"If there is one thing meaner than another, it's _rain_," Corrie
announced generally. "I'm going out. Won't you come, Gerard?"
"If rain is the meanest thing there is, it shows real sense to go out in
it," Isabel commented, from the window-seat opposite. "That is just like
you, Corrie Rose. When I ask you to take me out on a perfectly fair day,
you won't do it."
"I?" stunned. "I ever refused----"
"Yes. Yesterday, when I asked you to take me just once around the race
course, while the cars were out practising. You know you would not. If
it is safe for you, it is safe for me. But never mind; your old pink car
won't win, anyhow. He hasn't a chance with the professional drivers, has
he, Mr. Gerard?"
"A chance?" Gerard gravely echoed. "Why, several of our best drivers are
thinking of withdrawing, since he is entered, because they feel it's no
use trying to win if he is racing."
"Oh, you're making fun! But I mean it; _I_ could race that car he is so
vain of, with my own little runabout machine."
Corrie dragged a mandolin from beneath his chair and tinkled the opening
chords of a popular melody.
"Get on your little girl's racer,
And I'll lead you for a chaser,
Down the good old Long Island course.
And before you're half through it,
Your poor car will rue it,
And you'll trade in the pieces for a horse."
The provoking improvisation ended abruptly, as Isabel's well-aimed
sofa-pillow struck the singer.
"Do you call that a ladylike retort?" Corrie queried, freeing himself
from the silken missile. "Tell her it isn't, Flavia."
"I am afraid," Flavia excused herself. "There are more cushions on that
window-seat."
"It was a soft answer, at least," Gerard laughed. "And a good shot."
"Oh, I taught her to pitch, myself. Now I'm sorry," deplored her cousin.
"Too late," Isabel returned complacently. "I called that a cushion
carom, Corrie. And my car would not fall to pieces. Flavia, he is
feeding candy to Firdousi."
Flavia looked over with the warm brightening of expression Allan Gerard
had learned to watch for when she regarded her brother, and which never
failed to stir in him the half-wistful envy of the first day when he had
seen her so gazing at the driver of the pink racing car.
"If Corrie can teach a Persian kitten to eat candy, he probably can
teach it to digest candy," she offered serene reply. "Besides, he loves
Firdousi, as much as I do."
"I only gave him some fruit-paste to see his jaws work," the culprit
defended. "He needs exercise. And so do I."
"Not that kind, yours work all the time. It is only an hour since
breakfast and you have talked ever since," corrected his cousin.
"I haven't!"
"You have."
Corrie ran his fingers through his heavy fair hair, carefully set the
purring kitten on the floor, and stood up.
"All right, if you say so," he submitted gracefully. "What you say, I
stand for."
The argument was pure sport, of course. But with that last playful
sentence, Corrie suddenly turned his dark-blue eyes upon Isabel with an
expression not playful, as if himself struck by some deeper force in the
words.
"What you say, I stand for," he repeated, and paused.
Flavia and Gerard both looked at him. All the fresh ardor of first love,
all the impulsive faith of eighteen and its entire devotion invested
Corrie Rose and illumined the shining regard in which he enveloped his
cousin. There was in him a quality that lifted the moment above mere
sentimentality, a young strength and straightforward earnestness at once
dignified and pathetic with the pathos of all transient things that must
go down before the battery of the years.
It would have been difficult to encounter a more enchanting family life
than that into which Allan Gerard had been drawn. The Rose household was
as redolent of simple fragrance as a household of roses, in spite of its
costly luxury, its retinue of servants and lavish expenditure. Thomas
Rose's wealth had been made so long since, before the birth of the
younger generation, that to one and all it was merely the natural
condition of affairs, not in the least affecting them personally. Money
was very nearly non-existent to them, since they never were obliged to
consider its lack or abundance. They spent as they desired, precisely as
they ate when hungry or drank according to thirst, without either stint
or excess. It was Arcadian, it was improbable, but it was so. And the
guard-wall that encircled their gilded Arcadia was a strong mutual
affection not to be overthrown from without. Only by internal treason
could that domain fall.
