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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse
+#26 in our series by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: The Adventures of Sally
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7464]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 4, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII, with a few ISO-8859-1 characters
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADVENTURES OF SALLY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Tim Barnett
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+SALLY GIVES A PARTY
+
+
+
+1
+
+Sally looked contentedly down the long table.  She felt happy at last.
+Everybody was talking and laughing now, and her party, rallying after an
+uncertain start, was plainly the success she had hoped it would be. The
+first atmosphere of uncomfortable restraint, caused, she was only too
+well aware, by her brother Fillmore's white evening waistcoat, had worn
+off; and the male and female patrons of Mrs. Meecher's select
+boarding-house (transient and residential) were themselves again.
+
+At her end of the table the conversation had turned once more to the
+great vital topic of Sally's legacy and what she ought to do with it.
+The next best thing to having money of one's own, is to dictate the
+spending of somebody else's, and Sally's guests were finding a good deal
+of satisfaction in arranging a Budget for her. Rumour having put the sum
+at their disposal at a high figure, their suggestions had certain
+spaciousness.
+
+"Let me tell you," said Augustus Bartlett, briskly, "what I'd do, if I
+were you." Augustus Bartlett, who occupied an intensely subordinate
+position in the firm of Kahn, Morris and Brown, the Wall Street brokers,
+always affected a brisk, incisive style of speech, as befitted a man in
+close touch with the great ones of Finance. "I'd sink a couple of
+hundred thousand in some good, safe bond-issue--we've just put one out
+which you would do well to consider--and play about with the rest. When
+I say play about, I mean have a flutter in anything good that crops up.
+Multiple Steel's worth looking at. They tell me it'll be up to a hundred
+and fifty before next Saturday."
+
+Elsa Doland, the pretty girl with the big eyes who sat on Mr. Bartlett's
+left, had other views.
+
+"Buy a theatre.  Sally, and put on good stuff."
+
+"And lose every bean you've got," said a mild young man, with a deep
+voice across the table. "If I had a few hundred thousand," said the mild
+young man, "I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the
+heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke
+has been got at and means to lie down in the seventh..."
+
+"Say, listen," interrupted another voice, "lemme tell you what I'd do
+with four hundred thousand..."
+
+"If I had four hundred thousand," said Elsa Doland, "I know what would
+be the first thing I'd do."
+
+"What's that?" asked Sally.
+
+"Pay my bill for last week, due this morning."
+
+Sally got up quickly, and flitting down the table, put her arm round her
+friend's shoulder and whispered in her ear:
+
+"Elsa darling, are you really broke? If you are, you know, I'll..."
+
+Elsa Doland laughed.
+
+"You're an angel, Sally.  There's no one like you.  You'd give your last
+cent to anyone. Of course I'm not broke. I've just come back from the
+road, and I've saved a fortune. I only said that to draw you."
+
+Sally returned to her seat, relieved, and found that the company had now
+divided itself into two schools of thought. The conservative and prudent
+element, led by Augustus Bartlett, had definitely decided on three
+hundred thousand in Liberty Bonds and the rest in some safe real estate;
+while the smaller, more sporting section, impressed by the mild young
+man's inside information, had already placed Sally's money on Benny
+Whistler, doling it out cautiously in small sums so as not to spoil the
+market. And so solid, it seemed, was Mr. Tuke's reputation with those in
+the inner circle of knowledge that the mild young man was confident
+that, if you went about the matter cannily and without precipitation,
+three to one might be obtained. It seemed to Sally that the time had
+come to correct certain misapprehensions.
+
+"I don't know where you get your figures," she said, "but I'm afraid
+they're wrong. I've just twenty-five thousand dollars."
+
+The statement had a chilling effect.  To these jugglers with
+half-millions the amount mentioned seemed for the moment almost too
+small to bother about. It was the sort of sum which they had been
+mentally setting aside for the heiress's car fare. Then they managed to
+adjust their minds to it. After all, one could do something even with a
+pittance like twenty-five thousand.
+
+"If I'd twenty-five thousand," said Augustus Bartlett, the first to
+rally from the shock, "I'd buy Amalgamated..."
+
+"If I had twenty-five thousand..." began Elsa Doland.
+
+"If I'd had twenty-five thousand in the year nineteen hundred," observed
+a gloomy-looking man with spectacles, "I could have started a revolution
+in Paraguay."
+
+He brooded sombrely on what might have been.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do," said Sally.  "I'm
+going to start with a trip to Europe... France, specially. I've heard
+France well spoken of--as soon as I can get my passport; and after I've
+loafed there for a few weeks, I'm coming back to look about and find
+some nice cosy little business which will let me put money into it and
+keep me in luxury. Are there any complaints?"
+
+"Even a couple of thousand on Benny Whistler..." said the mild young man.
+
+"I don't want your Benny Whistler," said Sally.  "I wouldn't have him if
+you gave him to me. If I want to lose money, I'll go to Monte Carlo and
+do it properly."
+
+"Monte Carlo," said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name.
+"I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty
+dollars... just fifty... I'd have..."
+
+At the far end of the table there was a stir, a cough, and the grating
+of a chair on the floor; and slowly, with that easy grace which actors
+of the old school learned in the days when acting was acting, Mr.
+Maxwell Faucitt, the boarding-house's oldest inhabitant, rose to his
+feet.
+
+"Ladies," said Mr. Faucitt, bowing courteously, "and..." ceasing to bow
+and casting from beneath his white and venerable eyebrows a quelling
+glance at certain male members of the boarding-house's younger set who
+were showing a disposition towards restiveness, "... gentlemen. I feel
+that I cannot allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words."
+
+His audience did not seem surprised.  It was possible that life, always
+prolific of incident in a great city like New York, might some day
+produce an occasion which Mr. Faucitt would feel that he could allow to
+pass without saying a few words; but nothing of the sort had happened as
+yet, and they had given up hope. Right from the start of the meal they
+had felt that it would be optimism run mad to expect the old gentleman
+to abstain from speech on the night of Sally Nicholas' farewell dinner
+party; and partly because they had braced themselves to it, but
+principally because Miss Nicholas' hospitality had left them with a
+genial feeling of repletion, they settled themselves to listen with
+something resembling equanimity. A movement on the part of the
+Marvellous Murphys--new arrivals, who had been playing the Bushwick
+with their equilibristic act during the preceding week--to form a party
+of the extreme left and heckle the speaker, broke down under a cold look
+from their hostess. Brief though their acquaintance had been, both of
+these lissom young gentlemen admired Sally immensely.
+
+And it should be set on record that this admiration of theirs was not
+misplaced. He would have been hard to please who had not been attracted
+by Sally. She was a small, trim, wisp of a girl with the tiniest hands
+and feet, the friendliest of smiles, and a dimple that came and went in
+the curve of her rounded chin. Her eyes, which disappeared when she
+laughed, which was often, were a bright hazel; her hair a soft mass of
+brown. She had, moreover, a manner, an air of distinction lacking in the
+majority of Mrs. Meecher's guests. And she carried youth like a banner.
+In approving of Sally, the Marvellous Murphys had been guilty of no
+lapse from their high critical standard.
+
+"I have been asked," proceeded Mr. Faucitt, "though I am aware that
+there are others here far worthier of such a task--Brutuses compared
+with whom I, like Marc Antony, am no orator--I have been asked to
+propose the health..."
+
+"Who asked you?" It was the smaller of the Marvellous Murphys who spoke.
+He was an unpleasant youth, snub-nosed and spotty. Still, he could
+balance himself with one hand on an inverted ginger-ale bottle while
+revolving a barrel on the soles of his feet. There is good in all of us.
+
+"I have been asked," repeated Mr. Faucitt, ignoring the unmannerly
+interruption, which, indeed, he would have found it hard to answer, "to
+propose the health of our charming hostess (applause), coupled with
+the name of her brother, our old friend Fillmore Nicholas."
+
+The gentleman referred to, who sat at the speaker's end of the table,
+acknowledged the tribute with a brief nod of the head. It was a nod of
+condescension; the nod of one who, conscious of being hedged about by
+social inferiors, nevertheless does his best to be not unkindly. And
+Sally, seeing it, debated in her mind for an instant the advisability of
+throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her
+hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but she
+restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive
+impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance
+of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest
+motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that
+quarter would be weakened.
+
+She leaned back with a sigh.  The temptation had been hard to resist.  A
+democratic girl, pomposity was a quality which she thoroughly disliked;
+and though she loved him, she could not disguise from herself that, ever
+since affluence had descended upon him some months ago, her brother
+Fillmore had become insufferably pompous. If there are any young men
+whom inherited wealth improves, Fillmore Nicholas was not one of them.
+He seemed to regard himself nowadays as a sort of Man of Destiny. To
+converse with him was for the ordinary human being like being received
+in audience by some more than stand-offish monarch. It had taken Sally
+over an hour to persuade him to leave his apartment on Riverside Drive
+and revisit the boarding-house for this special occasion; and, when he
+had come, he had entered wearing such faultless evening dress that he
+had made the rest of the party look like a gathering of tramp-cyclists.
+His white waistcoat alone was a silent reproach to honest poverty, and
+had caused an awkward constraint right through the soup and fish
+courses. Most of those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an
+impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one
+would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him
+in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had
+eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank back abashed.
+
+"Speaking," said Mr. Faucitt, "as an Englishman--for though I have long
+since taken out what are technically known as my 'papers' it was as a
+subject of the island kingdom that I first visited this great country--I
+may say that the two factors in American life which have always made the
+profoundest impression upon me have been the lavishness of American
+hospitality and the charm of the American girl. To-night we have been
+privileged to witness the American girl in the capacity of hostess, and
+I think I am right in saying, in asseverating, in committing myself to
+the statement that his has been a night which none of us present here
+will ever forget. Miss Nicholas has given us, ladies and gentlemen, a
+banquet. I repeat, a banquet. There has been alcoholic refreshment. I do
+not know where it came from: I do not ask how it was procured, but we
+have had it. Miss Nicholas..."
+
+Mr. Faucitt paused to puff at his cigar.  Sally's brother Fillmore
+suppressed a yawn and glanced at his watch. Sally continued to lean
+forward raptly. She knew how happy it made the old gentleman to deliver
+a formal speech; and though she wished the subject had been different,
+she was prepared to listen indefinitely.
+
+"Miss Nicholas," resumed Mr. Faucitt, lowering his cigar, "... But why,"
+he demanded abruptly, "do I call her Miss Nicholas?"
+
+"Because it's her name," hazarded the taller Murphy.
+
+Mr. Faucitt eyed him with disfavour.  He disapproved of the marvellous
+brethren on general grounds because, himself a resident of years
+standing, he considered that these transients from the vaudeville stage
+lowered the tone of the boarding-house; but particularly because the one
+who had just spoken had, on his first evening in the place, addressed
+him as "grandpa."
+
+"Yes, sir," he said severely, "it is her name.  But she has another
+name, sweeter to those who love her, those who worship her, those who
+have watched her with the eye of sedulous affection through the three
+years she has spent beneath this roof, though that name," said Mr.
+Faucitt, lowering the tone of his address and descending to what might
+almost be termed personalities, "may not be familiar to a couple of dud
+acrobats who have only been in the place a week-end, thank heaven, and
+are off to-morrow to infest some other city. That name," said Mr.
+Faucitt, soaring once more to a loftier plane, "is Sally. Our Sally. For
+three years our Sally has flitted about this establishment like--I
+choose the simile advisedly--like a ray of sunshine. For three years she
+has made life for us a brighter, sweeter thing. And now a sudden access
+of worldly wealth, happily synchronizing with her twenty-first
+birthday, is to remove her from our midst. From our midst, ladies and
+gentlemen, but not from our hearts. And I think I may venture to hope,
+to prognosticate, that, whatever lofty sphere she may adorn in the
+future, to whatever heights in the social world she may soar, she will
+still continue to hold a corner in her own golden heart for the comrades
+of her Bohemian days. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our hostess, Miss
+Sally Nicholas, coupled with the name of our old friend, her brother
+Fillmore."
+
+Sally, watching her brother heave himself to his feet as the cheers died
+away, felt her heart beat a little faster with anticipation. Fillmore
+was a fluent young man, once a power in his college debating society,
+and it was for that reason that she had insisted on his coming here
+tonight.
+
+She had guessed that Mr. Faucitt, the old dear, would say all sorts of
+delightful things about her, and she had mistrusted her ability to make
+a fitting reply. And it was imperative that a fitting reply should
+proceed from someone. She knew Mr. Faucitt so well. He looked on these
+occasions rather in the light of scenes from some play; and, sustaining
+his own part in them with such polished grace, was certain to be pained
+by anything in the nature of an anti-climax after he should have ceased
+to take the stage. Eloquent himself, he must be answered with eloquence,
+or his whole evening would be spoiled.
+
+Fillmore Nicholas smoothed a wrinkle out of his white waistcoat; and
+having rested one podgy hand on the table-cloth and the thumb of the
+other in his pocket, glanced down the table with eyes so haughtily
+drooping that Sally's fingers closed automatically about her orange, as
+she wondered whether even now it might not be a good thing...
+
+It seems to be one of Nature's laws that the most attractive girls
+should have the least attractive brothers. Fillmore Nicholas had not
+worn well. At the age of seven he had been an extraordinarily beautiful
+child, but after that he had gone all to pieces; and now, at the age of
+twenty-five, it would be idle to deny that he was something of a mess.
+For the three years preceding his twenty-fifth birthday, restricted
+means and hard work had kept his figure in check; but with money there
+had come an ever-increasing sleekness. He looked as if he fed too often
+and too well.
+
+All this, however, Sally was prepared to forgive him, if he would only
+make a good speech. She could see Mr. Faucitt leaning back in his chair,
+all courteous attention. Rolling periods were meat and drink to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Fillmore spoke.
+
+"I'm sure," said Fillmore, "you don't want a speech...   Very good of
+you to drink our health. Thank you."
+
+He sat down.
+
+The effect of these few simple words on the company was marked, but not
+in every case identical. To the majority the emotion which they brought
+was one of unmixed relief. There had been something so menacing, so easy
+and practised, in Fillmore's attitude as he had stood there that the
+gloomier-minded had given him at least twenty minutes, and even the
+optimists had reckoned that they would be lucky if they got off with
+ten. As far as the bulk of the guests were concerned, there was no
+grumbling. Fillmore's, to their thinking, had been the ideal
+after-dinner speech.
+
+Far different was it with Mr. Maxwell Faucitt.  The poor old man was
+wearing such an expression of surprise and dismay as he might have worn
+had somebody unexpectedly pulled the chair from under him. He was
+feeling the sick shock which comes to those who tread on a non-existent
+last stair. And Sally, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp
+wordless exclamation as if she had seen a child fall down and hurt
+itself in the street. The next moment she had run round the table and
+was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke across
+him with a sob in her voice.
+
+"My brother," she stammered, directing a malevolent look at the
+immaculate Fillmore, who, avoiding her gaze, glanced down his nose and
+smoothed another wrinkle out of his waistcoat, "has not said
+quite--quite all I hoped he was going to say. I can't make a speech,
+but..." Sally gulped, "... but, I love you all and of course I shall
+never forget you, and... and..."
+
+Here Sally kissed Mr. Faucitt and burst into tears.
+
+"There, there," said Mr. Faucitt, soothingly.  The kindest critic could
+not have claimed that Sally had been eloquent: nevertheless Mr. Maxwell
+Faucitt was conscious of no sense of anti-climax.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Sally had just finished telling her brother Fillmore what a pig he was.
+The lecture had taken place in the street outside the boarding-house
+immediately on the conclusion of the festivities, when Fillmore, who had
+furtively collected his hat and overcoat, had stolen forth into the
+night, had been overtaken and brought to bay by his justly indignant
+sister. Her remarks, punctuated at intervals by bleating sounds from the
+accused, had lasted some ten minutes.
+
+As she paused for breath, Fillmore seemed to expand, like an indiarubber
+ball which has been sat on. Dignified as he was to the world, he had
+never been able to prevent himself being intimidated by Sally when in
+one of these moods of hers. He regretted this, for it hurt his
+self-esteem, but he did not see how the fact could be altered. Sally had
+always been like that. Even the uncle, who after the deaths of their
+parents had become their guardian, had never, though a grim man, been
+able to cope successfully with Sally. In that last hectic scene three
+years ago, which had ended in their going out into the world, together
+like a second Adam and Eve, the verbal victory had been hers. And it had
+been Sally who had achieved triumph in the one battle which Mrs.
+Meecher, apparently as a matter of duty, always brought about with each
+of her patrons in the first week of their stay. A sweet-tempered girl,
+Sally, like most women of a generous spirit, had cyclonic
+potentialities.
+
+As she seemed to have said her say, Fillmore kept on expanding till he
+had reached the normal, when he ventured upon a speech for the defence.
+
+"What have I done?" demanded Fillmore plaintively.
+
+"Do you want to hear all over again?"
+
+"No, no," said Fillmore hastily.  "But, listen.  Sally, you don't
+understand my position. You don't seem to realize that all that sort of
+thing, all that boarding-house stuff, is a thing of the past. One's got
+beyond it. One wants to drop it. One wants to forget it, darn it! Be
+fair. Look at it from my viewpoint. I'm going to be a big man ..."
+
+"You're going to be a fat man," said Sally, coldly.
+
+Fillmore refrained from discussing the point.  He was sensitive.
+
+"I'm going to do big things," he substituted.  "I've got a deal on at
+this very moment which... well, I can't tell you about it, but it's
+going to be big. Well, what I'm driving at, is about all this sort of
+thing"--he indicated the lighted front of Mrs. Meecher's home-from-home
+with a wide gesture--"is that it's over. Finished and done with. These
+people were all very well when..."
+
+"... when you'd lost your week's salary at poker and wanted to borrow a
+few dollars for the rent."
+
+"I always paid them back," protested Fillmore, defensively.
+
+"I did."
+
+"Well, we did," said Fillmore, accepting the amendment with the air of a
+man who has no time for chopping straws. "Anyway, what I mean is, I
+don't see why, just because one has known people at a certain period in
+one's life when one was practically down and out, one should have them
+round one's neck for ever. One can't prevent people forming an
+I-knew-him-when club, but, darn it, one needn't attend the meetings."
+
+"One's friends..."
+
+"Oh, friends," said Fillmore.  "That's just where all this makes me so
+tired. One's in a position where all these people are entitled to call
+themselves one's friends, simply because father put it in his will that
+I wasn't to get the money till I was twenty-five, instead of letting me
+have it at twenty-one like anybody else. I wonder where I should have
+been by now if I could have got that money when I was twenty-one."
+
+"In the poor-house, probably," said Sally.
+
+Fillmore was wounded.
+
+"Ah! you don't believe in me," he sighed.
+
+"Oh, you would be all right if you had one thing," said Sally.
+
+Fillmore passed his qualities in swift review before his mental eye.
+Brains? Dash? Spaciousness? Initiative? All present and correct. He
+wondered where Sally imagined the hiatus to exist.
+
+"One thing?" he said.  "What's that?"
+
+"A nurse."
+
+Fillmore's sense of injury deepened.  He supposed that this was always
+the way, that those nearest to a man never believed in his ability till
+he had proved it so masterfully that it no longer required the
+assistance of faith. Still, it was trying; and there was not much
+consolation to be derived from the thought that Napoleon had had to go
+through this sort of thing in his day. "I shall find my place in the
+world," he said sulkily.
