The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Queen of Farrandale, by Clara Louise Burnham

THE QUEEN
OF FARRANDALE

A Novel

BY
CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

THE QUEEN
OF FARRANDALE

CHAPTER I
THE NE’ER-DO-WELL

“I’ve never had any luck,” said Hugh Sinclair, lifting a stein of beer and emptying it in one steady draught.

The fashionably dressed man, with graying hair on his temples who sat opposite him at the table, left his own foaming mug untouched as he watched the handsome, rough-looking boy of twenty-four with a half smile.

“Nor my father before me,” added Hugh, as he set down the empty stein. “No silver spoons in the mouths of our family when they are born.”

“Your father was a pretty fine man,” remarked the other.

“Oh, yes, I suppose so,” said the boy carelessly. “I remember, Mr. Ogden, that you and he were a sort of pals. I suppose it was on his account that you looked me up to-day. I’m sorry I haven’t any better hospitality to show you than a near-beer joint. These hot dogs aren’t so bad, though. Try ’em.”

The young fellow drove his fork into the food on his plate and his companion followed his example, while a brazen automatic piano in the corner crashed out “The Virginia Blues.”

John Ogden began to eat. “I love that clever human who cursed the man that put the din into dinner, and took the rest out of restaurant,” he said.

“M’h’m,” agreed Hugh with his mouth full.

“Who are left in your family?” asked Ogden. “The last time I saw you was twelve years ago, and do you know why I remember the date?”

Hugh looked up. “Can’t imagine. Something about father, I suppose.”

“No, about your sister Carol.”

“Good old Carol?” said the boy with surprise.

“Yes. How much more time have you before you must go back to the store?”

Hugh looked at his wrist watch. Its dilapidated leather bracelet matched the carelessness of its owner’s general appearance. “Half an hour.”

“Then let us eat quickly and get to some quiet spot.”

They found it in a hotel lobby on the way to Hugh’s place of business, and in transit John Ogden took further mental note of his companion’s shabbiness. Not only were his clothes in need of brushing, but he had not shaved to-day; his shoes were dusty and by industry the boy finished several cigarettes before, in the hotel lobby, they found a couple of neighboring chairs, and he lighted another.

“Hard luck to tote you around this way, Mr. Ogden, but all I’ve got is a hall bedroom in a hash house.”

“You talk a lot about luck, don’t you?” remarked the older man. “You don’t look as if you had ever gone after it very hard.”

“Oh, yes,” responded Hugh; “I’ve batted around considerable after jobs.”

“You don’t keep them very long, eh?”

“No, and the devil can take them for all me. I’ve never had anything worth keeping since I got back from France. I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. That’s about the size of it, and most of the other fellows are the same way. My friends are all Bolshevists.”

“Oh, come now,” said the older man, regarding the frank young ne’er-do-well with some disgust, “that isn’t worthy of your father’s son.”

“Perhaps not; but what do you care?” turning upon his well-dressed, well-groomed companion; nettled by the shade of contempt in his tone. “My father’s dead and that’s the end of him.”

“I was going to tell you why I care,” said Ogden, meeting the inimical look in the exceedingly handsome blue eyes bent upon him. He paused a minute, then added, “I am glad I stopped over and hunted you up. You remind me of her.”

“Oh, yes,” said Hugh listlessly, “Carol. You said something about Carol.”

“I did,” returned the other quietly. “Twelve years ago to-day I asked her to be my wife.”

“You—Carol?” The boy’s voice was so incredulous that Ogden smiled.

“Yes; I wasn’t always forty-two, you know. I was thirty then, and she was eighteen.”

“That was the reason you hung around father, then?”

“One of the reasons, yes,” said Ogden slowly. “She was a sober little head for eighteen, and it was largely because for years she had had to be a mother to her little brother.”

The tone and manner in which this was said caused Hugh to remove his cigarette for a thoughtful moment. “Good old Carol,” he said; then, restoring the cigarette, he added, “I wish to thunder she had married you. That guy Morrison carried her off to Colorado. She hated to leave me like the devil. She wrote me every day while I was over there.”

“Don’t light another cigarette, Hugh,” exclaimed the other in irrepressible impatience. “Don’t you know you never will hold a position if you’re one of these coffin-tack slaves?”