It was not in one day that Gerard had come to understand this in its
fullness; he had learned bit by bit. For there was nothing at all
angelic about the gay family. But now he first realized, as he watched
Corrie, that Isabel Rose was placed here by circumstance and not by
fittedness. She was too earthen a vessel, however handsome and
wholesome, to contain that fine sun-shot essence distilled from the
fountain of youth which her cousin poured out for her taking. Gerard
knew it, as he saw her matter-of-fact acceptance of the gaze that should
have moved even a woman who did not love Corrie.
Yet, they would probably marry one another, he reflected. There was
nothing to interfere, if she consented. He felt an elder brother's
outrush of impatient protection for the boy; involuntarily he turned to
Flavia with a movement of regretful irritation at the folly of it all, a
folly he divined that she also recognized.
Flavia met his glance, and read its impatience and regret. How she
applied it was a reflection less of her own mind than of Isabel's; she
fancied Gerard jealous of this open wooing of the other girl, and mutely
asking her own intervention.
That intervention was not easy to give. In spite of herself, the days
with Allan Gerard had affected her so far. Stooping, she lifted Firdousi
to her lap, gaining a moment before breaking the silence that had fallen
upon the group.
"Where are you going to take Mr. Gerard, Corrie?" she inquired. "Are not
the possibilities storm-limited?"
"He isn't going to take him anywhere," Isabel calmly interpolated. "They
are going to stay in and amuse us. At least, that is what I say, if he
is going to stand for it. He said he would, but it's some large order."
Corrie threw back his head, all seriousness vanishing before his
laughter.
"Just you let father catch you slinging Boweryese like that, Miss Rose,"
he begged, moving aside to stuff a handful of candy into either
coat-pocket. "He loves to hear girls talk slang. But it _is_ some classy
order, all right, if you come to think of it; I guess I won't commence
to-day. I'm going over to show the _Dear Me_ to Jack Rupert, Flavia; he
thinks he can tell me why her engine misses."
"In the rain, dear?" his sister wondered.
"'Snips and snails and gasoline tales, are what little boys are made
of,'" Isabel quoted derisive _Mother Goose_. "He won't melt; let him
go. Mr. Gerard, you do not want to go out in a sloppy motor boat, do
you?"
"If you will forgive my bad taste, I believe I shall go with Corrie,"
Gerard deprecated, rising. He looked again at Flavia, but she offered no
suggestion that he stay.
"That's the idea," approved the gentleman in question. "I'll ring for
our raincoats."
There was a period of silence in the many-windowed, octagonal library,
after the two young girls were left alone. Flavia continued to play with
the drowsy kitten. Isabel, chin in hand, gazed across the rain-drenched
window-panes, her full lips bent discontentedly. The first diversion was
effected by the smart slap of a maple-leaf flattened against the glass
by a gust of wind, directly across the watcher's line of vision.
"P.P.C.," interpreted Flavia, surveying the large pale-golden leaf, as
it adhered to the wet pane opposite her cousin.
"Now, what may that mean?" Isabel demanded.
"_Pour prendre conge_, of course. Those are the farewell cards of
departing summer. See her coat-of-arms on it: a gold-and-crimson
sunset?"
Isabel eyed her companion with scornful superiority.
"You had better talk sense," she counselled. "That is a good stiff
north wind blowing, and Corrie is just as reckless with his motor boat
as he is with his car. He and Mr. Gerard are likely to be
half-drowned--and I am glad of it."
"Isa!"
"I am glad. It serves them right for leaving me at home and going off
with that mechanic. I know why Corrie did it, too; he didn't want us to
be together all day. He is jealous of Mr. Gerard because he likes me."
"Corrie does?"
Isabel launched a glance of malicious comprehension over her shoulder,
smilingly meaningly.
"Oh, Corrie! Of course! But I meant Mr. Gerard. Anyone can see how
Corrie hates to have him with me."
