PART I

OLD-DAD

UNTIL Daphne Bretton's peremptory departure from college she had

neither known nor liked her father well enough to distinguish

him with a nick name. But on that momentous day in question,

when blurting into the problematical presence of an unfamiliar

parent in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar city she flung her

unhappy news across his book-cluttered desk, the appellation

slipped from her stark lips as though it were the only fluid

phrase in a wooden-throated world.

"Old-Dad!" she said, "I have been expelled from college!"

From under the incongruous thatch of his snow-white hair her young

father lifted his extraordinarily young face with a snarl like the

snarl of a startled animal.

"Why?--Why Daphne!" he gasped. "_What?_" [2]

With her small gloved hand fumbling desperately at the great muffly

collar of her coat the young girl repeated her statement.

"I--I have been expelled from college!" she said.

"Yes, but Daphne!--What for?" demanded her father. His own face was

suddenly as white as hers, his lips as stark. "What for?" he persisted.

Twice the young girl's lips opened and shut in an utter agony of

inarticulation. Then quite sharply the blonde head lifted, the shoulders

squared, and the whole slender, quivering little body braced itself

to meet the traditional blow of the traditional Avenger.

"For--for having a boy in my room--at night," said the girl.

Before the dumb, abject misery in the young blue eyes that lifted so

heavily to his, a grin like the painted grin on a sick clown's face

shot suddenly across the father's mobile mouth.

"Oh I hope he was a nice boy!" he said quite abruptly. "Blonde or

brunette?"

"Why--Why--Father!" stammered the [3] girl. "I--I thought you

would--would kill me!"

"Kill you?" mumbled her father. More essentially at the moment he

seemed concerned with an overturned bottle of ink that was splashing

its sinister pool across his morning's work. "Kill you?" he repeated

vaguely. Across the high, intervening barrier of books and catalogues

he craned his neck suddenly with a certain sharp intentness.

"And is your shoulder broken, too?" he asked very gently.

"My shoulder?" quivered the girl.

"It sags so," murmured her father.

"It's my suit-case," said the girl. "My heavy suit-case."

"Why not put it down?" asked the man.

Across the young girl's fluctuant face a dozen new miseries flared

hotly.

"I didn't--just know--whether you'd want me to put it down," she said.

"You've come home, haven't you?" questioned the man. "Home is

supposed to be where your father is, isn't it?"

"It never has been," said the girl quite simply. [4]

Like a clash of swords the man's eyes smote across the girl's

and the girl's across the man's. The ironic grin was still

twisting wryly at one corner of the man's mouth but under the

mocking fend of his narrowing eye lids a glisten of tears showed

suddenly.

"Oh--Father," rallied the girl. "They called me an evil name!

They----" With a gesture of ultimate bewilderment and despair she

took a single step towards him. "Oh, Father," she gasped. "_What_ is

it about boys that makes it so wicked to have them around?" And

pitched over headlong in a dead faint at his feet.

When blackness turned into whiteness again she found herself

lying limply in the big Oxford chair before the fire with a

slate-colored hound sniffing rather interrogatively at her

finger-tips and the strange man whom she had called "father"

leaning casually with one elbow on the mantel-piece while he

stood staring down at her through a great, sweet, foggy blur of

cigarette smoke.

"Wh--what is the blue dog's name?" she asked a bit vaguely.

"Creep-Mouse," said the man. [5]

"I'm--I'm glad there's a dog," she whispered.

"So it's all right now, is it?" smiled the man. The smile was

all in his eyes now and frankly mechanical still--a faint flare

of mirth through a quizzical fretwork of pain.

"Yes, it's all right--now," said the girl, "unless of course----"

Edging weakly forward to the front of the chair she clutched out

gropingly for its cool, creaking straw arms and straightened up

suddenly very stiff and tense. "Aren't you even going to ask

me," she faltered, "what the boy was doing in my room--at night?"

"Oh, of course, I'm only human," admitted her father. Very

leisurely as he spoke he stopped to light a fresh cigarette and

stood for a moment blowing innumerable rings of smoke into

space. "Only somehow--that's a matter," he smiled, "that I'd

rather hear directly from the boy himself!"

"From the boy himself?" stammered the girl. With her slender,

silken-shod limbs, the short skirt of the day, the simple blouse,

the tousled hair, she looked for all the world like [6] a little

child just jumping up to play. "Why--why he's here now!" she said.

"Here _now?_" cried her father. "Where?"

"Downstairs," said the girl. "We came on together."

"Came on together?" demanded her father. "From college, you

mean? Two days and a night?"

"Yes," said the girl.

With a sharp intake of his breath that might have meant anything

the man stepped suddenly forward.

Towering to her own little height the girl stood staunchly to

meet him.

"Why you don't think for one single moment that--that it was fun,

do you?" she questioned whitely. "You don't think for one single

solitary little moment that I wanted him to come, do you? Or

that there was anything very specially amusing for him in the

coming?" Whiter and whiter the little face lifted. "It was only

that he said I couldn't come alone to--to face whatever had to

be faced. And if he came first he said it would seem like

telling tales on me instead of on himself. So----" [7]

"Go and get him!" said her father quite sharply.

With unquestioning obedience the girl started for the door.

Half way across the rug she stopped and swung round squarely.

"He will say it was all his fault," she said. "But it wasn't! I--I

sort of dared him to do it!"

"Just a minute!" called her father. "When you come back with

him----"

"Am I to come back with him?" protested the girl.

"When you come back with him----" repeated her father, "if I ask

him to be seated you may leave the room at once--at once, you

understand? But if I shouldn't ask him to sit down----"

"Then I am to stay and--see it through?" shivered the girl.

"Then you are to stay and see it through," said her father.

With a little soft thud the door shut between them.

When it opened again the man was still standing by the fireplace

blowing gray smoke into space. With a casualness that savored [8]

almost of affectation he stopped to light another cigarette

before glancing up half askance to greet the hesitant footstep

on the threshold.

"Why, come in!" he ordered.

Without further parleying the two young people appeared before him.

In the five minutes of her absence the young girl seemed to have

grown younger, smaller, infinitely more broken even than her

father had remembered her. But almost any girl would have looked

unduly frail perhaps before the superbly handsome and altogether

stalwart young athlete who loomed up so definitely beside her.

As though his daughter suddenly had ceased to exist the father's

glance narrowed sharply towards the boy's clean young figure--the

eager, worried eyes--the sensitive nostril--the grimly resolute

young mouth, and in that glance a gasp that might have meant anything

slipped through his own lips.

"You're--you're a keen looking lad!" he said. "But I think I could

lick you at tennis!"

"Sir?" faltered the boy.

Quizzically but not unkindly the man [9] resumed his stare. "I don't

think I happen to have heard your name," he affirmed with some

abruptness.

"Wiltoner," said the boy. "Richard Wiltoner."

"Sit down, Richard," said the man.

Like some tortured creature at bay the boy turned sharply to the

window and back towards the door again.

"No, I thank you, Sir!" he protested. "I simply couldn't sit

down!" Restively he crossed to the bookcase and swung around

with a jerk to rake his impatient eyes across the girl's

lingering presence. "Maybe I'll never sit down again!" he said.

"Nor eat?" drawled the older man. "Nor--sleep?"

"Nor eat, nor sleep!" said the boy.

"Yes, that's just it," whispered the girl. "That's just the way

he was on the train--miles and miles it must have been--from

the engine to the last car--all the time I mean--night and

day--stalking up and down--up and down!"

"Little Stupid!" said her father.

"Who?--I?" gasped the girl. For a [10] second bewilderment she

stared from the man's face to the boy's. "O--h!" she cried out in

sudden enlightenment. "You _asked_ him to sit down, didn't you?"

And fled from the room.

With a shiver of relief the boy turned squarely then to meet the

man. The quizzically furrowed lines around the man's mouth still

held their faint ironic humor but the boy's face in the full

light showed strangely stark.

"Well--Lad," said the man very softly. "What have you got to

tell me about it?"

"Why that's just it!" cried the boy. "What is there to tell

except that I've been a thoughtless cad,--a----"

"How--thoughtless?" said the man.

"And that your daughter isn't one bit to blame!" persisted the

boy. "Not one bit! And for the rest of it----" he cried out

desperately. "What am I expected to say? What ought I to say?

For God's sake what do you want me to say? Oh, of course, I've

read yarns," he flushed. "French novels and all that sort of

thing, but when it comes down to one's self and a--and a girl

you know----Why--what's the matter with everybody?" [11] he demanded

furiously. "A fellow isn't rotten just because he's a fellow!

And it isn't even as though I had wanted to be rotten but wasn't!

I never _thought_ of being rotten!" Hotter and hotter the red

shame flared in his face. "It's a nasty, dirty, evil-minded world!"

he stormed. "Why you'd think to hear Miss Merriwayne talk that----"

"Miss who?" said the older man.

"Miss Merriwayne," said the boy. "Claudia Merriwayne--the

president of the college, you know."

"No, I didn't know," said the man.

"She's a fiend!" said the boy. "An utterly merciless----" In a

hectic effort to regain his self-control he bit the sentence in

two and began to repace the room. "There--there was a dance at

the college that night," he resumed at last with reasonable

calmness.

"I don't go in much for that sort of thing. I don't live in

town, you see, but miles and miles outside. I'm just a 'farmer,'

you know," he confided with his first faint ghost of a smile.

"My brother and I have a bit of a ranch outside. We're trying

very hard to be 'scientific farmers.' It's the deuce of a [12] job!

And whenever there comes a night that I've got pep enough to stay

awake I'd rather ride somehow than fuss around with people.

Sometimes I ride all night! I've got a horse named Brainstorm!

And he's some devil!" In the instant's transfiguring glow he was

all young god again, superb, defiant. Then as though with a

spasm of pain his young mouth tightened to a single determinate

line. With the air of one suddenly very tired he stopped his

restless pacing and backed into the supporting angle of the

bookcase.

"But on this particular night--that I was telling you about," he

resumed unhappily, "I had a sort of a feeling somehow that I'd

like to go to the dance. It isn't always easy, you know," he

confided with unexpected ingenuousness. "After the long day's

work, I mean, with your back broken and your arms sprained, to

come in and round up your own hot tub and your own shaving things

and your own supper and the evening clothes you haven't even seen

for six months. And I forgot the supper," he smiled faintly. "We

haven't any woman at the house just now. But after you get to the

dance you don't [13] mind!" he brightened transiently. "It's so

bright and sweet-smelling! So many lights and colors! And so many

funny dresses! And the music certainly is bully! And then all of

a sudden at some silly hour like eleven o'clock everything shuts

down and you have to go home! Why you'd only just come! Just got

into your step, I mean! Just met the girls you wanted to meet!

Just begun to laugh! Just begun to fool! That's the trouble with

college parties," he frowned. "They're so darn institutional! No

hanging round afterwards to forage in the kitchen and help put

the house to bed, no nice jolly dawdling about on the front steps

to look at the moon, no funny, bumpy walk home through a plowed

field with a girl in high-heeled shoes and a lace tidy over her

head! Just _zip!_ Like that! 'Eleven o'clock! Everybody _get out!_'

All that fun and prettiness and everything snuffed out like a sour

candle just because some old dame wants to go to bed! It's too--it's

too abrupt!" said the boy.

"So you felt?" prodded the man.

_"Felt?"_ cried the boy. "Why at five [14] minutes of eleven I felt

so _fit_ I could have run nine miles to help put out a fire. But

at eleven I was so mad I'd have run twenty just to start one!"

"So what _did_ you do?" said the man.