Hugh flared up. The flare showed in his beautiful eyes and darkened them to violet. Who was this glass of fashion to dictate to a decent Bolshevist like himself!

“And don’t I tell you I don’t give a damn how many dinky positions I lose?” he retorted.

Ogden put a soothing hand on the boy’s big arm and was nervously shaken off. “I’m sorry, old man. Don’t take it that way. Of course you’re free, white, and twenty-one; but I can’t help taking an interest in you.”

“Better cut it. I thank you, of course, for looking me up”—Hugh rose—“but I’ve got to trot along now. Good luck to you.”

John Ogden rose, too. “It won’t be good luck for me unless I see you again. I’m staying at this hotel. Come to dinner with me to-night.”

“Oh, no. Thank you just the same, but I’ve no togs decent to dine in a place like this.” The boy was somewhat touched by the older man’s invitation and manner, and he smiled grudgingly, revealing perfect teeth and more than ever causing Ogden a twinge of memory. “I can dress for a dinner of Reds in some cellar. That’s my size.”

“Wait a minute, Hugh. Listen. This is my anniversary. I never could love another girl after Carol. I’ve gone lonely for twelve years for her sake. If she could have felt differently I should have been your big brother all this time. Won’t you dine with me to-night? This is always a hard day for me.”

Hugh looked down on his immaculate companion curiously. How could a man, with hair graying around the temples and growing thin on the crown, nurse memories of love? It seemed absurd. But the face regarding him so steadily was a strong one. An idea suddenly occurred to the boy.

“Were you in the big shindy?”

“Yes.”

“What were you?”

“Major of infantry.”

“Get any bumps?”

“Yes, I achieved a little limp. Didn’t you notice it?”

“I hated the officers,” remarked Hugh.

“Will you come to-night?”

There was only a trifle more of hesitation before the boy answered: “Well—I’ll come.”

Ogden slapped him on the back and he moved off with long, deliberate strides. The older man looked after him. The boy’s splendid build and the grace with which his head was set on those firm shoulders attracted many a glance wherever he appeared.

The man sighed. He was familiar with the type of disillusioned returned members of the A.E.F., who went out surrounded by the incense of hero-worship, and came back to the shock of finding themselves negligible.

CHAPTER II
FOR CAROL

At the appointed hour Hugh came. He had made the concession of blacking his shoes, and shaving, and the unkempt hair of the noon hour, though obviously still in need of the barber, had been brushed until its dark auburn waves lay thickly in place.

John Ogden had secured a table for two in a retired corner and ordered a dinner, the first couple of courses of which seemed to cheer the gloom of his guest.

“I suppose I ought to call you Major,” said the boy.

“Not if it does violence to your feelings. I am plain John Ogden again, you know. I would like to forget the war.”

“Same here,” returned Hugh, swallowing a mighty mouthful of red snapper.

When the meat course was well under way, Ogden began his investigation again.

“You haven’t told me much about yourself,” he said. “It seems as if you must have relatives in town. Why should you be living in a boarding-house? It’s too bad. I thought I remembered connections of your father’s.”

“There were some odd cousins of his about when I was a kid,” said Hugh, “but they have disappeared. I wouldn’t live with ’em on a bet, anyway.”

“Then there was some one else,” persisted the host. “Your father had a very wealthy aunt, I remember.”

The filet was so extremely good that under its influence Hugh smiled at this reminiscence. “Oh, that old dame,” he remarked. “Yes, she’s still in the ring. You couldn’t kill her with an axe. She must be a hundred and fifty by this time; but she doesn’t live here, you know.”

“I thought she did.”

“No, old Sukey lives in Farrandale”—naming a rural city some hundred miles distant from the metropolis.

John Ogden admired beauty in man, woman, or child, and the light of contemptuous amusement which now played over the face of his guest so relieved its habitual sullenness that the host allowed himself the pleasure of staring for a silent space. He was very conscious of the glances bent upon Hugh from other tables, but the boy himself was entirely engrossed in the best dinner he had enjoyed for many a moon.

“There was some quarrel, I remember,” said Ogden; “some trouble between her and your father.”

“Well, slightly,” returned Hugh. “She didn’t have any children, so my father, being her nephew, she set out to run him. Dad had a pretty stiff upper lip, and she claimed he ruined her life by disobeying her in his marriage, and in his business, and in the place he chose to live, and so on ad infinitum.”