Flavia adjusted the blue-satin bow upon Firdousi's neck, saying nothing
for a moment. She did not intend to put the question hovering at her
lips, yet suddenly the indiscreet words escaped her:
"Then, you think Mr. Gerard is--interested in you?"
"Did you ever know a man to come here without being interested in me,
Flavia Rose?"
The superb arrogance was a trifle too much to escape retort, even from
the considerate Flavia.
"Well, there was Mr. Stone," she recalled, with intention.
Isabel colored richly, her handsome light-gray eyes hardened. The recent
episode of Mr. Ethan Stone had not been one of her triumphs in
flirtation.
"He was almost as old as uncle," she exclaimed sharply. "He would have
died of fright at the things Mr. Gerard and Corrie and I like to do,
anyway, if he had stayed here. He was all nerves. So are you, for that
matter. You are worried over Corrie now, you know you are."
Flavia never quarrelled; she had an abhorrence of scenes. But that did
not imply a lack of capacity for anger. She rose, a straight, slim
figure in her blue morning-frock, the kitten in her arms.
"If I were with him, I should not be worried," she stated with dignity.
"I am never afraid when I am there to share what happens. I think I will
go upstairs."
And she went, leaving the other girl to devise her own amusements.
In her own room, Flavia pushed aside the window-curtains to look out. In
all the dripping landscape she saw no trace of her brother or their
guest; the guest, half of whose visit was now past. The next day would
be Sunday; one of the two weeks she had unreasoningly dreaded was gone,
already. Was she glad, or sorry? She did not know. But she continued to
look from the window; there was indeed a strong north wind blowing, and
Corrie, if not reckless, certainly used the least margin of safety.
It was impossible to be more safe from drowning than Corrie was at
that time. He was in fact on land as dry as the weather permitted,
engaged in operating a small ciderpress for the benefit of himself
and Gerard, at a certain old-fashioned farm where he was--as he
himself explained--persona very grata indeed.
"They are used to me," he supplemented. "Wonderful what people can get
used to, isn't it?"
"It surely is," Gerard agreed, from his seat on an overturned barrel. He
contemplated interestedly the picture Corrie presented with his sleeves
rolled to the elbow, his coat off and his bright hair flecked with
ruby-hued drops of the flying liquid. "See here, Corrie, what are you
planning to do with yourself?"
"Do? Meet Rupert and try out the _Dear Me_, of course. Why?"
"I didn't mean that way. College? Business?"
"Oh! Would you pitch over that tin-cup, please? Why, I am all through
college."
"Through it! Before you are nineteen?"
"Jes' so. Like to see the pretty blue-ribboned papers that prove it?" He
sat down on the press, drying his face with his handkerchief. "You see,
my father had tutors to lavish all their wisdom and attention on little
Corwin B. Rose, and I never had to wait while the rest of a class
ploughed along, so I got through the usual junk and was ready for
college at fifteen plus. So I entered at New York, where I could drive
back and forth from home each day, and finished up the college business.
It was a nuisance and I wanted to get it over, so I hustled a bit. The
classical course, you know, not the professional. I graduated last
Spring, just before I met you at the twenty-four-hour race. You look
surprised."
"I should not have thought it of you."
"You didn't suppose I could work?" The mischievous blue eyes laughed at
him. "I can, when I have to. And studying doesn't hit me very hard,
although I'd rather be out-doors."
"Not that, exactly. You do not look it," Gerard said slowly. He could
not explain the effects he had seen left by college life with unlimited
money at command, or how he was moved by their utter absence here.
Corrie gave way to open mirth.
"What a compliment! My word! Fancy! Well, I can't help my face. Anyway,
you think I look as if I could drive a car, so I'm satisfied. Do you
know," his expression sobered as he leaned forward, fixing earnest eyes
on his companion's, "I would rather be you, do what you are doing, than
be or do anything else in the world. Of course, I shan't get the
chance--probably I couldn't do the work if I did--but I should _love_
it."
Gerard actually colored before that ardent admiration, taken unaware.