+
+"Oh, you'll find your place all right," said Sally.  "And I'll come
+round and bring you jelly and read to you on the days when visitors are
+allowed... Oh, hullo."
+
+The last remark was addressed to a young man who had been swinging
+briskly along the sidewalk from the direction of Broadway and who now,
+coming abreast of them, stopped.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Foster."
+
+"Good evening.  Miss Nicholas."
+
+"You don't know my brother, do you?"
+
+"I don't believe I do."
+
+"He left the underworld before you came to it," said Sally.  "You
+wouldn't think it to look at him, but he was once a prune-eater among
+the proletariat, even as you and I. Mrs. Meecher looks on him as a son."
+
+The two men shook hands.  Fillmore was not short, but Gerald Foster with
+his lean, well-built figure seemed to tower over him. He was an
+Englishman, a man in the middle twenties, clean-shaven, keen-eyed, and
+very good to look at. Fillmore, who had recently been going in for one
+of those sum-up-your-fellow-man-at-a-glance courses, the better to fit
+himself for his career of greatness, was rather impressed. It seemed to
+him that this Mr. Foster, like himself, was one of those who Get There.
+If you are that kind yourself, you get into the knack of recognizing the
+others. It is a sort of gift.
+
+There was a few moments of desultory conversation, of the kind that
+usually follows an introduction, and then Fillmore, by no means sorry to
+get the chance, took advantage of the coming of this new arrival to
+remove himself. He had not enjoyed his chat with Sally, and it seemed
+probable that he would enjoy a continuation of it even less. He was glad
+that Mr. Foster had happened along at this particular juncture. Excusing
+himself briefly, he hurried off down the street.
+
+Sally stood for a minute, watching him till he had disappeared round
+the corner. She had a slightly regretful feeling that, now it was too
+late, she would think of a whole lot more good things which it would
+have been agreeable to say to him. And it had become obvious to her that
+Fillmore was not getting nearly enough of that kind of thing said to him
+nowadays. Then she dismissed him from her mind and turning to Gerald
+Foster, slipped her arm through his.
+
+"Well, Jerry, darling," she said.  "What a shame you couldn't come to
+the party. Tell me all about everything."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+It was exactly two months since Sally had become engaged to Gerald
+Foster; but so rigorously had they kept the secret that nobody at Mrs.
+Meecher's so much as suspected it. To Sally, who all her life had hated
+concealing things, secrecy of any kind was objectionable: but in this
+matter Gerald had shown an odd streak almost of furtiveness in his
+character. An announced engagement complicated life. People fussed about
+you and bothered you. People either watched you or avoided you. Such
+were his arguments, and Sally, who would have glossed over and found
+excuses for a disposition on his part towards homicide or arson, put
+them down to artistic sensitiveness. There is nobody so sensitive as
+your artist, particularly if he be unsuccessful: and when an artist has
+so little success that he cannot afford to make a home for the woman he
+loves, his sensitiveness presumably becomes great indeed. Putting
+herself in his place, Sally could see that a protracted engagement,
+known by everybody, would be a standing advertisement of Gerald's
+failure to make good: and she acquiesced in the policy of secrecy,
+hoping that it would not last long. It seemed absurd to think of Gerald
+as an unsuccessful man. He had in him, as the recent Fillmore had
+perceived, something dynamic. He was one of those men of whom one could
+predict that they would succeed very suddenly and rapidly--overnight, as
+it were.
+
+"The party," said Sally, "went off splendidly." They had passed the
+boarding-house door, and were walking slowly down the street. "Everybody
+enjoyed themselves, I think, even though Fillmore did his best to spoil
+things by coming looking like an advertisement of What The Smart Men
+Will Wear This Season. You didn't see his waistcoat just now. He had
+covered it up. Conscience, I suppose. It was white and bulgy and
+gleaming and full up of pearl buttons and everything. I saw Augustus
+Bartlett curl up like a burnt feather when he caught sight of it. Still,
+time seemed to heal the wound, and everybody relaxed after a bit. Mr.
+Faucitt made a speech and I made a speech and cried, and ...oh, it was all
+very festive. It only needed you."
+
+"I wish I could have come.  I had to go to that dinner, though.
+Sally..." Gerald paused, and Sally saw that he was electric with
+suppressed excitement. "Sally, the play's going to be put on!"
+
+Sally gave a little gasp.  She had lived this moment in anticipation for
+weeks. She had always known that sooner or later this would happen. She
+had read his plays over and over again, and was convinced that they were
+wonderful. Of course, hers was a biased view, but then Elsa Doland also
+admired them; and Elsa's opinion was one that carried weight. Elsa was
+another of those people who were bound to succeed suddenly. Even old Mr.
+Faucitt, who was a stern judge of acting and rather inclined to consider
+that nowadays there was no such thing, believed that she was a girl with
+a future who would do something big directly she got her chance.
+
+"Jerry!" She gave his arm a hug.  "How simply terrific! Then Goble and
+Kohn have changed their minds after all and want it? I knew they would."
+
+A slight cloud seemed to dim the sunniness of the author's mood.
+
+"No, not that one," he said reluctantly.  "No hope there, I'm afraid.  I
+saw Goble this morning about that, and he said it didn't add up right.
+The one that's going to be put on is 'The Primrose Way.' You remember?
+It's got a big part for a girl in it."
+
+"Of course! The one Elsa liked so much.  Well, that's just as good.
+Who's going to do it? I thought you hadn't sent it out again."
+
+"Well, it happens..." Gerald hesitated once more.  "It seems that this
+man I was dining with to-night--a man named Cracknell..."
+
+"Cracknell? Not the Cracknell?"
+
+"The Cracknell?"
+
+"The one people are always talking about.  The man they call the
+Millionaire Kid."
+
+"Yes.  Why, do you know him?"
+
+"He was at Harvard with Fillmore.  I never saw him, but he must be
+rather a painful person."
+
+"Oh, he's all right.  Not much brains, of course, but--well, he's all
+right. And, anyway, he wants to put the play on."
+
+"Well, that's splendid," said Sally: but she could not get the right
+ring of enthusiasm into her voice. She had had ideals for Gerald. She
+had dreamed of him invading Broadway triumphantly under the banner of
+one of the big managers whose name carried a prestige, and there seemed
+something unworthy in this association with a man whose chief claim to
+eminence lay in the fact that he was credited by metropolitan gossip
+with possessing the largest private stock of alcohol in existence.
+
+"I thought you would be pleased," said Gerald.
+
+"Oh, I am," said Sally.
+
+With the buoyant optimism which never deserted her for long, she had
+already begun to cast off her momentary depression. After all, did it
+matter who financed a play so long as it obtained a production? A
+manager was simply a piece of machinery for paying the bills; and if he
+had money for that purpose, why demand asceticism and the finer
+sensibilities from him? The real thing that mattered was the question of
+who was going to play the leading part, that deftly drawn character
+which had so excited the admiration of Elsa Doland. She sought
+information on this point.
+
+"Who will play Ruth?" she asked.  "You must have somebody wonderful.
+It needs a tremendously clever woman. Did Mr. Cracknell say anything
+about that?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we discussed that, of course."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, it seems..." Again Sally noticed that odd, almost stealthy
+embarrassment. Gerald appeared unable to begin a sentence to-night
+without feeling his way into it like a man creeping cautiously down a
+dark alley. She noticed it the more because it was so different from his
+usual direct method. Gerald, as a rule, was not one of those who
+apologize for themselves. He was forthright and masterful and inclined
+to talk to her from a height. To-night he seemed different.
+
+He broke off, was silent for a moment, and began again with a question.
+
+"Do you know Mabel Hobson?"
+
+"Mabel Hobson? I've seen her in the 'Follies,' of course."
+
+Sally started.  A suspicion had stung her, so monstrous that its
+absurdity became manifest the moment it had formed. And yet was it
+absurd? Most Broadway gossip filtered eventually into the
+boarding-house, chiefly through the medium of that seasoned sport, the
+mild young man who thought so highly of the redoubtable Benny Whistler,
+and she was aware that the name of Reginald Cracknell, which was always
+getting itself linked with somebody, had been coupled with that of Miss
+Hobson. It seemed likely that in this instance rumour spoke truth, for
+the lady was of that compellingly blonde beauty which attracts the
+Cracknells of this world. But even so...
+
+"It seems that Cracknell..." said Gerald. "Apparently this man
+Cracknell..." He was finding Sally's bright, horrified gaze somewhat
+trying. "Well, the fact is Cracknell believes in Mabel Hobson...and...
+well, he thinks this part would suit her."
+
+"Oh, Jerry!"
+
+Could infatuation go to such a length? Could even the spacious heart of
+a Reginald Cracknell so dominate that gentleman's small size in heads as
+to make him entrust a part like Ruth in "The Primrose Way" to one who,
+when desired by the producer of her last revue to carry a bowl of roses
+across the stage and place it on a table, had rebelled on the plea that
+she had not been engaged as a dancer? Surely even lovelorn Reginald
+could perceive that this was not the stuff of which great emotional
+actresses are made.
+
+"Oh, Jerry!" she said again.
+
+There was an uncomfortable silence.  They turned and walked back in the
+direction of the boarding-house. Somehow Gerald's arm had managed to get
+itself detached from Sally's. She was conscious of a curious dull ache
+that was almost like a physical pain.
+
+"Jerry! Is it worth it?" she burst out vehemently.
+
+The question seemed to sting the young man into something like his
+usual decisive speech.
+
+"Worth it? Of course it's worth it.  It's a Broadway production.
+That's all that matters. Good heavens! I've been trying long enough to
+get a play on Broadway, and it isn't likely that I'm going to chuck away
+my chance when it comes along just because one might do better in the
+way of casting."
+
+"But, Jerry! Mabel Hobson! It's... it's murder! Murder in the first
+degree."
+
+"Nonsense.  She'll be all right.  The part will play itself.  Besides,
+she has a personality and a following, and Cracknell will spend all the
+money in the world to make the thing a success. And it will be a start,
+whatever happens. Of course, it's worth it."
+
+Fillmore would have been impressed by this speech.  He would have
+recognized and respected in it the unmistakable ring which characterizes
+even the lightest utterances of those who get there. On Sally it had not
+immediately that effect. Nevertheless, her habit of making the best of
+things, working together with that primary article of her creed that the
+man she loved could do no wrong, succeeded finally in raising her
+spirits. Of course Jerry was right. It would have been foolish to refuse
+a contract because all its clauses were not ideal.
+
+"You old darling," she said affectionately attaching herself to the
+vacant arm once more and giving it a penitent squeeze, "you're quite
+right. Of course you are. I can see it now. I was only a little startled
+at first. Everything's going to be wonderful. Let's get all our chickens
+out and count 'em. How are you going to spend the money?"
+
+"I know how I'm going to spend a dollar of it," said Gerald completely
+restored.
+
+"I mean the big money.  What's a dollar?"
+
+"It pays for a marriage-licence."
+
+Sally gave his arm another squeeze.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," she said.  "Look at this man.  Observe him.  My
+partner!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+ENTER GINGER
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+Sally was sitting with her back against a hillock of golden sand,
+watching with half-closed eyes the denizens of Roville-sur-Mer at their
+familiar morning occupations. At Roville, as at most French seashore
+resorts, the morning is the time when the visiting population assembles
+in force on the beach. Whiskered fathers of families made cheerful
+patches of colour in the foreground. Their female friends and relatives
+clustered in groups under gay parasols. Dogs roamed to and fro, and
+children dug industriously with spades, ever and anon suspending their
+labours in order to smite one another with these handy implements. One
+of the dogs, a poodle of military aspect, wandered up to Sally: and
+discovering that she was in possession of a box of sweets, decided to
+remain and await developments.
+
+Few things are so pleasant as the anticipation of them, but Sally's
+vacation had proved an exception to this rule. It had been a magic month
+of lazy happiness. She had drifted luxuriously from one French town to
+another, till the charm of Roville, with its blue sky, its Casino, its
+snow-white hotels along the Promenade, and its general glitter and
+gaiety, had brought her to a halt. Here she could have stayed
+indefinitely, but the voice of America was calling her back. Gerald had
+written to say that "The Primrose Way" was to be produced in Detroit,
+preliminary to its New York run, so soon that, if she wished to see the
+opening, she must return at once. A scrappy, hurried, unsatisfactory
+letter, the letter of a busy man: but one that Sally could not ignore.
+She was leaving Roville to-morrow.
+
+To-day, however, was to-day: and she sat and watched the bathers with a
+familiar feeling of peace, revelling as usual in the still novel
+sensation of having nothing to do but bask in the warm sunshine and
+listen to the faint murmur of the little waves.
+
+But, if there was one drawback, she had discovered, to a morning on the
+Roville plage, it was that you had a tendency to fall asleep: and this
+is a degrading thing to do so soon after breakfast, even if you are on a
+holiday. Usually, Sally fought stoutly against the temptation, but
+to-day the sun was so warm and the whisper of the waves so insinuating
+that she had almost dozed off, when she was aroused by voices close at
+hand. There were many voices on the beach, both near and distant, but
+these were talking English, a novelty in Roville, and the sound of the
+familiar tongue jerked Sally back from the borders of sleep. A few feet
+away, two men had seated themselves on the sand.
+
+From the first moment she had set out on her travels, it had been one of
+Sally's principal amusements to examine the strangers whom chance threw
+in her way and to try by the light of her intuition to fit them out with
+characters and occupations: nor had she been discouraged by an almost
+consistent failure to guess right. Out of the corner of her eye she
+inspected these two men.
+
+The first of the pair did not attract her.  He was a tall, dark man
+whose tight, precise mouth and rather high cheeks bones gave him an
+appearance vaguely sinister. He had the dusky look of the clean-shaven
+man whose life is a perpetual struggle with a determined beard. He
+certainly shaved twice a day, and just as certainly had the self-control
+not to swear when he cut himself. She could picture him smiling nastily
+when this happened.
+
+"Hard," diagnosed Sally.  "I shouldn't like him.  A lawyer or something,
+I think."
+
+She turned to the other and found herself looking into his eyes.  This
+was because he had been staring at Sally with the utmost intentness ever
+since his arrival. His mouth had opened slightly. He had the air of a
+man who, after many disappointments, has at last found something worth
+looking at.
+
+"Rather a dear," decided Sally.
+
+He was a sturdy, thick-set young man with an amiable, freckled face and
+the reddest hair Sally had ever seen. He had a square chin, and at one
+angle of the chin a slight cut. And Sally was convinced that, however he
+had behaved on receipt of that wound, it had not been with superior
+self-control.
+
+"A temper, I should think," she meditated.  "Very quick, but soon over.
+Not very clever, I should say, but nice."
+
+She looked away, finding his fascinated gaze a little embarrassing.
+
+The dark man, who in the objectionably competent fashion which, one
+felt, characterized all his actions, had just succeeded in lighting a
+cigarette in the teeth of a strong breeze, threw away the match and
+resumed the conversation, which had presumably been interrupted by the
+process of sitting down.
+
+"And how is Scrymgeour?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, all right," replied the young man with red hair absently.  Sally
+was looking straight in front of her, but she felt that his eyes were
+still busy.
+
+"I was surprised at his being here.  He told me he meant to stay in
+Paris."
+
+There was a slight pause.  Sally gave the attentive poodle a piece of
+nougat.
+
+"I say," observed the red-haired young man in clear, penetrating tones
+that vibrated with intense feeling, "that's the prettiest girl I've seen
+in my life!"
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+At this frank revelation of the red-haired young man's personal
+opinions, Sally, though considerably startled, was not displeased. A
+broad-minded girl, the outburst seemed to her a legitimate comment on a
+matter of public interest. The young man's companion, on the other hand,
+was unmixedly shocked.
+
+"My dear fellow!" he ejaculated.
+
+"Oh, it's all right," said the red-haired young man, unmoved.  "She
+can't understand. There isn't a bally soul in this dashed place that can
+speak a word of English. If I didn't happen to remember a few odd bits
+of French, I should have starved by this time. That girl," he went on,
+returning to the subject most imperatively occupying his mind, "is an
+absolute topper! I give you my solemn word I've never seen anybody to
+touch her. Look at those hands and feet. You don't get them outside
+France. Of course, her mouth is a bit wide," he said reluctantly.
+
+Sally's immobility, added to the other's assurance concerning the
+linguistic deficiencies of the inhabitants of Roville, seemed to
+reassure the dark man. He breathed again. At no period of his life had
+he ever behaved with anything but the most scrupulous correctness
+himself, but he had quailed at the idea of being associated even
+remotely with incorrectness in another. It had been a black moment for
+him when the red-haired young man had uttered those few kind words.
+
+"Still you ought to be careful," he said austerely.
+
+He looked at Sally, who was now dividing her attention between the
+poodle and a raffish-looking mongrel, who had joined the party, and
+returned to the topic of the mysterious Scrymgeour.
+
+"How is Scrymgeour's dyspepsia?"
+
+The red-haired young man seemed but faintly interested in the
+vicissitudes of Scrymgeour's interior.
+
+"Do you notice the way her hair sort of curls over her ears?" he said.
+"Eh? Oh, pretty much the same, I think."
+
+"What hotel are you staying at?"
+
+"The Normandie."
+
+Sally, dipping into the box for another chocolate cream, gave an
+imperceptible start. She, too, was staying at the Normandie. She
+presumed that her admirer was a recent arrival, for she had seen nothing
+of him at the hotel.
+
+"The Normandie?" The dark man looked puzzled.  "I know Roville pretty
+well by report, but I've never heard of any Hotel Normandie. Where is
+it?"
+
+"It's a little shanty down near the station.  Not much of a place.
+Still, it's cheap, and the cooking's all right."
+
+His companion's bewilderment increased.
+
+"What on earth is a man like Scrymgeour doing there?" he said.  Sally
+was conscious of an urgent desire to know more and more about the absent
+Scrymgeour. Constant repetition of his name had made him seem almost
+like an old friend. "If there's one thing he's fussy about..."
+
+"There are at least eleven thousand things he's fussy about,"
+interrupted the red-haired young man disapprovingly. "Jumpy old
+blighter!"
+
+"If there's one thing he's particular about, it's the sort of hotel he
+goes to. Ever since I've known him he has always wanted the best. I
+should have thought he would have gone to the Splendide." He mused on
+this problem in a dissatisfied sort of way for a moment, then seemed to
+reconcile himself to the fact that a rich man's eccentricities must be
+humoured. "I'd like to see him again. Ask him if he will dine with me at
+the Splendide to-night. Say eight sharp."
+
+Sally, occupied with her dogs, whose numbers had now been augmented by a
+white terrier with a black patch over its left eye, could not see the
+young man's face: but his voice, when he replied, told her that
+something was wrong. There was a false airiness in it.
+
+"Oh, Scrymgeour isn't in Roville."
+
+"No? Where is he?"
+
+"Paris, I believe."
+
+"What!" The dark man's voice sharpened.  He sounded as though he were
+cross-examining a reluctant witness. "Then why aren't you there? What
+are you doing here? Did he give you a holiday?"
+
+"Yes, he did."
+
+"When do you rejoin him?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"What!"
+
+The red-haired young man's manner was not unmistakably dogged.
