"And who do you suppose I found there?" he said, when he got home, well
on towards eleven o'clock, an hour so dissipated for Old Chester that
Milly was broad awake in silent anxiety. "Why, Ned, if you please! He
was talking to Hayes's daughter Helen. She seems a mighty nice girl,
Milly. I packed young Edwin off at nine; he was boring Miss Helen to
death. Boys have no sense about such things. Can't you give him a
hint that women of twenty-five don't care for little boys' talk?
By-the-way, she talks mighty well herself. After I settled my business
with Hayes, we got to discussing the President's letter; she had just
read it."
"Do you mean to say _that the President has written to Helen Hayes_?"
cried Mrs. Dilworth, sitting up in bed in her astonishment.
Thomas roared, and began to pull his boots. "Why, they are regular
correspondents! Didn't you know it?"
"No! I hadn't the slightest idea--Tom, you're joking?"
"My dear, you can't think I am capable of joking? But, Milly, look
here, I'll tell you one thing: she was mighty sensible about Ned. She
thinks there's a good deal to him--"
"I don't need Helen Hayes to tell me that," said Ned's mother.
Tom, who never paused for his wife's reply, was whistling joyfully:
[Illustration: music fragment]
Helen Hayes had been very comforting to him; he had protested, when Ned
reluctantly departed, that a boy never knew when to clear out; and Miss
Helen had pouted, and said Ned shouldn't be scolded; "I wouldn't let
him 'clear out'--so there!" Few women of thirty-two can be cunning
successfully, but Tom thought Miss Helen very cunning. "I just
perfectly love to hear him talk about his music," she said.
"He can't talk about anything else," Ned's father said. "That's the
trouble with him."
"The trouble with him? Why, that's the beauty of him," said Miss
Hayes, with enthusiasm; and Thomas said to himself that she was a
mighty good-looking girl. The rose-colored lamp-shade cast a soft
light on a face that was not quite so young as was the frock she
wore--rose-colored also, with much yellowish lace down the front. It
was very unlike Milly's dresses--dark, good woollens, made rather
tight, for Milly, short and stout and forty-three, aspired (for her
Thomas's sake) to a figure,--which is always a pity at forty-three.
Furthermore, Helen Hayes's hands, very white and heavy with shining
rings, lay in lovely idleness in her lap; and that is so much more
restful in a woman's hands than to be fussing with sewing "or
everlasting darning," Thomas thought. In fact, what with her lovely
idleness and her praise of his boy, Tom Dilworth thought he had rarely
seen so pleasing a young woman. "Though she's not so very young, after
all; she must be twenty-five," he told his wife.
"She'll never see thirty again."
"Well, she's a mighty nice girl," Thomas said.
Except to look pretty, Miss Helen Hayes had done nothing to produce
this impression, for she had contradicted Mr. Dilworth up and down
about Ned.
"He has genius, you know."
"You mean his fiddle?" Tom said, incredulously.
"I mean his music. We'll hear of him one of these days."
"I don't care much whether we ever hear from his music," he said, "but
I wish I could hear that he was applying himself to business."
"Business!" cried Helen Hayes. "What is business compared to Art?"
Thomas looked over at Mr. Hayes in astonishment, for in those days, in
Old Chester, this particular sort of talk had not been heard; the older
man sneered and changed his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the
other. Miss Hayes did not get much sympathy from her family. But she
went on with pretty dogmatism:
"You see, in a man like your son--"
"A man! He's only twenty, my dear young lady."
"In a _man_, sir! like your son--genius is the thing to consider; and
you owe it to the world to let genius have its fullest play. Don't
bring Pegasus down to plough Old Chester cornfields. Why, it seems to
me," said Helen Hayes, "that he ought to be allowed to just soar. We
common folk ought to do the ploughing."
"Thunder an' guns!" said Tom Dilworth.
"I don't care if he can't be sure that two and two make four," cried
Miss Helen (Thomas, bubbling into aggrieved confidence on this sore
subject, had alleged this against his son); "he can put four notes
together that open the gates of heaven. And he'll distinguish himself
in music, because his father's son is bound to have tremendous
perseverance and energy."
Old Mr. Hayes snorted and spat into the fire; but Miss Helen's look
when she said "his father's son" made Mr. Thomas Dilworth simper.
"That girl has sense," he said to himself as he walked home at a
quarter to eleven. But he only told Mrs. Dilworth that she had better
hint to Ned to be a little more backward in coming forward. "That
Hayes girl is nice to him on our account," said Tom, "but he needn't
bore her to death. Milly, why don't you have one of those pink
wrappers? She had one on to-night. Loose, you know, and trimmed down
the front."
"A wrapper isn't very suitable for company," Mrs. Dilworth said,
briefly. "It didn't matter with you, because you're an old married
man; but she oughtn't to go round in wrappers when Neddy's there."
"Why, it was a sort of party dress--all lace and stuff. I wish you had
one like it. As for Ned, he's a babe; and her wrapper thing was
perfectly proper, of course. Can't you ask her for the pattern?"
And then Thomas went to sleep and dreamed of a large order for
galvanized buckets; but his Milly lay awake a long time, wondering how
she could get a pink dress; pleased, in her silent way, that Tom should
be thinking about her clothes; but with a slow resentment gathering in
her heart that Helen Hayes's clothes should have suggested his thought.
"And pink isn't my color," she thought, a vision of her own mild, red
face rising in her mind. Still, a fresh pink lawn--"that's always
pretty," Milly Dilworth said to herself, earnestly.