A PUZZLE
Setting forth on this adventure promised to Carolyn May all that a
hazard of new fortunes ever yields the young. She accompanied the
_Beacon's_ new reporter with the conviction that "wonderful things"
were sure to happen. To find one particular mother and baby amid the
five and more million persons in the Greater City was, to her mind, a
simple thing.
"And I couldn't be mistaken once I saw that pale lady," she confided to
Bassett, as they descended into the subway. "You see, she's got such
b-e-a-_u_-tiful hair! And the baby is just as cunning! But he's an
awfully thin little thing."
"Your taste runs to plump babies, I fancy," suggested her companion,
and he smiled upon Carolyn May. There was a serious cast to his
countenance despite its naturally frank expression.
"My!" exclaimed the little girl, "_all_ babies ought to be fat. If they
don't start out fat how can they ever hope to grow up to be big men and
women? I guess that's what the matter is with some of these awfully
thin people you see. They must have been skinny babies.
"My Auntie Rose Kennedy--You don't know her, do you?"
"I haven't that pleasure," he said.
"Well, she's awfully nice. You'd like her. Though some folks think
she's stern--just at first. I did, myself," confessed Carolyn May. "And
if you'd seen her spank General Bolivar with a lath--"
"Spank _who_ with _what_?" gasped Bassett, suddenly aroused by her
statement.
"Why, yes. General Bolivar is Uncle Joe Stagg's big white turkey
gob-ble-er. And he chased me. So Aunty Bose spanked him with a lath.
She's very stern when she wants to be. But she had skinny babies.
'Puny' she says they were, all three of them. So they couldn't live to
grow up, and they've got three stones like three white lozenges in the
churchyard at the Corners."
All this information rather staggered Joe Bassett. But he could not
help being amused by the little girl's chatter. While they rode uptown
on the subway train the journey was enlivened by similar monologues on
the part of Carolyn May. There had been times when Aunty Rose Kennedy
was wont to say that Carolyn's tongue "was hung in the middle and ran
at both ends."
The two new friends left the subway and crossed the park to that glade
where the little girl had made the acquaintance of the pale lady the
day before. Early as was the hour in the afternoon there were already
many babies with their nurses and carriages about the benches bordering
the walks.
"Of course," Carolyn May said, "we don't have to look for a carriage.
The pale lady won't have any, for it was all smashed. There! It was
right down yonder that Princey and I found the pale lady. Oh! There she
is!"
"Where? Are you sure?" asked Bassett, feeling rather embarrassed. This
was his first attempt at such an interview as Mr. Cameron had proposed.
Suppose the "pale lady" should resent it?
Carolyn May was pointing eagerly down the path to a woman sitting with
a baby in her lap, alone on a bench. The little girl might have started
off on a run to greet her friend the next moment, had not Bassett
detained her.
"Wait!" he said, dropping a restraining hand upon her shoulder. He
had paled; now he flushed warmly. "Wait! Let me speak to her first,
Carolyn. Are you sure that is the lady of the accident?"
[Illustration: "_Wait--let me speak to her first, Carolyn!_"]
"Why, of _course_!" declared the child confidently. "Don't you see
she has no go-cart? And how pale she is? And how thin the baby is? Of
course I know her!"
"Wait here, Carolyn," said Bassett, a strange tremour in his voice. "I
want to speak to the--er--the lady alone."
Carolyn May, not altogether pleased, and somewhat puzzled as well,
watched the tall young man approach the pale lady. Bassett stood
between the child and her friend when the latter first looked up and
observed his approach.
What she said, how she looked, or how Bassett looked and what he said,
the little girl had no means of knowing. But what followed quickly
filled Carolyn's small heart with trouble and her usually sunny face
began to cloud over.
The pale lady rose from the bench with her baby. She and Bassett
seemed to be talking very earnestly together. They began to move slowly
down the walk--quite in the opposite direction from that point where
Carolyn May stood, as she had been told to stand. Disobedience was not
one of her sins.
