ONLY OBEYING ORDERS
“Will you kindly tell me why you are here?” Leslie Cairns surveyed her
chaperon, Mrs. Gaylord, with an anything but welcoming face. “Didn’t you
understand my letter? It was written in English. At least, I thought I
wrote English.” Leslie used sarcastic emphasis.
“Yes, Leslie, your letter was in English, I suppose your rude slang
might be classed as English.” The chaperon’s voice was bitingly dry. Her
florid, usually placid features were stiff with resentment of Leslie’s
cavalier manner. “You took advantage of me in a most unfair way. Instead
of writing me that you thought of going to New York to spend the
holidays, you simply notified me at the last minute, completely ignoring
me as your chaperon.”
“Oh, cut out the lecture!” Leslie made a derisive motion as though to
push further rebuke from her. “What is the matter with you? Doesn’t our
agreement hold good in New York as well as in Hamilton? Couldn’t we have
got together in a few hours if necessary? I allowed for all that when I
wrote you. I didn’t think it urgent to put it down in black and white. I
gave you credit for having some gray matter. Who engaged you in the
first place, my father, or I? He saw fit to butt in to my arrangement
with you. Of course I’m not supposed to know that. Still it wouldn’t
take me long to remind him of it, if he began to be fussy with me.”
Displeasure of her father’s private understanding with Mrs. Gaylord
momentarily banished Leslie’s regret of their estrangement.
“_Leslie!_ I hope you would not be so treacherous as to let your father
know that you—that he—that you know he and I have a private
understanding about you,” stammered the chaperon in reproachful alarm.
“_That_ is a secret agreement between him and me.”
“Was a secret, you mean,” satirized Leslie, laughing with a kind of
grotesque amusement. “A secret isn’t much of a secret after it goes as
far as a third party.”
“_Leslie!_” Mrs. Gaylord repeated the name with exclamatory half-hearted
wrath.
“Yes, ‘Leslie,’” mimicked her amused charge. “What’s the use of puffing,
Gaylord? You know you always lose out with me in a talk contest. Sit
down, take off your hat and your head will cool off. Registered at our
village inn?” she raised ironic eyebrows at her chaperon.
“Yes; I have registered,” was the frigid return. Mrs. Gaylord tried not
to show approval of the dainty Dresden apartment she was in. She had
caught only a fleecing glimpse of Doris. The latter had promptly
retreated to the bed-room she was to occupy of the expensive Dresden
suite of small salon, two sleeping rooms and bath which Leslie had
extravagantly engaged. “I engaged a room with bath on this floor, but—”
She glanced about the smart salon.
“No room here,” supplied Leslie. “Oh, you are welcome, of course, to
inhabit the salon with Goldie and me,” she added flippantly.
“Thank you. You know, Leslie, that I have tried not to stand in your
way.” Mrs. Gaylord spoke with reproving bitterness. “I am here now, not
because I wish to be, but because—” The chaperon made an impressive
pause.
“Now we are getting down to brass tacks.” Leslie simulated genial
encouragement.
Mrs. Gaylord frowned, but resisted bandying further words. “Your father
ordered me to come to New York, Leslie,” she said with a direct
simplicity which had more effect on her discourteous charge than had her
air of affront.
“What?” Leslie almost screamed the question.
From the adjoining bed-room Doris heard the cry and wondered. She knew
that Leslie had a chaperon, named Mrs. Gaylord, who amiably permitted
Leslie to do as she pleased. While she had retired to her bed-room and
closed the door, on the arrival of the chaperon, she had caught enough
of the salutatory remarks between Leslie and the other woman to
establish Mrs. Gaylord’s identity in her own mind. The fact that the
caller had come at so late an hour further convinced her.
“Just what I say,” stiffly confirmed the chaperon. “I received this
letter from him. You might as well see it.” She had opened her small
seal traveling bag as she spoke. Now she handed Leslie the letter from
Peter Cairns.
“Uh-h-h-h!” Leslie dropped down on a gilt-framed, pale-hued Dresden
settee with a pretense of total collapse. Next second she sat up with a
jerk. “Gaylord, I beg your pardon for ragging you. You seem to be a good
sport,” was her half-humorous apology.
Mrs. Gaylord with difficulty maintained a grave face. Strangely enough,
at heart she did not dislike Leslie. Constant companionship with the
financier’s long-neglected daughter from the standpoint of a duenna had
shown her plainly all Leslie’s faults and virtues. When first she had
come to Leslie she had resentfully labeled her as having all faults and
no virtues. Presently she discovered that Leslie was generous, not of
spirit, but in a material way. She also had a virtue of minding her own
affairs beyond that of any other girl or woman of Mrs. Gaylord’s
acquaintance. Of Leslie’s intriguing, unscrupulous side the chaperon
knew little. She admired the girl’s peculiar originality and thought her
sayings distinctively clever or funny. She respected Leslie for being
neither foolishly sentimental nor flirtatious. Leslie’s rudenesses she
soon learned to overlook because Leslie was as civil to her as to anyone
else, perhaps more civil.
“What are you going to do about it?” Leslie inquired with rueful
curiosity. “He’s in New York. I saw him last night in front of the
Luxe-Garins. Don’t think he saw me. I was in a taxi. Goldie and I had
been there to dinner.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there—just you two young girls!” cried out the
chaperon despairingly.
“Oh, stuff. I’m not a minor. Think the Luxe-Garins is a jungle full of
black-whiskered lions and unicorns? We didn’t dance, or speak to a soul.
We only had eats. That’s not a social blunder, is it?”
“No-o-o.” There was a certain amount of relief in the reply. “I shall do
nothing, Leslie. Your father has ordered me to come here to look after
you. I am here. I thought before I came I would write him and explain
why we were not together. I could find no proper explanation. I dare say
he is very angry with me.” Mrs. Gaylord’s tone grew rather plaintive.
“As your chaperon I should insist on your compliance with strict
convention at all times. But it is as you say. You are not a minor, you
have the right to go where you please and do as you please. Since your
father has—well—has—.” The chaperon halted lamely.
“Cut me off his card index,” supplied Leslie with forceful moroseness.
Both chaperon and charge had spoken louder than they were aware. In the
next room the last few sentences of their talk had come clearly to
Doris’s ears. While she was not specially curious she could not help
being impressed by what she heard.
“If I had been like some of the girls I’ve known I’d not have engaged a
chaperon at all after he turned me down,” Leslie defended darkly. “I’m
supposed not to know he has ever showed a spark of interest in me since
he cut me out of his life. Don’t you let him call you down because I
told you to visit your head off if you liked among your friends while I
was at Hamilton. You may tell him I hired you and chased you away from
me when I felt like being alone for a while. He owes you a debt of
gratitude for telling me that he didn’t quite efface himself from my
map. Tell him,” she snickered faintly, “that I pay you a salary for
acting as a friend instead of a priggish frump. Tell him he ought to
double your salary from his end of the deal for the same reason.”
“Why—Leslie!” Grateful amazement this time prompted the chaperon’s
exclamation. “I had no idea you felt that way about me.”
“I had no idea myself,” Leslie retorted. She cast a half sheepish glance
toward Mrs. Gaylord. She was experiencing the peculiar sensation of
physical glow which invariably attends the moral defense of another
person. For the first time in her wayward career she felt moved to
defend someone for whose offense she was strictly to blame.
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