A RAINCLOUD.
"When a chap has a bit of a brain," said a voice, speaking from behind a
crinkled newspaper that was doing temporary service as a fan, "and a
habit of seeing rather far into things, if you know what I mean--it's
_such_ a jolly nuisance that he can't get it before the public without
writing it down. Isn't it, rather, don't you think, Lady Ware?"
"I suppose it rather must be, kind of," said Daisy, who, in a smart
white skirt and blouse, and canvas shoes, occupied the other end of the
tennis-court bench on the Wares' lawn, "but you should worry about that,
Arthur. The public has enough books to read anyway."
"Not of the kind I should write, they haven't," declared Lord Arthur
Milcourt, raising toward a green bough above them the ingenuous face of
twenty-one; "I say, can you type a bit?"
"What?" Daisy demanded, wrinkling her brows at the speaker in a comical
way; "oh, you mean, run a typewriter. No."
"Weren't you employed in an office or something, when old Will
discovered--er--met you? And didn't you run--that is, operate--a typing
machine there?"
"I was a housemaid before I was married," replied Daisy, dimpling, "and
I didn't know a typewriter from a bale of hay."
"Ah!" commented Lord Arthur, regarding her. "I say, old Will's a queer
sort, don't you think?" he added, with apparent irrelevance, after a
moment.
Daisy rose to her feet and tossed her tennis racquet down on the bench.
"Not half so queer as some people I could name," she observed, pinning
on her hat. "I'm going down town. Do you want to come, or will you stay
here? There's a book up in the library about writers or painters or
something. I came across it the other day when I was looking for
something else. Full of pictures of homely-looking men, it is--some of
them bald-headed, and others with hair down to the coat-collars."
"I'll stay and glance over the book," said Lord Arthur, stretching out
luxuriously on the bench; "I say, get it and bring it out, will you,
there's a good soul. I shouldn't wonder if it's jolly interesting.
Baldheaded men! You _are_ a rum one."
"Get it yourself, you lazy, long-legged lump," said Daisy, promptly;
"who was your servant this time last year?"
"Ah--sorry," murmured Lord Arthur (the words were apologetic, but the
tone was supercilious); "I'll go and fetch it myself." He marched off to
the house; and as he marched, he muttered: "'Long-legged lump!' Jowve,
but it's _wickid_--poor old Will!"
Daisy went up to her pretty suite of rooms with their ivied balcony. She
did not notice the details of their furnishings now with quite so fresh
and keen a pleasure as on that first morning, now two months past, when
she had opened new-waked eyes in the dainty, pink bedroom. She stepped
about now with a casual and proprietary air--turning the shower on in
the bathroom for a cooling splash after her recent game of tennis with
young Lord Arthur, (Ware's second cousin, "just out")--laying out a
simple, girlish dress from her well-stocked wardrobe--shaking out a
folded towel or two and laying them handily on the glass rack at the end
of the bathtub. Ada the maid was at her service if she cared to ring.
But Daisy had been her own maid for seventeen years and intended to keep
on in the same way.
Only a few moments elapsed till, smart and parasolled, she stepped out
through the side door and into the cinder-path that led, with many a
leisurely looping, to the picket-gate that gave to the street. Life at
the Wares' had wrought some changes in her appearance. The color in her
face was more delicate, and her skin clearer. Her modiste had corseted
her in long willowy lines, so that, although her height had not
increased a particle, she looked taller. Her ankles, in their silk
stockings, showed a more shapely fulness where they met the hem of her
short neat walking-skirt.
She passed from the residential street to a corner where a trolley-line
crossed, and caught a car. It was the Wares' chauffeur's afternoon
"off", and Daisy's own little runabout was being repaired at the garage
downtown.
Her destination was the postoffice. She had answered that grim letter
from her mother with a brief note in which she had asked that any
further letters from the home farm should be addressed to her, in her
maiden name, at the city "general delivery". Her object in this note,
which mentioned nothing of her marriage, was to pique the curiosity of
John Nixon and his wife, so that they would, in all probability,
actually fulfil their expressed intention of coming to town and taking
her back to the farm.
She had not called at the "general delivery" wicket since despatching
this note home; and this was her self-appointed mission to-day.
Evidently she had succeeded in waking the interest of her mother and
stepfather; for the clerk, with a smile, passed out a letter addressed
in the sloping irregular handwriting of Mrs. Lovina Nixon; the postmark
showing it had been in the office some days. Daisy took the missive to
one of the side-tables and opened it.
"Your pa and me," wrote Mrs. Lovina, "will be in town to get you, like I
said, right after thrashen. You neento think your goen to get away the
like of that. Yon can be looken fur us about the end of Oktobr. Mebbe we
wont be so hard on you when we get you back, if youl come down to the
train and meet us and save us trouble but if we have to put the police
onto you or go to any expens to get aholt of you, wel take it out of
your hide when we get you home here and you can bet on that, so mind,
itl be just like Im tellen you, so you can do wichever you like for to
do."
Daisy twinkled and dimpled from brow to chin-point as she folded the
letter and slipped it into her hand-bag. She knew Mrs. Lovina Nixon!
When Daisy had commenced to read her letter, broad daylight had filled
the postoffice rotunda, and a little sunbeam had slanted like a slung
javelin from the window-sash down across the desk against which she
leaned. As she looked up now, however, after depositing the missive in
her reticule, she saw that, across the big room, the electric lights had
been turned on; and, glancing toward the window-pane, she saw that heavy
clouds had come up and that, already, there showed here and there on
the glass, the splash of a raindrop.