"Corrie Rose, you are given to the folly of hero-worship; and heroes are
few," he accused sternly.
"I don't know about that, Mr. Gerard."
"I do. But, Corrie----"
"Present."
Gerard stood up, reaching for his raincoat.
"Beware of heroine-worship, it is _the_ folly. When you find the real
woman, get on your knees, where you belong, before a grace of God, but
don't build shrines to an imitation."
Astonished, Corrie paused, upright beside the ciderpress, then smiled
with a blending of pride and serious exaltation.
"No danger of that! I--that can never happen to me," he assured
quietly. "I am safe-guarded from imitations, win or lose. I believe, if
I am given to hero-worship, that I'm pretty good at picking the right
subjects for it. Had enough cider?"
"Too much, probably. If I am ill to-morrow, I shall tell Rupert that you
poisoned me. Are you going around to pay the lord proprietors of the
place for what we have consumed?"
"Who, me? If I did, Mrs. Goodwin might box my ears for the impertinence;
she has boxed them before. I grew up around here, remember. The first
acquaintance I made with this house was when I shied an apple at the
family tabby as it sat sunning itself on the well-curb, and bowled it
in. Naturally, I hadn't meant to hit it; the beast stepped forward just
as I fired. I nearly fell in, myself, trying to get it out, but the well
was deep and I couldn't raise a meow or a whisker. It was a fine
November Sunday, I remember, and while I was busy the family drove into
the yard, home from church. I bolted. No one saw me go, but by and by I
began to remember all the yarns I ever had heard about people getting
typhoid fever from polluted well-water, and to imagine that entire
household dying on my hands. Remorse with a capital R! I felt like
Cesare Borgia and Madame de Brinvilliers and the Veiled Mokanna all
rolled into one. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I sneaked into
Flavia's room at two o'clock in the morning, for counsel."
"She gave it?"
"She gave it. You can always count on Flavia. I can see her now, sitting
up in bed with her hair braided in two big yellow plaits and her
troubled kiddie countenance turned to me.
"'You will have to tell either papa or those people,' she decided, wise
as a toy owl. 'And if you tell them, _they_ will surely tell papa, so
perhaps you would rather tell him yourself. But I am sorry, dear
darling.'
"So I 'fessed up, after breakfast."
"What happened?" Gerard questioned.
"We drove over to the farm together, and father went in for a private
interview with old man Goodwin. After which he, father, escorted me
around to the well and informed me that I was to drink a cup of that
water. Phew, I would rather have drunk hemlock! I wasn't much given to
begging off when I got into trouble, but I tried that time, all right.
"'It's what you've left these folks to drink,' said he, standing with
his hands in his pockets, looking at me. 'It would have been a lot more
pleasant for you to swallow if you had owned up two days ago; just keep
that as a reminder never to put off a thing you ought to do. Take your
medicine, Corwin B.'
"I took it. But it almost killed me." He shook his blond head
disgustedly. "I told him I would probably die of typhoid, or something
worse. He said we would chance it."
"Still, it was a chance, Corrie."
Corrie calmly fastened the last button of his raincoat.
"No, I guess not. You see, old Goodwin had told father that they pulled
pussy out of the well ten minutes after I ran away, the first day. She
was clinging to the bucket, pretty wet, but healthy and merry. Father
told me the truth, before dinner-time; I didn't seem to care for
luncheon, that day. Have you got a pencil? I've lost my fountain-pen
again; that's the third I've bought this month."
Gerard produced the pencil.
"It was a rough joke on you, though," he commented. "Didn't you resent
it?"
Corrie lifted his bright clear glance from his task of tearing a blank
leaf from his notebook.
"Hadn't I earned it?" he asked. "Keep the lines straight, Gerard; my
father never punished me in anger, nor unless I could first admit I
deserved it and we could shake hands on it afterward. Of course, that
sort of thing ended five years ago--there never was much of it--but
there couldn't be closer friends than we have been, right through. We
have kept each other's respect, we couldn't get along without it; and we
expect a good deal of each other, too. I just don't want you to
misunderstand."