“So she let him die without forgiving him.”

“Let him die! She’d have made him die if she could.”

“And she ignores the existence of you and Carol.”

“Well, rather.”

“It is all very vague in my remembrance because I didn’t notice anything much but Carol in those days. So”—the speaker paused again—“you are very much alone in the world, Hugh.”

“Yes,” said the boy carelessly. “What’s the difference? I don’t want any relatives bothering.”

When the meat course was finished, he took out a package of cigarettes. “Have a tack on me?” he said, and his host accepted one, but offered his guest a cigar which the boy refused with a curt shake of the head.

“Of course, if I could have Carol, I’d like it,” he went on. “Carol’s never a nuisance. It would be good for me, too. I know that. If the Volstead Act hadn’t been sneaked in on us, I know perfectly well I wouldn’t last long. I haven’t any way of making hootch and no money to buy it, so I still cumber the ground.”

“I don’t like to hear a young fellow talk like that,” said John Ogden, and he was not so unconscious of the servant class as to feel easy under the waiter’s entertainment.

“A young fellow doesn’t like to talk that way either,” retorted Hugh, “but what is there in it? What’s the use of anything? Of course, I’ve thought of the movies.”

“What?”

“Thought of going into the movies.” Hugh did not lower his voice, and the waiter was indefatigable in his attentions.

“I’m a looker,” went on the boy impersonally, as he attacked the salad. “Wallie Reid and Valentino—any of those guys wouldn’t have anything on me if I chose to go in for it.”

“Why don’t you, then?” John Ogden thought he might as well share the waiter’s entertainment.

“Oh, it’s too much bother, and the director yells at you, and they put that yellow stuff all over you when you know you’re yellow enough already.”

The boy laughed, and sending out a cloud of smoke from his Grecian nose again attacked his crab-meat.

After they had finished the ices and while they were drinking their coffee, Ogden succeeded in driving off the reluctant waiter.

“I’m interested in that inexorable grand-aunt of yours,” he said. “What is her name?”

“Susanna Frink,” returned Hugh, “affectionately known in the bosom of the family as ‘Old Sukey the Freak.’”

His host sat up and leaned forward. “Not possible! Susanna Frink your aunt?”

“’Tisn’t my fault,” said Hugh, raising the smooth dark eyebrows his host had been admiring.

“But I know her,” said Ogden. “There’s a masterful old lady for you!”

“You bet your life,” agreed Hugh. “I’ve always believed she must be a descendant of that old galoot—I mean Canute, that commanded the proud wave—thus far and no farther!”

“Well, I never knew that Susanna Frink was Mr. Sinclair’s aunt. He never said much about her to me, but Carol used to laugh about a family fortune that was so near and yet so far. Miss Frink is a personage, Hugh. I’ve had business dealings with her, and she prides herself on being a lady of the old school. She told me so herself. All alone in the world, and feels it, I know, for all her proud front.”

“False front probably,” put in Hugh.

“Perhaps.” Ogden smiled. “Anyway, it is dark—”

“What did I tell you!”

“And faultlessly waved, and she is straight as an arrow and slender, and she drives about in her victoria with the bay horses in the fashion of fifty years ago, scorning automobiles with her whole soul. Her bonnet ties under her chin, and her eyeglasses are attached to a black ribbon. She has personality plus. You ought to meet her.”

“Meet her!” Hugh leaned forward with a scowl of incredulous disgust. “Wrinkled old harridan in a black wig! What should I want to meet her for?”

Ogden studied him thoughtfully—“You don’t resemble your father. Neither did Carol. You must have had a beautiful mother.”

“We did.” Hugh felt in an inside pocket and took out a small rubbed morocco photograph case. Opening it, he handed it to his friend.

Color came into the latter’s face as he looked at it. “Carol!” he exclaimed.

“No. Mother. What do you think of old Sukey for trying to lay father off that peach?”

“I’d give a thousand dollars for this picture,” said Ogden, upon which Hugh took it from him without ceremony and returned it to his inside pocket.

“It was Carol’s,” he said. “She gave it to me to take over there. I guess it was a mascot, for I pulled through some tight places.”

