had seen but once
or twice, had sent him climbing upon a frail ladder of romantic dreams.
Harwood struck his hands together sharply. If he owed a duty to Marian
and her family, not less he was bound to turn Allen's thoughts into safe
channels.
"Of course it wouldn't do--that sort of thing, you know, Allen. I didn't
mean to beat you into the dust. Let's go over to Pop June's and get some
oysters. I don't feel up to our usual boarding-house discussion of
Christian Science to-night."
At the first opportunity Dan suggested to Bassett, without mentioning
Marian's adventure with Allen, that the Whitcomb was no place for her,
and that her pursuit of knowledge under his own tutorship was the merest
farce; whereupon Bassett sent her back immediately to Miss Waring's.