+
+"Well, if you want to know," he said, "the old blighter fired me the day
+before yesterday."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+There was a shuffling of sand as the dark man sprang up.  Sally, intent
+on the drama which was unfolding itself beside her, absent-mindedly gave
+the poodle a piece of nougat which should by rights have gone to the
+terrier. She shot a swift glance sideways, and saw the dark man standing
+in an attitude rather reminiscent of the stern father of melodrama about
+to drive his erring daughter out into the snow. The red-haired young
+man, outwardly stolid, was gazing before him down the beach at a fat
+bather in an orange suit who, after six false starts, was now actually
+in the water, floating with the dignity of a wrecked balloon.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," demanded the dark man, "that, after all the
+trouble the family took to get you what was practically a sinecure with
+endless possibilities if you only behaved yourself, you have
+deliberately thrown away..." A despairing gesture completed the
+sentence. "Good God, you're hopeless!"
+
+The red-haired young man made no reply.  He continued to gaze down the
+beach. Of all outdoor sports, few are more stimulating than watching
+middle-aged Frenchmen bathe. Drama, action, suspense, all are here. From
+the first stealthy testing of the water with an apprehensive toe to the
+final seal-like plunge, there is never a dull moment. And apart from the
+excitement of the thing, judging it from a purely aesthetic standpoint,
+his must be a dull soul who can fail to be uplifted by the spectacle of
+a series of very stout men with whiskers, seen in tight bathing suits
+against a background of brightest blue. Yet the young man with red hair,
+recently in the employment of Mr. Scrymgeour, eyed this free circus
+without any enjoyment whatever.
+
+"It's maddening! What are you going to do? What do you expect us to do?
+Are we to spend our whole lives getting you positions which you won't
+keep? I can tell you we're... it's monstrous! It's sickening! Good God!"
+
+And with these words the dark man, apparently feeling, as Sally had
+sometimes felt in the society of her brother Fillmore, the futility of
+mere language, turned sharply and stalked away up the beach, the dignity
+of his exit somewhat marred a moment later by the fact of his straw hat
+blowing off and being trodden on by a passing child.
+
+He left behind him the sort of electric calm which follows the falling
+of a thunderbolt; that stunned calm through which the air seems still to
+quiver protestingly. How long this would have lasted one cannot say: for
+towards the end of the first minute it was shattered by a purely
+terrestrial uproar. With an abruptness heralded only by one short, low
+gurgling snarl, there sprang into being the prettiest dog fight that
+Roville had seen that season.
+
+It was the terrier with the black patch who began it.  That was Sally's
+opinion: and such, one feels, will be the verdict of history. His best
+friend, anxious to make out a case for him, could not have denied that
+he fired the first gun of the campaign. But we must be just. The fault
+was really Sally's. Absorbed in the scene which had just concluded and
+acutely inquisitive as to why the shadowy Scrymgeour had seen fit to
+dispense with the red-haired young man's services, she had thrice in
+succession helped the poodle out of his turn. The third occasion was too
+much for the terrier.
+
+There is about any dog fight a wild, gusty fury which affects the
+average mortal with something of the helplessness induced by some vast
+clashing of the elements. It seems so outside one's jurisdiction. One is
+oppressed with a sense of the futility of interference. And this was no
+ordinary dog fight. It was a stunning mêlée, which would have excited
+favourable comment even among the blasé residents of a negro quarter or
+the not easily-pleased critics of a Lancashire mining-village. From all
+over the beach dogs of every size, breed, and colour were racing to the
+scene: and while some of these merely remained in the ringside seats and
+barked, a considerable proportion immediately started fighting one
+another on general principles, well content to be in action without
+bothering about first causes. The terrier had got the poodle by the left
+hind-leg and was restating his war-aims. The raffish mongrel was
+apparently endeavouring to fletcherize a complete stranger of the
+Sealyham family.
+
+Sally was frankly unequal to the situation, as were the entire crowd of
+spectators who had come galloping up from the water's edge. She had been
+paralysed from the start. Snarling bundles bumped against her legs and
+bounced away again, but she made no move. Advice in fluent French rent
+the air. Arms waved, and well-filled bathing suits leaped up and down.
+But nobody did anything practical until in the centre of the theatre of
+war there suddenly appeared the red-haired young man.
+
+The only reason why dog fights do not go on for ever is that Providence
+has decided that on each such occasion there shall always be among those
+present one Master Mind; one wizard who, whatever his shortcomings in
+other battles of life, is in this single particular sphere competent and
+dominating. At Roville-sur-Mer it was the red-haired young man. His dark
+companion might have turned from him in disgust: his services might not
+have seemed worth retaining by the haughty Scrymgeour: he might be a
+pain in the neck to "the family"; but he did know how to stop a dog
+fight. From the first moment of his intervention calm began to steal
+over the scene. He had the same effect on the almost inextricably
+entwined belligerents as, in mediaeval legend, the Holy Grail, sliding
+down the sunbeam, used to have on battling knights. He did not look like
+a dove of peace, but the most captious could not have denied that he
+brought home the goods. There was a magic in his soothing hands, a spell
+in his voice: and in a shorter time than one would have believed
+possible dog after dog had been sorted out and calmed down; until
+presently all that was left of Armageddon was one solitary small Scotch
+terrier, thoughtfully licking a chewed leg. The rest of the combatants,
+once more in their right mind and wondering what all the fuss was about,
+had been captured and haled away in a whirl of recrimination by voluble
+owners.
+
+Having achieved this miracle, the young man turned to Sally.  Gallant,
+one might say reckless, as he had been a moment before, he now gave
+indications of a rather pleasing shyness. He braced himself with that
+painful air of effort which announces to the world that an Englishman is
+about to speak a language other than his own.
+
+"J'espère," he said, having swallowed once or twice to brace himself up
+for the journey through the jungle of a foreign tongue, "J'espère que
+vous n'êtes pas--oh, dammit, what's the word--J'espère que vous n'êtes
+pas blessée?"
+
+"Blessée?"
+
+"Yes, blessée.  Wounded.  Hurt, don't you know.  Bitten.  Oh, dash it.
+J'espère..."
+
+"Oh, bitten!" said Sally, dimpling.  "Oh, no, thanks very much.  I
+wasn't bitten. And I think it was awfully brave of you to save all our
+lives."
+
+The compliment seemed to pass over the young man's head.  He stared at
+Sally with horrified eyes. Over his amiable face there swept a vivid
+blush. His jaw dropped.
+
+"Oh, my sainted aunt!" he ejaculated.
+
+Then, as if the situation was too much for him and flights the only
+possible solution, he spun round and disappeared at a walk so rapid that
+it was almost a run. Sally watched him go and was sorry that he had torn
+himself away. She still wanted to know why Scrymgeour had fired him.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+
+Bedtime at Roville is an hour that seems to vary according to one's
+proximity to the sea. The gilded palaces along the front keep deplorable
+hours, polluting the night air till dawn with indefatigable jazz: but at
+the pensions of the economical like the Normandie, early to bed is the
+rule. True, Jules, the stout young native who combined the offices of
+night-clerk and lift attendant at that establishment, was on duty in the
+hall throughout the night, but few of the Normandie's patrons made use
+of his services.
+
+Sally, entering shortly before twelve o'clock on the night of the day on
+which the dark man, the red-haired young man, and their friend
+Scrymgeour had come into her life, found the little hall dim and silent.
+Through the iron cage of the lift a single faint bulb glowed: another,
+over the desk in the far corner, illuminated the upper half of Jules,
+slumbering in a chair. Jules seemed to Sally to be on duty in some
+capacity or other all the time. His work, like women's, was never done.
+He was now restoring his tissues with a few winks of much-needed beauty
+sleep. Sally, who had been to the Casino to hear the band and afterwards
+had strolled on the moonlit promenade, had a guilty sense of intrusion.
+
+As she stood there, reluctant to break in on Jules' rest--for her
+sympathetic heart, always at the disposal of the oppressed, had long
+ached for this overworked peon--she was relieved to hear footsteps in
+the street outside, followed by the opening of the front door. If Jules
+would have had to wake up anyway, she felt her sense of responsibility
+lessened. The door, having opened, closed again with a bang. Jules
+stirred, gurgled, blinked, and sat up, and Sally, turning, perceived
+that the new arrival was the red-haired young man.
+
+"Oh, good evening," said Sally welcomingly.
+
+The young man stopped, and shuffled uncomfortably.  The morning's
+happenings were obviously still green in his memory. He had either not
+ceased blushing since their last meeting or he was celebrating their
+reunion by beginning to blush again: for his face was a familiar
+scarlet.
+
+"Er--good evening," he said, disentangling his feet, which, in the
+embarrassment of the moment, had somehow got coiled up together.
+
+"Or bon soir, I suppose you would say," murmured Sally.
+
+The young man acknowledged receipt of this thrust by dropping his hat
+and tripping over it as he stooped to pick it up.
+
+Jules, meanwhile, who had been navigating in a sort of somnambulistic
+trance in the neighbourhood of the lift, now threw back the cage with a
+rattle.
+
+"It's a shame to have woken you up," said Sally, commiseratingly,
+stepping in.
+
+Jules did not reply, for the excellent reason that he had not been woken
+up. Constant practice enabled him to do this sort of work without
+breaking his slumber. His brain, if you could call it that, was working
+automatically. He had shut up the gate with a clang and was tugging
+sluggishly at the correct rope, so that the lift was going slowly up
+instead of retiring down into the basement, but he was not awake.
+
+Sally and the red-haired young man sat side by side on the small seat,
+watching their conductor's efforts. After the first spurt, conversation
+had languished. Sally had nothing of immediate interest to say, and her
+companion seemed to be one of these strong, silent men you read about.
+Only a slight snore from Jules broke the silence.
+
+At the third floor Sally leaned forward and prodded Jules in the lower
+ribs. All through her stay at Roville, she had found in dealing with the
+native population that actions spoke louder than words. If she wanted
+anything in a restaurant or at a shop, she pointed; and, when she wished
+the lift to stop, she prodded the man in charge. It was a system worth a
+dozen French conversation books.
+
+Jules brought the machine to a halt: and it was at this point that he
+should have done the one thing connected with his professional
+activities which he did really well--the opening, to wit, of the iron
+cage. There are ways of doing this. Jules' was the right way. He was
+accustomed to do it with a flourish, and generally remarked "V'la!" in a
+modest but self-congratulatory voice as though he would have liked to
+see another man who could have put through a job like that. Jules'
+opinion was that he might not be much to look at, but that he could open
+a lift door.
+
+To-night, however, it seemed as if even this not very exacting feat was
+beyond his powers. Instead of inserting his key in the lock, he stood
+staring in an attitude of frozen horror. He was a man who took most
+things in life pretty seriously, and whatever was the little difficulty
+just now seemed to have broken him all up.
+
+"There appears," said Sally, turning to her companion, "to be a hitch.
+Would you mind asking what's the matter? I don't know any French myself
+except 'oo la la!'"
+
+The young man, thus appealed to, nerved himself to the task.  He eyed
+the melancholy Jules doubtfully, and coughed in a strangled sort of way.
+
+"Oh, esker... esker vous..."
+
+"Don't weaken," said Sally.  "I think you've got him going."
+
+"Esker vous...   Pourquoi vous ne... I mean ne vous... that is to say,
+quel est le raison..."
+
+He broke off here, because at this point Jules began to explain.  He
+explained very rapidly and at considerable length. The fact that neither
+of his hearers understood a word of what he was saying appeared not to
+have impressed itself upon him. Or, if he gave a thought to it, he
+dismissed the objection as trifling. He wanted to explain, and he
+explained. Words rushed from him like water from a geyser. Sounds which
+you felt you would have been able to put a meaning to if he had detached
+them from the main body and repeated them slowly, went swirling down the
+stream and were lost for ever.
+
+"Stop him!" said Sally firmly.
+
+The red-haired young man looked as a native of Johnstown might have
+looked on being requested to stop that city's celebrated flood.
+
+"Stop him?"
+
+"Yes.  Blow a whistle or something."
+
+Out of the depths of the young man's memory there swam to the surface a
+single word--a word which he must have heard somewhere or read
+somewhere: a legacy, perhaps, from long-vanished school-days.
+
+"Zut!" he barked, and instantaneously Jules turned himself off at the
+main. There was a moment of dazed silence, such as might occur in a
+boiler-factory if the works suddenly shut down.
+
+"Quick! Now you've got him!" cried Sally.  "Ask him what he's talking
+about--if he knows, which I doubt--and tell him to speak slowly. Then
+we shall get somewhere."
+
+The young man nodded intelligently.  The advice was good.
+
+"Lentement," he said.  "Parlez lentement.  Pas si--you know what I
+mean--pas si dashed vite!"
+
+"Ah-a-ah!" cried Jules, catching the idea on the fly.  "Lentement.  Ah,
+oui, lentement."
+
+There followed a lengthy conversation which, while conveying nothing to
+Sally, seemed intelligible to the red-haired linguist.
+
+"The silly ass," he was able to announce some few minutes later, "has
+made a bloomer. Apparently he was half asleep when we came in, and he
+shoved us into the lift and slammed the door, forgetting that he had
+left the keys on the desk."
+
+"I see," said Sally.  "So we're shut in?"
+
+"I'm afraid so.  I wish to goodness," said the young man, "I knew French
+well. I'd curse him with some vim and not a little animation, the chump!
+I wonder what 'blighter' is in French," he said, meditating.
+
+"It's the merest suggestion," said Sally, "but oughtn't we to do
+something?"
+
+"What could we do?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, we might all utter a loud yell.  It would scare
+most of the people in the hotel to death, but there might be a survivor
+or two who would come and investigate and let us out."
+
+"What a ripping idea!" said the young man, impressed.
+
+"I'm glad you like it.  Now tell him the main out-line, or he'll think
+we've gone mad."
+
+The young man searched for words, and eventually found some which
+expressed his meaning lamely but well enough to cause Jules to nod in a
+depressed sort of way.
+
+"Fine!" said Sally.  "Now, all together at the word 'three.'
+One--two--Oh, poor darling!" she broke off. "Look at him!"
+
+In the far corner of the lift, the emotional Jules was sobbing silently
+into the bunch of cotton-waste which served him in the office of a
+pocket-handkerchief. His broken-hearted gulps echoed hollowly down the
+shaft.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+
+In these days of cheap books of instruction on every subject under the
+sun, we most of us know how to behave in the majority of life's little
+crises. We have only ourselves to blame if we are ignorant of what to do
+before the doctor comes, of how to make a dainty winter coat for baby
+out of father's last year's under-vest and of the best method of coping
+with the cold mutton. But nobody yet has come forward with practical
+advice as to the correct method of behaviour to be adopted when a
+lift-attendant starts crying. And Sally and her companion, as a
+consequence, for a few moments merely stared at each other helplessly.
+
+"Poor darling!" said Sally, finding speech.  "Ask him what's the
+matter."
+
+The young man looked at her doubtfully.
+
+"You know," he said, "I don't enjoy chatting with this blighter.  I mean
+to say, it's a bit of an effort. I don't know why it is, but talking
+French always makes me feel as if my nose were coming off. Couldn't we
+just leave him to have his cry out by himself?"
+
+"The idea!" said Sally.  "Have you no heart? Are you one of those fiends
+in human shape?"
+
+He turned reluctantly to Jules, and paused to overhaul his vocabulary.
+
+"You ought to be thankful for this chance," said Sally.  "It's the only
+real way of learning French, and you're getting a lesson for nothing.
+What did he say then?"
+
+"Something about losing something, it seemed to me.  I thought I caught
+the word perdu."
+
+"But that means a partridge, doesn't it? I'm sure I've seen it on the
+menus."
+
+"Would he talk about partridges at a time like this?"
+
+"He might.  The French are extraordinary people."
+
+"Well, I'll have another go at him.  But he's a difficult chap to chat
+with. If you give him the least encouragement, he sort of goes off like
+a rocket." He addressed another question to the sufferer, and listened
+attentively to the voluble reply.
+
+"Oh!" he said with sudden enlightenment.  "Your job?" He turned to
+Sally. "I got it that time," he said. "The trouble is, he says, that if
+we yell and rouse the house, we'll get out all right, but he will lose
+his job, because this is the second time this sort of thing has
+happened, and they warned him last time that once more would mean the
+push."
+
+"Then we mustn't dream of yelling," said Sally, decidedly.  "It means a
+pretty long wait, you know. As far as I can gather, there's just a
+chance of somebody else coming in later, in which case he could let us
+out. But it's doubtful. He rather thinks that everybody has gone to
+roost."
+
+"Well, we must try it.  I wouldn't think of losing the poor man his job.
+Tell him to take the car down to the ground-floor, and then we'll just
+sit and amuse ourselves till something happens. We've lots to talk
+about. We can tell each other the story of our lives."
+
+Jules, cheered by his victims' kindly forbearance, lowered the car to
+the ground floor, where, after a glance of infinite longing at the keys
+on the distant desk, the sort of glance which Moses must have cast at
+the Promised Land from the summit of Mount Pisgah, he sagged down in a
+heap and resumed his slumbers. Sally settled herself as comfortably as
+possible in her corner.
+
+"You'd better smoke," she said.  "It will be something to do."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"And now," said Sally, "tell me why Scrymgeour fired you."
+
+Little by little, under the stimulating influence of this nocturnal
+adventure, the red-haired young man had lost that shy confusion which
+had rendered him so ill at ease when he had encountered Sally in the
+hall of the hotel; but at this question embarrassment gripped him once
+more. Another of those comprehensive blushes of his raced over his face,
+and he stammered.
+
+"I say, I'm glad... I'm fearfully sorry about that, you know!"
+
+"About Scrymgeour?"
+
+"You know what I mean.  I mean, about making such a most ghastly ass of
+myself this morning. I... I never dreamed you understood English."
+
+"Why, I didn't object.  I thought you were very nice and complimentary.
+Of course, I don't know how many girls you've seen in your life, but..."
+
+"No, I say, don't! It makes me feel such a chump."
+
+"And I'm sorry about my mouth.  It is wide.  But I know you're a
+fair-minded man and realize that it isn't my fault."
+
+"Don't rub it in," pleaded the young man.  "As a matter of fact, if you
+want to know, I think your mouth is absolutely perfect. I think," he
+proceeded, a little feverishly, "that you are the most indescribable
+topper that ever..."
+
+"You were going to tell me about Scrymgeour," said Sally.
+
+The young man blinked as if he had collided with some hard object while
+sleep-walking. Eloquence had carried him away.
+
+"Scrymgeour?" he said.  "Oh, that would bore you."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Sally reprovingly.  "Can't you realize that we're
+practically castaways on a desert island? There's nothing to do till
+to-morrow but talk about ourselves. I want to hear all about you, and
+then I'll tell you all about myself. If you feel diffident about
+starting the revelations, I'll begin. Better start with names. Mine is
+Sally Nicholas. What's yours?"
+
+"Mine? Oh, ah, yes, I see what you mean."
+
+"I thought you would.  I put it as clearly as I could.  Well, what is
+it?"
+
+"Kemp."
+
+"And the first name?"
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact," said the young man, "I've always rather
+hushed up my first name, because when I was christened they worked a
+low-down trick on me!"
+
+"You can't shock me," said Sally, encouragingly.  "My father's name was
+Ezekiel, and I've a brother who was christened Fillmore."
+
+Mr. Kemp brightened.  "Well, mine isn't as bad as that... No, I don't
+mean that," he broke off apologetically. "Both awfully jolly names, of
+course..."
+
+"Get on," said Sally.
+
+"Well, they called me Lancelot.  And, of course, the thing is that I
+don't look like a Lancelot and never shall. My pals," he added in a more
+cheerful strain, "call me Ginger."
+
+"I don't blame them," said Sally.