John Ogden continued to gaze at him for sheer pleasure in the way his lips curved over the faultless teeth in an occasional smile, bringing back his romance with the gentle girl, who liked him, but not well enough—

“Well,” said Hugh, rising, “I mustn’t take any more of your time, Mr. Ogden. I had forgotten there were dinners like that in the world, and I thank you, I’m sure, for bothering yourself.” He held out his hand, but his host took him by the sleeve.

“Don’t be in a hurry, old man,” he said. “The party isn’t over yet. Have you any best girl you want to go to see?”

“Divil a girl. I called up one that I’d met one evening, and asked if I could drop in, and she said, ‘Certainly,’ and went on to ask what we were going to do—what were we going to see? ‘Good-night,’ said I, and hung up with a click. My first and last offense.”

John Ogden laughed. “Sit down, then, if there is no meeting of the Reds to-night.”

Hugh laughed and dropped back into his chair.

“I’ve had an idea,” said his friend. “You liked the dinner. How would you like to have one like that every night?”

“Foolish question number 13,” responded Hugh.

“I know a way you can get it.”

“Well”—the boy regarded his dignified companion curiously—“so do I; but Bolshevism and safe-cracking aren’t the same thing.”

“A sufficient number of good dinners cure Bolshevism, I’ve noticed,” said Ogden. “I have hopes of you if you will do what I say.”

“Shoot,” remarked Hugh, still gazing at him imperturbably.

“You have had some thought of being an actor. I’m offering you a part.”

“I didn’t know what business you were in, Mr. Ogden. Are you a producer?”

“No; I’m in the wool business, and I’ll give you some to pull over your Aunt Susanna’s eyes.”

He smiled, and Hugh shook his head.

“I suppose you know what you are talking about.”

“The question is how much stamina have you, Hugh? Could you, for instance, stop your cigarettes? I believe that is the eighth you’re on now.”

“I can do anything I want to, of course,” said the young fellow coolly, “but I don’t believe you can make me want to do that.”

“Are you so in love with your present way of living?” asked Ogden dryly. “Your hall bedroom wouldn’t seem to indicate a very valuable business position.”

“I haven’t any position. I’ve got a job, packing boxes in the basement of a department store.”

“She owns the biggest department store in Farrandale.”

“Who?”

“Your Aunt Susanna.”

“What in thunder do I care what she owns?”

“Because, if you have any sporting blood, you can own it some day.”

Hugh leaned back in his chair. “Well, you know how to get around Volstead all right. I’d like a shot myself.”

“I won’t hint any longer. I’m willing to bet a thousand dollars that you can make Susanna Frink change her will in your favor.”

Hugh gave a bored smile and did not change his easy position. “Sorry circumstances prevent my taking you up.”

“You can pay me when you get the money.” Ogden was leaning forward in his chair and smiling, and Hugh turned his head to face him.

“Well, I’ll say Carol made an escape,” he remarked with such unction that his companion’s smile became a laugh.

“Here’s the idea,” he said. “Your six feet of good looks nearly sent you into the movies. Now there’s a stage in Farrandale where you can vault right into a star part without having to go through the drudgery of atmosphere work.”

He paused and Hugh stared at him, no enthusiasm in his pensive eyes.

“You get yourself some good clothes—Miss Frink’s leery of the needy; she’s had a diet of them for fifty years—”

“I haven’t any money,” growled Hugh.

“I have. Don’t interrupt me. You must be very scrupulous about your personal appearance. You shave every day. Your shoes are always blacked.” Hugh looked down. “You go every Sunday to the same church Miss Frink does, and you apply for a position in the Ross Graham department store. Miss Frink is Ross; likewise she is Graham. I supply them with blankets and I am on sufficiently good terms with the old lady.”

“Supposing I don’t get the position—and then again supposing I do,” contemptuously. “What of it?”

“Here, here, boy, brace up. Did you leave all your fighting blood in France? You will get the position, for I shall make it plain that be it ever so humble, there’s no job so good for your purposes as one in Ross Graham’s.”

“You’ll make it plain. Say, do you think you’re writing a play?”

“Why, my dear boy, you’re going to carry a letter of introduction from me that will explain to Miss Frink that you are a young man whose connections have large dry-goods interests, and, as you wish to learn the workings of an up-to-date, perfectly equipped department store, I have advised you to examine the Ross Graham establishment as an example of thoroughly good management and success. Your desire is to begin at the bottom and learn the business from A to Z.”