"I swore I wouldn't go home," flushed the boy, "until at least

I'd had something to eat! You know what college feeds are, a

cent's worth of salad and the juice of one cracker? Your

daughter laughed. She thought it was funny. 'Oh, what a pity,'

she said, 'that you can't have the cold roast chicken that's up

in my room!' 'Where is your room?' I asked. I was laughing too.

'Oh, just round the corner in the next building,' she said.

'Trot along over with me and if nobody's round I'll scoot

upstairs and toss it down to you!' It was further than I

thought," said the boy. "And very nice. Just a two-minute cut

across the campus, but stars, you know, and a crunch of snow,

and the funny fat shapes of the orchestra instruments running

for their train. And Lord but I was hungry! But when we got to

the dormitory there were too many people round, it seemed, too

many lights, too much passing, [15] not a single shadow in the

whole world apparently that was big enough to toss a roast chicken

into--let alone hide my great hulking shape. 'I just darsn't!'

said your daughter. 'Somebody surely would see me, a matron or a

proctor or the night watchman or some body!' And all of a

sudden," flushed the boy, "it seemed to me so absolutely idiotic

that a girl who'd never done any harm in her life should be shut

up in a place where she couldn't even proffer food to a starving

friend or finish out a dance or do any other decent normal thing

just because some cranky old dame had other ideas. 'Well, there's

no old dame who owns me!' I said. So if you're afraid to go get

the chicken I'll come and get it myself!' 'Yes--I can--see you!'

laughed your daughter. She was standing on the step as she spoke

and she had on something very red and sort of cunning with a hood

all black fur around her face and as she tilted up her chin to the

light it looked as though even her hair was laughing at you. 'Well,

I'm coming!' I laughed back. '_You_ darsn't!' she said. In an hour

I was there! Oh, of course, I know I oughtn't to have done [16] it!"

conceded the boy. "But upon my soul I swear I didn't think anything

about it except that it was putting something over on some of those

old dames! All this fuss about it's being a girl's room never

entered my head for a moment I tell you! I've always had such an

awful lot of girl cousins tumbling around. And it was all so darned

easy after the moon went down! Such a nifty fire-escape and the

toughest sort of an old wisteria vine and----"

"Was--she expecting you?" asked the man.

"No,--that was the trouble," flushed the boy. "Maybe at first

she had wondered a bit if I'd really have the nerve--I don't

know. But by the time I'd got there she'd started for bed. Was

in her wrapper, I mean, with her hair down. Bare feet, you know,

and all that sort of thing. And when I opened the window and

slipped in across the edge she started to scream. Knew who I was

all at once and all that--but the scream got started first. And

I knew, of course, that wouldn't do, so I jumped and caught her

in my arms to try and smother it out. And the door opened--and

in walked President Merriwayne [17] herself. I don't know what she

was doing there in that dormitory at that time of night. It may

have been just accident or somebody may have overheard us

fooling out on the front steps the hour before--I don't know. It

just happened--that's all," said the boy. "And there was an

awful scene, of course. Things said, I mean, that I shouldn't

have supposed a woman would say to a young girl. And two or

three teachers or proctors came running in. And there was a

faculty meeting later of course. And somebody blabbed to a

chambermaid and the chambermaid blabbed to somebody else. And a

reporter got hold of it and----"

"And a reporter got hold of it?" said the man.

"Yes," shivered the boy.

"Pictures?" asked the man.

"Yes," said the boy.

"Pretty horrid?" said the man.

"Very horrid," said the boy.

For an instant there seemed to be no sound at all in the room

except the sound of flame sucking at the birch juices on the

hearth. [18]

Then the man looked up sharply from the birch log to the boy's

quivering face.

"Well--was the roast chicken good?" he asked.

"_S--ir_?" stammered the boy.

"And so----?" prompted the man.

From the boy's lips a long shuddering sigh escaped. "And so,"

said the boy, "I have ruined your daughter's life."

"And what do you propose to do about it?" asked the man.

With a quick squaring of his shoulders the boy drew his fine

young body to its full height.

"I propose to do whatever you want me to do," he said.

"Such as what?" asked the man.

"Such as anything!" said the boy. Almost imperceptibly his

breath quickened. "Why, when I came here just now," he cried, "I

came, of course, expecting to be stormed at, to be cursed, to be

insulted, to be told I was a liar, to have everything I said or

did rammed down my throat again! But you?----All you've done is

just to listen to me! And believe me! And laugh! It's as though

I'd hurt you so much you were sorriest of all [19] for me--and

were trying every darned way you knew to keep me from going mad!

It's as though----" From the sudden slight sag of his shoulders

he rallied again with a gesture of folded arms and finality. "I

tell you I want to do whatever you want me to do," he repeated

quite simply.

"Have you talked with anyone--about this?" asked the man.

"Just with my brother," said the boy.

"And what did he say?" asked the man.

"It's the brother who runs the farm with me," explained the boy.

"He's a cripple and rather a bit nervous now and then, but he

reads an awful lot of books. Not just farm books I mean--not

just scientific books, but all sorts of----"

"By which you are intending to imply," interrupted the man,

"that your brother's opinion, even though nervous, may be

considered fairly sophisticated?"

"Oh, yes," said the boy. "And we went into it all very thoroughly.

All the scandal and notoriety of the expulsion, I mean, and the

fright and the mortification, and the silly sap-headed mothers

who won't let their [20] daughters chum with your daughter any more,

and the old cats who all their lives long will be pussy footing

after her with whispers and insinuations. It's the bill, of course,

that I can't ever pay. That's the beastliness of it! But what

I've got, of course, I must give towards it! This isn't just my

opinion, you understand?" he questioned a bit sharply. "But it's

my brother's, too! And it isn't just my brother's either! It's

_mine_!"

"And that opinion is----?" prompted the man.

"I should like to ask your daughter to marry me!" said the boy.

"I admit that that opinion is--classical," drawled the man.

"Shall--shall we consult the lady?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"Suppose you go to the door and call her," suggested the father.

An instant later the boy was on the threshold. With the

hesitation of perplexity only he peered first to the right and

then to the left.

"Miss Bretton!" he called.

"Not even 'Daphne?'" interpolated the man. [21]

With a vague gesture of surprise the boy swung back into the room.

"Why--why I never even _saw_ your daughter," he said, "until the

night of the dance!"

"_What_?" cried the man.

Before the interrogative exclamation could even be acknowledged

Daphne herself appeared upon the scene.

"Yes,--Mr. Wiltoner?" she faltered.

"Mr. Wiltoner," said her father quite abruptly, "has just made

you an offer of marriage."

"A--what?" gasped the girl.

"Mr. Wiltoner--I would say," drawled her father, "has--just done

himself the honor of asking your hand in marriage."

"What?" repeated the girl, her voice like a smothered scream.

"And he's quite poor, I judge," said her father, "with all his

own way to make in the world--and a crippled brother besides.

And whoever marries him now will have the devil of a time

pitching in neck and neck to help him run his farm. Have to

carry wood, I mean, and water, and help plow and help [22] scrub

and help kill pigs--and help wrangle with the crippled brother

and----"

"_What_?" gasped the girl.

"Oh, of course, I admit it's very old-fashioned," murmured her

father, "very quixotic--very absurd--and altogether what any

decent lad would do under the circumstances. And you, of course,

will refuse him to the full satisfaction of your own thoroughly

modern sense of chivalry and self-respect Nevertheless----" From

the half-mocking raillery of the older man's eyes a sudden glance

wistful as a caress shot down across the boy's sensitive face and

superb young figure. "Nevertheless," he readdressed his daughter

almost harshly, "I would to God that _you_ were old-fashioned

enough to faint on his neck and accept him!"

"Why--why Father!" stammered the girl. "I'm engaged to the--to

the English professor at college!"

Above the faint flare of a fresh cigarette the man's ironic

smile broke suddenly again through shrewdly narrowed eyes.

"'Are'? Or 'were'?" he asked. "'Yet', you mean? 'Still?'" [23]

"Oh, of course, I know I can't marry anyone now," quivered

the girl. "Everything's over--everything's smashed. It's only

that--that----"

With the hand that had just tossed away a half-burnt match her

father reached out a bit abruptly to clasp the boy's fingers.

"You hear, Richard?" he asked. "Your offer, it seems, is

rejected! So the incident is closed, my boy--with honor to all

and 'malice towards none!' Completely closed!" he adjured with a

certain finality. "And the little lady----" he bowed to his

daughter, "suffers no more--fear--nor ever will, I trust, while

her life remains in my keeping." From his pocket he snatched a

card suddenly, scribbled a line on it, and handed it to the boy.

"I'm going South to-morrow," he smiled. "Daphne and I. To be

gone rather indefinitely I imagine. About January send me a

line! About your own luck, you know, that farm of yours and

everything! It's very interesting!" With faintly forked eyebrows

he turned to watch the precipitated parting between the boy and

girl--a slender, quivering hand stealing limply into a clasp

that wrung [24] it like a torture, blue eyes still baffled with

perplexity lifting heavily to black eyes as quick as a bared

nerve. "Good-bye!" said the man quite trenchantly.

"Good-bye," choked the girl.

"Good-bye!" snapped the boy.

Then the man and his daughter stood alone again.

"There's a bath-room down the hall!" said the man. "And my own

room is just beyond. Take a tub! Take a nap. Take--something!

I've got a letter to write and don't want any one around!"

It was quite evident also that he didn't want any things around,

either. The instant his daughter had left him he turned with a

single impetuous gesture and swept all the books and papers from

his desk. It might have been the tantrumous impulse of a child,

or the unconscious urge of the spirit towards unhampered elbow

room.

Certainly there was neither childishness nor spirituality in the

plain businesslike paper and strong, blunt handwriting that went

to the composition of the letter. An almost breathless immediacy

seemed also a distinctly [25] actuating factor in the task. As

fast ever as hand could reach pen and pen could reach ink and ink

could reach paper again the writer drove to his mark.

To Miss Claudia Merriwayne,

President, -------- College (said the letter).

So it is you, dear Clytie Merriwayne, who have so peremptorily

thus become the arbitrator of my family fame and fortunes?

God Almighty! How Time flies! You, old enough to have a college.

And I, old enough to have a daughter expelled from the same! Why

did you do it, Clytie? Not have a college, I mean, but expel my

daughter? Truly she seems to me like rather a nice little kid.

And now I suppose in the cackle and comment of all concerned she

stands forth "ruined" before the world. Yet when all's said and

done, Clytie Merriwayne, who did the "ruining?" Not the little

girl certainly. Most emphatically not that splendid boy! Who

else then except yourself? Personally it would seem to me

somehow at the moment as though you had bungled your college just

[26] about as badly as I have bungled my daughter. My only

conceivable excuse is that I've been a damned Ignoramus! What's

yours?

Here I had a fine, frank, clean, prankish little girl who didn't

know a man from a woman, and you have changed her into a cowering,

tortured, and altogether bewildered young recreant who never again,

as long as time lasts, perhaps, will ever be able to tell a saint

from a devil, or a lark from a lust, or a college president from

any other traducer of youth and innocence. Yet you are considered

to be something of a Specialist in girls, I should suppose. As

well as once having been a girl yourself.

How ever did you happen to do it, I say? How ever in the world

did you happen to do it?

"For discipline," of course you will most instantly affirm. "A

necessary if drastic example to all the young lives in your

charge. Youth being," as you will undoubtedly emphasize, "the

formative period of character." It certainly is, Clytie! The

simplest garden catalogue will tell you the same. Young things

grow on the morning sun! That's the [27] phrase--everywhere. But

don't ever forget, Clytie, that they blight just as easily on

that selfsame sun! And if you have blighted my little girl

instead of 'grown' her I shall not easily forgive you.