+
+"Perhaps you wouldn't mind thinking of me as Ginger?'' suggested the
+young man diffidently.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"That's awfully good of you."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+Jules stirred in his sleep and grunted.  No other sound came to disturb
+the stillness of the night.
+
+"You were going to tell me about yourself?" said Mr. Lancelot (Ginger)
+Kemp.
+
+"I'm going to tell you all about myself," said Sally, "not because I
+think it will interest you..."
+
+"Oh, it will!"
+
+"Not, I say, because I think it will interest you..."
+
+"It will, really."
+
+Sally looked at him coldly.
+
+"Is this a duet?" she inquired, "or have I the floor?"
+
+"I'm awfully sorry."
+
+"Not, I repeat for the third time, because I think It will interest you,
+but because if I do you won't have any excuse for not telling me your
+life-history, and you wouldn't believe how inquisitive I am. Well, in
+the first place, I live in America. I'm over here on a holiday. And it's
+the first real holiday I've had in three years--since I left home, in
+fact." Sally paused. "I ran away from home," she said.
+
+"Good egg!" said Ginger Kemp.
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"I mean, quite right.  I bet you were quite right."
+
+"When I say home," Sally went on, "it was only a sort of imitation home,
+you know. One of those just-as-good homes which are never as
+satisfactory as the real kind. My father and mother both died a good
+many years ago. My brother and I were dumped down on the reluctant
+doorstep of an uncle."
+
+"Uncles," said Ginger Kemp, feelingly, "are the devil.  I've got an...
+but I'm interrupting you."
+
+"My uncle was our trustee.  He had control of all my brother's money and
+mine till I was twenty-one. My brother was to get his when he was
+twenty-five. My poor father trusted him blindly, and what do you think
+happened?"
+
+"Good Lord! The blighter embezzled the lot?"
+
+"No, not a cent.  Wasn't it extraordinary! Have you ever heard of a
+blindly trusted uncle who was perfectly honest? Well, mine was. But the
+trouble was that, while an excellent man to have looking after one's
+money, he wasn't a very lovable character. He was very hard. Hard! He
+was as hard as--well, nearly as hard as this seat. He hated poor
+Fill..."
+
+"Phil?"
+
+"I broke it to you just now that my brother's name was Fillmore."
+
+"Oh, your brother.  Oh, ah, yes."
+
+"He was always picking on poor Fill.  And I'm bound to say that Fill
+rather laid himself out as what you might call a pickee. He was always
+getting into trouble. One day, about three years ago, he was expelled
+from Harvard, and my uncle vowed he would have nothing more to do with
+him. So I said, if Fill left, I would leave. And, as this seemed to be
+my uncle's idea of a large evening, no objection was raised, and Fill
+and I departed. We went to New York, and there we've been ever since.
+About six months' ago Fill passed the twenty-five mark and collected his
+money, and last month I marched past the given point and got mine. So it
+all ends happily, you see. Now tell me about yourself."
+
+"But, I say, you know, dash it, you've skipped a lot.  I mean to say,
+you must have had an awful time in New York, didn't you? How on earth
+did you get along?"
+
+"Oh, we found work.  My brother tried one or two things, and finally
+became an assistant stage-manager with some theatre people. The only
+thing I could do, having been raised in enervating luxury, was ballroom
+dancing, so I ball-room danced. I got a job at a place in Broadway
+called 'The Flower Garden' as what is humorously called an
+'instructress,' as if anybody could 'instruct' the men who came there.
+One was lucky if one saved one's life and wasn't quashed to death."
+
+"How perfectly foul!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know.  It was rather fun for a while.  Still," said Sally,
+meditatively, "I'm not saying I could have held out much longer: I was
+beginning to give. I suppose I've been trampled underfoot by more fat
+men than any other girl of my age in America. I don't know why it was,
+but every man who came in who was a bit overweight seemed to make for me
+by instinct. That's why I like to sit on the sands here and watch these
+Frenchmen bathing. It's just heavenly to lie back and watch a two
+hundred and fifty pound man, coming along and feel that he isn't going
+to dance with me."
+
+"But, I say! How absolutely rotten it must have been for you!"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you one thing.  It's going to make me a very
+domesticated wife one of these days. You won't find me gadding about in
+gilded jazz-palaces! For me, a little place in the country somewhere,
+with my knitting and an Elsie book, and bed at half-past nine! And now
+tell me the story of your life. And make it long because I'm perfectly
+certain there's going to be no relief-expedition. I'm sure the last
+dweller under this roof came in years ago. We shall be here till
+morning."
+
+"I really think we had better shout, you know."
+
+"And lose Jules his job? Never!"
+
+"Well, of course, I'm sorry for poor old Jules' troubles, but I hate to
+think of you having to..."
+
+"Now get on with the story," said Sally.
+
+
+
+6
+
+
+
+Ginger Kemp exhibited some of the symptoms of a young bridegroom called
+upon at a wedding-breakfast to respond to the toast. He moved his feet
+restlessly and twisted his fingers.
+
+"I hate talking about myself, you know," he said.
+
+"So I supposed," said Sally.  "That's why I gave you my autobiography
+first, to give you no chance of backing out. Don't be such a shrinking
+violet. We're all shipwrecked mariners here. I am intensely interested
+in your narrative. And, even if I wasn't, I'd much rather listen to it
+than to Jules' snoring."
+
+"He is snoring a bit, what? Does it annoy you? Shall I stir him?"
+
+"You seem to have an extraordinary brutal streak in your nature," said
+Sally. "You appear to think of nothing else but schemes for harassing
+poor Jules. Leave him alone for a second, and start telling me about
+yourself."
+
+"Where shall I start?"
+
+"Well, not with your childhood, I think.  We'll skip that."
+
+"Well..." Ginger Kemp knitted his brow, searching for a dramatic
+opening. "Well, I'm more or less what you might call an orphan, like
+you. I mean to say, both my people are dead and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Thanks for explaining.  That has made it quite clear."
+
+"I can't remember my mother.  My father died when I was in my last year
+at Cambridge. I'd been having a most awfully good time at the 'varsity,'"
+said Ginger, warming to his theme. "Not thick, you know, but good. I'd
+got my rugger and boxing blues and I'd just been picked for scrum-half
+for England against the North in the first trial match, and between
+ourselves it really did look as if I was more or less of a snip for my
+international."
+
+Sally gazed at him wide eyed.
+
+"Is that good or bad?" she asked.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Are you reciting a catalogue of your crimes, or do you expect me to get
+up and cheer? What is a rugger blue, to start with?"
+
+"Well, it's... it's a rugger blue, you know."
+
+"Oh, I see," said Sally.  "You mean a rugger blue."
+
+"I mean to say, I played rugger--footer--that's to say, football--Rugby
+football--for Cambridge, against Oxford. I was scrum-half."
+
+"And what is a scrum-half?" asked Sally, patiently.  "Yes, I know you're
+going to say it's a scrum-half, but can't you make it easier?"
+
+"The scrum-half," said Ginger, "is the half who works the scrum.  He
+slings the pill out to the fly-half, who starts the three-quarters
+going. I don't know if you understand?"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"It's dashed hard to explain," said Ginger Kemp, unhappily.  "I mean, I
+don't think I've ever met anyone before who didn't know what a
+scrum-half was."
+
+"Well, I can see that it has something to do with football, so we'll
+leave it at that. I suppose it's something like our quarter-back. And
+what's an international?"
+
+"It's called getting your international when you play for England, you
+know. England plays Wales, France, Ireland, and Scotland. If it hadn't
+been for the smash, I think I should have played for England against
+Wales."
+
+"I see at last.  What you're trying to tell me is that you were very
+good at football."
+
+Ginger Kemp blushed warmly.
+
+"Oh, I don't say that.  England was pretty short of scrum-halves that
+year."
+
+"What a horrible thing to happen to a country! Still, you were likely to
+be picked on the All-England team when the smash came? What was the
+smash?"
+
+"Well, it turned out that the poor old pater hadn't left a penny.  I
+never understood the process exactly, but I'd always supposed that we
+were pretty well off; and then it turned out that I hadn't anything at
+all. I'm bound to say it was a bit of a jar. I had to come down from
+Cambridge and go to work in my uncle's office. Of course, I made an
+absolute hash of it."
+
+"Why, of course?"
+
+"Well, I'm not a very clever sort of chap, you see.  I somehow didn't
+seem able to grasp the workings. After about a year, my uncle, getting a
+bit fed-up, hoofed me out and got me a mastership at a school, and I
+made a hash of that. He got me one or two other jobs, and I made a hash
+of those."
+
+"You certainly do seem to be one of our most prominent young hashers!"
+gasped Sally.
+
+"I am," said Ginger, modestly.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"And what about Scrymgeour?" Sally asked.
+
+"That was the last of the jobs," said Ginger.  "Scrymgeour is a pompous
+old ass who think's he's going to be Prime Minister some day. He's a big
+bug at the Bar and has just got into Parliament. My cousin used to devil
+for him. That's how I got mixed up with the blighter."
+
+"Your cousin used... ? I wish you would talk English."
+
+"That was my cousin who was with me on the beach this morning."
+
+"And what did you say he used to do for Mr. Scrymgeour?"
+
+"Oh, it's called devilling.  My cousin's at the Bar, too--one of our
+rising nibs, as a matter of fact..."
+
+"I thought he was a lawyer of some kind."
+
+"He's got a long way beyond it now, but when he started he used to devil
+for Scrymgeour--assist him, don't you know. His name's Carmyle, you
+know. Perhaps you've heard of him? He's rather a prominent johnny in his
+way. Bruce Carmyle, you know."
+
+"I haven't."
+
+"Well, he got me this job of secretary to Scrymgeour."
+
+"And why did Mr. Scrymgeour fire you?"
+
+Ginger Kemp's face darkened.  He frowned.  Sally, watching him, felt
+that she had been right when she had guessed that he had a temper. She
+liked him none the worse for it. Mild men did not appeal to her.
+
+"I don't know if you're fond of dogs?" said Ginger.
+
+"I used to be before this morning," said Sally.  "And I suppose I shall
+be again in time. For the moment I've had what you might call rather a
+surfeit of dogs. But aren't you straying from the point? I asked you why
+Mr. Scrymgeour dismissed you."
+
+"I'm telling you."
+
+"I'm glad of that.  I didn't know."
+
+"The old brute," said Ginger, frowning again, "has a dog.  A very jolly
+little spaniel. Great pal of mine. And Scrymgeour is the sort of fool
+who oughtn't to be allowed to own a dog. He's one of those asses who
+isn't fit to own a dog. As a matter of fact, of all the blighted,
+pompous, bullying, shrivelled-souled old devils..."
+
+"One moment," said Sally.  "I'm getting an impression that you don't
+like Mr. Scrymgeour. Am I right?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"I thought so.  Womanly intuition! Go on."
+
+"He used to insist on the poor animal doing tricks.  I hate seeing a dog
+do tricks. Dogs loathe it, you know. They're frightfully sensitive.
+Well, Scrymgeour used to make this spaniel of his do tricks--fool-things
+that no self-respecting dogs would do: and eventually poor old Billy got
+fed up and jibbed. He was too polite to bite, but he sort of shook his
+head and crawled under a chair. You'd have thought anyone would have
+let it go at that, but would old Scrymgeour? Not a bit of it! Of all the
+poisonous..."
+
+"Yes, I know.  Go on."
+
+"Well, the thing ended in the blighter hauling him out from under the
+chair and getting more and more shirty, until finally he laid into him
+with a stick. That is to say," said Ginger, coldly accurate, "he started
+laying into him with a stick." He brooded for a moment with knit brows.
+"A spaniel, mind you! Can you imagine anyone beating a spaniel? It's
+like hitting a little girl. Well, he's a fairly oldish man, you know,
+and that hampered me a bit: but I got hold of the stick and broke it
+into about eleven pieces, and by great good luck it was a stick he
+happened to value rather highly. It had a gold knob and had been
+presented to him by his constituents or something. I minced it up a
+goodish bit, and then I told him a fair amount about himself. And then--
+well, after that he shot me out, and I came here."
+
+Sally did not speak for a moment.
+
+"You were quite right," she said at last, in a sober voice that had
+nothing in it of her customary flippancy. She paused again. "And what
+are you going to do now?" she said.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You'll get something?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I shall get something, I suppose.  The family will be pretty
+sick, of course."
+
+"For goodness' sake! Why do you bother about the family?" Sally burst
+out. She could not reconcile this young man's flabby dependence on his
+family with the enterprise and vigour which he had shown in his dealings
+with the unspeakable Scrymgeour. Of course, he had been brought up to
+look on himself as a rich man's son and appeared to have drifted as such
+young men are wont to do; but even so... "The whole trouble with you,"
+she said, embarking on a subject on which she held strong views, "is
+that..."
+
+Her harangue was interrupted by what--at the Normandie, at one o'clock
+in the morning--practically amounted to a miracle. The front door of the
+hotel opened, and there entered a young man in evening dress. Such
+persons were sufficiently rare at the Normandie, which catered
+principally for the staid and middle-aged, and this youth's presence was
+due, if one must pause to explain it, to the fact that, in the middle of
+his stay at Roville, a disastrous evening at the Casino had so
+diminished his funds that he had been obliged to make a hurried shift
+from the Hotel Splendide to the humbler Normandie. His late appearance
+to-night was caused by the fact that he had been attending a dance at
+the Splendide, principally in the hope of finding there some
+kind-hearted friend of his prosperity from whom he might borrow.
+
+A rapid-fire dialogue having taken place between Jules and the newcomer,
+the keys were handed through the cage, the door opened and the lift was
+set once more in motion. And a few minutes later, Sally, suddenly aware
+of an overpowering sleepiness, had switched off her light and jumped
+into bed. Her last waking thought was a regret that she had not been
+able to speak at length to Mr. Ginger Kemp on the subject of enterprise,
+and resolve that the address should be delivered at the earliest
+opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+THE DIGNIFIED MR. CARMYLE
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+By six o'clock on the following evening, however.   Sally had been
+forced to the conclusion that Ginger would have to struggle through life
+as best he could without the assistance of her contemplated remarks: for
+she had seen nothing of him all day and in another hour she would have
+left Roville on the seven-fifteen express which was to take her to
+Paris, en route for Cherbourg and the liner whereon she had booked her
+passage for New York.
+
+It was in the faint hope of finding him even now that, at half-past six,
+having conveyed her baggage to the station and left it in charge of an
+amiable porter, she paid a last visit to the Casino Municipale. She
+disliked the thought of leaving Ginger without having uplifted him. Like
+so many alert and active-minded girls, she possessed in a great degree
+the quality of interesting herself in--or, as her brother Fillmore
+preferred to put it, messing about with--the private affairs of others.
+Ginger had impressed her as a man to whom it was worth while to give a
+friendly shove on the right path; and it was with much gratification,
+therefore, that, having entered the Casino, she perceived a flaming head
+shining through the crowd which had gathered at one of the
+roulette-tables.
+
+There are two Casinos at Roville-sur-Mer.  The one on the Promenade goes
+in mostly for sea-air and a mild game called boule. It is the big Casino
+Municipale down in the Palace Massena near the railway station which is
+the haunt of the earnest gambler who means business; and it was plain to
+Sally directly she arrived that Ginger Kemp not only meant business but
+was getting results. Ginger was going extremely strong. He was
+entrenched behind an opulent-looking mound of square counters: and, even
+as Sally looked, a wooden-faced croupier shoved a further instalment
+across the table to him at the end of his long rake.
+
+"Epatant!" murmured a wistful man at Sally's side, removing an elbow
+from her ribs in order the better to gesticulate Sally, though no French
+scholar, gathered that he was startled and gratified. The entire crowd
+seemed to be startled and gratified. There is undoubtedly a certain
+altruism in the make-up of the spectators at a Continental
+roulette-table. They seem to derive a spiritual pleasure from seeing
+somebody else win.
+
+The croupier gave his moustache a twist with his left hand and the wheel
+a twist with his right, and silence fell again. Sally, who had shifted
+to a spot where the pressure of the crowd was less acute, was now able
+to see Ginger's face, and as she saw it she gave an involuntary laugh.
+He looked exactly like a dog at a rat-hole. His hair seemed to bristle
+with excitement. One could almost fancy that his ears were pricked up.
+
+In the tense hush which had fallen on the crowd at the restarting of the
+wheel, Sally's laugh rang out with an embarrassing clearness. It had a
+marked effect on all those within hearing. There is something almost of
+religious ecstasy in the deportment of the spectators at a table where
+anyone is having a run of luck at roulette, and if she had guffawed in a
+cathedral she could not have caused a more pained consternation. The
+earnest worshippers gazed at her with shocked eyes, and Ginger, turning
+with a start, saw her and jumped up. As he did so, the ball fell with a
+rattling click into a red compartment of the wheel; and, as it ceased to
+revolve and it was seen that at last the big winner had picked the wrong
+colour, a shuddering groan ran through the congregation like that which
+convulses the penitents' bench at a negro revival meeting. More glances
+of reproach were cast at Sally. It was generally felt that her
+injudicious behaviour had changed Ginger's luck.
+
+The only person who did not appear to be concerned was Ginger himself.
+He gathered up his loot, thrust it into his pocket, and elbowed his way
+to where Sally stood, now definitely established in the eyes of the
+crowd as a pariah. There was universal regret that he had decided to
+call it a day. It was to the spectators as though a star had suddenly
+walked off the stage in the middle of his big scene; and not even a loud
+and violent quarrel which sprang up at this moment between two excitable
+gamblers over a disputed five-franc counter could wholly console them.
+
+"I say," said Ginger, dexterously plucking Sally out of the crowd, "this
+is topping, meeting you like this. I've been looking for you
+everywhere."
+
+"It's funny you didn't find me, then, for that's where I've been.  I was
+looking for you."
+
+"No, really?" Ginger seemed pleased.  He led the way to the quiet
+ante-room outside the gambling-hall, and they sat down in a corner. It
+was pleasant here, with nobody near except the gorgeously uniformed
+attendant over by the door. "That was awfully good of you."
+
+"I felt I must have a talk with you before my train went."
+
+Ginger started violently.
+
+"Your train? What do you mean?"
+
+"The puff-puff," explained Sally.  "I'm leaving to-night, you know."
+
+"Leaving?" Ginger looked as horrified as the devoutest of the
+congregation of which Sally had just ceased to be a member. "You don't
+mean leaving? You're not going away from Roville?"
+
+"I'm afraid so."
+
+"But why? Where are you going?"
+
+"Back to America.  My boat sails from Cherbourg tomorrow."
+
+"Oh, my aunt!"
+
+"I'm sorry," said Sally, touched by his concern.  She was a warm-hearted
+girl and liked being appreciated. "But..."
+
+"I say..." Ginger Kemp turned bright scarlet and glared before him at
+the uniformed official, who was regarding their tête-à-tête with the
+indulgent eye of one who has been through this sort of thing himself. "I
+say, look here, will you marry me?"
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Sally stared at his vermilion profile in frank amazement.  Ginger, she
+had realized by this time, was in many ways a surprising young man, but
+she had not expected him to be as surprising as this.
+
+"Marry you!"
+
+"You know what I mean."
+
+"Well, yes, I suppose I do.  You allude to the holy state.  Yes, I know
+what you mean."
+
+"Then how about it?"
+
+Sally began to regain her composure.  Her sense of humour was tickled.