He scribbled his signature across the bit of paper, and secured the
legend to the ciderpress.
"There; now the Goodwins will know who has been here. Ready?"
"Ready," Gerard assented.
The rain had ceased; the vigorous broom of the north wind was sweeping
the broken storm-clouds across a gray sky. The drive to the yacht club
was accomplished pleasantly and quickly.
"I told Rupert to meet us here at noon," Corrie observed, when they
stopped at the pier. "And I had lunch for three sent over, this morning.
What a deserted old hole the club is in October! Hello, what----"
From beneath the tarpaulin cover of a long, polished motor boat moored
in the wall-locked artificial harbor, a frowsy head had projected, to be
instantly withdrawn into shelter at sight of the two young men. The
genus of that head was unmistakable, the action significant. Both
arrivals halted involuntarily.
"Club steward?" inquired Gerard, with irony.
"Tramp!" flared his companion, recovering breath after the first shock
of amazement at the audacity of the intruder. "A dirty, lazy hobo in my
boat! Lying on my cushions, mauling my things, running my engine for all
I know. Oh!"
"Hold on," Gerard advised. "Better investigate."
But Corrie was already at the edge of the pier.
"Come out of there!" he shouted imperiously. "Come out, I say, or I'll
come aboard and throw you out. What do you mean by it? Come out, I tell
you."
The head slowly emerged, a red head in need of combing; its owner rested
his arms on the gleaming mahogany deck and turned a sullen, unshaven
face on his challenger.
"Stand me a quarter, an' I'll beat it," he invited raucously.
"A quarter! You'll beat it without a cent and do it quick, or go to
jail. That is my boat, do you hear? Come out. What are you doing there?
Stealing?"
"Sleepin', if you want to know."
"I've got a right to know. Are you going to take your filthy self off my
cushions, or am I going to throw you off?"
"You?"
"Yes, _me_. Who do you think?"
The man measured his young antagonist with unhurried scrutiny, yawned,
and ostentatiously settled himself in a position of greater comfort.
"You can't do it," he sneered. "Send a man."
The _Dear Me_ was not anchored, but moored to the pier by a pulley and
tackle. Before the diverted Gerard guessed his purpose, Corrie had
hauled in the boat's bow by the running line attached and swung himself
raging into the craft below. There was a choked oath, a sound of rending
canvas, then the clatter and thud of combat in close quarters.
It was over before Gerard could do more than haul the reeling,
water-drenched boat again within reach. A great splash, a cry changing
to a smothered gurgle, announced a threat fulfilled.
"I don't want any help," panted Corrie, standing erect and dishevelled,
fiery blue eyes on his floundering enemy. "He's had enough, I fancy.
Here, the water is only five feet deep, you chump! Not that way! Throw
me an oar, Gerard--he'd drown himself in a saucer. Here, catch hold,
you. What's the matter with you?"
"You pitched him into pretty cold water," Gerard reproached, between
amusement and pity. "Got him? Look out! You'll capsize!"
Corrie had him, by the collar, and brought him to the pier, a streaming,
shivering wreck.
"Man's size, am I?" demanded the victor. "Here, what are you shaking
like that for? You'll kill yourself, man."
The captive looked at him, speechless, shuddering miserably in the
boisterous rush of wind that wrapped his wet garments about him like a
sheath of ice.
"You silly idiot," Corrie snapped impatiently. "Why didn't you do as I
told you? Open the basement door, won't you, Gerard, while I bring him?
We'll be sure to find a fire there. Are you going to come quietly, yes?"
The victim followed tamely to the lower part of the building, where
Corrie threw open a furnace-door and installed him in the red glow of
heat.
"Take off your clothes," he commanded. "Trying to get pneumonia, are
you, so I will feel like a brute? Oh, I'll give you something to wear;
I've got a lot of old duds in my locker here. What are you laughing at,
Allan Gerard?"
"The responsible man's burden. Never mind me, go on with your rescue."
"I should like to throw something at you."
