"Rather beg than work, wouldn't he? I call him Micawber because he's
always waiting for something to turn up."
Joan wheeled round. To hear a stranger's voice in a place that was
peculiarly hers and Martin's amazed and offended her. It was
unbelievable.
A girl was sitting in the long grass, hatless, with her hands clasped
round her knees. The sun lit up her bobbed hair that shone like brass
and had touched her white skin with a warm finger. Wistful and elfish,
sitting like Puck on a toadstool, she might have slipped out of some
mossy corner of the woods to taste the breeze and speculate about life.
She wore a butter-colored sport shirt wide open at the neck and brown
cord riding breeches and puttees. Slight and small boned and rather
thin she could easily have passed for a delicate boy or, except for
something at the back of her eyes that showed that she had not always
lived among trees, for Peter Pan's brother of whom the world had never
heard.
Few people would have recognized in this spring maid the Tootles of
Broadway and that rabbit warren in West Forty-sixth Street. The dew of
the country had washed her face and lips, and the choir voices of
Martin's big cathedral had put peace and gentleness into her expression.
She ran her eyes with frank admiration over the unself-consciously
patrician Joan in her immaculate town clothes and let them rest finally
on a face that seemed to her to be the most attractive that she had
ever seen, for all that its expression made her want to scramble to her
feet and take to her heels. But she controlled herself and sat tight,
summoned her native impertinence to the rescue and gave a friendly nod.
After all, it was a free country. There were no princesses knocking
about.
"You don't look as if you were a pal of squirrels," she said.
Joan's resentment at the unexpected presence of this interloper only
lasted a moment. It gave way almost immediately before interest and
curiosity and liking,--even, for a vague reason, sympathy.
"I've known this one all his life," she said. "His father and mother
were among my most intimate friends and, what's more, his grandfather
and grandmother relied on me to help them out in bad times."
The duet of laughter echoed among the trees.
With a total lack of dignity the squirrel retired and stood, with erect
tail, behind a tuft of coarse grass, wondering what had happened.
"It's a gift to be country and look town," said Tootles, with
unconcealed flattery. "It's having as many ancestors as the squirrels,
I suppose. According to the rules I ought to feel awkward, oughtn't I?"
"Why?"
"Well, I'm trespassing. I saw it in your eyes. 'Pon my soul it never
occurred to me before. Shall I try and make a conventional exit or may
I stay if I promise not to pinch the hill? This view is better than
face massage. It rubs out all the lines. My word, but it's good to be
alive up here!"
The mixture of cool cheek and ecstasy, given forth in the patois of the
London suburbs, amused Joan. Here was a funny, whimsical, pathetic,
pretty little thing, she thought--queerly wise, too, and with all about
her a curious appeal for friendship and kindness. "Stay, of course,"
she said. "I'm very glad you like my hill. Use it as often as you can."
She sat down on the flat-topped piece of rock that she had so often
shared with Martin. There was a sense of humanity about this girl that
had the effect of a magnet. She inspired confidence, as Martin did.
"Thanks most awfully," said Tootles. "You're kinder than you think to
let me stay here. And I'm glad you're going to sit down for a bit. I
like you, and I don't mind who knows it."
"And I like you," said Joan.
And they both laughed again, feeling like children. It was a
characteristic trick of Fate's to bring about this meeting.
"I don't mind telling you now," went on Tootles, all barriers down,
"that I've come up here every evening for a week. It's a thousand years
since I've seen the sun go to bed and watched the angels light the
stars. It's making me religious. The Broadway electrics have always
been between me and the sky.... Gee, but it's goin' to be great this
evening." She settled herself more comfortably, leaned back against the
stump of a tree and began to smile like a child at the Hippodrome in
expectation of one of the "colossal effects."
Joan's curiosity was more and more piqued, but it was rather to know
what than who this amazingly natural little person was. For all her
youth there were lines round her mouth that were eloquent of a story
begun early. Somehow, with Martin away and giving no sign, Joan was
glad, and in a way comforted, to have stumbled on some one, young like
herself, who had obviously faced uncertainty and stood at the
crossroads. "I'd like to ask you hundreds of questions," she said
impulsively. "Do you mind?"
"No, dearie. Fire away. I shan't have to tell you any fables to keep
you interested. I broke through the paper hoop into the big ring when I
was ten. Look! See those ducks flyin' home? The first time I saw them I
thought it was a V-shaped bit of smoke running away from one of the
factories round Newark."
She had told Martin that. His laugh seemed still to be in the air.
"Are you married?" asked Joan suddenly.
"Not exactly, dearie," replied Tootles, without choosing her words. But
a look at the young, eager, sweet face bent towards her made her decide
to use camouflage. "What I mean is, no, I'm not. Men don't marry me
when it isn't absolutely necessary. I'm a small part chorus lady, if
you get my point."
Joan was not quite sure that she did. Her sophistication had not gone
farther up than Sixty-seventh Street or farther down than Sherry's, and
it was bounded by Park Avenue on the one side and Fifth Avenue on the
other. "But would you like to have been married?" All her thoughts just
then were about marriage and Marty.
Tootles shook her head and gave a downward gesture with an open hand
that hardly needed to be amplified. "No, not up to a few weeks ago.
I've lived by the stage, you see, and that means that the men I've come
across have not been men but theatricals. Very different. You may take
my word. When I met my first man I didn't believe it. I thought he was
the same kind of fake. But when I knew that he was a man
alright,--well, I wanted to be married as much as a battered fishing
smack wants to get into harbor." She was thinking of Marty too,
although not of marriage any more.
"And are you going to be?"
"No, dearie. He's got a wife, it turns out. It was a bit o' cheek ever
to dream of hitting a streak of such luck as that. All the same, I've
won something that I shall treasure all the days of my life.... Look.
Here come some of the mourners." She pointed to three crows that
flapped across a sky all hung with red and gold.