"What?" I can hear you demand in hectic righteousness. "Do I

claim for one minute that my little daughter has committed a

Propriety instead of an Impropriety?" (Oh, Clytie, haven't you

learned even yet that Youth is almost never proper but, oh, so

seldom vicious?) Admitting perfectly frankly to all the world

that my daughter has committed a very grave Impropriety I must

still contend that she has by no means committed a Viciousness!

And even God Almighty, that shrewdest of Accountants, exacts

such little toll for Improprieties. It's these sharkish overhead

charges of middlemen like you that strain Youth's reputational

resources so.

Far be it from me, alas, to deny that there undoubtedly _is_ a

hideous amount of evil in the world. But more and more I stand

astonished before the extraordinarily small amount of it that

smoulders in young people's bodies compared with the undue

proportion of it [28] that flames so frankly in older people's

minds! In this case in point for instance, it's your whole moral

premises that are wrong! It isn't just that the boy wouldn't

have hurt her if he could. But that he couldn't have hurt her if

he would! Both equally "pure in heart!" Both romping equally

impishly through a moment's impulsive adventure! My God! I'd

hate to be the first evil thought that had ever butted into a

youngster's mind!

But enough! What you need in your college, perhaps, is a little

less French and a little more Biology! Quite a bit more mercy

certainly! This setting steel traps for Vice and catching

Innocence instead is getting to be an altogether too common

human experience. And some of us who have watched the writhings

of an accidentally incarcerated household pet have decided long

since that even a varmint doesn't quite deserve a steel trap!

But all this, Clytie, being neither here nor there, I come now

to the real point of my letter which is to ask a favor.

My little daughter is pretty sick, Clytie--sick mentally, I

mean--sex-scared, socially [29] and emotionally disorganized.

On the particular trip I am planning for the winter into the

more or less primitive and lawless wild-lands of the far South

I am hoping that she will find plentiful opportunity to

reconstruct her courage from the inherent principles alone of

Right and Wrong. But failing this hope by the time the Northern

summer is due----?

Have you no memories, Clytie, of another college room? And

another indiscretion? Which beginning soberly with a most worthy

desire to exchange Philosophy note books ended--if my memory

serves right--with a certain amount of kissing. Yet will you

contend for one single instant, Clytie, that your thoughts that

night were one whit less clean than my daughter's? That there

were four "improper" youngsters in that episode, instead of two

as now, does not greatly in my mind refute the similarity. Nor

the fortuitous chance by which one boy had just vanished over the

window-sill and you into another room when _that_ blow fell! Do

you remember the things that were said then, Clytie Merriwayne?

To your room-mate, I mean? Poor [30] little frightened baby!

Seventeen, wasn't she? And cut her throat at dawn rather than

meet what had to be met? Pretty little white throat it was too

as I remember it. With a rather specially tender and lilting

little contralto voice that would have been singing lullabys in

another four or five years. And the boy? The boy who was caught,

I mean? Not a bad sort at all! Was rather intending to make

something fairly decent of himself--up to then! But after the

blood-red things the girl's father and mother said to him? He

went a bit "batty" after that, some people said! A bit wild

anyway! Eighteen or nineteen he must have been? Oh, ye gods,

what a waste! Babies _all_! And to make them suffer so! Just by

the thickness of a door you escaped it, Clytie! Just by the

whish of a skirt! Except for that----?

Well this is the favor, Clytie. If by Summer my little girl is

still staggering under the nervous and moral burden of feeling

herself the only "improper" person in the world, I shall ask

your permission to tell her the incident here noted, assuring

you of course in all fairness and decency--if I am any judge [31]

of young character--that she will never tell on you as you have

told on her!

As for the rest if I have written over-garrulously I crave your

pardon. This turning the hands of the clock backwards is slower

work than turning them ahead.

For old time's sake believe me at least

_Sincerely_ yours,

JAFFREY BRETTON.

With a sigh of relief then he rose from his desk, lit another

cigarette, and started down the hall, with Creep-Mouse, the blue

hound, skulking close behind him.

As he crossed the threshold of his own room and glanced incidentally

towards his bed a gasp of purely optical astonishment escaped him.

All hunched up in a pale blue puffy-quilt his lovely little

daughter lay ensconced among his snow-white pillows. Across

her knees innumerable sheets of paper fluttered. Close at her

elbow a discarded box of pencils lay tossed like a handful of

jack-straws. And the great blue eyes that peered out at him

from the cloud of bright gold hair were all brimmed up again

with terror and tears. [32]

"I'm--I'm writing to John," she said.

"John?" queried her father.

"Why--yes,--the English professor--at college,--don't you

remember?" faltered the girl. "Don't--don't you want to know

about John?"

"No, I don't!" said the man. "There's nothing important about

'John' that 'John' won't have a chance to show for himself--in

this immediate situation."

"Isn't it--isn't it--Hell?" quivered the girl.

"N--o--o," said her father. "I shouldn't consider it just Hell.

But I admit it's something of a poser for a man in John's

position. He's one of the faculty of course?"

"Yes," said the girl.

"And was at the faculty meeting--presumably when----"

"Yes," said the girl.

"Was your engagement--announced?" asked her father quite

abruptly. "Generally known, I mean, among the girls?"

"No--not--exactly," said the girl.

"U--m--m," said her father. From his wordless stare at the wall

he glanced down a [33] bit sharply at the wan little face before

him. "Heard from him yet?" he demanded.

"No, not yet," said the girl. "Why he doesn't know where I am!

Nobody knows where I am, I tell you! I just ran away, I tell

you! I didn't even wait to pack! I--I----But, of course, I _will_

hear!" she asserted passionately. "I will! I _will_! It isn't

that I expect to--to marry him now," she explained piteously.

"Nobody of course--would want to marry me now. It's only that----"

Before the sudden rush of color to her face her father gave a

little startled gasp.

"Hanged if you're not pretty!" he said. "Shockingly pretty!" With an

almost amused interest his eyes swept down across the exquisite little

face and figure all muffled up to the tips of its ears in the great

blue puffy-quilt against the snow-white pillows. "Truly when I came in

here just now," he laughed, "I thought a magazine-cover had come to

life on my bed!" With the laughter still on his lips all the mischief

went suddenly out of his eyes. "You heard what I said just now about

going South to-morrow?" he asked a [34] bit trenchantly. "I'm sorry if

it seems peremptory. But my plans have been made for some time. I had

intended to take only--Creep-Mouse with me."

"Creep-Mouse?" questioned the girl.

"Oh, of course, there are a dozen other dogs up country that I

could choose from," reflected her father with a somewhat frowning

introspection. "But when it comes to traveling about and putting

up with things, Creep-Mouse alone combines the essential

characteristics of an undauntable disposition--with folding legs."

"Oh, of course, I can't speak too positively about my

undauntable disposition," rallied the girl with the faintest

possible smile, "but I certainly will try to take the hint about

the folding legs----"

"Hint?" snapped her father. "Oh, it wasn't so much the adaptability

business I was thinking about as it was about the dog!" With a

gesture almost embarrassed he reached down suddenly and drew the

hound's plushy ear through his fingers. "Oh, hang it all,

Daphne!" he resumed quite abruptly, "you and I might easily not

like the same opera [35] or the same hors-d'oeuvre--but I'd hate

anyone round who didn't like the same dog."

"I--adore--Creep-Mouse!" said Daphne.

"Truly?" quizzed her father.

"Truly!" twinkled Daphne.

"Oh, all right then," said her father, "I guess we understand

each other!"

"Perfectly," nodded Daphne.

"For all time," said her father.

"All time," acquiesced Daphne.

With his watch in his hand and his dark eyes narrowed to some

unspoken thought he thrust out his last admonishment to her.

"Then take all the brace there is!" he said, "and hustle out and

get some new clothes! It's quite lucky on the whole, I imagine,

that you didn't have time to pack up any of your college things

for you certainly won't need anything--academic in the place

we're heading for! It's not any South that you've ever heard of

that we're going to, you understand?" he explained with the

faintest possible tint of edginess in his tone. "No Palm

Beaches! No pink sash-ribbons! No tennis! No velvet golf

courses! No airy--fairy--anythings! But a South below the South!

A [36] South all heat and glare and sweat and jet-greens jungles!

Tropics and slime! Rough! Tough! Pretty nasty some of the time.

Violently beautiful--almost always! And we're going down to

_hunt_!" he added with certain decisiveness. "And to _fish_! And

to study citrus fruits when there's nothing else to do! And you

might just as well know it now as later," he resumed with all

his old insouciance. "I--am--also going to find me a wife if

such a thing is humanly possible."

"A--wife?" gasped the girl. "Oh, this--this eternal marrying

business!" she shivered. "If it's all so dreadful, about men, I

mean, why do women keep marrying? What's the righteousness of

it? What's the decency? What's it all about?"

"Don't forget that I'm one of these 'dreadful men,'" smiled her

father.

"Yes--I--know," quivered the girl.

"But----" Like a butterfly slipping out of its cocoon one

shoulder slipped lacy-white from the blue puffy-quilt. "What

about my own mother?" she demanded.

"Your mother has been dead for fifteen years," said the man. [37]

"Yes--but Father," persisted the girl.

With folded arms the man stood watching her bright young color

wax--and wane again.

"If there's anything you want to ask," he suggested, "maybe

you'd better ask it now--and get it over with."

"Oh, I didn't want to be inquisitive," stammered the girl. "It's

only that--that servants and relatives talk so--and I know so

little. You--you and mother didn't live together, did you?" she

questioned quite abruptly.

"No," said the man.

"You--you mean there was trouble?" flushed the girl.

"There was--some trouble," said the man.

"You mean that you--didn't like her?" probed the merciless

little voice.

"No--I--didn't--like her," said the man without a flicker of

expression.

Clutching the blue quilt about her the girl jumped to the floor

and ran swiftly to him.

"Oh, Father!" she cried. "Whatever in the world will I do if you

don't like _me_?"

"But I do like you!" smiled her father. Shy as a boy he reached

out and touched her sunny hair. "Only one condition!" he rallied

[38] with sudden and unaffected sternness. "When you broke into my

study just now you called me 'Old-Dad'! Up to that moment I had

considered myself--some--young--buck. Never again--as long as

you live--I warn you--ever call me anything _except_ Old-Dad!

Darned if it isn't sobering!" [39]

II

THE scene that Daphne had left behind her two thousand miles or

more, though more academic of course, was none the less poignant

to the one most concerned.

Deflected by a more or less erudite lecture-obligation to a town

at least gossip-distance away, no faintest rumor of any college

chaos whatsoever had reached John Burnarde's ears till the

evening after the dance, when just recrossing the well-worn

threshold of his beautiful, austere study, the shrill harsh

clang of his telephone bell rang down the curtain on what had

been the most exquisitely perfect episode of even his fastidious

life.

Yet even then no whisper prepared him for what the alarm was all

about. Poor John Burnarde!

Whatever else an academic training may teach an undergraduate it

has certainly never taught a member of the faculty what to do

when summoned post-haste to the President's [40] office to consult

with various other members of the faculty on what has been

pronounced "a most flagrant breach of moral as well as of

academic standards" he finds the case to be the exceedingly

delicate one of a girl-student caught entertaining a man in her

room late at night,--and the girl herself--his fiancee!

That the betrothal at that moment was known only to himself and

the girl gave John Burnarde the last long breath, he felt, that

he should ever draw again.

Still a bit flushed, a bit breezy, with his brisk sprint across

the chill November campus, he was just slipping out of his overcoat

in the doorway of the President's office when the name "Daphne

Bretton" first struck across his startled senses. Half hampered by

a balky overshoe, half pinioned by a ripped sleeve-lining he thrust

his head alone into the conference.

