II

"Well, Ann has heard from those Minneapolis people again. And she isn't

any nearer making up her mind than before."

"Here's what they say," added his sister-in-law. She took a letter out

of her bag and handed it to him.

"Oh!" said Walworth. He felt half relieved, half vexed.

His wife stood by the window, rubbing her forefinger along the edges of

its silver lettering.

"I don't see whatever put Minneapolis into Ann's head. There seems to

be a plenty of buildings right here."

She looked at the rough brick back of a towering structure a few

hundred feet away, and at the huddle of lower roofs between. From a

skylight on one of these a sunbeam came reflected, and compelled her to

move.

"And plenty of dirt, too, if she is after real estate; plenty to be

sold, and plenty of people to sell it. I never saw a town where it was

more plentiful."

She glanced downwards at the wagons and cars that were splashing

through the streets after a rainy September night. "Why shouldn't

there be more people to shovel it, too? You see their signs stuck up

everywhere--the dealers, I mean."

"Ann can get to Minneapolis in thirteen hours," suggested Walworth,

passing the end of his thumb along one of his eyebrows. "What's that,

after the trip West? And then she can see for herself. You take

the cars here late in the afternoon, and you get there in time for

breakfast."

"I believe I'd just let it drop," said Miss Wilde, "if I happened

to know positively of any good thing here. They write a nice enough

letter, but I can't tell what state the building is in unless I see it.

And I'm merely taking their word that the ground is worth a hundred and

fifty. There's forty feet. I wonder if 'all improvements in' means that

the street is paved."

"Drop it, anyway," said her sister, as if she were disembarrassing

herself of some loathsome parcel. "Look around in Chicago itself. You

can see what you are buying, then. Even if you do invest here, you are

not compelled to live here." She became almost rigid in her disdain.

"Ah--um!" murmured Walworth, in a noncommittal way.

The door opened suddenly, and two young girls entered in a brisk

fashion. The first one had a slight figure, a little above the average

height. To-day people called her slender; six or eight years later

they would be likely to call her lean. She had long, thin arras, and

delicate, transparent hands. She had large eyes of a deep blue, and

the veins were plainly outlined on her pale temples. She had a bright

face and a lively manner, and seemed to be one who drew largely on

her nervous force without making deposits to keep up her account. Her

costume was such as to give one the idea that dress was an important

matter with her.

"Well, Frankie!" she called to Mrs. Floyd, "you found your way here all

right, did you? You're a clever little body! Or did Miss Wilde help

you?"

Mrs. Floyd passed back the Minneapolis letter to her sister and

bestowed a lady-like frown on the new-comers. She disliked to be called

"Frankie," but what is to be done between cousins?

"Jessie!" she expostulated softly, indicating Ogden in the adjoining

room.

"You can't think," the girl went on, to Ogden _redux_, "how proud my

cousin is of her ignorance of Chicago. She knows where to buy her

steaks, and she has mastered the shortest way down town, and that's

about all. Frankie, dear, where is the City Hall?"

[Illustration: "Two young girls entered."]

"How should _I_ know?" returned Frances Floyd, with a weary disdain.

"Why, there's the corner of it," cried Jessie Bradley, at the window,

"not two blocks off. It's big enough to see!"

"And she's been here a whole year, too!" cried her husband, proudly and

fondly.

Mrs. Floyd drew Jessie Bradley aside. "I know I'm very ignorant," she

said, speaking in a low tone, "but there is one thing you can tell me

about, if you want to. 'Why have you been so long in getting up to the

office? You said Mayme--Mayme; I suppose that means Mary--you said that

she was going to stop in the bank for just two or three minutes."

Jessie looked towards her young friend, who was seated near Ogden on

one of the wide window-sills. Then she turned back to her questioner,

with eyes that were steady and perhaps a bit defiant.

"Well, we stopped for a minute in that insurance office on the way up.

We came part way by the stairs. Mayme said she had just got to see him.

I don't see how she can meet him anywhere else. They won't let him come

to the house. I can't see that her brother has treated him so very

well."