A lump rose in her throat. Salt tears stung the child's eyelids. She
beheld the pale lady and Mr. Bassett walk quite out of sight, and
neither of them turned to look at her!
Of course Carolyn knew her way home. Mr. Bassett must know that, too,
for this was the spot where her adventure had occurred the previous
afternoon. He had been assigned to interview the pale lady and get her
story; he was not supposed to act as nursemaid for Carolyn May.
But the latter felt very much hurt. Neither the pale lady nor Mr.
Bassett had asked her to join them! She wanted to hear all about it.
She wanted to see how the pale lady would look when she was given the
twenty dollar bank note for a new baby carriage.
And they had ignored her--left her out of it entirely! She might never
know at all just how glad the pale lady was to receive the twenty
dollars. And--
They were out of sight! Carolyn suddenly came to life and started after
them. But when she reached the exit of the park and the busy avenue
crossing, Mr. Bassett and the pale lady and her baby were utterly gone.
Carolyn May went on home feeling very disconsolate indeed.
But, after all, this was a holiday. She could not be unhappy for
long. Here was mamma ready to take her on the shopping tour after
all; and when Carolyn May had had her hands and face washed, and her
hair combed, and her ribbons freshened a bit, they set off, for the
department stores on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, of course,
for it was too late to go "'way down town."
There was plenty to see in Harlem's business mart, and the little girl
enjoyed herself. For she had money of her own to spend; Papa Cameron
saw to that. She bought a new rubber dog for Baby Eldred Price, and
a new "bangle" for Prince's collar, that being a fad just then among
local dog owners.
"But you have bought yourself nothing, Carolyn May," said her mother.
"I thought you wanted one of those pretty lace collars such as Edna
wears? You have been looking at it and admiring it. Now, I fear," said
Mamma, seriously, "you have not enough money left from your allowance
to buy a collar equally as nice as your little friend's."
"We-ell," the little girl said slowly, "I--I guess I won't care much.
You know, Mamma, I can look at Edna's just the same, and it's ever so
pretty. Why! I can enjoy it better seeing it on her than as if I wored
it myself. For you see," concluded this small philosopher, "I should
have to go to the looking-glass to see a collar on me; but when Edna
wears hers I can look at it all I like. Yes, it will be lots more
convenient."
This was indeed a holiday, for, as Papa Cameron did not some home to
dinner, when the electric advertising signs began to sparkle on the
wide thoroughfare, the little girl and her mother went to the "very
nicest restaurant there was" for their evening meal, where there was a
"cute" little shaded lamp on each table, and an orchestra that played
lovely music while people danced on the open floor in the middle of the
great hall.
The waiter who attended to the needs of Mrs. Cameron and Carolyn was a
very nice man indeed, the little girl thought. He saw to it that her
water glass was filled and he said "Yes, Mam'zelle" and "No, Mam'zelle"
with an air that made Carolyn feel thoroughly grown up. She shook hands
with the waiter when they departed, he was such a very nice man.
She was very sleepy when they came out upon the busy street. The big
stores were closed and the theatre-going crowd jostled her. Even the
suggestion of her favourite moving picture house did not tempt her on
this night, and she fairly staggered the last few blocks, clinging to
her mother's hand; "and I never _did_ know just how I got to bed," she
told her father the next day.
It had been quite a wonderful day to look back upon, despite her
disappointment about the pale lady and Mr. Joe Bassett. Regarding that,
Mr. Cameron had something to tell his wife when he sat down to the
breakfast table. It was Carolyn's and her mother's breakfast, but Mr.
Cameron's supper.
"Of course, Carolyn May knew her way home from the park," her mother
said. "But Mr. Bassett seemed to take the fact too easily for granted
when he deserted her there. Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the
unfledged reporter?"
She had already heard the story of Joe Bassett and knew who he was and
as much about his personal affairs as her husband.