As the trolley line did not approach within three blocks of the Ware
gate, and as there was quite a walk across the lawn as well, Daisy
decided the best way to avoid a wetting was to take one of the taxis
which were parked in a long line by the curb, just outside the
postoffice. Hastily hooking her parasol over her arm, she hurried out of
the revolving door and across the sidewalk. Just as she was about to
step into one of the dingy vehicles labelled "Auto for Hire", a jitney
drew up by the curb to let out a passenger; and Daisy, out of the corner
of her eye, saw a dry-smiling face, a profusion of riotously "kinky"
hair that made it necessary to set the peaked chauffeur's cap a little
to one side, and a pair of narrowed humorous eyes that, however, looked
soberly away as she said, "Hello, Jimmy Knight. Want a dead-head
passenger?"
"Step in, ma'am," said Jimmy, formally, holding his eyes steadily
forward as he reached back, deftly felt for the latch, and opened the
tonneau door.
"Haven't you any room in front?" Daisy raised her lashes very slowly,
then dropped them and put her head on one side.
"You ken sit in front if you so prefer, lady," Jimmy answered, with
emphasis of politeness, as he closed the tonneau again, and opened the
fore-door. Daisy had no sooner hopped in and seated herself than the
rain came on heavily. Jimmy, reaching up, let down the storm-curtains on
both sides and buttoned them fast before he started the car.
"Thanks so much, chauffeur," acknowledged Daisy, smiling up sidewise as
she mimicked his manner.
"Don't mention it, madam," deprecated Jimmy Knight, throwing in his
clutch. The car skidded slightly on the arch of the pavement, but ran
smooth and straight, as the engine, in the street-centre, picked up
speed. Jimmy's gloved finger mechanically "gave her gas" or advanced the
spark, as occasion required. Outside, the rain poured steadily, misting
the mica peep-holes in the storm-curtains and half-blinding the
windshield. The car stopped frequently for additional passengers; and
soon the tonneau was filled with dour figures in wet raincoats that
rustled shrilly as the owners moved, watching in a fidget for home
streets.
Said one of the passengers, a girl, as, leaning back in her seat after
glancing around the edge of the storm-curtain, her eyes fell on Daisy's
fashionably-clad figure:
"Some swell jane in the front seat with the driver, Lil."
The remark was made with unmannerly distinctness; and the speaker's
companion, another girl of the same commonplace city type, made answer,
also in a tone purposely raised to reach Daisy's ear:
"Oh, well, we all know what them dolled-up kind is."
"Hey!" Jimmy Knight's head jerked around, and a glinting iris swam into
that corner of his eye-socket next the last speaker, "do you skirts want
to get out o' this car head-first? If not, shut up!"
The second girl looked at the first one.
"Well, the _very_ idea!" she said audibly, after a second or two.
"The idosity of him!" commented Girl Number One, also in a loud tone;
"some friend, I guess. They all have their friends."
Jimmy turned toward the curb, and threw on the brake. As the car skidded
to a standstill, he banged open the tonneau door.
"Get out!" he said. "Go on--the both of you! Get to hell out of here!
Keep your darned fares."
There was that in Jimmy's tone and look which caused the two to act
promptly.
"Some gentleman!" remarked Girl Number Two, as she descended on the wet
street.
"Oh, it doesn't matter," fired back Number One, as they walked away,
heads up, "we live on the next street, anyway."
"That's ten cents I owe you," said Daisy to Jimmy Knight, dimpling.
Jimmy did not answer--at least, not in words. He put his lips together,
slammed home the clutch and the car leaped forward.
By the end of another ten minutes the last two of the passengers in the
back portion of the jitney had reached their home corner, and the car
was empty except for Daisy and Jimmy.
"I'll take y' home, lady," he said, brusquely; "no coat--get wet to the
skin--this here rain."
"Thank you," aped Daisy, formally. Then she put her chin in the air, and
silence reigned.
"What _you_ mad at?" came Jimmy's voice, presently. "Who said they
didn't 'feel like' marryin', and then went straight off and married
money? Not me. You ain't got a thing in the world to be sore at: I have,
an' I'm darned good and sore. I didn't think it was in you, Kid--honest,
I didn't.... Here we are at your door. Get out! don't set there, with
the servants maybe lookin' out of the windows."
Daisy's face was red as she dismounted. She made a step away, then came
back.
"I'm--I'm--", she began, the color on her cheeks deepening.
"Yes, you are," said Jimmy Knight, dryly, "good an' plenty. No use o'
standin' there and chewin' the fat now. Get into the house, and get them
wet duds off. You give me a pain, you do!"
The car, with a scornful roar, shot off along the driveway of the Ware
grounds, and Daisy was alone. Presently something rolled down her cheek
and ran into the corner of her mouth. It had a salt taste. It was a
tear.
"Some folk wad still be findin' something tae greet about, even if they
had the warld with a wire dike aboot it," remarked Jean, who was now
chief (under Lady Frances, of course) in the Ware kitchen; regarding
Daisy in her keen and kind scrutinizing way, as the latter, entering the
room, sat down moodily in a chair, dropped her hands into her lap, and
stared before her with pensive wet lashes lowered; "Man! lassie, but
ye're ill tae suit!"