Mrs. Floyd's regard travelled from the culprit, before her to the

greater culprit on the windowsill. Mary Brainard was a pretty little

thing of eighteen, with a plump, dimpled face. She had wide eyes of

baby-blue under a fluffy flaxen bang. The brim of her hat threw a

shadow over her pink cheeks, and she was nibbling the finger-ends of

her gloves between her firm white teeth.

Mrs. Floyd considered this picture with grave disapproval, and turned

back to her young cousin a face full of severe reproach.

"Jessie, I don't like this. It wasn't a nice thing for you to do at

all, and I'm sure your mother would agree with me. Don't mix in any

such matter. Let her own people attend to it."

Mary Brainard noticed this whispered passage, and suspected herself

under comment. Her face, rather weakly pretty generally, was quite

flushed and brilliant now, and she looked out from under her wide hat

with the forced audacity that a lightly esteemed nature may sometimes

assume, and afterwards, to everybody's surprise, may justify. She began

to chat brightly with Ogden. Her gayety, however, was evidently but the

spending momentum of some recent impact, and the bright defiance with

which she glanced around the group was not more a surprise to them than

to herself.

Jessie Bradley crossed over to the window and found a third place on

its wide sill. Walworth gathered the two ladies behind the shelter of

his big desk, and the Minneapolis matter was resumed.

"No," said Jessie, as she settled down, "Mrs. D. Walworth Floyd

doesn't know where the City Hall is." She was in a slightly nervous

state, and she caught hold of the first piece of conversational

driftwood that came her way. "I ought to have asked her something

easier--where La Salle Street was, for instance. I wonder if she knows

she's on it now."

"Well, Mr. Ogden is going to have a chance to learn all about La Salle

Street!" cried Mayme Brainard, with the air of one who dreads the

slightest pause in the talk. "He's going into the Bank, he tells me."

"That will do very well for six days in the week," declared the other.

"How about the seventh?" she asked with a twinkling directness. "Are

you an Episcopalian, or what?"

"What, I fancy. Why, in Borne, I suppose, I shall do as the Romans do.

For the forenoon there are the newspapers, of course. Then for the

afternoon--the races, perhaps. In the evening--well, the theatre, I

should say. That's about the plan at my house."

"Well, I've never been to the theatre Sunday evening, nor any of my

people. And I don't believe that many nice people do go, either.

Perhaps you think that there are not any nice people in Chicago--I've

heard the remark made. Well, there are, I can tell you--just as nice

as anywhere. I suppose you've noticed the way the papers here have of

collecting all the mean, hateful things that the whole country says

about us, and making a column out of them. I dare say they think it's

funny. I don't know but what it is. There's my own father, now. He

reads those things right after the market-reports, and time and time

again I've seen him laugh till he cried. Yet he isn't any fonder of a

joke than anybody else. He says it's better to be abused and made fun

of than not to be noticed at all. How does it strike you?"

She made a little _moue_, as she recalled one or two of these national

love-taps.

"And I must say it's awful, too--the sort of news that is sent out from

here--excursions and alarums, and nothing else. During the anarchist

time folks down East were a good deal more scared than we were. And

I remember, when I was at school, I read in the Philadelphia papers

that typhoid fever was raging in Chicago. They gave the death-rate and

everything. I came home as fast as I could. I expected to find the

whole family dying. But _they_ didn't know anything about it. And they

took my pocket-money to pay the return fare. They were alive enough."

Ogden smiled. He saw that he was face to face with a true daughter

of the West; she had never seen him before, and she might never see

him again, yet she was talking to him with perfect friendliness and

confidence. Equally, he was sure, was she a true daughter of Chicago;

she had the one infallible local trait--she would rather talk to a

stranger about her own town than about any other subject.

"I think we shall have to reform you," she went on presently, "in

advance. I believe the proper place for you next Sunday would be St.

Asaph's. But it's high, you understand. Come over; my cousin has room

in her pew. There is a vested choir, and when you have heard Vibert's

singing--"

She stopped, as if to appreciate her own daring--like a child lighting

a match. Mary Brainard gave a little start and put her hand on her

friend's arm, yet at the same time she blushed slightly--less, perhaps,

in panic than in pride.