“Oh, still pack boxes in a basement,” remarked Hugh, but a light of curiosity began to shine in his eyes.

“I know Miss Frink; I know what she likes. She hates dawdlers; she hates failures. She herself is an example of a successful business woman. She didn’t inherit money. I have heard that a tea-room and a peculiarly delicious candy started her fortune fifty years ago. She is in the early seventies now, not a hundred and fifty as you estimated;—and what are the seventies in these days? Just the youth of old age.”

“Are you kidding?” returned Hugh.

“I never was more in earnest.”

The boy grunted. “Why, the very name of Sinclair would give Sukey hydrophobia.”

“That is why you can’t use it,” returned his mentor promptly. “What was your mother’s maiden name?”

“Draper, and I suppose that would be anathema, too.”

“Perhaps. She has a wonderful memory.”

“My middle name is Stanwood.”

“That would do. Then the initial on your clothing would be all right.”

Hugh’s attention was caught. John Ogden noted that his guest was letting his cigarette go out.

He waited a moment to allow cerebration to go on.

The boy finally met his eyes again. “You seem to mean all this business,” he said.

“Money talks,” returned Ogden sententiously.

“You really want to put up money on this fool idea?”

“It will only be a fool idea if you’re a fool.”

“Well, probably I am.” The boy’s broad shoulders relapsed against the back of his chair.

His companion frowned and sat forward more tensely in his own.

“You are Miss Frink’s legitimate heir,” he said, in a low voice, “but, believe me, there is no hope of her dying intestate. Are you going to continue tamely taking one cheap job after another, being a disgrace to the finest sister a boy ever had, listening to the disgruntled talk of a lot of grouchy fellows until you become as spineless as they are”—

“Say, now,” Hugh sat up, crimsoning.

“Keep still. Are you going on living in a cloud of cheap tobacco smoke, in a hall bedroom on a back street, with no ambition for anything better—”

“Look here—”

“No one stands still,” declared John Ogden curtly. “You’re going down if you’re not going up. You, with your splendid physique, allowing your backbone to slump like boiled macaroni. Aren’t you man enough to take a brace and go to Farrandale and shove that pussy-footing secretary of your aunt’s out of the place that should be yours?”

Hugh regarded the suddenly fiery speaker with open lips.

“He expects to be her heir; everybody knows he does. He has Miss Frink under his influence so that the whole household are afraid of him. There she lives in this great house, with her servants and this secretary—Grimshaw, his name is. He has wormed himself into her confidence until she scarcely makes a move without him, though she doesn’t realize it herself. Will you stay here and let him have it all his own way?”

The speaker scowled into the dark eyes with the deep, pensive corners that were giving him their full attention.

“As soon as you told me you were Miss Frink’s nephew, I saw what you could do; and for the very same reason that you felt you could succeed in the movies. Isn’t it Shakespeare who said: ‘She is a woman, and therefore to be won’? They’re not a bit different at seventy from what they are at seventeen when they get hold of a man like you.”

Hugh still gaped, and was silent.

“Of course, there must be something inside your head as well as out. You’ll have to make self-denials and sacrifices; but who doesn’t who gets anywhere?”

“You want me to go to Farrandale under an assumed name,” said Hugh slowly. “I know what Carol would say. She would say I was living a lie.”

“Then I should remind your sweet sister that Stanwood is your own name, and that you are going on an honorable mission—a rescue party of one: rescuing yourself from hookworm, and your aunt from the influence of a smooth-tongued hypocrite.”

“Hookworm, is it?” said Hugh, frowning, those curving lips taking a set line.

“Describes it to a T,” returned Ogden promptly. “Now to-morrow morning, give up your job. I’ll stay over another day, and we’ll fit you out and plan details.”

Hugh put out his hand impulsively, and the older man grasped it.

“Mr. Ogden, why do you take all this trouble?”

John Ogden smiled. “I’m a sport,” he returned. “I’m enough of a gambler for this.”

“I do thank you,” said the boy. “I’ve never made good in my life—”

His companion could see that the strong teeth set together to hold the lips firm.

“Let’s do this, then,” Ogden returned in a low voice. “Let’s do it—for Carol.”