"What?" he demanded.

"This will hit Burnarde rather roughly, I'm afraid," whispered

the History Man to the Biology Woman. "She's quite his star

English pupil, I imagine. Has done one [41] little bit of lyric

verse already, they say, that is really rather remarkable. Very

young of course, very ingenuous, but quite remarkably knowing."

"Maybe now we can guess where she gets her 'knowingness,'"

murmured the new Bible Instructor behind her pure white ringers.

"_What_?" demanded John Burnarde all over again. The winter wind

seemed to have faded oddly from one cheek but was still spotting

hecticly in the other. "_What_?" he persisted bewilderedly,

still struggling with his overshoes.

"Why it's the Bretton girl!" prompted a sharp voice from some

dark seat in the corner.

"That pretty little Bretton girl," regretted a gentler tone.

"Yes--I--I--know who you mean," stammered Burnarde. "But--but----"

"Always made me think of apple-blossoms--somehow," confided the

old Mathematics professor a bit surreptitiously.

"Apple-blossoms?" mumbled poor Burnarde.

"So sort of pink and white and fresh and--and [42] fragrant. 'Pon

my soul when she comes into my class and takes a front seat it

makes me feel a little queer. It's like being a boy again! Young

grass, May morning, and a wind through the apple orchard!

Fragrancy? Yes, that's it!"

"Yes, it's just exactly the flagrancy of it that makes the

scandal so complete!" interposed the President's keenly incisive

feminine voice.

Instantly every eye except Burnarde's reverted to the unquestionable

dominance of the President's ash-blond personality.

Burnarde alone, looming lean, keen, tense, on the edge of the

group, with five generations of poise and reticence masking the

precipitant horror in his mind, stood staring blankly from one

face to another of his cruder-birthed associates.

"I--protest!" he said.

"Protest?" questioned the President's coolly inflected voice.

"Protest what?" With a graceful if somewhat studied gesture of

patience Miss Claudia Merriwayne laid down her jotting pencil

and narrowed her cold gray eyes to the eyes of her youngest [43]

professor. "You were a little late getting here I think, Mr.

Burnarde," she admonished him perfectly courteously, "but the

general circumstances of the case you have gleaned quite

sufficiently, I think, even in this last brief moment or so?

Surely in a case so--so distressing," she flushed, "it will not

be necessary for us to--to revive the details in all their

entirety? In the half hour that we have been discussing the

matter. It _is_ a half hour, isn't it?" she turned sharply and

asked of her nearest neighbor.

"Fully a half hour!" gloated the nearest neighbor.

"Miss Bretton, of course, will have to leave college," resumed

the President succinctly. "Definitely--positive expulsion is, of

course, the only path open to us!"

"I protest!" said John Burnarde.

From some half-shadowed corner directly in front of him a

distinctly Continental smile flared up on a French instructor's

face. Close at his elbow the phrase "little sly, pink-faced

minx" hissed plainly from one gossip to another. The blood was

surging in his ears! His heart was pounding like an [44] engine!

Shock, bewilderment, nausea itself, racked chaotically through

all his senses! Yet neither love nor loyalty, a girl's honor or

a man's dignity, seemed to him at that moment to be essentially

served by capping sensationalism with sensationalism. Sophisticated

as he was in all the finer knowledges that book or life could offer,

afraid of nothing on earth except the vulgarity of publicity, shy

of nothing on earth except his great, grown-man desire for this

little, young, exquisite girl, no power in the world could have

forced him then and there to take the sweetest news he had ever

known, or ever was to know, it would seem, and slop it down

like so much kerosene to feed a flame already quite noxious

enough. Still fighting desperately for time, still parrying

for enlightenment, he kept his mask-like face turned blankly

towards his companions.

"I protest!" he repeated tenaciously. "There is some mistake--some

misunderstanding! Even in the two short months Miss Bretton has

been with us she has certainly--Certainly----" In a voice as low

as a nun's but particularly and peculiarly enunciative [45] he

focused suddenly on the President. "The charge is absurd," he

said. "It's outrageous! Someone has lied of course! And lied

very badly."

With an ill-concealed gesture of exasperation the President

straightened up in her chair and glared at her youngest professor.

"I--am the only person--who could have 'lied,'" she affirmed with

some hauteur. Slowly into her cold strong-featured face a hot

flush ebbed and waned again through lips that crisped a bit

round the edges of her words. "If you _insist_ on knowing every

detail, Mr. Burnarde," she said, "it was I myself who discovered

Miss Bretton! And she was barefooted at the time--and in her

nightdress--and clasped most emphatically in the young man's arms."

"What?" cried Burnarde. His very heart seemed to wrench itself

loose at the word, but his tight lips bit back the agony into a

mere raspishness of astonishment. "What?" Then quite as

unexpectedly to himself as to any of the others an amazing

little laugh slipped through where even agony could not pass. Oh

ye god of Rhetoric! Ye subtlety [46] of Satire! Ye psychology of

Climax! Was this the moment when a Master of Arts should fling

his tenderest morsel to the dogs? "Betrothal?" Red as blood,

white as a lily, the word flashed through his stricken senses!

"Betrothal?" Oh ye gods of everything! A betrothal so new, so

shy, so sacred, so reverential, that he had not yet even so much

as affrighted the cool, unawakened, little-girl finger tips with

the thrill of his grown-man lips! A betrothal so new, so shy, so

precious, he had not yet even so much as shared the secret with

his adorable, patrician mother! Announce it now? Proclaim it

now? Merciful God! Was there anything left to proclaim? Yes,

that was just exactly the question! _Was_ there anything left to

proclaim? Even for loyalty, even in defense of the Beloved who

had chosen so garishly--elsewhere, would it greatly enhance a

substance as tender as a young girl's honor to scream out now?

"_I also claimed her_--_once_?" Starkly his fine, clear-cut lips

opened and shut again. "I--I protest!" he mumbled. Vaguely in a

chaotic blur he sensed a restless exchange of glances, the soft,

clothy shifting [47] and stir of busy people impatient to be off.

Cleanly and concisely through the blur cut the President's

persistent purpose.

"Expulsion, of course," said the President, "must always seem a

drastic measure. But in the safety and protection of the greater

number rests now as always the greater mercy. This Bretton girl,

I understand, has grown up with practically no home surroundings,

being shifted about from one boarding school to another ever since

her earliest childhood, and knowing apparently very little more about

her people than even I have been able to glean. The circumstances

are very sad, of course, very unfortunate, but our duty at the

moment, of course, concerns itself with results, not causes. Looking

back now to her first appearance among us two months ago I realize

that there has always been something about her that was vaguely

disquieting, vaguely suggestive of lawlessness. Her eyes,

perhaps, her hair, some odd little trick of manner. Certainly,"

quickened the President, "I would not be doing my duty by the

hundreds of innocent young girls committed to my care if----" [48]

As though all life reverted then to the mere pursuit of hats and

coats and rubbers, the Faculty Meeting dissolved into individual

interests again and dispersed as such along the gloomy corridor

and down the creaking stairs.

It was winter-cold on the stairs.

Shuffling a little in his overshoes, jerking his coat-collar

just a bit tighter around his throat, John Burnarde felt

suddenly very old. "Old? Merciful Heavens!" he winced. He was

only thirty-five! Did Age come like that to a man in just the

time it took him to go up and down the same gray, creaky,

familiar stairs? "Apple Blossoms was it that the old Mathematics

Professor had said she looked like? But God knew it wasn't just

her little face that was Apple Blossomy, but her little mind

also, and the little glad gay heart of her! So fresh, so new, so

virgin-sweet! By what foul chance, by what incalculable

circumstance, had she blundered into _this_?"

Stripped of passion, stripped even of protest, stripped indeed

of every human emotion except his dignity and his pain he pushed

his [49] way blindly out through interminable heavy doors and

breasted the winter night.

Then quite suddenly, stripped of every emotion _except_ pain, he

swung around in his tracks, remounted the stairs, re-entered the

President's office, and slamming the door be hind him, flung

down even his dignity on the altar of his love.

"Miss Merriwayne!" he said. "This thing that you propose

doing--cannot be done! I am engaged to Miss Bretton!"

For a single instant only, every knowledge, manner, poise, that

John Burnarde had been born with, defied every knowledge,

manner, poise, that Claudia Merriwayne had worked forty years to

acquire.

Then reverting suddenly to the identical accent with which

Claudia Merriwayne's mother was still lashing Claudia Merriwayne's

father, doubtless, in the little far away North Kansas home, the

College President opened her thin lips to speak.

"The thing--is already done,--Mr. Burnarde," she said. "Miss

Bretton left town an hour ago--and with her paramour, I am

told!" [50]

"With her--what?" cried John Burnarde.

"With her 'paramour,'" repeated the President coolly.

"The word is unfortunate," frowned Burnarde.

"So--is the episode," said the President.

With a little sharp catch of his breath John Burnarde stepped

forward to the edge of the desk.

"You understand that I am going to marry Miss Bretton?" he

affirmed with some incisiveness.

"Not in my college!" said the President. "Nor in any other

college if I even so much as remotely gauge either the

professional or the social exigencies of the situation."

Emphatically, but by no means extravagantly, she drove her

meaning home. "Do you dream for one single moment, Mr.

Burnarde," she quizzed, "that any reputable college in the land

would accept, or maintain on its faculty," she added significantly,

"a man whose wife for reasons of moral obliquity had not been

considered a safe associate for----"

"You mean----" interrupted John Burnarde. [51]

"Everything that I say," acquiesced the President, "and everything

that I imply."

"That is your ultimatum?" questioned John Burnarde.

"That is my ultimatum!" said the President.

With the slightest perceptible tightening of his lips John

Burnarde began to put on his gloves.

"Very fortunately," he said, "there are other professions in the

world besides the teaching of English."

"Very fortunately," conceded the President. One side of her

mouth lifted very faintly with the concession. "Yet somehow, Mr.

Burnarde," she added hastily, "I do not seem to picture you as

a--as an automobile salesman, for instance. Nor yet visualize

that frail, lovely mother of yours relinquishing very easily her

life-long ambitions for your deanship--which up to now, of

course, has by no means seemed the improbable fruition of your

distinguished services with us. Your mother," mused the

President, "has doubtless made some sacrifices for you--in her

time?" [52]

"Most mothers have!" snapped John Burnarde.

Roused snap for snap to his tone the President leaned forward

suddenly.

"You're not the only man," she cried, "who has been both flouted

and betrayed by Frivolity! Next time you choose----" Her cheeks

flushed scarlet. "Next time you choose, perhaps you will choose

more wisely, more consistently with your age and attainments!

This mad infatuation is surely but the mood of a moment, the----"

Recovering her self-control as quickly almost as she had lost

it she sank back with typical statuesqueness into her throne-like

Jacobean chair. "Surely, Mr. Burnarde," she asked in all

sincerity, "you must admit that the--that the warning I have

given you is at least--reasonable?"

"Absolutely reasonable!" said John Burnarde. "And absolutely

damnable!" And turning on his heel he stalked from the room.

But even the winter night could not cool his cheeks now, nor the

great pile of unread themes and forensics that he found awaiting

him in his room, divert his tortured mind for one single second

from the problems of a [53] lover to the problems of a professor.

Somewhere indeed, he reasoned, among that white flare of papers

a fresh stab of pain undoubtedly awaited him, a familiar

handwriting strangely poignant, some little brand new bud of an

idea forging valiantly upward through the clotted sod of

academic tradition into the sunshine of acknowledged success, a

purely prosy rhetorical question, perhaps, thrilled to its very

interrogation mark by the sweet new secret hidden behind its

formality!