"--you will learn what it is that brings Mayme Brainard all the way

over from Union Park twice every Sunday," were the words with which

this sentence was mentally concluded. "It's like an angel," she

continued aloud. "A certain kind of angel," she added to herself. "Do

you sing?" "Yes, a little."

"Then of course you play. But that doesn't count. Do you write?

But everybody does that, too. I do. Or did. I carried off a prize

once. It kept me in flowers for a week. Well, what is it--dialect or

psychological?"

"Business letters," answered Ogden, with a balking sobriety.

"Pshaw! Well, then, can you sketch, or can you do anything in

water-colors? I did a lovely head of Desdemona once--in crayon. That

was at Ogontz."

"Kodak," Ogden confessed briefly. "Views along the wharves in Boston;

some pretty bits from around Stockbridge."

"My own story was in Stockbridge! Our artist on the spot!" She clapped

her hands together joyfully. "What else? Can you--cook?"

"No."

"Neither can I!"

"Can you keep books?" he asked in turn.

"Not a bit."

"Well, I can."

"You take the odd trick. Wait a minute, though. How about private

theatricals?" she asked.

"I have acted in them once or twice."

She looked aslant at Mary Brainard. The girl seemed glad that St.

Asaph's had been dropped, but she was hoping, fearfully, that it might

be taken up again.

"Well, Father Tisdale has everything just about perfect. He's from

St. John the Evangelist--Boston, you know. And you ought to hear

little Mike Besser. He's our butcher's boy--only eleven. Sometimes he

and Russell Vibert"--the other girl vibrated at this first audacious

mention of the full name--"sing duets together, and then--"

Her eyes rolled around the room in a mock ecstasy and rested on the

group of elders, whose three heads just showed above the top of the

desk. Walworth's face made quite a picture of discomfort and distress,

as he rose from his chair with the effect of trying to shake himself

loose from the complications that his wife and Sister Ann were weaving

about him.

"The whole building is full of them," he said, rather pettishly; "there

are half a dozen on every floor. But _I_ don't know anything about any

of them."

He looked inquiringly towards the window seat.

"Ogden might."

"How is that?" inquired the young fellow, rising.

"Some real-estate man. Mrs. Floyd's sister here has about concluded to

cast in her lot with us. She wants an adviser. Perhaps you happen to

know of--"

He took on the ingenuous air of one who is earnestly searching for

information--in the least likely quarter.

Ogden laughed self-consciously.

"Well, now, as a matter of fact, I do. His name is McDowell. He is on

the second floor above. I have a sort of personal interest in him. He

will be my brother-in-law within a month or six weeks."

A slight flutter among the women--the mention of matrimony.

"Do you want to try that, Ann?" asked Floyd.

"We became acquainted with him down East, last year," Ogden went on,

proud to show his newness wearing off. "He was working up a syndicate.

He calls himself a hustler. He tells me he has just opened a new

subdivision out south somewhere--beyond Washington Park, I believe. I

think you'll find him posted."

Older people than Ogden frequently go out of their way to run

cheerfully the risk of advising others in business matters.

"I believe I'll see him, anyway," decided Miss Wilde. Like all women,

she embraced the personal element in every affair. The people in

Minneapolis became mere myths, now that she found herself so near to

the future husband of the sister of the man who had just presented a

letter of introduction to her own brother-in-law. The chain was long,

to be sure, and some of its links were rather weak--but it served.

Mrs. Floyd arose, shaking out the folds of her dress and smoothing away

the wrinkles that the last half-hour had accumulated on her forehead.

"I have asked Mr. Ogden to go to church with us Sunday," Jessie

Bradley announced to her. "And he is going to bring some Stockbridge

photographs."

"First-rate!" cried Walworth, relieved by any outcome whatever.

"Stockbridge! Why, that's where I did my courting!"

Mrs. Floyd was caught in a melting mood.

"We shall be very happy to see Mr. Ogden," she pronounced primly.