MR. CHARLES KEELER
“Well, why don’t you go on?” asked Mr. Keeler, as Roy paused.
“You’ve heard something about the affair. I can see you have by the way
you look. Please tell me what it was.”
“Only a very little,” was the reply. “As I was crossing the trestle in
the train a while ago I heard a lady behind me telling a gentleman who
was with her that this was the place where Roy Pell rescued the old
miser. So now you see I know who you are, but I hope that won’t make
any difference about your telling the story. You left off in the most
interesting place. It would be worse than the serials in the weekly
papers, for I couldn’t look forward to getting the continuation next
Saturday.”
Roy smiled and then said “All right, you’ve promised not to use it
unless I give you leave, you know. But I don’t want you to think of me
as a regular hero because I lugged that old man off the bridge. There
would have been plenty of time for me to have run down to Burdock and
stopped the train and got help there, but I really didn’t think of it.”
“Oh, no, that isn’t the part I’m interested in at all. What I want to
know is the reason you seemed so glum over having come into a fortune.
Was it much, may I inquire?”
“About half a million, but I haven’t been one mite happier since we’ve
had it. In the first place my oldest brother has been sick ever since.
We don’t know what’s the matter with him and he won’t give up his law
business and go away for rest as mother wants him to. He says he has
got too much to do looking after the investing of her money. Then
there’s Rex, he wants so many things that he can’t settle on any one.
He got a bicycle almost the first thing, and now he’s tired of it and
wants a horse, and Jess says there’s no good of getting that because we
ought to go to Europe and take Syd with us.”
“And Eva, she wants to go to Vassar, and mother doesn’t want to give
her up, and the worst of it all is we’ve sold the place and we are
going to move into the city next month, and I hate to leave Marley,
although the rest all want to go. So we’re all pulling different ways,
and nobody a bit happy, for if he’s got what he wanted he has to
remember that it’s what the rest didn’t want. I had a fling out about
the whole thing just before I left the house and I came down to grumble
to the creek. Why, that’s funny!”
“What’s funny?” inquired Mr. Keeler, as Roy looked up with a half
smile.
“Why, it’s just a month ago to-day since Rex came down here to mope
because we didn’t have money enough to let him go on a trip to Canada,
and now I’ve come here to do the same thing because we’re come into a
fortune.”
“Then you don’t care for the money?” remarked the author.
“Not if it’s going to break up a family the way it has ours. Jess used
to be awfully lively and full of fun, and now she’s all the time
talking about new clothes and the places she wants to go, and how she’s
going to have her room decorated in the new house.”
“But I thought you said she wanted to go to Europe.”
“So I did. That’s one of the troubles. She don’t know what she wants.
It’s one thing one minute and another the next.”
“But your mother? Doesn’t she have something to say about it?”
“Yes, but she’s so fond of us all, she wants to do what will give us
the most pleasure. And of course when we all want different things
that’s pretty hard to do.”
“And the ‘different thing’ that I want is to stay right here in Marley.
I’d graduate at the academy here next June, and then all my friends are
here, and I like the country. Now if your hero in a story was in a fix
like this what would you do with him?”
“It depends on the sort of story I was writing. If it was one with a
motive, a moral, so to speak, I’d have him give up his own desire and
say he’d be perfectly willing to do what the rest wanted to do.”
“But if the rest wanted to do different things? Here’s Rex wanting to
live in Philadelphia, and Eva thinking it would be ever so much nicer
to live in Boston, and Jess divided half of the time between New York
and Europe, and Sydney looking as if he’d drop into the grave right off
if we didn’t do something quick—what then?”
Roy spoke very earnestly, and Mr. Keeler did not smile this time. He
began to pick at the bark on the tree trunk and did not reply for some
little time after Roy had paused.
“I think,” he said finally, “that in that case I should have had my
hero try to make himself contented with whichever decision was arrived
at. Half a million ought to atone for a great many drawbacks.”