Just why Mr. Henry Bassett, disrespectfully known far and wide as "the
Griffin of Wall Street," had disowned his son, the newspaper reading
public and the newspaper writers who catered to that public could
only surmise. One day Joe was high in favour in his father's office
downtown, as well as in the Riverside Drive mansion where the Bassetts
dwelt; the next, Joe was out in the world and frankly admitting to
friends who asked that he never expected to touch a cent of his
father's vast fortune or be received by him again.
Of course one could surmise that the estrangement had something to
do with the younger Bassett's marriage, although that had occurred
after his break with his father. It was not the usual tawdry
rich-man's-son-and-stage-girl marriage. Young Mrs. Bassett was born and
brought up "to the purple" just as Joe had been. But her family had
lost its property and rumour kept whispering that the girl had nowhere
to turn but to that "easiest way" of marriage.
It might be said that she had captured a rich man's son. But she had
wedded Joe Bassett after he had been disowned; and those knowing Henry
Bassett well said that he would not have put his son out of the house
without a good reason, and because of that good reason he would never
take him back.
This was all two years old now. The general public had quite forgotten
the young Bassetts.
"Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the unfledged reporter?" Mrs.
Cameron had asked.
"Scarcely that," observed her husband in a somewhat scornful tone of
voice. "Joe Bassett--no matter how smart a man his father is--will
never set the North River afire. At least, not in the newspaper field."
"Tell me about it," said Hannah Cameron, for she was one of those wise
women who always retain a refreshing though not an undue interest in
their husband's work. Besides, before she married she had worked in the
_Beacon_ office and had never lost interest in the newspaper "game."
"Can you imagine what the fellow said when he came back to the office
from that assignment? He was prompt enough. He wasted no time. And he
had the story--more of it than I expected him to get. He had in some
way discovered (and that's a mystery, too) the name of the man whose
automobile smashed the woman's baby carriage and who gave the twenty
dollar bill to Carolyn."
"Oh! Who was that man, Papa?" asked the little girl, her interest, too,
aroused.
"Why, Bassett would not tell me even that. Nor the name of your friend,
'the pale lady.' He got all the information needed to make a whacking
good story, but refused to turn it in and offered his resignation
instead, if I considered that necessary."
"Oh!" cried Hannah Cameron, dropping her knife and fork to stare at her
husband. "Why did he do that?"
"Because he said he considered it bald impudence to put the story of
the woman's private affairs into the papers for the public to read.
She had begged him not to print anything about it. I asked him how he
thought papers were made readable if not by just such stories, and he
told me if _that_ was newspaper work he could not do it."
"It it is not without reason--his point," murmured Mrs. Cameron.
Her husband smiled grimly. "I have always told you, Hannah, that you
lacked an essential for sound newspaper work--you possess no nose for
news. But Bassett was very high and mighty about it. Yet, somehow, I
like the fellow," the husband added, musingly.
"I hope you were not obliged to discharge him," his wife said
seriously, and plainly more moved by her husband's story than she cared
to let him see.
"No. I gave him another chance. Put him on police and City Hall work.
He cannot run against many people in that end of the game who will stir
his latent chivalry. He seemed much impressed by Carolyn's friend. Said
she was a lady and should not have her misfortunes spread upon the news
sheet.
"He had sent the twenty dollar bill to the man who gave it to Carolyn
May. Somehow he discovered his identity. The woman refused to accept
the money. Bassett offered to make good the twenty if I did not believe
him; but it was impossible to distrust the young idiot."
"That is a harsh word, Lewis," said Mrs. Cameron.
"It fits him," her husband said in disgust. "No wonder Joe Bassett has
not got along any better."
"But, Papa Cameron!" cried Carolyn May suddenly, "then my pale lady
won't have any new go-cart for her baby."
"She will not buy it with that twenty dollars your friend in the
automobile gave you."
"And--and maybe she can't get another at all! I wonder--Why!" exclaimed
the child, aghast, "we don't know where she lives or what her name is
at all, do we?"
"Oh," said her mother kindly, "if you so easily found your pale lady
over there in the park yesterday, you will be able to see her again."
To Carolyn's disappointment, however, she looked every afternoon in the
park for a week; but the pale lady and her baby did not reappear.