CHAPTER III
AN INTRODUCTION

The town of Farrandale was en gala. It was the annual day of rejoicing in its own success and prosperity. Everybody was happy except Miss Frink’s horses. The new coachman had drawn the check reins too tight. They didn’t like the streamers of bunting; they had objected to the band; and just as Miss Frink, always the queen of the occasion, rose in her carriage to say a few words to her fellow townsmen, a corner of a temporary platform near them gave way, and the celebrated bays, Rex and Regina, did what for some minutes they had been nervously contemplating: they bolted. The coachman’s efforts irritated them still more. Miss Frink was thrown violently against the side of her chariot, and in the mad, crashing gallop that ensued she saw her end in the sharp curve of the railroad they were heading for, and the advance of an oncoming express train. Some one else saw it, too, and, springing from the side of the road, caught the bridle and was dragged until one of the horses fell down entangled in the reins the coachman had dropped when he jumped. The shouting crowd leaping after the runaway found a very much-shaken queen of the fête, and an unconscious man lying in the road with a gash in his head, his hair matted with blood. The express train crashed by. It was a flyer that ignored even the thriving little city of Farrandale. Never was Miss Frink’s indomitable spirit more regnant than in the present catastrophe. Somebody picked up the dazed coachman, who proved to be intact and able to help disentangle the fallen Rex and get him to his feet; while others lifted the unconscious hero. Motors came flying to the scene. In one was Miss Frink’s secretary, Leonard Grimshaw, and a pretty young woman with pure white hair. The latter fell upon Miss Frink with horrified exclamations; while the secretary also rushed to the victoria and stood beside it.

“Oh, had you only allowed me to drive with you, dear lady!” he mourned.

“Yes, probably the horses wouldn’t have run away,” returned Miss Frink irritably. She readjusted her fallen eyeglasses. “Adèle, kindly leave my bonnet alone.”

“But it is on the side, dear Aunt Susanna.”

Miss Frink looked past them to the unconscious burden being lifted from the ground.

“Has any one sent for the ambulance?” exclaimed the secretary nervously. “Oh, how shocking, dear Miss Frink! What might have happened! It makes my blood run cold.”

“It must run cold if you think I’m going to send that man off in an ambulance,” announced Miss Frink. “Here, lift him into your car, Grim, and Adèle, you go for Dr. Morton and bring him to the house.”

“The house, Miss Frink?” asked the secretary. “Don’t you mean the hospital, dear lady?”

“No, I do not,” snapped the “dear lady.”

One of the gathering crowd came up with a dusty suitcase. “This must be his,” he said, and the secretary accepted it, gloomily.

Adèle Lumbard gave one look at the unconscious face of the rescuer as he was lifted into the waiting car and Miss Frink took the place beside him, then she jumped into an eagerly offered motor and sped away.

Miss Frink leaned out and addressed the shaken coachman.

“Get the horses home somehow, Foley.” Then to the increasing crowd: “It is my wish that you go on with the programme. I am not hurt in the least, and later Mr. Grimshaw or Mrs. Lumbard will represent me.”

She steadied the form of the injured man beside her while her secretary drove toward the house on the outskirts of the town. His brow was exceedingly dark. He was afraid the cut on the stranger’s head would stain the upholstery of the car. Once he turned toward his employer and made a last effort.

“You know they give them the very best care at the hospital,” he suggested.

“Leonard Grimshaw, I am a lady of the old school,” returned Miss Frink. “Everybody was not rushed off to a hospital in my young days. I probably wouldn’t be here if it was not for this young man, and I am going to supervise personally every bone in his body. Drive carefully. We’ll get there as soon as Dr. Morton does.”

Her secretary resigned himself, and gave his attention to avoiding the bumps as a matter of self-preservation.

Miss Frink was attired in her best in honor of the state occasion. Her bonnet of black maline was decorated with white roses, and the maline lace-edged strings were tied under her chin. Her handsome dress and wrap were of black satin. Her hair, though streaked with silver, still gave the impression of being dark, and it was crimped in the even waves which had framed her face for forty years. The face itself, though lined, was still firm in texture, and her dark, alert eyes were bright. If she ever wore spectacles, it must have been in the privacy of her own room. The eyeglasses on their slender black ribbon were as inseparable from her appearance as a feature of her face.

She looked through them now at the unconscious form beside her, and her spontaneous thought was: “He is too handsome! I hope I haven’t killed him!”