“Oh, I know a lot of people envy us,” broke in Roy. “Charley Minturn
says I ought to be the happiest fellow going. But I’m not. That’s
because I’m going—to leave Marley. I s’pose you think it’s queer for me
to tell all this to a stranger. But it’s just because you are a
stranger that I feel that I can do it. You can understand how that can
be, can’t you, Mr. Keeler?”
“Yes, perfectly. But I think you attach too much importance to your
feeling for Marley. Of course you think now that you will not be
contented elsewhere because you do not yet know the attractions of
other places. I remember when I was in my teens, living abroad, I
thought I could not be happy anywhere but in Paris. I had been there
all winter, and when spring came and we were to go to Germany I felt
just as you do over leaving Marley. But when we were settled in our
German home I grew to like it just as I had Paris. That is the way it
is sure to be with you.”
“Why, you’ve done me lots of good,” exclaimed Roy. “I should never have
thought of looking at things that way. So you’ve lived in Europe? Rex
only wants to travel there.”
“He’s your twin brother, you say? Does he look like you?”
“No; only the least bit. He is the good looking member of the family.
There he goes now on his wheel. Would you like to meet him?”
“Indeed I should,” replied Mr. Keeler heartily. “It would seem exactly
like a character out of a story.”
Roy put his fingers between his lips and gave a peculiar whistle,
composed of three distinct notes. Rex, who was just passing under the
trestle, turned around in his saddle, and when he saw some one beside
his brother on the tree trunk, he made a half circle in the road and
came scudding back on his machine.
He ran this in a little distance among the trees, left it leaning
against one of them and then came on foot to the edge of the creek. His
bicycle suit was very becoming to him. Roy watched Mr. Keeler’s face
and saw that he was favorably impressed at once.
He accomplished the introduction, mentioning the book both boys had
read. Rex seemed immensely pleased at meeting the author, and put on
his most charming manner.
“Won’t you come over to the house, Mr. Keeler?” he said. “We can give
you some lemonade and I’d like you to see the view of the trestle from
our piazza.”
“You are very kind,” returned the young man, looking at his watch, “but
I am afraid I shall not have time. I had planned to take the next train
in to town. I have only about twenty minutes in which to catch it now.”
“Stay to tea then and go up some time this evening,” went on Rex. “I am
sure our mother would be delighted to meet you, and so would the girls.
Wouldn’t they, Roy?”
“Yes, indeed, please stay, Mr. Keeler.”
Roy would not have dared to make this request if he had been left to
himself. That was the difference in character of the two brothers. One
was impulsive, ready to do anything on the spur of the moment: the
other cautious, shrinking sometimes. He was just as anxious as Rex to
extend the hospitality of the Pellery to their new acquaintance, but
felt that he had not known the other long enough to warrant him in
doing so.
Mr. Keeler hesitated. He was in his element now in the society of two
boys of such contrasted temperaments, making admirable studies.
“I was going back to New York to-night,” he said. “But I suppose I
could put it off till morning.”
“Do; then you can stay to tea at the Pellery,” exclaimed Rex. “That’s
what we call our house. It makes it seem like a nest, you know. If you
don’t mind I’ll mount my wheel and run on ahead to tell them you are
coming, so that we can receive you in proper state.”
There was no opportunity given Mr. Keeler to decline. Rex rushed ahead,
mounted his wheel and was off before he could answer.
“You will stay, won’t you?” asked Roy.
“With pleasure if you think it will not inconvenience your mother. That
is decidedly important. You do not know but I may be some moonshiner
from the Cumberland, or a bandit from Italy. My complexion certainly
answers to the latter description. You see, you have only my word for
who I really am.”
“I guess that’s good enough,” laughed Roy, “How do you like Rex?”
“Immensely.”
“Everybody does. I suppose we ought to be very proud of him, and we
are, but then we are afraid for him at the same time. What a boy he is!
See, he’s hunted up our big flag and hung it from Syd’s window in honor
of your coming. You’ll have to make a speech now.”