+She looked at Ginger gravely. He did not meet her eye, but continued to
+drink in the uniformed official, who was by now so carried away by the
+romance of it all that he had begun to hum a love-ballad under his
+breath. The official could not hear what they were saying, and would not
+have been able to understand it even if he could have heard; but he was
+an expert in the language of the eyes.
+
+"But isn't this--don't think I am trying to make difficulties--isn't
+this a little sudden?"
+
+"It's got to be sudden," said Ginger Kemp, complainingly.  "I thought
+you were going to be here for weeks."
+
+"But, my infant, my babe, has it occurred to you that we are practically
+strangers?" She patted his hand tolerantly, causing the uniformed
+official to heave a tender sigh. "I see what has happened," she said.
+"You're mistaking me for some other girl, some girl you know really
+well, and were properly introduced to. Take a good look at me, and
+you'll see."
+
+"If I take a good look at you," said Ginger, feverishly, "I'm dashed if
+I'll answer for the consequences."
+
+"And this is the man I was going to lecture on 'Enterprise.'"
+
+"You're the most wonderful girl I've ever met, dash it!" said Ginger,
+his gaze still riveted on the official by the door "I dare say it is
+sudden. I can't help that. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,
+and there you are!"
+
+"But..."
+
+"Now, look here, I know I'm not much of a chap and all that, but...
+well, I've just won the deuce of a lot of money in there..."
+
+"Would you buy me with your gold?"
+
+"I mean to say, we should have enough to start on, and... of course I've
+made an infernal hash of everything I've tried up till now, but there
+must be something I can do, and you can jolly well bet I'd have a
+goodish stab at it. I mean to say, with you to buck me up and so forth,
+don't you know. Well, I mean..."
+
+"Has it struck you that I may already be engaged to someone else?"
+
+"Oh, golly! Are you?"
+
+For the first time he turned and faced her, and there was a look in his
+eyes which touched Sally and drove all sense of the ludicrous out of
+her. Absurd as it was, this man was really serious.
+
+"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am," she said soberly.
+
+Ginger Kemp bit his lip and for a moment was silent.
+
+"Oh, well, that's torn it!" he said at last.
+
+Sally was aware of an emotion too complex to analyse.  There was pity in
+it, but amusement too. The emotion, though she did not recognize it, was
+maternal. Mothers, listening to their children pleading with engaging
+absurdity for something wholly out of their power to bestow, feel that
+same wavering between tears and laughter. Sally wanted to pick Ginger up
+and kiss him. The one thing she could not do was to look on him, sorry
+as she was for him, as a reasonable, grown-up man.
+
+"You don't really mean it, you know."
+
+"Don't I!" said Ginger, hollowly.  "Oh, don't I!"
+
+"You can't! There isn't such a thing in real life as love at first
+sight. Love's a thing that comes when you know a person well and..." She
+paused. It had just occurred to her that she was hardly the girl to
+lecture in this strain. Her love for Gerald Foster had been sufficiently
+sudden, even instantaneous. What did she know of Gerald except that she
+loved him? They had become engaged within two weeks of their first
+meeting. She found this recollection damping to her eloquence, and ended
+by saying tamely:
+
+"It's ridiculous."
+
+Ginger had simmered down to a mood of melancholy resignation.
+
+"I couldn't have expected you to care for me, I suppose, anyway," he
+said, sombrely. "I'm not much of a chap."
+
+It was just the diversion from the theme under discussion which Sally
+had been longing to find. She welcomed the chance of continuing the
+conversation on a less intimate and sentimental note.
+
+"That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about," she said, seizing
+the opportunity offered by this display of humility. "I've been looking
+for you all day to go on with what I was starting to say in the lift
+last night when we were interrupted. Do you mind if I talk to you like
+an aunt--or a sister, suppose we say? Really, the best plan would be for
+you to adopt me as an honorary sister. What do you think?"
+
+Ginger did not appear noticeably elated at the suggested relationship.
+
+"Because I really do take a tremendous interest in you."
+
+Ginger brightened.  "That's awfully good of you."
+
+"I'm going to speak words of wisdom.  Ginger, why don't you brace up?"
+
+"Brace up?"
+
+"Yes, stiffen your backbone and stick out your chin, and square your
+elbows, and really amount to something. Why do you simply flop about and
+do nothing and leave everything to what you call 'the family'? Why do
+you have to be helped all the time? Why don't you help yourself? Why do
+you have to have jobs found for you? Why don't you rush out and get one?
+Why do you have to worry about what, 'the family' thinks of you? Why
+don't you make yourself independent of them? I know you had hard luck,
+suddenly finding yourself without money and all that, but, good heavens,
+everybody else in the world who has ever done anything has been broke at
+one time or another. It's part of the fun. You'll never get anywhere by
+letting yourself be picked up by the family like... like a floppy
+Newfoundland puppy and dumped down in any old place that happens to suit
+them. A job's a thing you've got to choose for yourself and get for
+yourself. Think what you can do--there must be something--and then go at
+it with a snort and grab it and hold it down and teach it to take a
+joke. You've managed to collect some money. It will give you time to
+look round. And, when you've had a look round, do something! Try to
+realize you're alive, and try to imagine the family isn't!"
+
+Sally stopped and drew a deep breath.  Ginger Kemp did not reply for a
+moment. He seemed greatly impressed.
+
+"When you talk quick," he said at length, in a serious meditative voice,
+"your nose sort of goes all squiggly. Ripping, it looks!"
+
+Sally uttered an indignant cry.
+
+"Do you mean to say you haven't been listening to a word I've been
+saying," she demanded.
+
+"Oh, rather! Oh, by Jove, yes."
+
+"Well, what did I say?"
+
+"You... er... And your eyes sort of shine, too."
+
+"Never mind my eyes.  What did I say?"
+
+"You told me," said Ginger, on reflection, "to get a job."
+
+"Well, yes.  I put it much better than that, but that's what it amounted
+to, I suppose. All right, then. I'm glad you..."
+
+Ginger was eyeing her with mournful devotion.  "I say," he interrupted,
+"I wish you'd let me write to you. Letters, I mean, and all that. I have
+an idea it would kind of buck me up."
+
+"You won't have time for writing letters."
+
+"I'll have time to write them to you.  You haven't an address or
+anything of that sort in America, have you, by any chance? I mean, so
+that I'd know where to write to."
+
+"I can give you an address which will always find me." She told him the
+number and street of Mrs. Meecher's boarding-house, and he wrote them
+down reverently on his shirt-cuff. "Yes, on second thoughts, do write,"
+she said. "Of course, I shall want to know how you've got on. I... oh,
+my goodness! That clock's not right?"
+
+"Just about.  What time does your train go?"
+
+"Go! It's gone! Or, at least, it goes in about two seconds." She made a
+rush for the swing-door, to the confusion of the uniformed official who
+had not been expecting this sudden activity. "Good-bye, Ginger. Write to
+me, and remember what I said."
+
+Ginger, alert after his unexpected fashion when it became a question of
+physical action, had followed her through the swing-door, and they
+emerged together and started running down the square.
+
+"Stick it!" said Ginger, encouragingly.  He was running easily and well,
+as becomes a man who, in his day, had been a snip for his international
+at scrum-half.
+
+Sally saved her breath.  The train was beginning to move slowly out of
+the station as they sprinted abreast on to the platform. Ginger dived
+for the nearest door, wrenched it open, gathered Sally neatly in his
+arms, and flung her in. She landed squarely on the toes of a man who
+occupied the corner seat, and, bounding off again, made for the window.
+Ginger, faithful to the last, was trotting beside the train as it
+gathered speed.
+
+"Ginger! My poor porter! Tip him.  I forgot."
+
+"Right ho!"
+
+"And don't forget what I've been saying."
+
+"Right ho!"
+
+"Look after yourself and 'Death to the Family!'"
+
+"Right ho!"
+
+The train passed smoothly out of the station.  Sally cast one last look
+back at her red-haired friend, who had now halted and was waving a
+handkerchief. Then she turned to apologize to the other occupant of the
+carriage.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said, breathlessly.  "I hope I didn't hurt you."
+
+She found herself facing Ginger's cousin, the dark man of yesterday's
+episode on the beach, Bruce Carmyle.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+Mr. Carmyle was not a man who readily allowed himself to be disturbed by
+life's little surprises, but at the present moment he could not help
+feeling slightly dazed. He recognized Sally now as the French girl who
+had attracted his cousin Lancelot's notice on the beach. At least he had
+assumed that she was French, and it was startling to be addressed by her
+now in fluent English. How had she suddenly acquired this gift of
+tongues? And how on earth had she had time since yesterday, when he had
+been a total stranger to her, to become sufficiently intimate with
+Cousin Lancelot to be sprinting with him down station platforms and
+addressing him out of railway-carriage windows as Ginger? Bruce Carmyle
+was aware that most members of that sub-species of humanity, his
+cousin's personal friends, called him by that familiar--and, so Carmyle
+held, vulgar--nickname: but how had this girl got hold of it?
+
+If Sally had been less pretty, Mr. Carmyle would undoubtedly have
+looked disapprovingly at her, for she had given his rather rigid sense
+of the proprieties a nasty jar. But as, panting and flushed from her
+run, she was prettier than any girl he had yet met, he contrived to
+smile.
+
+"Not at all," he said in answer to her question, though it was far from
+the truth. His left big toe was aching confoundedly. Even a girl with a
+foot as small as Sally's can make her presence felt on a man's toe if
+the scrum-half who is handling her aims well and uses plenty of vigour.
+
+"If you don't mind," said Sally, sitting down, "I think I'll breathe a
+little."
+
+She breathed.  The train sped on.
+
+"Quite a close thing," said Bruce Carmyle, affably.  The pain in his toe
+was diminishing. "You nearly missed it."
+
+"Yes.  It was lucky Mr. Kemp was with me.  He throws very straight,
+doesn't he."
+
+"Tell me," said Carmyle, "how do you come to know my Cousin? On the
+beach yesterday morning..."
+
+"Oh, we didn't know each other then.  But we were staying at the same
+hotel, and we spent an hour or so shut up in an elevator together. That
+was when we really got acquainted."
+
+A waiter entered the compartment, announcing in unexpected English that
+dinner was served in the restaurant car. "Would you care for dinner?"
+
+"I'm starving," said Sally.
+
+She reproved herself, as they made their way down the corridor, for
+being so foolish as to judge anyone by his appearance. This man was
+perfectly pleasant in spite of his grim exterior. She had decided by the
+time they had seated themselves at the table she liked him.
+
+At the table, however, Mr. Carmyle's manner changed for the worse.  He
+lost his amiability. He was evidently a man who took his meals seriously
+and believed in treating waiters with severity. He shuddered austerely
+at a stain on the table-cloth, and then concentrated himself frowningly
+on the bill of fare. Sally, meanwhile, was establishing cosy relations
+with the much too friendly waiter, a cheerful old man who from the start
+seemed to have made up his mind to regard her as a favourite daughter.
+The waiter talked no English and Sally no French, but they were getting
+along capitally, when Mr. Carmyle, who had been irritably waving aside
+the servitor's light-hearted advice--at the Hotel Splendide the waiters
+never bent over you and breathed cordial suggestions down the side of
+your face--gave his order crisply in the Anglo-Gallic dialect of the
+travelling Briton. The waiter remarked, "Boum!" in a pleased sort of
+way, and vanished.
+
+"Nice old man!" said Sally.
+
+"Infernally familiar!" said Mr. Carmyle.
+
+Sally perceived that on the topic of the waiter she and her host did not
+see eye to eye and that little pleasure or profit could be derived from
+any discussion centring about him. She changed the subject. She was not
+liking Mr. Carmyle quite so much as she had done a few minutes ago, but
+it was courteous of him to give her dinner, and she tried to like him as
+much as she could.
+
+"By the way," she said, "my name is Nicholas.  I always think it's a
+good thing to start with names, don't you?"
+
+"Mine..."
+
+"Oh, I know yours.  Ginger--Mr. Kemp told me."
+
+Mr. Carmyle, who since the waiter's departure, had been thawing,
+stiffened again at the mention of Ginger.
+
+"Indeed?" he said, coldly.  "Apparently you got intimate."
+
+Sally did not like his tone.  He seemed to be criticizing her, and she
+resented criticism from a stranger. Her eyes opened wide and she looked
+dangerously across the table.
+
+"Why 'apparently'? I told you that we had got intimate, and I explained
+how. You can't stay shut up in an elevator half the night with anybody
+without getting to know him. I found Mr. Kemp very pleasant."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"And very interesting."
+
+Mr. Carmyle raised his eyebrows.
+
+"Would you call him interesting?"
+
+"I did call him interesting." Sally was beginning to feel the
+exhilaration of battle. Men usually made themselves extremely agreeable
+to her, and she reacted belligerently under the stiff unfriendliness
+which had come over her companion in the last few minutes.
+
+"He told me all about himself."
+
+"And you found that interesting?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well..." A frigid half-smile came and went on Bruce Carmyle's dark
+face. "My cousin has many excellent qualities, no doubt--he used to play
+football well, and I understand that he is a capable amateur
+pugilist--but I should not have supposed him entertaining. We find him a
+little dull."
+
+"I thought it was only royalty that called themselves 'we.'"
+
+"I meant myself--and the rest of the family."
+
+The mention of the family was too much for Sally.  She had to stop
+talking in order to allow her mind to clear itself of rude thoughts.
+
+"Mr. Kemp was telling me about Mr. Scrymgeour," she went on at length.
+
+Bruce Carmyle stared for a moment at the yard or so of French bread
+which the waiter had placed on the table.
+
+"Indeed?" he said.  "He has an engaging lack of reticence."
+
+The waiter returned bearing soup and dumped it down.
+
+"V'la!" he observed, with the satisfied air of a man who has
+successfully performed a difficult conjuring trick. He smiled at Sally
+expectantly, as though confident of applause from this section of his
+audience at least. But Sally's face was set and rigid. She had been
+snubbed, and the sensation was as pleasant as it was novel.
+
+"I think Mr. Kemp had hard luck," she said.
+
+"If you will excuse me, I would prefer not to discuss the matter."
+
+Mr. Carmyle's attitude was that Sally might be a pretty girl, but she
+was a stranger, and the intimate affairs of the Family were not to be
+discussed with strangers, however prepossessing.
+
+"He was quite in the right.  Mr. Scrymgeour was beating a dog..."
+
+"I've heard the details."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know that.  Well, don't you agree with me, then?"
+
+"I do not.  A man who would throw away an excellent position simply
+because..."
+
+"Oh, well, if that's your view, I suppose it is useless to talk about
+it."
+
+"Quite."
+
+"Still, there's no harm in asking what you propose to do about
+Gin--about Mr. Kemp."
+
+Mr. Carmyle became more glacial.
+
+"I'm afraid I cannot discuss..."
+
+Sally's quick impatience, nobly restrained till now, finally got the
+better of her.
+
+"Oh, for goodness' sake," she snapped, "do try to be human, and don't
+always be snubbing people. You remind me of one of those portraits of
+men in the eighteenth century, with wooden faces, who look out of heavy
+gold frames at you with fishy eyes as if you were a regrettable
+incident."
+
+"Rosbif," said the waiter genially, manifesting himself suddenly beside
+them as if he had popped up out of a trap.
+
+Bruce Carmyle attacked his roast beef morosely.  Sally who was in the
+mood when she knew that she would be ashamed of herself later on, but
+was full of battle at the moment, sat in silence.
+
+"I am sorry," said Mr. Carmyle ponderously, "if my eyes are fishy.  The
+fact has not been called to my attention before."
+
+"I suppose you never had any sisters," said Sally.  "They would have
+told you."
+
+Mr. Carmyle relapsed into an offended dumbness, which lasted till the
+waiter had brought the coffee.
+
+"I think," said Sally, getting up, "I'll be going now.  I don't seem to
+want any coffee, and, if I stay on, I may say something rude. I thought
+I might be able to put in a good word for Mr. Kemp and save him from
+being massacred, but apparently it's no use. Good-bye, Mr. Carmyle, and
+thank you for giving me dinner."
+
+She made her way down the car, followed by Bruce Carmyle's indignant,
+yet fascinated, gaze. Strange emotions were stirring in Mr. Carmyle's
+bosom.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+GINGER IN DANGEROUS MOOD
+
+
+
+Some few days later, owing to the fact that the latter, being
+preoccupied, did not see him first, Bruce Carmyle met his cousin
+Lancelot in Piccadilly. They had returned by different routes from
+Roville, and Ginger would have preferred the separation to continue. He
+was hurrying on with a nod, when Carmyle stopped him.
+
+"Just the man I wanted to see," he observed.
+
+"Oh, hullo!" said Ginger, without joy.
+
+"I was thinking of calling at your club."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Yes.  Cigarette?"
+
+Ginger peered at the proffered case with the vague suspicion of the man
+who has allowed himself to be lured on to the platform and is accepting
+a card from the conjurer. He felt bewildered. In all the years of their
+acquaintance he could not recall another such exhibition of geniality on
+his cousin's part. He was surprised, indeed, at Mr. Carmyle's speaking
+to him at all, for the affaire Scrymgeour remained an un-healed wound,
+and the Family, Ginger knew, were even now in session upon it.
+
+"Been back in London long?"
+
+"Day or two."
+
+"I heard quite by accident that you had returned and that you were
+staying at the club. By the way, thank you for introducing me to Miss
+Nicholas."
+
+Ginger started violently.
+
+"What!"
+
+"I was in that compartment, you know, at Roville Station.  You threw her
+right on top of me. We agreed to consider that an introduction. An
+attractive girl."
+
+Bruce Carmyle had not entirely made up his mind regarding Sally, but on
+one point he was clear, that she should not, if he could help it, pass
+out of his life. Her abrupt departure had left him with that baffled and
+dissatisfied feeling which, though it has little in common with love at
+first sight, frequently produces the same effects. She had had, he
+could not disguise it from himself, the better of their late encounter
+and he was conscious of a desire to meet her again and show her that
+there was more in him than she apparently supposed. Bruce Carmyle, in a
+word, was piqued: and, though he could not quite decide whether he liked
+or disliked Sally, he was very sure that a future without her would have
+an element of flatness.
+
+"A very attractive girl.  We had a very pleasant talk."
+
+"I bet you did," said Ginger enviously.
+
+"By the way, she did not give you her address by any chance?"
+
+"Why?" said Ginger suspiciously.  His attitude towards Sally's address
+resembled somewhat that of a connoisseur who has acquired a unique work
+of art. He wanted to keep it to himself and gloat over it.
+
+"Well, I--er--I promised to send her some books she was anxious to
+read..."
+
+"I shouldn't think she gets much time for reading."
+
+"Books which are not published in America."
+
+"Oh, pretty nearly everything is published in America, what? Bound to
+be, I mean."
+
+"Well, these particular books are not," said Mr. Carmyle shortly.  He
+was finding Ginger's reserve a little trying, and wished that he had
+been more inventive.
+
+"Give them to me and I'll send them to her," suggested Ginger.
+
+"Good Lord, man!" snapped Mr. Carmyle.  "I'm capable of sending a few
+books to America. Where does she live?"
+
+Ginger revealed the sacred number of the holy street which had the luck
+to be Sally's headquarters. He did it because with a persistent devil
+like his cousin there seemed no way of getting out of it: but he did it
+grudgingly.
+
+"Thanks." Bruce Carmyle wrote the information down with a gold pencil in
+a dapper little morocco-bound note-book. He was the sort of man who
+always has a pencil, and the backs of old envelopes never enter into his
+life.
+
+There was a pause.  Bruce Carmyle coughed.