With an irresistible impulse he began suddenly to rummage

through the themes. Yes, here was _the_ handwriting! With fingers

that trembled he unfolded the page. Dated the very night before

this dreadful thing had happened, surely somehow--somewhere on

this very page the dreadful thing must be disproved!

"Dear Mr. Burnarde," ran the little note pinned to the page.

"Dear Mr. Burnarde" (Oh, the delicious camouflage of the

formality). Please, I beg of you do not be angry with me because

I am submitting no prose theme this week! I just can't, somehow!

I'm all verse these days! What do you think [54] about this one?

There are oodles and oodles more lines to it of course, but this

is to be the recurrent refrain:

He who made Hunger, Love, and the Sea,

Made three tides which have got to be!

"Oh, of course, I know you'll say that the word 'got' isn't

particularly poetical and all that. But it's simply got to be

'got,' don't you see? Why----"

Right in the middle of the unfinished sentence he crumpled the

page in his hand. Merciful Heavens, if she was innocent why

hadn't she written him? Or even if she were sorry--only? Or even

if----If people had any explanations to give they usually gave

them to you, didn't they? "Gave" them to you? _Forced_ them on

you, rather, didn't they? Fairly _hurled_ them at you? This

staking all for love? Yes, surely! Social position! Professional

reputation! Even his mother's heart! _For love_? Yes, that was

it! But suppose--the object of such love--fairly flaunted

herself as being neither loving--nor lovable? Maddened anew by

the futility of it all he plunged down at his desk and [55] began

to write a letter--and tore that letter up! And began another and

tore that up! And began another! Merciful Heavens! he suffered.

Was his hand palsied? His brain blighted? Were there no live

words left in all the world--except just those which crowded

every other sane thought out of his mind?

"He who made hunger, love, and the sea,

Made three tides which have got to be!" [56]

III

TAKEN all in all, _mileage_ undoubtedly is just about the

paltriest form of separation that can occur between two people.

If only Fate would break its impish habit of always and forever

introducing such perfectly unexpected things into mileage! Even

Fate though at just this time hadn't quite made up its mind

perhaps just what it intended to do with little Daphne Bretton!

Given good food, a brave heart, and any reasonable amount of

diversion, most young people outgrow their sins and even their

mistakes almost as soon as they outgrow their clothes. But to

outgrow a punishment is quite a different matter! People who

deal out punishments ought to think about that!

Daphne Bretton and her father had to think a good deal about it.

Daphne especially! Totally uninjured by her mistake but pretty

badly crippled by her punishment the world looked very dark to

Daphne. [57]

Being only eighteen and having thus far evolved no special

philosophy of her own concerning the best way to meet Life's

inevitable disasters it was rather fortunate perhaps in the

present emergency that she had at least her father's philosophy

to fall back upon. Her father's philosophy was so amazingly

simple.

"No matter what happens," said her father, "never wear a worried

looking hat!"

"Which being interpreted," puzzled Daphne, "means----"

Like a Fancier perfectly willing to share the cut-flowers of his

mind but quite distinctly opposed to parting with the roots of

any of his ideas her father parried the question.

"Which being interpreted," he repeated a bit stiffly, "means

'_Never wear a worried looking hat_!'"

Certainly there developed nothing worried looking about Daphne

Bretton's Florida-going hat! Nor about her suit, either! Nor her

shoes! Nor her silken stockings! Her hat was crisp, with a flare

of pink in it, her suit was blue, her shoes and silkies

distinctly [58] trim. From top to toe, bright hair, bright cheeks,

lithe little body and all, there was nothing worried looking

about Daphne Bretton except her eyes. Sweet eyes they were too,

wide set, wistful, and inherently frank, though vaguely furtive

now with the tragic, incongruous furtiveness of youth that

having once perhaps feared overmuch that it would not be noticed

is panic-stricken now lest it may be. Little girl eyes distinctly,

and the eyes of a very worried little girl at that!

In the joggling crowd at the railroad station two women noticed

her only too quickly. The little blue hound himself sniffing

close at her heels quickened to the trail no more avidly than

they.

"Bet you a dollar," gasped the first, "that that's the Bretton

girl!"

"Bretton girl?" gloated the other in an only too audible whisper.

"Why, yes, of course, you know," nudged the first "That one, you

know, that was expelled from college for having a boy in her

room at night! Oh, an awful scandal it was! Why the Sunday

papers were full of it last week!" [59]

"Oh, yes, of course, I saw it," confided the second. "A whole

page of pictures, wasn't it? Perfectly disgusting, I call it! So

bold--so----"

"Pretty, though, isn't she?" deprecated the first.

"If you like that fast type," sneered the second.

"Oh, and look at her now!" snickered the first. "Got an older

man in tow this time! And, oh goodness, but isn't he a stunner

with all that white hair and elegant figure and swell traveling

bags! If there's one thing I think refined it's swell traveling

bags! But, oh, isn't it awful the way rich people cut up?

Wouldn't you think her folks would stop her? Wouldn't you?"

From under the sheltering, shadowy brim of her hat Daphne shot

an agonized glance at her father's half-averted face. But to her

infinite astonishment her father's deep-set eyes were utterly

serene, and even his shrewd mouth was relaxed at the moment into

the faint ghost of a perfectly amiable smile.

"Old-Dad--are you deaf?" she gasped with a little quick clutch

at his arm. [60]

"When geese are cackling," said her father.

"And blind?" flared Daphne.

"When the view is offensive," admitted her father. With

unwavering nonchalance he swung around suddenly to the nearest

news stand and began then and there to pile Daphne's blue

broadcloth arms with every funny paper in sight.

From lips quivering so that they could barely function their

speech Daphne protested the action. "Why--why, Old-Dad," she

pleaded. "Do you think for one single moment that I shall ever

smile again? Or--or ever--even want to smile again?" In a fresh

shiver of tears and shame the hot tears started to her eyes.

"Why I'm nothing but--but just an outlaw!" she gasped. "A--a--

sort of a----"

"Personally," conceded her father, "I'd infinitely rather travel

with an outlaw than an inlaw! They're so inherently more

considerate--somehow, so----" Quite imperturbably as he spoke he

kept right on piling up the magazines in Daphne's protesting

arms. "Steady there, Kiddie!" he admonished her smilingly.

"Steady! Steady! Never let any [61] sorrow you'll ever meet leak

into your chance to laugh! Water-tight your compartments--that's

the idea! Love, Hope, Fear, Pride, Ambition--everything walled off

and separate from another! And then if you run into a bit of bad

weather now and then, Little Girl, you won't--" Aghast at the

increasing tremor of the little figure he broke off abruptly in

the midst of his message. "Why the only trouble with you,

Daphne," he laughed, "is that you are so pretty! It's an awful

responsibility I tell you to travel with a daughter who's so

extravagantly pretty. So many complicating things are bound to

happen all the time. Beaux, for instance, and----"

"Beaux?" winced Daphne.

"Such as the incipient one yonder," nodded her father.

Following the general direction of the nod the girl's eyes raked

somewhat covertly but none the less thoroughly the shadow just

back of the flower booth.

"O--h," she shivered. "_That_?" Back of her lovely blondeness,

her youth, her vitality, the delicate fine-boned structure of

her face [62] loomed suddenly into the faint, poignant outline

of the ultimate skull. "Do--do you think he's a reporter?" she

stammered.

"Reporter _nothing_!" snapped her father. Snatching up the

traveling bags he headed quite precipitously for the train.

White as a little ghost Daphne pattered after him. Close at her

heels followed the blue hound.

"What a stunning looking man!" said someone. "And what an

awfully pretty girl!" murmured another. "And what a funny

looking dog!" agreed everybody.

"For goodness sake, don't you know who it is?" called the girl

at the flower booth to the girl at the news-stand.

"Naw," admitted the girl at the news-stand.

"Oh, pshaw," preened the girl at the flower booth. "Don't you

know anything? Why it's Jaffrey Bretton the--the--well, I don't

know what he is except that he's richer than--oh, richer than

Croesus! And wild? Oh, Gee! Why I knew a chauffeur once that

knew a cook that said----"

So Jaffrey Bretton and Daphne and the little blue hound passed

from the rabble of the station to the rumble of the train. [63]

The rumble of the train is at least a pleasant sound. And when

one's nerves are just a bit over-frazzled with the cantankerous

parlance of men it is not a half bad idea for the price of a

railroad ticket to yield one's ears for such time as one may to

the simpler things that Steel, Wood, and Plush have to say to

each other. "Strength!" pulses Steel. "Form!" urges Wood. "Rest!"

purrs Plush. "Strength--Form--Rest! Strength--Form--Rest!" On and

on and on, just like that, day and night, mile and mile, swirl and

sway, with no more effort to one's brittle-nerved, ice-chilled

body than lolling in a bath-tub would be, while the great Sunny

South like so much hot water comes pouring in, a little deeper,

a little hotter, every minute, to lave and soothe Past, Present,

and Future alike. God bless Railroad Journeys!

Surely it was at least twenty-four restful hours before the

"parlance of men" caught up with Daphne and her father again.

This catching up, however, proved itself quite sufficiently

unpleasant.

It had been rather an eerie day, an eerie twilight anyway, as

railroad twilights are apt [64] to be with a great, smooth-running,

brilliantly lighted, ultra-perfected train of ultra-perfected

cars slipping deeper and deeper and deeper into the black morass

of a wild, swampy, tropical night.

Eerieness for eerieness Daphne Bretton's eyes matched the night.

Sparkle for sparkle Jaffrey Bretton's eyes matched the train. To

escape the sparkle Daphne pleaded a desire to dally alone in her

quiet dark drawing-room. To escape the eerieness Jaffrey Bretton

vaunted the intention of finding some stray man who could smoke

more cigars than he. With an unwonted touch of formality, a

sudden strange shyness of scene and sentiment they bowed their

good-nights to each other.

"See you in the morning!" nodded her father.

"In the morning," acquiesced Daphne.

Nothing on earth could have brightened her eyes at the moment.

Nothing on earth could have dulled her father's. Yet within an

hour when they met again it was Daphne's face that was fairly

blazing with excitement and her father's that was stricken with

brooding. [65]

Maybe too much "looking back" even from the last car of a train

isn't specially good for any man. Certainly just sitting up till

nine o'clock never made any man look so tired.

Joggling back to his warm, plushy Pullman car from the cindery

murk and chill of the observation platform it was then that Jaffrey

Bretton sensed through the tail of his eye, as it were, the

kaleidoscopic blur of a scuffle in the smoking-room. Tweed-brown,

newspaper-white, broadcloth-blue, the fleeting impress struck

across his jaded optic nerve, till roused by a sudden lurch of

his heart to the familiar blueness of that blue he whirled

around in the narrow aisle and yanked aside the curtain just

in time to behold a perfectly strange young man forcing a kiss

on Daphne's infuriated lips.

"But I _am_ Daphne Bretton! I _am_! I _am_!" fought the girl.

"Why, of course, you're 'Daphne Bretton!'" kissed the man. "So

why be so particular?"

"And I--happen to be Daphne Bretton's--father!" hailed Jaffrey

Bretton quite incisively from the doorway. [66]

"Eh? _What_?" jumped the Kissing Man.

"Oh--O--h!" gasped Daphne.

With a somewhat hectic attempt at nonchalance the Kissing Man

stooped down and picked up the crumpled newspaper at his feet.

"Well, it's my newspaper, anyway!" he grinned.

"It's mine if I want it!" began Daphne all over again.

With a quick jerk of his wrist the stranger twisted the

newspaper from the girl's snatching fingers and began rather

awkwardly to smooth out the crumple and piece together the

fragments. It was the pictorial supplement of a week-old Sunday

paper and from its front page loomed an almost life-sized

portrait of Daphne extravagantly bordered and garnished with

what some cheap cartoonist considered a facetious portrayal of

Daphne's recent tragedy.