"Haven't you got enough on your hands?"
The raillery struck some note in the man's pride. He looked from Gerard
to Corrie, who was bringing an armful of assorted clothing, with a
reawakening defiance not so much evil as primitive.
"You couldn't have put it over me so easy," he announced sombrely, "if
I'd had the feed I bet you got this morning."
The garments escaped Corrie's grasp.
"Feed? You're hungry?"
"What you think I was sleepin' in your dinky boat for, if I had the
price of anythin'? It had a blanket in it an' was better than the open,
that's why."
"Why didn't you say so," Corrie stormed at him hotly. "Get into those
clothes and come upstairs. Or, no; I'll bring it down, stay there."
It was an elaborate lunch-hamper that presently was brought in and set
down.
"Eat it," was the concise direction. "That vacuum-bottle is full of hot
coffee; drink it. For Heaven's sake stop shivering--_why_ couldn't you
speak? Rupert is coming, Gerard. I heard the motor-horn down the road."
Gerard discreetly had turned his back to the scene, reading a
last-season bulletin of yacht racing that was fixed to the wall at the
end of the room.
"You want to start?" he interpreted, as Corrie joined him.
"Well--I hope you won't mind, but I don't see how we can. I have got to
stay here until that chattering, shaking----"
"'Brimstone pig,'" supplied Gerard, with a recollection of the
unforgettable _Mrs. Smallweed_.
"Thanks. Until he finishes and can leave, for the steward will put him
out if he finds him here alone."
"That cannot be long."
"No, but," he hesitated, engagingly confused. "But we are miles from a
restaurant, you know, and I had to feed him somehow, and there wasn't
anything except our luncheon that I had sent over for the trip. So I
suppose we had better drive home and get some eats there. It is a shabby
way to treat you, all right, after bringing you out."
Gerard dropped his hand on the other's shoulder, his laughing eyes very
kind.
"Corrie Rose, how many times a year do you throw your offenders
overboard, and give them your own lunch to make up for it?" he
challenged.
There was no lack of perception in Corrie; he recognized both the
innuendo and its truth.
"About every day," he confessed. "My temper slips. Everyone expects it
of me, so it's all right. At least, it has been all right; I guess I've
got to stop."
"Corrie, you did not believe me in earnest?"
"No, it isn't that." He shook his head as if to shake off a vexing
thought. "I--it makes me feel like a brute to think I've been knocking
out a half-starved man and throwing him into that water because he
crawled under an old blanket in my boat for shelter. Why didn't I
question him decently? I must put on the brake, or I'll spoil something
without intending it."
Gerard opened his lips to deny the danger and recall the provocation
received, but for some reason he did not analyze, closed them without
speaking. The two stood together in silence for many moments, looking
out at the gray-green expanse of tumbling water.
"I'll be goin'," the hoarse voice of the involuntary guest said, behind
them. "Obliged for your feed."
There was a tentative quality in the statement, an attempt to carry off
easily a situation capable of unpleasant developments, a studied
ignoring of his captor's possible right to detain him. But Corrie swung
around with a face of open sunniness that shamed suspicion, his hands in
the pockets of his long overcoat.
"Good enough! Did you find what you liked, or rather, like what you
found?" he responded.
The hard face relaxed into a reluctant humor, the man looked again to
assure himself of the inquirer's seriousness.
"The best ever," he essayed social graciousness. "I ain't left much.
Your little caramels were fine."
"Caramels? Who on earth put in caramels? Armand must have lost his mind!
What kind of caramels?"
"Wrapped in tin paper, they were, in a little tin box."
"Wrapped----Holy cats, Gerard, he has eaten the concentrated bouillon
squares! They were not to eat, man; they were to be dissolved in a cup
of boiling water, to drink."
"They tasted all right. I guess they'll go. I'll be movin'."
"Go? Well, I hope so; you must have enough concentrated beef in you to
nourish an army. You are going, you say. Where to?"
"The big town."
"What are you going to do when you get there?"