+
+"I saw Uncle Donald this morning," he said.
+
+His manner had lost its geniality.  There was no need for it now, and he
+was a man who objected to waste. He spoke coldly, and in his voice there
+was a familiar sub-tingle of reproof.
+
+"Yes?" said Ginger moodily.  This was the uncle in whose office he had
+made his debut as a hasher: a worthy man, highly respected in the
+National Liberal Club, but never a favourite of Ginger's. There were
+other minor uncles and a few subsidiary aunts who went to make up the
+Family, but Uncle Donald was unquestionably the managing director of
+that body and it was Ginger's considered opinion that in this capacity
+he approximated to a human blister.
+
+"He wants you to dine with him to-night at Bleke's."
+
+Ginger's depression deepened.  A dinner with Uncle Donald would hardly
+have been a cheerful function, even in the surroundings of a banquet in
+the Arabian Nights. There was that about Uncle Donald's personality
+which would have cast a sobering influence over the orgies of the
+Emperor Tiberius at Capri. To dine with him at a morgue like that relic
+of Old London, Bleke's Coffee House, which confined its custom
+principally to regular patrons who had not missed an evening there for
+half a century, was to touch something very near bed-rock. Ginger was
+extremely doubtful whether flesh and blood were equal to it.
+
+"To-night?" he said.  "Oh, you mean to-night? Well..."
+
+"Don't be a fool.  You know as well as I do that you've got to go."
+Uncle Donald's invitations were royal commands in the Family. "If
+you've another engagement you must put it off."
+
+"Oh, all right."
+
+"Seven-thirty sharp."
+
+"All right," said Ginger gloomily.
+
+The two men went their ways, Bruce Carmyle eastwards because he had
+clients to see in his chambers at the Temple; Ginger westwards because
+Mr. Carmyle had gone east. There was little sympathy between these
+cousins: yet, oddly enough, their thoughts as they walked centred on the
+same object. Bruce Carmyle, threading his way briskly through the crowds
+of Piccadilly Circus, was thinking of Sally: and so was Ginger as he
+loafed aimlessly towards Hyde Park Corner, bumping in a sort of coma
+from pedestrian to pedestrian.
+
+Since his return to London Ginger had been in bad shape.  He mooned
+through the days and slept poorly at night. If there is one thing
+rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives
+a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion,
+it is hopeless love. Hopeless love had got Ginger all stirred up. His
+had been hitherto a placid soul. Even the financial crash which had so
+altered his life had not bruised him very deeply. His temperament had
+enabled him to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a
+philosophic "Right ho!" But now everything seemed different. Things
+irritated him acutely, which before he had accepted as inevitable--his
+Uncle Donald's moustache, for instance, and its owner's habit of
+employing it during meals as a sort of zareba or earthwork against the
+assaults of soup.
+
+"By gad!" thought Ginger, stopping suddenly opposite Devonshire House.
+"If he uses that damned shrubbery as soup-strainer to-night, I'll slosh
+him with a fork!"
+
+Hard thoughts... hard thoughts! And getting harder all the time, for
+nothing grows more quickly than a mood of rebellion. Rebellion is a
+forest fire that flames across the soul. The spark had been lighted in
+Ginger, and long before he reached Hyde Park Corner he was ablaze and
+crackling. By the time he returned to his club he was practically a
+menace to society--to that section of it, at any rate, which embraced
+his Uncle Donald, his minor uncles George and William, and his aunts
+Mary, Geraldine, and Louise.
+
+Nor had the mood passed when he began to dress for the dismal
+festivities of Bleke's Coffee House. He scowled as he struggled morosely
+with an obstinate tie. One cannot disguise the fact--Ginger was warming
+up. And it was just at this moment that Fate, as though it had been
+waiting for the psychological instant, applied the finishing touch.
+There was a knock at the door, and a waiter came in with a telegram.
+
+Ginger looked at the envelope.  It had been readdressed and forwarded on
+from the Hotel Normandie. It was a wireless, handed in on board the
+White Star liner Olympic, and it ran as follows:
+
+Remember.  Death to the Family.  S.
+
+Ginger sat down heavily on the bed.
+
+The driver of the taxi-cab which at twenty-five minutes past seven drew
+up at the dingy door of Bleke's Coffee House in the Strand was rather
+struck by his fare's manner and appearance. A determined-looking sort of
+young bloke, was the taxi-driver's verdict.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+SALLY HEARS NEWS
+
+
+
+It had been Sally's intention, on arriving in New York, to take a room
+at the St. Regis and revel in the gilded luxury to which her wealth
+entitled her before moving into the small but comfortable apartment
+which, as soon as she had the time, she intended to find and make her
+permanent abode. But when the moment came and she was giving directions
+to the taxi-driver at the dock, there seemed to her something
+revoltingly Fillmorian about the scheme. It would be time enough to
+sever herself from the boarding-house which had been her home for three
+years when she had found the apartment. Meanwhile, the decent thing to
+do, if she did not want to brand herself in the sight of her conscience
+as a female Fillmore, was to go back temporarily to Mrs. Meecher's
+admirable establishment and foregather with her old friends. After all,
+home is where the heart is, even if there are more prunes there than the
+gourmet would consider judicious.
+
+Perhaps it was the unavoidable complacency induced by the thought that
+she was doing the right thing, or possibly it was the tingling
+expectation of meeting Gerald Foster again after all these weeks of
+separation, that made the familiar streets seem wonderfully bright as
+she drove through them. It was a perfect, crisp New York morning, all
+blue sky and amber sunshine, and even the ash-cans had a stimulating
+look about them. The street cars were full of happy people rollicking
+off to work: policemen directed the traffic with jaunty affability: and
+the white-clad street-cleaners went about their poetic tasks with a
+quiet but none the less noticeable relish. It was improbable that any of
+these people knew that she was back, but somehow they all seemed to be
+behaving as though this were a special day.
+
+The first discordant note in this overture of happiness was struck by
+Mrs. Meecher, who informed Sally, after expressing her gratification at
+the news that she required her old room, that Gerald Foster had left
+town that morning.
+
+"Gone to Detroit, he has," said Mrs. Meecher.  "Miss Doland, too." She
+broke off to speak a caustic word to the boarding-house handyman, who,
+with Sally's trunk as a weapon, was depreciating the value of the
+wall-paper in the hall. "There's that play of his being tried out there,
+you know, Monday," resumed Mrs. Meecher, after the handyman had bumped
+his way up the staircase. "They been rehearsing ever since you left."
+
+Sally was disappointed, but it was such a beautiful morning, and New
+York was so wonderful after the dull voyage in the liner that she was
+not going to allow herself to be depressed without good reason. After
+all, she could go on to Detroit tomorrow. It was nice to have something
+to which she could look forward.
+
+"Oh, is Elsa in the company?" she said.
+
+"Sure.  And very good too, I hear." Mrs. Meecher kept abreast of
+theatrical gossip. She was an ex-member of the profession herself,
+having been in the first production of "Florodora," though, unlike
+everybody else, not one of the original Sextette. "Mr. Faucitt was down
+to see a rehearsal, and he said Miss Doland was fine. And he's not easy
+to please, as you know."
+
+"How is Mr. Faucitt?"
+
+Mrs. Meecher, not unwillingly, for she was a woman who enjoyed the
+tragedies of life, made her second essay in the direction of lowering
+Sally's uplifted mood.
+
+"Poor old gentleman, he ain't over and above well.  Went to bed early
+last night with a headache, and this morning I been to see him and he
+don't look well. There's a lot of this Spanish influenza about. It might
+be that. Lots o' people have been dying of it, if you believe what you
+see in the papers," said Mrs. Meecher buoyantly.
+
+"Good gracious! You don't think... ?"
+
+"Well, he ain't turned black," admitted Mrs. Meecher with regret.  "They
+say they turn black. If you believe what you see in the papers, that is.
+Of course, that may come later," she added with the air of one confident
+that all will come right in the future. "The doctor'll be in to see him
+pretty soon. He's quite happy. Toto's sitting with him."
+
+Sally's concern increased.  Like everyone who had ever spent any length
+of time in the house, she had strong views on Toto. This quadruped, who
+stained the fame of the entire canine race by posing as a dog, was a
+small woolly animal with a persistent and penetrating yap, hard to bear
+with equanimity in health and certainly quite outside the range of a
+sick man. Her heart bled for Mr. Faucitt. Mrs. Meecher, on the other
+hand, who held a faith in her little pet's amiability and power to
+soothe which seven years' close association had been unable to shake,
+seemed to feel that, with Toto on the spot, all that could be done had
+been done as far as pampering the invalid was concerned.
+
+"I must go up and see him," cried Sally.  "Poor old dear."
+
+"Sure.  You know his room.  You can hear Toto talking to him now," said
+Mrs. Meecher complacently. "He wants a cracker, that's what he wants.
+Toto likes a cracker after breakfast."
+
+The invalid's eyes, as Sally entered the room, turned wearily to the
+door. At the sight of Sally they lit up with an incredulous rapture.
+Almost any intervention would have pleased Mr. Faucitt at that moment,
+for his little playmate had long outstayed any welcome that might
+originally have been his: but that the caller should be his beloved
+Sally seemed to the old man something in the nature of a return of the
+age of miracles.
+
+"Sally!"
+
+"One moment.  Here, Toto!"
+
+Toto, struck momentarily dumb by the sight of food, had jumped off the
+bed and was standing with his head on one side, peering questioningly at
+the cracker. He was a suspicious dog, but he allowed himself to be lured
+into the passage, upon which Sally threw the cracker down and slipped in
+and shut the door. Toto, after a couple of yaps, which may have been
+gratitude or baffled fury, trotted off downstairs, and Mr. Faucitt drew
+a deep breath.
+
+"Sally, you come, as ever, as an angel of mercy.  Our worthy Mrs.
+Meecher means well, and I yield to no man in my respect for her innate
+kindness of heart: but she errs in supposing that that thrice-damned
+whelp of hers is a combination of sick-nurse, soothing medicine, and a
+week at the seaside. She insisted on bringing him here. He was yapping
+then, as he was yapping when, with womanly resource which I cannot
+sufficiently praise, you decoyed him hence. And each yap went through me
+like hammer-strokes on sheeted tin. Sally, you stand alone among
+womankind. You shine like a good deed in a naughty world. When did you
+get back?"
+
+"I've only just arrived in my hired barouche from the pier."
+
+"And you came to see your old friend without delay? I am grateful and
+flattered. Sally, my dear."
+
+"Of course I came to see you.  Do you suppose that, when Mrs. Meecher
+told me you were sick, I just said 'Is that so?' and went on talking
+about the weather? Well, what do you mean by it? Frightening everybody.
+Poor old darling, do you feel very bad?"
+
+"One thousand individual mice are nibbling the base of my spine, and I
+am conscious of a constant need of cooling refreshment. But what of
+that? Your presence is a tonic. Tell me, how did our Sally enjoy foreign
+travel?"
+
+"Our Sally had the time of her life."
+
+"Did you visit England?"
+
+"Only passing through."
+
+"How did it look?" asked Mr. Faucitt eagerly.
+
+"Moist.  Very moist."
+
+"It would," said Mr. Faucitt indulgently.  "I confess that, happy as I
+have been in this country, there are times when I miss those wonderful
+London days, when a sort of cosy brown mist hangs over the streets and
+the pavements ooze with a perspiration of mud and water, and you see
+through the haze the yellow glow of the Bodega lamps shining in the
+distance like harbour-lights. Not," said Mr. Faucitt, "that I specify
+the Bodega to the exclusion of other and equally worthy hostelries. I
+have passed just as pleasant hours in Rule's and Short's. You missed
+something by not lingering in England, Sally."
+
+"I know I did--pneumonia."
+
+Mr. Faucitt shook his head reproachfully.
+
+"You are prejudiced, my dear.  You would have enjoyed London if you had
+had the courage to brave its superficial gloom. Where did you spend your
+holiday? Paris?"
+
+"Part of the time.  And the rest of the while I was down by the sea.  It
+was glorious. I don't think I would ever have come back if I hadn't had
+to. But, of course, I wanted to see you all again. And I wanted to be at
+the opening of Mr. Foster's play. Mrs. Meecher tells me you went to one
+of the rehearsals."
+
+"I attended a dog-fight which I was informed was a rehearsal," said Mr.
+Faucitt severely. "There is no rehearsing nowadays."
+
+"Oh dear! Was it as bad as all that?"
+
+"The play is good.  The play--I will go further--is excellent.  It has
+fat. But the acting..."
+
+"Mrs. Meecher said you told her that Elsa was good."
+
+"Our worthy hostess did not misreport me.  Miss Doland has great
+possibilities. She reminds me somewhat of Matilda Devine, under whose
+banner I played a season at the Old Royalty in London many years ago.
+She has the seeds of greatness in her, but she is wasted in the present
+case on an insignificant part. There is only one part in the play. I
+allude to the one murdered by Miss Mabel Hobson."
+
+"Murdered!" Sally's heart sank.  She had been afraid of this, and it was
+no satisfaction to feel that she had warned Gerald. "Is she very
+terrible?"
+
+"She has the face of an angel and the histrionic ability of that curious
+suet pudding which our estimable Mrs. Meecher is apt to give us on
+Fridays. In my professional career I have seen many cases of what I may
+term the Lady Friend in the role of star, but Miss Hobson eclipses them
+all. I remember in the year '94 a certain scion of the plutocracy took
+it into his head to present a female for whom he had conceived an
+admiration in a part which would have taxed the resources of the ablest.
+I was engaged in her support, and at the first rehearsal I recollect
+saying to my dear old friend, Arthur Moseby--dead, alas, these many
+years. An excellent juvenile, but, like so many good fellows, cursed
+with a tendency to lift the elbow--I recollect saying to him 'Arthur,
+dear boy, I give it two weeks.' 'Max,' was his reply, 'you are an
+incurable optimist. One consecutive night, laddie, one consecutive
+night.' We had, I recall, an even half-crown upon it. He won. We opened
+at Wigan, our leading lady got the bird, and the show closed next day. I
+was forcibly reminded of this incident as I watched Miss Hobson
+rehearsing."
+
+"Oh, poor Ger--poor Mr. Foster!"
+
+"I do not share your commiseration for that young man," said Mr. Faucitt
+austerely. "You probably are almost a stranger to him, but he and I have
+been thrown together a good deal of late. A young man upon whom, mark my
+words, success, if it ever comes, will have the worst effects. I dislike
+him. Sally. He is, I think, without exception, the most selfish and
+self-centred young man of my acquaintance. He reminds me very much of
+old Billy Fothergill, with whom I toured a good deal in the later
+eighties. Did I ever tell you the story of Billy and the amateur who...?"
+
+Sally was in no mood to listen to the adventures of Mr. Fothergill.  The
+old man's innocent criticism of Gerald had stabbed her deeply. A
+momentary impulse to speak hotly in his defence died away as she saw Mr.
+Faucitt's pale, worn old face. He had meant no harm, after all. How
+could he know what Gerald was to her?
+
+She changed the conversation abruptly.
+
+"Have you seen anything of Fillmore while I've been away?"
+
+"Fillmore? Why yes, my dear, curiously enough I happened to run into him
+on Broadway only a few days ago. He seemed changed--less stiff and aloof
+than he had been for some time past. I may be wronging him, but there
+have been times of late when one might almost have fancied him a trifle
+up-stage. All that was gone at our last encounter. He appeared glad to
+see me and was most cordial."
+
+Sally found her composure restored.  Her lecture on the night of the
+party had evidently, she thought, not been wasted. Mr. Faucitt, however,
+advanced another theory to account for the change in the Man of Destiny.
+
+"I rather fancy," he said, "that the softening influence has been the
+young man's fiancée."
+
+"What? Fillmore's not engaged?"
+
+"Did he not write and tell you? I suppose he was waiting to inform you
+when you returned. Yes, Fillmore is betrothed. The lady was with him
+when we met. A Miss Winch. In the profession, I understand. He
+introduced me. A very charming and sensible young lady, I thought."
+
+Sally shook her head.
+
+"She can't be.  Fillmore would never have got engaged to anyone like
+that. Was her hair crimson?"
+
+"Brown, if I recollect rightly."
+
+"Very loud, I suppose, and overdressed?"
+
+"On the contrary, neat and quiet."
+
+"You've made a mistake," said Sally decidedly.  "She can't have been
+like that. I shall have to look into this. It does seem hard that I
+can't go away for a few weeks without all my friends taking to beds of
+sickness and all my brothers getting ensnared by vampires."
+
+A knock at the door interrupted her complaint.  Mrs. Meecher entered,
+ushering in a pleasant little man with spectacles and black bag.
+
+"The doctor to see you, Mr. Faucitt." Mrs. Meecher cast an appraising
+eye at the invalid, as if to detect symptoms of approaching
+discoloration. "I've been telling him that what I think you've gotten is
+this here new Spanish influenza. Two more deaths there were in the paper
+this morning, if you can believe what you see..."
+
+"I wonder," said the doctor, "if you would mind going and bringing me a
+small glass of water?"
+
+"Why, sure."
+
+"Not a large glass--a small glass.  Just let the tap run for a few
+moments and take care not to spill any as you come up the stairs. I
+always ask ladies, like our friend who has just gone," he added as the
+door closed, "to bring me a glass of water. It keeps them amused and
+interested and gets them out of the way, and they think I am going to do
+a conjuring trick with it. As a matter of fact, I'm going to drink it.
+Now let's have a look at you."
+
+The examination did not take long.  At the end of it the doctor seemed
+somewhat chagrined.
+
+"Our good friend's diagnosis was correct.  I'd give a leg to say it
+wasn't, but it was. It is this here new Spanish influenza. Not a bad
+attack. You want to stay in bed and keep warm, and I'll write you out a
+prescription. You ought to be nursed. Is this young lady a nurse?"
+
+"No, no, merely..."
+
+"Of course I'm a nurse," said Sally decidedly.  "It isn't difficult, is
+it, doctor? I know nurses smooth pillows. I can do that. Is there
+anything else?"
+
+"Their principal duty is to sit here and prevent the excellent and
+garrulous lady who has just left us from getting in. They must also be
+able to aim straight with a book or an old shoe, if that small woolly
+dog I met downstairs tries to force an entrance. If you are equal to
+these tasks, I can leave the case in your hands with every confidence."
+
+"But, Sally, my dear," said Mr. Faucitt, concerned, "you must not waste
+your time looking after me. You have a thousand things to occupy you."
+
+"There's nothing I want to do more than help you to get better.  I'll
+just go out and send a wire, and then I'll be right back."
+
+Five minutes later, Sally was in a Western Union office, telegraphing to
+Gerald that she would be unable to reach Detroit in time for the
+opening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+FIRST AID FOR FILLMORE
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+It was not till the following Friday that Sally was able to start for
+Detroit. She arrived on the Saturday morning and drove to the Hotel
+Statler. Having ascertained that Gerald was stopping in the hotel and
+having 'phoned up to his room to tell him to join her, she went into the
+dining-room and ordered breakfast.
+
+She felt low-spirited as she waited for the food to arrive.  The nursing
+of Mr. Faucitt had left her tired, and she had not slept well on the
+train. But the real cause of her depression was the fact that there had
+been a lack of enthusiasm in Gerald's greeting over the telephone just
+now. He had spoken listlessly, as though the fact of her returning after
+all these weeks was a matter of no account, and she felt hurt and
+perplexed.