"Do--you want your head--kicked off?" asked Jaffrey Bretton.

"No, I don't," admitted the stranger. "But even if I did," he

confided with undismayed diablerie, "how ever in the world should

we locate it? I seem to have lost it so badly!" [67] By no means

unattractive even in his impudence he turned his flushed, indecorous

face to Daphne and in the sudden tilt of his deeply-cleft chin

the electric light struck down rather mercilessly across a faint

white scar that slashed zig-zag from his turbid, reckless eyes to

a most ingenuous dimple in his left cheek.

"You are--drunk!" said Jaffrey Bretton quite frankly.

"Yes, a little," admitted the stranger. "But even so," he

persisted with an elaborate bow. "But even so, the young lady

here will hardly contend, I think, that I acted entirely without

provocation!"

"Provocation?" questioned Jaffrey Bretton. With the faintest

perceptible frown blackening between his brows he turned to his

daughter. "Daphne," he said, "don't you know that you haven't

any business to enter a man's smoking-room?"

"But he wasn't smoking!" flared Daphne. "He was sleeping!"

"Well--a man's sleeping-room, then?" conceded her father.

"But I simply _had_ to have that newspaper!" [68] insisted Daphne.

"I tell you I won't have it flaunted all over the train! Brought into

the dining-car every meal! Flapped and rustled in my face--everywhere

I look! Oh, you think you're _funny_, do you?" she cried out

furiously as with one swift dart she snatched the offending page

from the stranger's unguarded grasp and tore it into shreds before

his eyes. "Oh, you think you're fu--fu--funny, do you?" she began

to babble hysterically.

"Yes--but Daphne," said her father with scarcely a lift to his

voice, "surely you don't imagine for a moment that you're

destroying the whole edition? It can't be done, you know. No one

yet has ever found a way to do it. Ten years hence from a

wayside hovel some well-meaning crone will hand you the page to

wrap your muddy rubbers in! Five thousand miles from here, on

the other side of the world, you'll open your top bureau drawer

to find it lined with your own immortal features! You just

simply have to get used to it, that's all. Laugh at it! Keep a

laugh always handy for just that thing!"

"_Laugh_?", flared Daphne. With a fresh [69] burst of fury she

tore the tattered page through and through again. "Well, I've

destroyed _this_ copy!" she triumphed. "No darkey porters or

smirking tourists will ever see _this_ copy! And maybe when I

get to Florida," she cried, "snakes will bite me! Or typhoons

shipwreck me! Or--or something happen so that I won't have to

come home again! But you, Old-Dad----" Tottering ever so

slightly where she stood all the hot anger in her eyes faded

suddenly into the vague, sinister bewilderment of a young mind

crowded dangerously near to the edge of its endurance. "You--you

see nobody knew I was bad until the College President said so,"

she explained painstakingly to no one in particular. "I didn't

even know it myself, I mean. _But my father_----" she rekindled

instantly. Like the rippling start of a young tiger just getting

ready to spring she swung around sharply on the stranger again.

"Surely you didn't think for a moment that it was just myself I

was thinking about in that wicked old paper?" she demanded

furiously of him. "For Heaven's sake, what earthly difference do

you think any such thing [70] can make to _me_ now? My life's over

and done with! But my father? The dreadful--malicious--flippant

things they said about my father!"

"O--h! So it was my honor, was it, that you were defending?"

asked her father a bit dryly.

As though she had not even heard the question, Daphne lifted her

flaming, defiant little face to the stranger's. "Why, my

Father's an _angel_!" she attested. "And he always was an

_angel_! And he always will be an _angel_!"

"In which case," interposed her father quite abruptly, "we had

better leave I think while the angeling is still good!" With a

touch that looked like the graze of a butterfly's wing and felt

like a lash of steel wires he curved his arm across her shoulder

and swept her from the smoking-room. Once outside the curtain

his directions were equally concise. "Trot along to your

drawing-room, Kiddie!" he ordered. "I'll join you presently."

As he swung back into the smoking-room he almost tripped across

the stranger's sprawling feet. Huddled in the corner with his [71]

face buried in his hands the stranger sat sobbing like a woman.

"You are drunker than I thought!" said Jaffrey Bretton.

"I am fully--that," admitted the stranger.

"And a rotter!" said Jaffrey Bretton.

"Oh, no end of a rotter!" conceded the stranger.

"And if I am not very much mistaken," mused Jaffrey Bretton, "you

are also the same man whom I noted--yesterday afternoon at the flower

booth in the railroad station--staring so unconscionably--not to

say offensively hard at my daughter?"

"I deny nothing!" hiccoughed the stranger. With an emotion that

would have done credit to a sober sorrow he lifted his stricken

face to his accuser. "And I don't mind at all that I'm drunk,"

he confided. "Nor--nor yet being the man who stared so--so hard

at your daughter. But--but _why_ am I such a rotter? Frankly now

as man to man how could I be such a rotter? That nice--nice

little girl! That----" With uncontrollable remorse he buried his

face in his hands again. [72]

"There are never but two reasons why a man pursues a woman,"

observed Bretton, "One because he respects her, and the other

because he doesn't. My daughter has, of course, been a little

unfortunate lately in achieving a certain amount of cheap

newspaper notoriety." In a perfectly even line of interrogation

his fine eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. "There was a woman

back there at the railroad station," he confided, as though in

sheer impulsiveness, "who rated my daughter indeed as being

'fast looking'. Now just about how 'fast looking' would you

consider her?"

From behind the cage of his fingers the young man's lips emitted

a most unhappy little groan.

"Why--why I should consider her," he mumbled, "just--just about

as 'fast looking' as a new-born babe!" But his rowdy eyes,

raking the older man's face, gathered no answering smile to

their humor. "N--n--o?" he rallied desperately. "N--o? On--on

further consideration I should say that that she wasn't _half_

as fast looking as a newborn babe! What? _Eh_?" he questioned [73]

worriedly. "Well not a hundredth part, then? Not a thousandth?

Not a--not a billionth? Oh, upon my soul," he sweated, "I can't

think what comes higher than billions!

"A 'billion' is plenty high enough," said Jaffrey Bretton. "But

such being the case--_why did you do it_?"

"Why did I do it?" mumbled the stranger.

"Why? Why----" Once again the rakish, confused young face

lifted, but this time at least a single illuminating conviction

transfigured its confusion. "Why--because she was so pretty!"

With a cigarette at his lips, a match poised halfway in mid-air,

Jaffrey Bretton's heels clicked together. Sharp as the crackle

of a trainer's whip his smile snapped into the situation.

"So you admit that she is pretty?" he asked quite tersely.

As though the question were a hook that fairly yanked him to his

feet the stranger struggled upward and crossed his limp arms on

his breast.

"She is--adorable!" he testified.

"And young?" urged Jaffrey Bretton. [74]

"Very young," acknowledged the stranger.

"And--spirited?" prodded Jaffrey Bretton. "Even tom-boyish

perhaps? And distinctly innocent?"

"Oh, perfectly spirited!" grinned the stranger a bit wanly.

"Ditto tom-boyish! And most essentially innocent!"

"So innocent," persisted Jaffrey Bretton. "So tom-boyish--so

spirited--so young--so pretty--that taken all in all the only

wonder is that--she wasn't expelled from college before."

"It is an absolute miracle!" brightened the stranger quite

precipitously.

With a shrug of his shoulders Jaffrey Bretton resumed the

lighting of his cigarette.

"The days--of miracles--are reputedly over," he confided very

casually between puffs. "But the natural phenomenon of a formal

apology is still occasionally observed, I believe, in the case

where either a very crude or a very cruel injustice has been

done."

With a click of his own heels the stranger added at least an

inch to his otherwise slouching height. [75]

"I apologize in all languages!" he hastened to affirm.

"'Jeg beklager at jeg har vaeret uhoflig.' That's it in Norwegian,

I believe! Now in Spanish----"

"What is just 'Plain Sorry?'" interrupted Jaffrey Bretton.

"_I am_!" cried the stranger. Like a sign post pointing "This

way to the Smile!" the faint white scar that slashed across his

face seemed to twitch suddenly towards the astonishing dimple in

his left cheek. Robbed for that single instant of its frowning,

furtive-eyed emphasis, his whole haggard young face assumed an

expression of extraordinary ingenuousness. "Certainly, you've been

awfully decent to me!" he smiled. "Thank you for being so--so

decent! But--but--whatever in the world _made_ you so decent?"

he began to waver ever so slightly. "Most fa--fathers you know,

would have knocked me down!"

"I--don't--knock--sick men down," said Jaffrey Bretton quite

simply.

"_Sick men_?" flared the stranger, all eyes again.

"But--some fathers--haven't such scruples," [76] confided Jaffrey

Bretton. With absolutely merciless scrutiny his eyes swept over

the swaying young figure before him--hollow temples, narrow

chest, twittering wrists, and all. "And if--I hadn't any longer

to live--than you evidently have," he added, without a flex of

accent, "I don't think I would squander any very large amount of

it in forcing tipsy kisses on young girls."

"_What would you do_?" asked the stranger quite surprisingly.

"God knows!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "But not that!"

"Yes--but _what_?" pleaded the stranger.

"Search--me!" shrugged Jaffrey Bretton. "That's the whole

trouble with 'whooping it up,'" he confided quite frankly.

"There's so blamed little to whoop! And it's so soon over! If

one only could believe now what the preachers have to say----"

"Preachers?" sniffed the stranger.

"It is, I admit, a sniffy idea," said Jaffrey Bretton, "but

undeniably--quaint! Being somewhat to the effect that the

pursuit of 'good works,' on the contrary, is an absolutely

inexhaustible amusement! Brand-new every [77] morning, I mean!

Just as original at night! A perfectly thrilling novelty--even

at noon! Heartache in it now and then perhaps but never any

headache! Atrophy of the pocket-book perhaps--but never atrophy

of the liver!"

"Never--any--headache?" contemplated the stranger. "Not even in

the morning, you mean?" Across his face a faint incredulous

smile twisted wryly like a twinge of pain. "Oh, now you're

joshing!" he said. "In all the world there never was any idea as

quaint as that!"

"Oh, nonsense!" snapped Jaffrey Bretton. "I've got an idea of my

own that's twice as quaint as that!"

"Such as what?" bridled the stranger.

Across the sweet-scented blur of a fresh cigarette the older

man's eyes narrowed suddenly to two mere glints of steel.

"I--I hated the way you kissed my little girl!" he said.

"Y--yes?" stammered the stranger.

"That youngster of mine is such a--little youngster," mused Jaffrey

Bretton perfectly evenly. "So totally inexperienced! So [78]

desperately affrighted and bewildered already with the untoward

happenings of the past week! Personally," he persisted, "I

want neither Prude nor Wanton in my family, but either one of

them--unfortunately--is made only too easily out of the same

sex-shock. In view of which case and under all existing

circumstances--you have made it considerably harder, I think,

for my little girl to reconstruct normal sex standards while

that particular kiss of yours remains the last one in her memory.

So I will thank you," said Jaffrey Bretton, "to accompany me now

to her drawing-room and show her as best you may how even a man

like you can kiss a woman 'Good-night' instead of 'Bad-night!'"

"_What_?" jumped the stranger.

Starkly for an instant he probed Jaffrey Bretton's unflinching

eyes. Then rubbing one hand for a single instant across his

clammy forehead he followed Jaffrey Bretton out through the

plushy green curtain into the aisle.

In the general joggle of the train it was comfortable for each

perhaps that the other's footsteps swayed no more, no less, than

his [79] own. Even outside Daphne's door the footing was none too

certain.