The man's dissipation-dulled eyes searched the candid face of the
questioner scarcely ten years his junior, then he looked to Gerard with
a confused and reluctant unease, as he might have looked had Corrie been
a young girl whose innocence he feared to offend.
"Aw, lots of things," he evaded, with a short, embarrassed laugh. "You
don't want to hear me talk, mister. I'll get there, now I'm fed up."
"Do you want me to find work for you around here? I can."
"My jobs are a different kind, mister. I couldn't stay in yours."
Corrie brought his hand from his pocket.
"All right, as you like. Take this for good luck and we'll call
ourselves even. Square, is it?"
The man took the bill awkwardly, his embarrassment deepened.
"You're square, sure," he signified.
As his slouching, bulky figure went out the door opposite, it crossed
the small erect form of Jack Rupert, who entered.
"Us for home," Corrie greeted the arrival. "It is too bad to have
brought you over for nothing, Rupert, but--what's the matter?"
The mechanician's countenance was a study in disgust, as he contemplated
one of his polished tan boots, a high-heeled, ornate affair of the
latest design labelled "smart." Off the race course and outside of
hours, Rupert had one passion: clothes.
"I ain't registering any complaints if the rest are satisfied," he
acidly returned. "But stepping in a puddle of wringing rags that the
town board of health ought to condemn for making a noisy demonstration
ain't what I look forward to all day as a treat. As for going home, I'm
ready, myself. The trip we're missing will keep awhile this weather. The
water is mussed bad and the only time I ever was car-sick was on the
boat to Savannah."
"Did he spoil his pretty shoes?" Corrie teased, speculatively eyeing the
heap of wet, unsavory clothing. "Never mind, Briggs shall make them good
as new with his Transcendant Tan for Tasteful Tootsies; you haven't seen
that darky of mine shine boots. I don't know what to do with those
clothes, Gerard, so I think I won't do anything. Let's go home before we
starve. Rupert, don't you approve of charity?"
"I ain't fitted to say; nobody ever showed me any. I always got exactly
what I worked for, measure evened off and loose-packed. If I sneaked
into somebody's boat-garage without an invitation, I wouldn't get a bath
and breakfast and a greenback; I'd get ten dollars or ten days from the
first judge in the stand. And so would you."
Corrie paused, struck.
"I? Why?"
"You. Why? What's the answer? I don't know, but I know the type. You
keep your score-card and watch it happen; you'll find you get just what
you enter for. Nothing more _and_ nothing less."
"'Nothing more _and_ nothing less,'" Corrie repeated, unconsciously
exact. "Well," his dancing smile flashed out, "we don't want any more
than that, do we? I'll be content with the life I earn."
"It's a good thing, for that's all we'll get," was the terse reply.
"When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow
between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because
I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the
wall. We don't have to kick it."
"Rupert is a philosopher," Gerard observed, not mockingly or in
ridicule, but as one stating a fact.
His mechanician nodded coolly.
"Calling names don't count. I've raced long enough to know a type of car
when I see it, and I've lived long enough to tell a type of man. The way
their heads set does it, maybe. Did you know the ladies were upstairs?"
"The ladies?" echoed Gerard, surprised. "They came with you?"
"Not precisely, I guess I came with them. Miss Rose saw me starting and
said she was coming over with her own little machine to see the launch
off, if she could get her cousin to come, and they'd bring me. So she
drove me over. I ain't used to that."
"Ladies?"
"Ladies' driving. My life's insured, so it was all right, though."
"Bully for Isabel!" Corrie approved, pensiveness cast aside. "Come up to
them, Gerard. I hear her tooting for us with the horn."
From the little scarlet runabout--the largest motor vehicle Mr. Rose
would allow his vigorous niece--Isabel and Flavia had descended.
"We came to see what you were doing," Isabel welcomed the group who
issued from the club-house. "I don't suppose Flavia would have come if
she hadn't been wondering whether Corrie was drowning himself. Go ahead
and start; don't wait on our account. But you had better eat your lunch
first, if you haven't already, for you will have no time to eat in the
boat on that sea."