+
+A cup of coffee had a stimulating effect.  Men, of course, were always
+like this in the early morning. It would, no doubt, be a very different
+Gerald who would presently bound into the dining-room, quickened and
+restored by a cold shower-bath. In the meantime, here was food, and she
+needed it.
+
+She was pouring out her second cup of coffee when a stout young man, of
+whom she had caught a glimpse as he moved about that section of the
+hotel lobby which was visible through the open door of the dining-room,
+came in and stood peering about as though in search of someone. The
+momentary sight she had had of this young man had interested Sally. She
+had thought how extraordinarily like he was to her brother Fillmore. Now
+she perceived that it was Fillmore himself.
+
+Sally was puzzled.  What could Fillmore be doing so far west? She had
+supposed him to be a permanent resident of New York. But, of course,
+your man of affairs and vast interests flits about all over the place.
+At any rate, here he was, and she called him. And, after he had stood in
+the doorway looking in every direction except the right one for another
+minute, he saw her and came over to her table.
+
+"Why, Sally?" His manner, she thought, was nervous--one might almost
+have said embarrassed. She attributed this to a guilty conscience.
+Presently he would have to break to her the news that he had become
+engaged to be married without her sisterly sanction, and no doubt he was
+wondering how to begin. "What are you doing here? I thought you were in
+Europe."
+
+"I got back a week ago, but I've been nursing poor old Mr. Faucitt ever
+since then. He's been ill, poor old dear. I've come here to see Mr.
+Foster's play, 'The Primrose Way,' you know. Is it a success?"
+
+"It hasn't opened yet."
+
+"Don't be silly, Fill.  Do pull yourself together.  It opened last
+Monday."
+
+"No, it didn't.  Haven't you heard? They've closed all the theatres
+because of this infernal Spanish influenza. Nothing has been playing
+this week. You must have seen it in the papers."
+
+"I haven't had time to read the papers.  Oh, Fill, what an awful shame!"
+
+"Yes, it's pretty tough.  Makes the company all on edge.  I've had the
+darndest time, I can tell you."
+
+"Why, what have you got to do with it?"
+
+Fillmore coughed.
+
+"I--er--oh, I didn't tell you that.  I'm sort of--er--mixed up in the
+show. Cracknell--you remember he was at college with me--suggested that
+I should come down and look at it. Shouldn't wonder if he wants me to
+put money into it and so on."
+
+"I thought he had all the money in the world."
+
+"Yes, he has a lot, but these fellows like to let a pal in on a good
+thing."
+
+"Is it a good thing?"
+
+"The play's fine."
+
+"That's what Mr. Faucitt said.  But Mabel Hobson..."
+
+Fillmore's ample face registered emotion.
+
+"She's an awful woman, Sally! She can't act, and she throws her weight
+about all the time. The other day there was a fuss about a
+paper-knife..."
+
+"How do you mean, a fuss about a paper-knife?"
+
+"One of the props, you know.  It got mislaid.  I'm certain it wasn't my
+fault..."
+
+"How could it have been your fault?" asked Sally wonderingly.  Love
+seemed to have the worst effects on Fillmore's mentality.
+
+"Well--er--you know how it is.  Angry woman... blames the first person
+she sees... This paper-knife..."
+
+Fillmore's voice trailed off into pained silence.
+
+"Mr. Faucitt said Elsa Doland was good."
+
+"Oh, she's all right," said Fillmore indifferently.  "But--" His face
+brightened and animation crept into his voice. "But the girl you want to
+watch is Miss Winch. Gladys Winch. She plays the maid. She's only in the
+first act, and hasn't much to say, except 'Did you ring, madam?' and
+things like that. But it's the way she says 'em! Sally, that girl's a
+genius! The greatest character actress in a dozen years! You mark my
+words, in a darned little while you'll see her name up on Broadway in
+electric light. Personality? Ask me! Charm? She wrote the words and
+music! Looks?..."
+
+"All right! All right! I know all about it, Fill.  And will you kindly
+inform me how you dared to get engaged without consulting me?"
+
+Fillmore blushed richly.
+
+"Oh, do you know?"
+
+"Yes.  Mr. Faucitt told me."
+
+"Well..."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, I'm only human," argued Fillmore.
+
+"I call that a very handsome admission.  You've got quite modest,
+Fill."
+
+He had certainly changed for the better since their last meeting.
+
+It was as if someone had punctured him and let out all the pomposity.
+If this was due, as Mr. Faucitt had suggested, to the influence of Miss
+Winch, Sally felt that she could not but approve of the romance.
+
+"I'll introduce you sometime,' said Fillmore.
+
+"I want to meet her very much."
+
+"I'll have to be going now.  I've got to see Bunbury.  I thought he
+might be in here."
+
+"Who's Bunbury?"
+
+"The producer.  I suppose he is breakfasting in his room.  I'd better go
+up."
+
+"You are busy, aren't you.  Little marvel! It's lucky they've got you to
+look after them."
+
+Fillmore retired and Sally settled down to wait for Gerald, no longer
+hurt by his manner over the telephone. Poor Gerald! No wonder he had
+seemed upset.
+
+A few minutes later he came in.
+
+"Oh, Jerry darling," said Sally, as he reached the table, "I'm so sorry.
+I've just been hearing about it."
+
+Gerald sat down.  His appearance fulfilled the promise of his voice over
+the telephone. A sort of nervous dullness wrapped him about like a
+garment.
+
+"It's just my luck," he said gloomily.  "It's the kind of thing that
+couldn't happen to anyone but me. Damned fools! Where's the sense in
+shutting the theatres, even if there is influenza about? They let people
+jam against one another all day in the stores. If that doesn't hurt them
+why should it hurt them to go to theatres? Besides, it's all infernal
+nonsense about this thing. I don't believe there is such a thing as
+Spanish influenza. People get colds in their heads and think they're
+dying. It's all a fake scare."
+
+"I don't think it's that," said Sally.  "Poor Mr. Faucitt had it quite
+badly. That's why I couldn't come earlier."
+
+Gerald did not seem interested either by the news of Mr. Faucitt's
+illness or by the fact that Sally, after delay, had at last arrived. He
+dug a spoon sombrely into his grape-fruit.
+
+"We've been hanging about here day after day, getting bored to death all
+the time... The company's going all to pieces. They're sick of
+rehearsing and rehearsing when nobody knows if we'll ever open. They
+were all keyed up a week ago, and they've been sagging ever since. It
+will ruin the play, of course. My first chance! Just chucked away."
+
+Sally was listening with a growing feeling of desolation.  She tried to
+be fair, to remember that he had had a terrible disappointment and was
+under a great strain. And yet... it was unfortunate that self-pity was a
+thing she particularly disliked in a man. Her vanity, too, was hurt. It
+was obvious that her arrival, so far from acting as a magic restorative,
+had effected nothing. She could not help remembering, though it made her
+feel disloyal, what Mr. Faucitt had said about Gerald. She had never
+noticed before that he was remarkably self-centred, but he was
+thrusting the fact upon her attention now.
+
+"That Hobson woman is beginning to make trouble," went on Gerald,
+prodding in a despairing sort of way at scrambled eggs. "She ought never
+to have had the part, never. She can't handle it. Elsa Doland could play
+it a thousand times better. I wrote Elsa in a few lines the other day,
+and the Hobson woman went right up in the air. You don't know what a
+star is till you've seen one of these promoted clothes-props from the
+Follies trying to be one. It took me an hour to talk her round and keep
+her from throwing up her part."
+
+"Why not let her throw up her part?"
+
+"For heaven's sake talk sense," said Gerald querulously.  "Do you
+suppose that man Cracknell would keep the play on if she wasn't in it?
+He would close the show in a second, and where would I be then? You
+don't seem to realize that this is a big chance for me. I'd look a fool
+throwing it away."
+
+"I see," said Sally, shortly.  She had never felt so wretched in her
+life. Foreign travel, she decided, was a mistake. It might be pleasant
+and broadening to the mind, but it seemed to put you so out of touch
+with people when you got back. She analysed her sensations, and arrived
+at the conclusion that what she was resenting was the fact that Gerald
+was trying to get the advantages of two attitudes simultaneously. A man
+in trouble may either be the captain of his soul and superior to pity,
+or he may be a broken thing for a woman to pet and comfort. Gerald, it
+seemed to her, was advertising himself as an object for her
+commiseration, and at the same time raising a barrier against it. He
+appeared to demand her sympathy while holding himself aloof from it. She
+had the uncomfortable sensation of feeling herself shut out and useless.
+
+"By the way," said Gerald, "there's one thing.  I have to keep her
+jollying along all the time, so for goodness' sake don't go letting it
+out that we're engaged."
+
+Sally's chin went up with a jerk.  This was too much.
+
+"If you find it a handicap being engaged to me..."
+
+"Don't be silly." Gerald took refuge in pathos.  "Good God! It's tough!
+Here am I, worried to death, and you..."
+
+Before he could finish the sentence, Sally's mood had undergone one of
+those swift changes which sometimes made her feel that she must be
+lacking in character. A simple, comforting thought had come to her,
+altering her entire outlook. She had come off the train tired and
+gritty, and what seemed the general out-of-jointness of the world was
+entirely due, she decided, to the fact that she had not had a bath and
+that her hair was all anyhow. She felt suddenly tranquil. If it was
+merely her grubby and dishevelled condition that made Gerald seem to her
+so different, all was well. She put her hand on his with a quick gesture
+of penitence.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said.  "I've been a brute, but I do sympathize,
+really."
+
+"I've had an awful time," mumbled Gerald.
+
+"I know, I know.  But you never told me you were glad to see me."
+
+"Of course I'm glad to see you."
+
+"Why didn't you say so, then, you poor fish? And why didn't you ask me
+if I had enjoyed myself in Europe?"
+
+"Did you enjoy yourself?"
+
+"Yes, except that I missed you so much.  There! Now we can consider my
+lecture on foreign travel finished, and you can go on telling me your
+troubles."
+
+Gerald accepted the invitation.  He spoke at considerable length, though
+with little variety. It appeared definitely established in his mind that
+Providence had invented Spanish influenza purely with a view to wrecking
+his future. But now he seemed less aloof, more open to sympathy. The
+brief thunderstorm had cleared the air. Sally lost that sense of
+detachment and exclusion which had weighed upon her.
+
+"Well," said Gerald, at length, looking at his watch, "I suppose I had
+better be off."
+
+"Rehearsal?"
+
+"Yes, confound it.  It's the only way of getting through the day.  Are
+you coming along?"
+
+"I'll come directly I've unpacked and tidied myself up."
+
+"See you at the theatre, then."
+
+Sally went out and rang for the lift to take her up to her room.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+The rehearsal had started when she reached the theatre.  As she entered
+the dark auditorium, voices came to her with that thin and reedy effect
+which is produced by people talking in an empty building. She sat down
+at the back of the house, and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,
+was able to see Gerald sitting in the front row beside a man with a bald
+head fringed with orange hair whom she took correctly to be Mr. Bunbury,
+the producer. Dotted about the house in ones and twos were members of
+the company whose presence was not required in the first act. On the
+stage, Elsa Doland, looking very attractive, was playing a scene with a
+man in a bowler hat. She was speaking a line, as Sally came in.
+
+"Why, what do you mean, father?"
+
+"Tiddly-omty-om," was the bowler-hatted one's surprising reply.
+"Tiddly-omty-om... long speech ending in 'find me in the library.' And
+exit," said the man in the bowler hat, starting to do so.
+
+For the first time Sally became aware of the atmosphere of nerves.  Mr.
+Bunbury, who seemed to be a man of temperament, picked up his
+walking-stick, which was leaning against the next seat, and flung it
+with some violence across the house.
+
+"For God's sake!" said Mr. Bunbury.
+
+"Now what?" inquired the bowler hat, interested, pausing hallway across
+the stage.
+
+"Do speak the lines, Teddy," exclaimed Gerald.  "Don't skip them in that
+sloppy fashion."
+
+"You don't want me to go over the whole thing?" asked the bowler hat,
+amazed.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Not the whole damn thing?" queried the bowler hat, fighting with
+incredulity.
+
+"This is a rehearsal," snapped Mr. Bunbury.  "If we are not going to do
+it properly, what's the use of doing it at all?"
+
+This seemed to strike the erring Teddy, if not as reasonable, at any
+rate as one way of looking at it. He delivered the speech in an injured
+tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now.
+Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery
+and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes
+wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange
+hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been
+polished to the last syllable more than a week ago--these things had
+sapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company and demoralization had set
+in. It would require only a trifle to produce an explosion.
+
+Elsa Doland now moved to the door, pressed a bell, and, taking a
+magazine from the table, sat down in a chair near the footlights. A
+moment later, in answer to the ring, a young woman entered, to be
+greeted instantly by an impassioned bellow from Mr. Bunbury.
+
+"Miss Winch!"
+
+The new arrival stopped and looked out over the footlights, not in the
+pained manner of the man in the bowler hat, but with the sort of genial
+indulgence of one who has come to a juvenile party to amuse the
+children. She was a square, wholesome, good-humoured looking girl with a
+serious face, the gravity of which was contradicted by the faint smile
+that seemed to lurk about the corner of her mouth. She was certainly not
+pretty, and Sally, watching her with keen interest, was surprised that
+Fillmore had had the sense to disregard surface homeliness and recognize
+her charm. Deep down in Fillmore, Sally decided, there must lurk an
+unsuspected vein of intelligence.
+
+"Hello?" said Miss Winch, amiably.
+
+Mr. Bunbury seemed profoundly moved.
+
+"Miss Winch, did I or did I not ask you to refrain from chewing gum
+during rehearsal?"
+
+"That's right, so you did," admitted Miss Winch, chummily.
+
+"Then why are you doing it?"
+
+Fillmore's fiancée revolved the criticized refreshment about her tongue
+for a moment before replying.
+
+"Bit o' business," she announced, at length.
+
+"What do you mean, a bit of business?"
+
+"Character stuff," explained Miss Winch in her pleasant, drawling voice.
+"Thought it out myself. Maids chew gum, you know."
+
+Mr. Bunbury ruffled his orange hair in an over-wrought manner with the
+palm of his right hand.
+
+"Have you ever seen a maid?" he asked, despairingly.
+
+"Yes, sir.  And they chew gum."
+
+"I mean a parlour-maid in a smart house," moaned Mr. Bunbury.  "Do you
+imagine for a moment that in a house such as this is supposed to be the
+parlour-maid would be allowed to come into the drawing-room champing
+that disgusting, beastly stuff?"
+
+Miss Winch considered the point.
+
+"Maybe you're right." She brightened.  "Listen! Great idea! Mr. Foster
+can write in a line for Elsa, calling me down, and another giving me a
+good come-back, and then another for Elsa saying something else, and
+then something really funny for me, and so on. We can work it up into a
+big comic scene. Five or six minutes, all laughs."
+
+This ingenious suggestion had the effect of depriving the producer
+momentarily of speech, and while he was struggling for utterance, there
+dashed out from the wings a gorgeous being in blue velvet and a hat of
+such unimpeachable smartness that Sally ached at the sight of it with a
+spasm of pure envy.
+
+"Say!"
+
+Miss Mabel Hobson had practically every personal advantage which nature
+can bestow with the exception of a musical voice. Her figure was
+perfect, her face beautiful, and her hair a mass of spun gold; but her
+voice in moments of emotion was the voice of a peacock.
+
+"Say, listen to me for just one moment!"
+
+Mr. Bunbury recovered from his trance.
+
+"Miss Hobson! Please!"
+
+"Yes, that's all very well..."
+
+"You are interrupting the rehearsal."
+
+"You bet your sorrowful existence I'm interrupting the rehearsal,"
+agreed Miss Hobson, with emphasis. "And, if you want to make a little
+easy money, you go and bet somebody ten seeds that I'm going to
+interrupt it again every time there's any talk of writing up any darned
+part in the show except mine. Write up other people's parts? Not while I
+have my strength!"
+
+A young man with butter-coloured hair, who had entered from the wings in
+close attendance on the injured lady, attempted to calm the storm.
+
+"Now, sweetie!"
+
+"Oh, can it, Reggie!" said Miss Hobson, curtly.
+
+Mr. Cracknell obediently canned it.  He was not one of your brutal
+cave-men. He subsided into the recesses of a high collar and began to
+chew the knob of his stick.
+
+"I'm the star," resumed Miss Hobson, vehemently, "and, if you think
+anybody else's part's going to be written up... well, pardon me while I
+choke with laughter! If so much as a syllable is written into anybody's
+part, I walk straight out on my two feet. You won't see me go, I'll be
+so quick."
+
+Mr. Bunbury sprang to his feet and waved his hands.
+
+"For heaven's sake! Are we rehearsing, or is this a debating society?
+Miss Hobson, nothing is going to be written into anybody's part. Now are
+you satisfied?"
+
+"She said..."
+
+"Oh, never mind," observed Miss Winch, equably.  "It was only a random
+thought. Working for the good of the show all the time. That's me."
+
+"Now, sweetie!" pleaded Mr. Cracknell, emerging from the collar like a
+tortoise.
+
+Miss Hobson reluctantly allowed herself to be reassured.
+
+"Oh, well, that's all right, then.  But don't forget I know how to look
+after myself," she said, stating a fact which was abundantly obvious to
+all who had had the privilege of listening to her. "Any raw work, and
+out I walk so quick it'll make you giddy."
+
+She retired, followed by Mr. Cracknell, and the wings swallowed her up.
+
+"Shall I say my big speech now?" inquired Miss Winch, over the
+footlights.
+
+"Yes, yes! Get on with the rehearsal.  We've wasted half the morning."
+
+"Did you ring, madam?" said Miss Winch to Elsa, who had been reading her
+magazine placidly through the late scene.
+
+The rehearsal proceeded, and Sally watched it with a sinking heart.  It
+was all wrong. Novice as she was in things theatrical, she could see
+that. There was no doubt that Miss Hobson was superbly beautiful and
+would have shed lustre on any part which involved the minimum of words
+and the maximum of clothes: but in the pivotal role of a serious play,
+her very physical attributes only served to emphasize and point her
+hopeless incapacity. Sally remembered Mr. Faucitt's story of the lady
+who got the bird at Wigan. She did not see how history could fail to
+repeat itself. The theatrical public of America will endure much from
+youth and beauty, but there is a limit.
+
+A shrill, passionate cry from the front row, and Mr. Bunbury was on his
+feet again. Sally could not help wondering whether things were going
+particularly wrong to-day, or whether this was one of Mr. Bunbury's
+ordinary mornings.
+
+"Miss Hobson!"
+
+The action of the drama had just brought that emotional lady on left
+centre and had taken her across to the desk which stood on the other
+side of the stage. The desk was an important feature of the play, for
+it symbolized the absorption in business which, exhibited by her
+husband, was rapidly breaking Miss Hobson's heart. He loved his desk
+better than his young wife, that was what it amounted to, and no wife
+can stand that sort of thing.
+
+"Oh, gee!" said Miss Hobson, ceasing to be the distressed wife and
+becoming the offended star. "What's it this time?"
+
+"I suggested at the last rehearsal and at the rehearsal before and the
+rehearsal before that, that, on that line, you, should pick up the
+paper-knife and toy negligently with it. You did it yesterday, and
+to-day you've forgotten it again."
+
+"My God!" cried Miss Hobson, wounded to the quick. "If this don't beat
+everything! How the heck can I toy negligently with a paper-knife when
+there's no paper-knife for me to toy negligently with?"
+
+"The paper-knife is on the desk."