The stranger’s long legs were stretched out in the spacious car, and, as his shoulders slid, Miss Frink put her arm around them the better to steady him, and looked anxiously at the matted hair, relieved to see that it seemed to have stanched the wound.

“Grim,” she called, “it seems to have stopped bleeding.”

“I hope so,” was the reply, fears for that upholstery soothed. He turned about enough to behold the amazing sight of his employer holding in her embrace the stalwart and fallen figure.

“Did you ever see such a beauty, Grim?” Miss Frink’s eyes were fixed on the face on her breast. “What a mercy he wasn’t disfigured!”

The secretary’s nostrils dilated. “It won’t matter much, if it’s concussion of the brain,” he remarked curtly.

“Grim! Don’t!” exclaimed the lady; and at the same moment the stranger’s eyelids flickered and the lashes she had been admiring lifted. The hero blinked and looked up, dazed, into the face bending over him. About her lips flickered a small smile of intense relief.

In a weak voice Hugh spoke: “Have you got a cigarette?”

“Grim, he wants a cigarette,” said Miss Frink, her voice wavering. “Have you got one?”

“Miss Frink,” exclaimed the secretary, justly shocked. “You ought to know—”

“Yes, I suppose so, but you see when the cat’s away, how do I know what you play? It would be convenient if you happened to—”

“Oh, the devil,” said Hugh, as he tried to move.

“What is it? What hurts?” asked Miss Frink anxiously.

“I don’t know, my shoulder, I guess. What’s doing, anyway?” inquired the sufferer feebly, beginning to realize his satin environment.

“You caught the horses and were dragged. Don’t you remember? You saved my life.”

Slowly Hugh cerebrated while his pensive eyes gazed up into the dark ones.

“And I’m so thankful to hear you speak, I could weep if I ever did, but I don’t indulge.”

John Ogden came floating back into the dazed, aching head, and all that had preceded his coming here.

“What did he call you just now?” asked Hugh with feeble incredulity.

“Miss Frink. I’m Miss Frink,”—with energy, “and I don’t want to die, and you saved my life.”

At this Hugh moved his head a little in the encircling satin, and he made an inarticulate sound. It was feeble, but it was trying to be a laugh, and Miss Frink appreciated the beauty of it.

“Yes, it is sort of funny saving an old woman, isn’t it, instead of a lovely young girl as it would be in the story-books?”

“I was thinking—” said Hugh. “Are you—Susanna?”

“Why, yes. How did you know it?”

“Because I have a letter of introduction to you—that’s why I laughed.”

“I should think you might,” dryly. “You are certainly introduced.—Grim,” sharply, “what are you doing!” The secretary’s feelings were such that he had increased his speed and jounced over a rough spot that made Hugh wince.

“Better not talk,” said Miss Frink. “We’re nearly there.”

Dr. Morton was waiting for them. Adèle Lumbard had told him that Aunt Susanna had a young Greek god in captivity, but that he needed some restoring.

It proved that the cut in Hugh’s head required a few stitches, and that his left arm was broken. Miss Frink still insisting that her home should be Hugh’s only hospital, he found himself finally installed in a handsome, spacious room with a competent and peremptory nurse.

On Miss Frink’s first visit to his bedside, where he lay with but one of the blue eyes peering out from his bandages, and his swathed arm resting on a pillow, he protested.

“Miss Frink, it’s all absurd,” he said. “I don’t need a nurse any more than a toad needs a tail. I can take care of myself perfectly. I have my right hand. If you’ll just send up some chow once in a while—”

“Chow,” interrupted Miss Frink thoughtfully. “You were in the war, of course.”

“Of course,” said Hugh, smiling at her tone, but with teeth set owing to an assortment of twinges.

“You must have been wonderful!”

“Oh, I was. Ask Pershing. Say, Miss Frink, I don’t like to be all this unnecessary expense to you.”

Miss Frink continued to look down at him reflectively. As John Ogden had said, she liked prosperous folk and had little patience with derelicts. Had she seen Hugh a few days ago shuffling along on his way to his job, unshaven, shabby, and careless, she certainly would not have looked at him twice, or if she had done so would have dilated disgusted nostrils at the odor of his cigarette; but John Ogden had sent his protégé forth from the hands of a good tailor and barber; and, had he known the disaster which befell that fine new suit, would have rubbed his hands in triumph.