"We haven't any lunch," Corrie cheerfully declared. "I gave it to a
tramp after I threw him overboard. You're just in time to take us home
for luncheon and save our lives."
"You look as if you had been fighting," Isabel criticized, with a
scornful survey of his attire. "You are all splashed with dirty water,
your cravat is pulled crooked and your coat is torn. We saw your tramp;
he passed us a few moments ago and we recognized your blue flannel suit
with the _Dear Me's_ insignia on the lapel. Mr. Rupert guessed what you
had been doing, when he saw the boat all in disorder and the pier all
wet. The man's hairy, dirty face looked horrid above your clothes."
"A contrast to my beauty, not so? Fix my cravat, please, ma'am; I can't
see the thing. But his face wasn't dirty, for I washed it."
"Why should I fix your wet cravat? Hold my gloves, then. Where is your
scarf-pin? Stolen by your tramp, I suppose."
Gerard had joined Flavia, but neither yet had spoken, watching the
cousins. They had not the fluent familiarity of intercourse possessed by
the two who looked and acted very like a pair of handsome boys.
Moreover, Gerard distrusted himself, fearing to say too much, too soon.
He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately as a man striving to
close his hand on some frail, elusive creature whose capture he scarcely
dares hope possible. And she gave him no help. Her frank gentleness and
impersonal cordiality gave neither encouragement nor discouragement, no
foothold smooth or rough.
The actual position he had never even conceived; the fact that she was
completely unconscious of his desire to woo her. He had no way of
knowing that it was his attitude toward Isabel she considered in all his
words and acts, remembering her cousin's confident appropriation of the
guest. It was of Isabel that she spoke now, while Gerard hesitated for
the right word to offer the girl beside him.
"The roads were very wet and slippery," she remarked. "If Isabel were
not a good driver, I think we would have found ourselves in a ditch.
Indeed," her soft mouth dimpled into a smile, "once I thought we were in
one. One wheel _was_. But we wiggled out again. Mr. Rupert wanted to put
the chains on the wheels, but she said we did not need them."
The thought of Isabel over-ruling the judgment of his racing mechanician
unsteadied Gerard's gravity.
"A coarse masculine hand is needed on the wheel, to-day," he confirmed,
with ulterior intention. "I believe we had better divide our party
differently, on the way back. Let me drive one car and Corrie or Rupert
the other. I'll promise not to take any ditches, if you consent."
"Great scheme," Corrie called, overhearing. "I'll take the red near-car
home, Isabel."
"No, indeed," Isabel vetoed decidedly. "Mr. Gerard is going to take me
home and I shall learn a lot from watching him drive. You can take
Flavia in your roadster; Mr. Rupert will ride in the rumble seat."
Being a gentleman, Gerard compelled his expression to evidence pleasant
acquiescence. But he was not soothed by the unclouded smile Flavia sent
her designated escort.
"Corrie doesn't mind taking me, do you, dear?" she covered her brother's
chagrin.
"I surely don't, Other Fellow," he heartily corroborated, coming across
to his sister, although the change in his transparent face betrayed his
discomfiture at the slight. "You and I have had many a good spin. In you
go! Come up behind, Rupert; there is more room here than on the other
machine."
"I think Mr. Rupert would rather ride with us, anyhow," Flavia declared,
her laughing eyes questioning the mechanician. "I fancied, once or twice
on the way over, that he would have preferred to have you or Mr. Gerard
driving."
"I ain't making any scornful denials," admitted Rupert, as he stepped in
front to crank the motor for Corrie. "I've always looked forward to
being killed in a larger machine, myself."
Isabel did not at once enter her own car.
"I can't fasten this glove without taking off the other, and then I
can't fasten the other without taking off this," she complained. "I
really believe----"
So, the last the three in the departing roadster saw of the two on the
pier, Allan Gerard was engaged in buttoning Isabel's glove, while her
wind-blown veils fluttered across his shoulders and her flushed,
provocative face bent over the task beside his.