"Let us in!" cried Daphne's father quite peremptorily.

In a vague mist of rumpled gold hair and soft white negligee

Daphne opened the door and ushered the two men into her trig

little room.

Without a moment's delay Jaffrey Bretton sprung the question

that was already on his lips. "Daphne--have you ever been kissed

very much?"

Above the cruel shadows that underlined the lovely young eyes,

the eyes themselves widened still with blank astonishment of a

little girl. But the white teeth that gleamed so brightly in the

half-light were caught for the first time in their lives across

the crimson line of an over-conscious under lip.

"I said,'Were you ever kissed very much?'" repeated her father

a bit tersely.

It was the big, blue, bewildered child's eyes that proved the

truth of the red lips answer.

"Why--why once," stammered Daphne perplexedly. "Why once on a

boat--when I was a little girl--and--and lost my doll [80]

overboard--an--an old lady jumped up and kissed me. Oughtn't

she to have?" Heavy with bewilderment only the blue eyes lifted

to the stranger's face, winced darkly away again behind their

shadowy lashes, and opened wide once more to her father's strangely

inscrutable smile.

"Yes--but man-kisses?" probed her father quite mercilessly.

"You--you are engaged to be married?"

"I--I _was_ engaged to be married," corrected Daphne. It was the

red lips that did all the answering now. "If you mean----"

curled the red lips, "if you mean----" Startlingly just above

her delicate cheek-bones two spots of red flared suddenly.

"It--it just never happened--somehow," she whispered. "Maybe--people

don't kiss much before they're married." Into the blue eyes

suddenly welled a great blur of tears. "It just--never

happened--that's all," quivered the red lips. Quick as a bolt the

white teeth shot across the quiver. "Thank God it never happened!"

cried the red lips. "I loathe men! I despise them! I----"

"This--this gentleman," said Jaffrey Bretton, [81] quite abruptly,

"has come to kiss you 'Good-night!'----"

"_What_?" screamed Daphne. Reeling back against the dark

wainscoting she stood there before them with a single slender

hand creeping out of its white sleeve towards her throat.

"Oh, I admit," said her father, "that it will not be just the

kiss that the old lady gave you when your doll was drowned. Nor

yet the kiss that your English Professor was doubtless planning

to give you some time. But as kisses go--you will find no fault

with it--I am quite sure."

"Why--why, Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne.

Flaming with protest, paling with revulsion, she lifted her

stricken eyes to the stranger only to find that his own face was

quite as stricken as hers.

Ashy-gray where his flush had been, faintly green around his

insolent young nostrils, his eyes seemed fairly begging for

mercy. Then quite suddenly he gave a queer, strained little

smile, sank down on one knee like a hero in a Play, and picking

up the hem of her gown pressed his lips solemnly to it. [82]

"You little--funny--furious--Baby," he began, twitched his queer

smile again, and crumpled up at her feet! "Call my man--quick!"

he mumbled thickly. "Next car--somewhere. Good-night! _Good-night!_"

But it was not a good night even so! Even what was left of the

night was not good! Even after the brief commotion was over and

the young stranger had been carried off more or less stumblingly

to his own quarters in the hands of a most efficient and formidable

valet, Daphne found her car only too frankly a sleepless car. Curling

up just as she was in her easiest window-corner with all her pillows

crushed behind her back, her knees hunched to her chin in the clasp

of her slim white arms, she sat wide-eyed and feverish watching the

cindery-smelling Southland go rushing darkly by to meet the North.

Long forgotten incidents of her littlest childhood flared hectically

back to her! Optical impressions so recent that they had scarcely

yet reported to her consciousness seared like flame across her

senses! The funny, furry scallop of her first kitten's ear, the

jingling tune of a Christmas Cantata, the quite [83] irrelevant weave

of the gray silk tie her English professor had worn at his last

lecture, the queer white scar that slashed the tipsy stranger's

face, some turquoise-colored dishes she had seen once in a

shop-window, the crackling rhyme-words "faster"--"disaster" of

a new poem she had just planned to write, the horrid crushed

feeling of her nose when that Wiltoner boy had caught her so roughly

to his breast, white narcissus and scarlet tulips bunched together

somewhere in a jet-black basket, and--and always that queer white scar

that slashed the tipsy stranger's face! Clacketty-clack-clack-clack

of wheels and brakes, rhythm and rumble, rapture of speed,

stark-eyed sleeplessness, a Railroad Night! Murky blackness

spangled with hamlet lights! Interminable miles of wraith-like

fog! A night-heron winging his homeward way suddenly across a

bizarre sky striped like a Japanese fan! The faint, sweet,

unbelievable scent of orange blossoms! And then the Florida Dawn!

It was the dawn that crept so inquisitively to the hem of Daphne's

gown.

With her lovely tousled head cocked ever [84] so slightly to one

side Daphne's glance followed the dawn's. Between her perfect

eyebrows a curious little frown puckered suddenly. With a quick,

raspy catch of her breath she jumped from her couch and bolted

for her father's compartment. Digging her fingers quite

unceremoniously into his gay-colored flannel shoulders she

roused him from his dreams.

"Old-Dad!" she cried, "I can't sleep!"

"Very few people can," growled her father. "So why fuss about it?"

"Yes--but Old-Dad!" persisted the girl. Her teeth were chattering

and from hand to feet a dreadful convulsive chill seemed to be

racking her suddenly.

"For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" cried her father.

"It's that--kiss!" quivered Daphne.

"Oh, shucks!" relaxed her father. "Forget it! It was a bit rough,

I know! But remember--you had no right--at all--to go foraging

into a tipsy man's smoking-room!"

"Smoking-room?" gasped Daphne. "Why--why I'd forgotten all about

_that_! The--the kiss, I mean----" her eyes were wide [85] with

horror, "the kiss, I mean----" White as a ghost suddenly she lifted

to her father's eyes the filmy hem of her gown where in two faint

crimson splashes across one corner a man had stenciled the bow of

his lips with his own life-blood.

"The _deuce_!" cried her father, and jumping into his wrapper rang

precipitously for the porter.

"The young man who was--who was sick last night the one that had

the hemorrhage--what about him?" he demanded of the first white-coated

Darky who came running.

"Is--is he dead?" whispered Daphne.

"The young man what had the hemorrhage," confided the Darky, "he done

gone leap from the train."

"What?" cried Jaffrey Bretton.

Enraptured by the excitement the Darky ripped his somber face in a

white grin from ear to ear.

"He sure did, Sah!" he attested genially. "Back thar jes' as we

was leavin' the water tank it was! More'n an hour back I reckon!"

With a sudden elongation of his grin that threatened to separate

the whole upper part [86] of his face from the lower he rallied

himself for his real news. "Was you by any chance, sah," he

grinned, "the gentleman what owned the cat-hound in the baggage car?"

"Cat-hound?" flared Jaffrey Bretton. "I've got a thousand-dollar

slate-colored hound in the baggage car if that's what you mean?"

"You ain't done got him now," regretted the Darky. "It was him

that jumps off first at the water tank. The cat was yeller. One

of them sort of swamp cats that----"

With a cry of real dismay Jaffrey Bretton pushed the Darky aside

and started for the door.

"'Twon't do you no good now, sah," protested the Darky. "It was

more'n an hour ago I reckon and the Captain of this 'ere train

he don't stop nothing for no dog."

"No, of course not!" cried Jaffrey Bretton, "But we've got to do

something! The swamp country----"

"Yes, sah, that's the trouble with these 'ere hound-dogs,"

reflected the Darky. "They runs till they busts. And when they

busts they bogs down. And jes' as soon as they bogs [87] down Mr.

Alligator or Mr. Little Ole Mocassin snake he----It was when the

young gentleman sees the swamp that he jumps. Tell the folks not

to worry, he hollers. Tell 'em this little ole good works

'speriment am only just begun! Was _you_ his folks?" brightened

the Darky.

"No!" flared Daphne.

"Yes!" said Jaffrey Bretton. "Go get me a telegraph blank

quick!" he ordered. "Find out what the last station back was!

And the next one ahead!"

Expeditiously the Darky plunged through the door, then swung

back for one more sentence.

"There was some gentlemens down here las' year what lost their

hound-dog. Jes' two hours it was and when they foun' him he was

all buzzard-et."

"Hush your mouth!" said Jaffrey Bretton.

"But, Old-Dad," shivered Daphne, "what about the--the man?"

"Men can look after themselves!" frowned her father, "and if

they can't, maybe they'll get another chance, who knows? But a

dog, poor little lover. All that dumb quivering [88] miracle of

love, trust, shrewdness, sinew, silk. If _he_ doesn't get the chance

to live out the measure of even his stingy little day----"

"Yes, but Old-Dad," reasoned Daphne, "it was Creep-Mouse's own

idea wasn't it--this jumping off to chase the cat?"

"Hush _your_ mouth!" said Jaffrey Bretton. To cover the very real

emotion that hid behind the irritability he began at once with

the stub of a pencil and the back of an envelope to compose a

telegram for the stranger.

"Thanks," he wrote. "Please communicate any news to J. Bretton,

Hotel-------"

Then quite abruptly he jumped up and started after the porter.

"Why, what an idiot I am!" he called back from the door way. "We

don't even know the chap's name!"

From under lashes that seemed extraordinarily heavy to lift

Daphne glanced up a bit askance at her father.

"His name is Sheridan Kaire," she said.

Swinging sharply round in his tracks her father stood eyeing her

with frank astonishment. [89]

"Well, I'd like to know," he demanded, "how _you_ happen to know

what his name is?"

"He--he sent me his card," said Daphne. This time her eyelashes

were quite unmistakably too heavy to lift. "At the hotel, I

mean," she faltered, "three or four nights ago. He sent me

orchids. He sent me candy. He sent me----"

"Do you mean," said her father, "that this man has been following

you for days?"

"Yes," said Daphne.

"And--and what did you do with these--these offerings?" asked

her father.

"Why, I didn't know just what to do with them," stammered

Daphne. "I was so frightened--I--I gave them to the bell boy."

"Do you mind telling me," quickened her father, "just why if you

were frightened or troubled you wouldn't call upon your most

natural protector?"

Like the fluffy edges of two feather fans Daphne's lashes

fringed on her cheeks.

"This father and daughter game is such a new one to me," she

said. "I've lived so much with boarding school girls--I--I

didn't know fathers were people you told things to, I [90] thought

they were people that you kept things from!" Very faintly around

the tremulous young mouth, very briefly behind the dark lashes a

little smile signaled.

"Take off that gown!" ordered her father quite abruptly, "and

wrap yourself up in that big coat of mine! And wait here till I

come back!"

"What time is it?" shivered Daphne.

"Four o'clock," said her father and was gone.

When he reappeared ten minutes later with a yellow envelope

flapping in his hand Daphne was still standing just where he had

left her though obediently bundled up now in the big tweed coat.

"We are all idiots!" affirmed her father. "Everybody on the

train is an idiot! Here's this message been stuck up in the

dining car since nine o'clock last night and no one had wit

enough to find us!"

"Is it from--Creep-Mouse?" brightened Daphne.

"Silly!" cried her father. "Creep-Mouse didn't jump off till

after midnight! This is for you!" [91]

"For--me?" questioned Daphne. With incredulous fingers she took

the yellow envelope and slit it end from end.

"Why, it's from John," she whispered. "John Burnarde--Mr. John

Burnarde." Swaying a little where she stood she bent her bright

head to the message. Then white once more to the lips she handed

the page to her father.

"Read it to me yourself," said her father. "You know the man's

accents and emphases better than I do and it won't make any

sense to me unless I can hear the man's voice in it."