“Don’t fret about expense,” said Miss Frink. “If it were not for you, I shouldn’t sign any more checks; and, speaking of checks, where is yours for your trunk? We must send for it.”

“It’s there in my pocketbook with my letter of introduction.”

Miss Frink, taking this as permission, found the pocketbook. She looked at the marking thereon. “Hugh Stanwood,” she read aloud. “That is odd,” she said. “Stanwood is one of our family names.” She looked toward the bed with a little twitch of her lips. “Perhaps we are related.”

“Who knows?” returned Hugh, who was longing for a cigarette.

“May I read this letter of introduction?”

“It is yours,” he answered.

Miss Frink read it attentively. “John Ogden,” she said aloud as she reached the signature. “I congratulate you on your friend. I respect John Ogden very much.”

“So he does you,” returned Hugh feebly, turning his bandaged head with a weary movement that his hostess was quick to notice.

He was wishing he had never seen John Ogden, and that he was back, a free Bolshevist without the headache, packing boxes with both hands in a basement, to pay for his hall bedroom and hot dogs.

Miss Frink, who had sent the nurse out of the room when she entered, went back to the bedside, and opened a package she had brought in with her. Hugh’s one violet eye rolled toward her listlessly. It suddenly brightened. Miss Frink had never looked so shame-faced in her life.

“You see, I went out and bought them myself, and not having the least idea what you liked I told the man to give me a variety.” The handsome box she opened held a number of packages of cigarettes, all of a different brand, and the lover-like smile Hugh gave her as his eager right hand shot out made color come up in the guilty face.

“Perhaps the nurse won’t let you, I don’t know,” she said hurriedly—“here, let me strike the match for you, it is awful to have only one hand!”

The cigarette was lighted, Miss Frink called the nurse, and fled to the study where her secretary was busily sorting papers at his desk. He was a smooth-shaven man in his late thirties, immaculate in appearance, his retreating hair giving him a very high forehead, and his small mouth with its full lips seeming an appropriate gateway for his voice and speech which were unfortunately effeminate.

“Grim,” said Miss Frink upon her sudden entrance, “Mr. Stanwood has been put in the White Room and the nurse is with him—Hello, Adèle, I didn’t see you.”

Mrs. Lumbard rose from the floor where she had been sitting Turkish fashion near the book-shelves.

“I was looking for that ‘Life of Mozart,’ Aunt Susanna. I thought the ‘Lives of the Musicians’ were on this lowest shelf.”

“No, upper. Take the ladder. Grim, I want you to go up to Mr. Stanwood’s room and get his suit of clothes, and pack them in a box and send them to his tailor with an order to duplicate the suit at once. Explain that he has been in an accident, and that the clothes and bill are to be sent to me. Here’s his trunk check. Get that, too. Adèle, why are you here? You know I wanted you to go back to the festivities.”

“I did, Aunt Susanna,” said the young woman with conscious rectitude. “I listened to the speeches and applauded, and answered a thousand questions about you. Why, you’re perfectly wonderful, Aunt Susanna. Any other woman would be lying in bed in a darkened room with a bandage around her head.”

“One bandage in the family is sufficient,” said Miss Frink, with a little excited laugh. “That poor boy upstairs looks as if he had been through the wars. And he did”—she turned acutely toward her secretary—“he did go through the war.”

Grimshaw lifted his high forehead in an injured manner. “If that is aimed at me, Miss Frink, I will remind you once again of my helpless mother and sister.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Miss Frink impatiently, “I know. Scuttle along, Grim, and do the errand. I believe I’ll jump into your car and just show myself at the supper at the City Hall.”

“Oh, you’re wonderful, Aunt Susanna!” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbard, clasping her pretty hands. “If you want me to, I’ll—”

“I don’t. I know how it would bore you. I’ll see that coachman first. I must get rid of him. I knew the checks weren’t right.”

She swept out of the room as suddenly as she had entered it, and the two left standing there looked at each other, their expressions changing from the solicitude they had worn to gravity.

“If the gods hadn’t intervened,” said Adèle softly, “to-night we should have been—”

“Sh!” warned the secretary.

“Of course, there would be some charities,” she went on, her brown eyes shining, “but you and I, you and I—”

“Hush!” warned the secretary again. “We can’t be thankful enough that dear Miss Frink’s life was saved.”