Once again the bright head bent to the page.

"To Miss Daphne Bretton," began the young voice as one quotes

some precious-memoried phrase. "While your blessed letter

completely relieves mind it cannot unfortunately relieve certain

distressing complications of----" As though breaking its way

through lips turned suddenly to ice the sweet enunciation began

quite palpably to crisp around the edges of its words. "Certain

distressing complications of this most unhappy situation.

Forwarding to you all love and confidence am yet tied hand and

foot against immediate action. Letter follows.

"T. D." [92]

"Which being interpreted?" questioned her father.

"Which being interpreted," rallied Daphne, "is academic for

nothing doing.----"

"U--m--m," mused her father, "and what does 'T. D.' stand for?"

"'Teacher-Dear,'" flushed Daphne. "It was just a sort of a joke

between us. I never somehow quite got round to calling him 'John.'"

As though lost in the most abstract reflection Jaffrey Bretton

cocked his head on one side.

"It's a good telegram," he said.

"Oh, a perfectly good telegram," acquiesced Daphne. With a

curiously old gesture of finality she turned aside.

"So in this fashion ends passion," she murmured.

"What do you know about passion?" quizzed her father.

"It rhymes with 'fashion,'" said Daphne.

For an instant only from blue eyes to black eyes and black eyes

to blue again the baffling, sphynxlike mystery of youth defied

the baffling, sphynxlike mystery of experience. [93] Then quite

abruptly her father reached out and cupped the little white

quivering chin in the hollow of his hand.

"What did you _think_ your lover would do, Daphne?" he smiled.

"Tear down the college chapel? Set fire to the gymnasium? Cast

all the faculty into dungeons--and come riding forth to claim

you on a coal black charger decked with crimson trappings?"

"No, of course not," said Daphne. "Only----"

"Yes, that's just it," hurried her father. "'Only' boys do

things like that! Only first-love, the young, wild free-lance

peddler ready and able any moment, God bless him, to dump down

his whole tip-cartful of trinkets at the feet of the first

lady-fair who meets his fancy! But a _grown man_, Daphne, is a

corporation! No end of other people's investments tied up with

him! No end of rules and obligations encompassing him about!

Truly, little girl, there are mighty few grown men who could

proffer honorable succor even to their belovedest on such short

notice. Truly, little girl, taken all in all, I think your John

is doing pretty well. [94] Maybe for all you know your John owes

money!"

"He does," nodded Daphne. "There were some queer old editions of

something he persuaded the college to buy last year. They turned

out not to be genuine or something and John feels he ought to

refund on it."

"And maybe there's an old father somewhere?"

"It's an old mother," quivered Daphne.

"And maybe the college president herself didn't make things any

too easy for him!"

"Miss Merriwayne's crazy about him," quickened Daphne. "All the

girls say so! Everybody----"

"U--m--m," mused her father. "Well, I think you'll hear from him

again!"

"Yes, I think I'll hear from him again," monotoned Daphne. Quite

suddenly her teeth began to chatter and the eyes that lifted to

his were like the eyes of a frightened fawn.

"I feel so little," she whispered. "Even in this big coat I feel so

little--and so cold! I never sat in anybody's lap," she stammered

desperately, "and--and as long as you didn't like my--my

mother I don't suppose you've [95] ever held anybody in yours. But

perhaps--maybe----" With a little smothered cry her hands crept

up to her father's shoulders. "Oh, if you just could hold me

till breakfast time!" she begged, "or just till the coffee's

ready."

Flushing like an embarrassed school-boy her father caught her up

in his arms and sank back into the narrow angular corner of plush

and wood with the little unfamiliar form snuggled close on his breast.

"Why--why, you don't weigh anything!" he faltered.

"No, I'm not as fat as I was last week," conceded Daphne. Like a

puppy dog settling down for a nap she stirred once or twice in

her nest. "Do you think of any little song you could sing?" she

asked.

"Nothing except:

'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest--

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!----'"

began her father in a cheerful tenor.

"No, I wouldn't care for that," sighed Daphne. [96]

"Why, it's from Stevenson himself!" argued her father.

"Never mind," snuggled Daphne. "Maybe I can think of one myself."

Peering down a moment later through the bright tickly blur of

her hair her father noticed suddenly that her lips were moving.

"Oh, you're not praying, are you?" he squirmed. "Oh, I do hope

you're not one of those people who makes his spiritual toilet in

public! Dear me! Dear me! To brush your soul night and morning

is no more, of course, than any neat person would do. But in

public----"

"I wasn't praying," said Daphne. "I was making a little poem."

"You seem to be rather prone to make little poems," murmured her

father.

"Would you like to hear this one?" offered Daphne.

"Oh, I don't mind," said her father.

"All right," quivered Daphne. "It's about Love."

"So I supposed," mused her father.

"And death," confided Daphne. [97]

"I wouldn't wonder at all," admitted her father.

"And its name?" puzzled Daphne. "Oh, I guess it hasn't any name!

It just begins! This is it:

'Oh, the little rose that died,

How it tried, oh, how it tried

Just to grow a little stronger,

Just to live a little longer,

Snatching sunshine, sipping rain

Till the June should come again!

Didn't want to be a tree,

Didn't envy you or me,

Asked no favor ere life's close

But the chance to be a rose,

Oh, that little rose that died,

How it tried! Oh, how it tried!----'"

"U--m--m," mused her father. "But I thought you said it was about

'Love.' This is all about 'roses.'"

"But it _is_ about 'Love!'" flared Daphne. "The rose part is

just--just figurative! You have to do that in poetry! Make most

everything figurative, or else it wouldn't be--be delicate."

Quite palpably her upper lip began to tremble. "Why, didn't you

like it?" [98] she whispered. "Didn't you like it at all, I mean?"

"Oh, yes," hurried her father, "I liked it very much, oh very!

Though personally on these crape-y poems I must confess I like

some jolly refrain added like 'Yo-ho and a bottle of rum!----'"

"Why--Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne. Sitting bolt upright, her cheeks

blazing, she stared aghast at him.

"Oh, of course, you've never been in love!" she cried. "But I

tell you when you're sitting all alone with your love-secret in

a whole recitation roomful of girls and--and _he_ comes in--so

lithe--so beautiful--and smiles through everybody--right at

you--and--and then begins to read--it's Shakespeare, you know

'How like a winter hath my absence been

From Thee----'

Oh, Old-Dad, if you could only hear him read!"

Before the sudden twinkle in her father's eyes she reverted

equally suddenly into sheer [99] childishness again and began to

pound him quite familiarly with her small fists.

"Oh, you're just teasing me!" she laughed. "You naughty,

naughty--Old-Dad! Oh, very well then, here's another poem for

you! You'll love this one! I made it up last night It's all

about you!"

"Shoot!" said her father.

Re-dramatized in that single instant to the role of a poet she

straightened up very formally. Back to her breast crept the

quivering little hands. Her eyes were blurred with tears. "The

name of this poem," she said, "is 'The Word that God Forgot to

Make.' But if that's too long I could, of course, call it just

'The Miracle.' See what you think.

'Out of panic and pain, out of unspeakable disaster,

(Oh rhyme, oh rune, oh rhythm itself, come faster, come faster!)

Out of all this I say

Fate has found me my father!

But where? Where? In earth or air?

From sky to sea? From you to me?

Where shall I find a rhyme for "father"?

I whose only speech is rhyme, I who have so little time.

How can I in other ways sound my Daddy's glorious praise?

Beauty, Splendor, Brains, Perfection----'" [100]

"Oh, I say!" wriggled her father. "Is that all?"

Wilting down on his breast again he heard her swallow pretty

hard several times before her muffled answer came.

"It's--it's all," she said, "except, of course, the refrain 'Yo-ho,'

etc."

Chuckling softly to himself for a moment her father sat staring

off across the crown of her head at the shifting car-window

landscape of orange groves, palm trees, and pine.

"Couldn't you pat me a little?" came the sweet, muffled voice

again.

"I darsn't," said her father. "If I should unclasp a single hand

you'd go bumpety-bump on the floor."

"O--h," sighed Daphne, "but couldn't you even--pat me with your

voice?"

"'Pat you with my voice?'" puzzled her father. With a quiver of

muscles his strong arms tightened round her. "Why, you poor

baby," he cried, "you poor lonesome little kiddie! You----"

"Why does everybody think I'm so little?" protested Daphne. With

considerable effort she struggled up again, "You--and John [101]

Burnarde--and the--and the Kissing Man! Every one of you called

me 'a baby.' But that Wiltoner boy--at the dance that night,"

she faltered, "he treated me as though I was quite grown up and

real. Right in the midst of a dance it was he asked me about

bread machines. Asked my advice about bread machines, I mean!

And I loved it!"

"Did you ever see a bread machine?" quizzed her father.

"N--o," admitted Daphne, "but it sounds so real! But what I want

to know," she hurried on quite irrelevantly, "is about this

place--this wild, desert-islandy sort of place that we're going

to. Will that seem _real_?"

"Very real," promised her father.

"Tents?" questioned Daphne.

"Yes," said her father.

"What will there be to eat?" brightened Daphne.

"Oh, canned goods," shrugged her father, "and warm oranges and

grape-fruit, and heaps of salt pork, of course, and all the

fresh fish we have strength to land--Spanish mackerel, sea

trout, sharks."

"Not sharks?" thrilled Daphne. [102]

"Ah, of course, we don't have to eat them," confessed her father.

"And people?" wilted Daphne again. "Will there have to be people?"

"Oh, only four or five probably," laughed her father, "and even those

usually are scattered twenty-five or fifty miles apart. Oh, of course,

now and then," he admitted in all honesty, "some gay Northern

houseboat comes floating by. But mostly--somehow, all that part of

the land, or rather of the water, seems inhabited by people who have

made mistakes--made real mistakes, I mean--argued not wisely but

too well with their mothers-in-law, or overdrawn their bank accounts

with the butt of a pistol rather than with the point of a pen, or

had a bit of 'rough play' somewhere upstate with an over-sensitive

sheriff. We're going to have, for instance, a 'Lost Man' for a

cook. Nice distinguished looking old city-spoken derelict who can't

remember who he is, so most happily for him he can't remember what

_his_ mistake was. And on the next key just below us, twenty miles

or so, there's an outlaw who killed two revenue officers 'up North in

Alabama' [103] somewhere. And inland just behind us there's a rather

good-looking woman who's gone batty on the subject of red. Can't

bear red, it seems, and has come down there to wallow her nerves

in the all-green jungle."

Big and dark and blue, Daphne widened her eyes to her father's.

"You're not fooling _any_, Old-Dad?" she asked.

"Not fooling any," said her father.

Blackly for an instant the heavy lashes shadowed down across the

delicately tinted cheeks. Then quite abruptly a real smile

flashed from eyes to lips.

"Oh, Old-Dad!" cried Daphne. "_Would_ you mind if I touched

your--beautiful hair?"

"Oh, shucks!" dodged her father.

But Daphne's little hands had already reached their goal.

"Oh, Old-Dad--how soft!" she gloated. "How white! How _thick_!

But, oh goodness--isn't it _hot_?"

"On the contrary," smiled her father with a slightly twisted

eyebrow. "On the contrary--it is an Ice Cap prescribed by Fate

for [104] what has doubtless been an over-feverish youth."

Solemnly for an instant Daphne considered the answer.

"Which being interpreted?" she questioned.

With a little sharp catch of his breath her father caught her

suddenly back to his breast.

"Which being interpreted," he laughed, "means:

'Didn't want to be a freak,

Had no hunch to sing or speak,

Couldn't be clever if he tried,

So have it dyed! _Oh_, have it dyed!----'" [105]