+
+"It's not on the desk."
+
+"No paper-knife?"
+
+"No paper-knife.  And it's no good picking on me.  I'm the star, not the
+assistant stage manager. If you're going to pick on anybody, pick on
+him."
+
+The advice appeared to strike Mr. Bunbury as good.  He threw back his
+head and bayed like a bloodhound.
+
+There was a momentary pause, and then from the wings on the prompt side
+there shambled out a stout and shrinking figure, in whose hand was a
+script of the play and on whose face, lit up by the footlights, there
+shone a look of apprehension. It was Fillmore, the Man of Destiny.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+Alas, poor Fillmore! He stood in the middle of the stage with the
+lightning of Mr. Bunbury's wrath playing about his defenceless head, and
+Sally, recovering from her first astonishment, sent a wave of sisterly
+commiseration floating across the theatre to him. She did not often pity
+Fillmore. His was a nature which in the sunshine of prosperity had a
+tendency to grow a trifle lush; and such of the minor ills of life as
+had afflicted him during the past three years, had, she considered, been
+wholesome and educative and a matter not for concern but for
+congratulation. Unmoved, she had watched him through that lean period
+lunching on coffee and buckwheat cakes, and curbing from motives of
+economy a somewhat florid taste in dress. But this was different. This
+was tragedy. Somehow or other, blasting disaster must have smitten the
+Fillmore bank-roll, and he was back where he had started. His presence
+here this morning could mean nothing else.
+
+She recalled his words at the breakfast-table about financing the play.
+How like Fillmore to try to save his face for the moment with an
+outrageous bluff, though well aware that he would have to reveal the
+truth sooner or later. She realized how he must have felt when he had
+seen her at the hotel. Yes, she was sorry for Fillmore.
+
+And, as she listened to the fervent eloquence of Mr. Bunbury, she
+perceived that she had every reason to be. Fillmore was having a bad
+time. One of the chief articles of faith in the creed of all theatrical
+producers is that if anything goes wrong it must be the fault of the
+assistant stage manager and Mr. Bunbury was evidently orthodox in his
+views. He was showing oratorical gifts of no mean order. The paper-knife
+seemed to inspire him. Gradually, Sally began to get the feeling that
+this harmless, necessary stage-property was the source from which sprang
+most, if not all, of the trouble in the world. It had disappeared
+before. Now it had disappeared again. Could Mr. Bunbury go on
+struggling in a universe where this sort of thing happened? He seemed to
+doubt it. Being a red-blooded, one-hundred-per-cent American man, he
+would try hard, but it was a hundred to one shot that he would get
+through. He had asked for a paper-knife. There was no paper-knife. Why
+was there no paper-knife? Where was the paper-knife anyway?
+
+"I assure you, Mr. Bunbury," bleated the unhappy Fillmore, obsequiously.
+"I placed it with the rest of the properties after the last rehearsal."
+
+"You couldn't have done."
+
+"I assure you I did."
+
+"And it walked away, I suppose," said Miss Hobson with cold scorn,
+pausing in the operation of brightening up her lower lip with a
+lip-stick.
+
+A calm, clear voice spoke.
+
+"It was taken away," said the calm, clear voice.
+
+Miss Winch had added herself to the symposium.  She stood beside
+Fillmore, chewing placidly. It took more than raised voices and
+gesticulating hands to disturb Miss Winch.
+
+"Miss Hobson took it," she went on in her cosy, drawling voice.  "I saw
+her."
+
+Sensation in court.  The prisoner, who seemed to feel his position
+deeply, cast a pop-eyed glance full of gratitude at his advocate. Mr.
+Bunbury, in his capacity of prosecuting attorney, ran his fingers
+through his hair in some embarrassment, for he was regretting now that
+he had made such a fuss. Miss Hobson thus assailed by an underling, spun
+round and dropped the lip-stick, which was neatly retrieved by the
+assiduous Mr. Cracknell. Mr. Cracknell had his limitations, but he was
+rather good at picking up lip-sticks.
+
+"What's that? I took it? I never did anything of the sort."
+
+"Miss Hobson took it after the rehearsal yesterday," drawled Gladys
+Winch, addressing the world in general, "and threw it negligently at the
+theatre cat."
+
+Miss Hobson seemed taken aback.  Her composure was not restored by Mr.
+Bunbury's next remark. The producer, like his company, had been feeling
+the strain of the past few days, and, though as a rule he avoided
+anything in the nature of a clash with the temperamental star, this
+matter of the missing paper-knife had bitten so deeply into his soul
+that he felt compelled to speak his mind.
+
+"In future, Miss Hobson, I should be glad if, when you wish to throw
+anything at the cat, you would not select a missile from the property
+box. Good heavens!" he cried, stung by the way fate was maltreating him,
+"I have never experienced anything like this before. I have been
+producing plays all my life, and this is the first time this has
+happened. I have produced Nazimova. Nazimova never threw paper-knives at
+cats."
+
+"Well, I hate cats," said Miss Hobson, as though that settled it.
+
+"I," murmured Miss Winch, "love little pussy, her fur is so warm, and if
+I don't hurt her she'll do me no..."
+
+"Oh, my heavens!" shouted Gerald Foster, bounding from his seat and for
+the first time taking a share in the debate. "Are we going to spend the
+whole day arguing about cats and paper-knives? For goodness' sake, clear
+the stage and stop wasting time."
+
+Miss Hobson chose to regard this intervention as an affront.
+
+"Don't shout at me, Mr. Foster!"
+
+"I wasn't shouting at you."
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, lower your voice."
+
+"He can't," observed Miss Winch.  "He's a tenor."
+
+"Nazimova never..." began Mr. Bunbury.
+
+Miss Hobson was not to be diverted from her theme by reminiscences of
+Nazimova. She had not finished dealing with Gerald.
+
+"In the shows I've been in," she said, mordantly, "the author wasn't
+allowed to go about the place getting fresh with the leading lady. In
+the shows I've been in the author sat at the back and spoke when he was
+spoken to. In the shows I've been in..."
+
+Sally was tingling all over.  This reminded her of the dog-fight on the
+Roville sands. She wanted to be in it, and only the recognition that it
+was a private fight and that she would be intruding kept her silent. The
+lure of the fray, however, was too strong for her wholly to resist it.
+Almost unconsciously, she had risen from her place and drifted down the
+aisle so as to be nearer the white-hot centre of things. She was now
+standing in the lighted space by the orchestra-pit, and her presence
+attracted the roving attention of Miss Hobson, who, having concluded her
+remarks on authors and their legitimate sphere of activity, was looking
+about for some other object of attack.
+
+"Who the devil," inquired Miss Hobson, "is that?"
+
+Sally found herself an object of universal scrutiny and wished that she
+had remained in the obscurity of the back rows.
+
+"I am Mr. Nicholas' sister," was the best method of identification that
+she could find.
+
+"Who's Mr. Nicholas?"
+
+Fillmore timidly admitted that he was Mr. Nicholas.  He did it in the
+manner of one in the dock pleading guilty to a major charge, and at
+least half of those present seemed surprised. To them, till now,
+Fillmore had been a nameless thing, answering to the shout of "Hi!"
+
+Miss Hobson received the information with a laugh of such exceeding
+bitterness that strong men blanched and Mr. Cracknell started so
+convulsively that he nearly jerked his collar off its stud.
+
+"Now, sweetie!" urged Mr. Cracknell.
+
+Miss Hobson said that Mr. Cracknell gave her a pain in the gizzard.  She
+recommended his fading away, and he did so--into his collar. He seemed
+to feel that once well inside his collar he was "home" and safe from
+attack.
+
+"I'm through!" announced Miss Hobson.  It appeared that Sally's presence
+had in some mysterious fashion fulfilled the function of the last straw.
+"This is the by-Goddest show I was ever in! I can stand for a whole lot,
+but when it comes to the assistant stage manager being allowed to fill
+the theatre with his sisters and his cousins and his aunts it's time to
+quit."
+
+"But, sweetie!" pleaded Mr. Cracknell, coming to the surface.
+
+"Oh, go and choke yourself!" said Miss Hobson, crisply.  And, swinging
+round like a blue panther, she strode off. A door banged, and the sound
+of it seemed to restore Mr. Cracknell's power of movement. He, too, shot
+up stage and disappeared.
+
+"Hello, Sally," said Elsa Doland, looking up from her magazine.  The
+battle, raging all round her, had failed to disturb her detachment.
+"When did you get back?"
+
+Sally trotted up the steps which had been propped against the stage to
+form a bridge over the orchestra pit.
+
+"Hello, Elsa."
+
+The late debaters had split into groups.  Mr. Bunbury and Gerald were
+pacing up and down the central aisle, talking earnestly. Fillmore had
+subsided into a chair.
+
+"Do you know Gladys Winch?" asked Elsa.
+
+Sally shook hands with the placid lodestar of her brother's affections.
+Miss Winch, on closer inspection, proved to have deep grey eyes and
+freckles. Sally's liking for her increased.
+
+"Thank you for saving Fillmore from the wolves," she said.  "They would
+have torn him in pieces but for you."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Miss Winch.
+
+"It was noble."
+
+"Oh, well!"
+
+"I think," said Sally, "I'll go and have a talk with Fillmore.  He looks
+as though he wanted consoling."
+
+She made her way to that picturesque ruin.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+
+Fillmore had the air of a man who thought it wasn't loaded.  A wild,
+startled expression had settled itself upon his face and he was
+breathing heavily.
+
+"Cheer up!" said Sally.  Fillmore jumped like a stricken jelly.  "Tell
+me all," said Sally, sitting down beside him. "I leave you a gentleman
+of large and independent means, and I come back and find you one of the
+wage-slaves again. How did it all happen?"
+
+"Sally," said Fillmore, "I will be frank with you.  Can you lend me ten
+dollars?"
+
+"I don't see how you make that out an answer to my question, but here
+you are."
+
+"Thanks." Fillmore pocketed the bill.  "I'll let you have it back next
+week. I want to take Miss Winch out to lunch."
+
+"If that's what you want it for, don't look on it as a loan, take it as
+a gift with my blessing thrown in." She looked over her shoulder at Miss
+Winch, who, the cares of rehearsal being temporarily suspended, was
+practising golf-shots with an umbrella at the other side of the stage.
+"However did you have the sense to fall in love with her, Fill?"
+
+"Do you like her?" asked Fillmore, brightening.
+
+"I love her."
+
+"I knew you would.  She's just the right girl for me, isn't she?"
+
+"She certainly is."
+
+"So sympathetic."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So kind."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And she's got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity
+the girl who marries you will need."
+
+Fillmore drew himself up with as much hauteur as a stout man sitting in
+a low chair can achieve.
+
+"Some day I will make you believe in me, Sally."
+
+"Less of the Merchant Prince, my lad," said Sally, firmly.  "You just
+confine yourself to explaining how you got this way, instead of taking
+up my valuable time telling me what you mean to do in the future. You've
+lost all your money?"
+
+"I have suffered certain reverses," said Fillmore, with dignity, "which
+have left me temporarily... Yes, every bean," he concluded simply.
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well..." Fillmore hesitated.  "I've had bad luck, you know.  First I
+bought Consolidated Rails for the rise, and they fell. So that went
+wrong."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"And then I bought Russian Roubles for the fall, and they rose.  So that
+went wrong."
+
+"Good gracious! Why, I've heard all this before."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"No, I remember now.  It's just that you remind me of a man I met at
+Roville. He was telling me the story of his life, and how he had made a
+hash of everything. Well, that took all you had, I suppose?"
+
+"Not quite.  I had a few thousand left, and I went into a deal that
+really did look cast-iron."
+
+"And that went wrong!"
+
+"It wasn't my fault," said Fillmore querulously.  "It was just my
+poisonous luck. A man I knew got me to join a syndicate which had bought
+up a lot of whisky. The idea was to ship it into Chicago in
+herring-barrels. We should have cleaned up big, only a mutt of a
+detective took it into his darned head to go fooling about with a
+crowbar. Officious ass! It wasn't as if the barrels weren't labelled
+'Herrings' as plainly as they could be," said Fillmore with honest
+indignation. He shuddered. "I nearly got arrested."
+
+"But that went wrong? Well, that's something to be thankful for.
+Stripes wouldn't suit your figure." Sally gave his arm a squeeze. She
+was very fond of Fillmore, though for the good of his soul she generally
+concealed her affection beneath a manner which he had once compared, not
+without some reason, to that of a governess who had afflicted their
+mutual childhood. "Never mind, you poor ill-used martyr. Things are sure
+to come right. We shall see you a millionaire some day. And, oh heavens,
+brother Fillmore, what a bore you'll be when you are! I can just see you
+being interviewed and giving hints to young men on how to make good.
+'Mr. Nicholas attributes his success to sheer hard work. He can lay his
+hand on his bulging waistcoat and say that he has never once indulged in
+those rash get-rich-quick speculations, where you buy for the rise and
+watch things fall and then rush out and buy for the fall and watch 'em
+rise.' Fill... I'll tell you what I'll do. They all say it's the first
+bit of money that counts in building a vast fortune. I'll lend you some
+of mine."
+
+"You will? Sally, I always said you were an ace."
+
+"I never heard you.  You oughtn't to mumble so."
+
+"Will you lend me twenty thousand dollars?"
+
+Sally patted his hand soothingly.
+
+"Come slowly down to earth," she said.  "Two hundred was the sum I had
+in mind."
+
+"I want twenty thousand."
+
+"You'd better rob a bank.  Any policeman will direct you to a good
+bank."
+
+"I'll tell you why I want twenty thousand."
+
+"You might just mention it."
+
+"If I had twenty thousand, I'd buy this production from Cracknell.
+He'll be back in a few minutes to tell us that the Hobson woman has
+quit: and, if she really has, you take it from me that he will close the
+show. And, even if he manages to jolly her along this time and she comes
+back, it's going to happen sooner or later. It's a shame to let a show
+like this close. I believe in it, Sally. It's a darn good play. With
+Elsa Doland in the big part, it couldn't fail."
+
+Sally started.  Her money was too recent for her to have grown fully
+accustomed to it, and she had never realized that she was in a position
+to wave a wand and make things happen on any big scale. The financing of
+a theatrical production had always been to her something mysterious and
+out of the reach of ordinary persons like herself. Fillmore, that
+spacious thinker, had brought it into the sphere of the possible.
+
+"He'd sell for less than that, of course, but one would need a bit in
+hand. You have to face a loss on the road before coming into New York.
+I'd give you ten per cent on your money, Sally."
+
+Sally found herself wavering.  The prudent side of her nature, which
+hitherto had steered her safely through most of life's rapids, seemed
+oddly dormant. Sub-consciously she was aware that on past performances
+Fillmore was decidedly not the man to be allowed control of anybody's
+little fortune, but somehow the thought did not seem to grip her. He had
+touched her imagination.
+
+"It's a gold-mine!"
+
+Sally's prudent side stirred in its sleep.  Fillmore had chosen an
+unfortunate expression. To the novice in finance the word gold-mine had
+repellent associations. If there was one thing in which Sally had
+proposed not to invest her legacy, it was a gold-mine; what she had had
+in view, as a matter of fact, had been one of those little fancy shops
+which are called Ye Blue Bird or Ye Corner Shoppe, or something like
+that, where you sell exotic bric-a-brac to the wealthy at extortionate
+prices. She knew two girls who were doing splendidly in that line. As
+Fillmore spoke those words, Ye Corner Shoppe suddenly looked very good
+to her.
+
+At this moment, however, two things happened.  Gerald and Mr. Bunbury,
+in the course of their perambulations, came into the glow of the
+footlights, and she was able to see Gerald's face: and at the same time
+Mr. Reginald Cracknell hurried on to the stage, his whole demeanour that
+of the bearer of evil tidings.
+
+The sight of Gerald's face annihilated Sally's prudence at a single
+stroke. Ye Corner Shoppe, which a moment before had been shining
+brightly before her mental eye, flickered and melted out. The whole
+issue became clear and simple. Gerald was miserable and she had it in
+her power to make him happy. He was sullenly awaiting disaster and she
+with a word could avert it. She wondered that she had ever hesitated.
+
+"All right," she said simply.
+
+Fillmore quivered from head to foot.  A powerful electric shock could
+not have produced a stronger convulsion. He knew Sally of old as
+cautious and clear-headed, by no means to be stampeded by a brother's
+eloquence; and he had never looked on this thing as anything better than
+a hundred to one shot.
+
+"You'll do it?" he whispered, and held his breath.  After all he might
+not have heard correctly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+All the complex emotion in Fillmore's soul found expression in one vast
+whoop. It rang through the empty theatre like the last trump, beating
+against the back wall and rising in hollow echoes to the very gallery.
+Mr. Bunbury, conversing in low undertones with Mr. Cracknell across the
+footlights, shied like a startled mule. There was reproach and menace in
+the look he cast at Fillmore, and a minute earlier it would have reduced
+that financial magnate to apologetic pulp. But Fillmore was not to be
+intimidated now by a look. He strode down to the group at the
+footlights,
+
+"Cracknell," he said importantly, "one moment, I should like a word with
+you."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+SOME MEDITATIONS ON SUCCESS
+
+
+
+If actors and actresses are like children in that they are readily
+depressed by disaster, they have the child's compensating gift of being
+easily uplifted by good fortune. It amazed Sally that any one mortal
+should have been able to spread such universal happiness as she had done
+by the simple act of lending her brother Fillmore twenty thousand
+dollars. If the Millennium had arrived, the members of the Primrose Way
+Company could not have been on better terms with themselves. The
+lethargy and dispiritedness, caused by their week of inaction, fell from
+them like a cloak. The sudden elevation of that creature of the abyss,
+the assistant stage manager, to the dizzy height of proprietor of the
+show appealed to their sense of drama. Most of them had played in pieces
+where much the same thing had happened to the persecuted heroine round
+about eleven o'clock, and the situation struck them as theatrically
+sound. Also, now that she had gone, the extent to which Miss Hobson had
+acted as a blight was universally recognized.
+
+A spirit of optimism reigned, and cheerful rumours became current.  The
+bowler-hatted Teddy had it straight from the lift-boy at his hotel that
+the ban on the theatres was to be lifted on Tuesday at the latest; while
+no less an authority than the cigar-stand girl at the Pontchatrain had
+informed the man who played the butler that Toledo and Cleveland were
+opening to-morrow. It was generally felt that the sun was bursting
+through the clouds and that Fate would soon despair of the hopeless task
+of trying to keep good men down.
+
+Fillmore was himself again.  We all have our particular mode of
+self-expression in moments of elation. Fillmore's took the shape of
+buying a new waistcoat and a hundred half-dollar cigars and being very
+fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion,
+but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the
+first day of the new regime. As a serf looking after paper-knives and
+other properties, he had been--for him--almost slim. As a manager he
+blossomed out into soft billowy curves, and when he stood on the
+sidewalk in front of the theatre, gloating over the new posters which
+bore the legend,
+
+
+
+FILLMORE NICHOLAS
+
+PRESENTS
+
+
+
+the populace had to make a detour to get round him.
+
+In this era of bubbling joy, it was hard that Sally, the fairy godmother
+responsible for it all, should not have been completely happy too; and
+it puzzled her why she was not. But whatever it was that cast the faint
+shadow refused obstinately to come out from the back of her mind and
+show itself and be challenged. It was not till she was out driving in a
+hired car with Gerald one afternoon on Belle Isle that enlightenment
+came.
+
+Gerald, since the departure of Miss Hobson, had been at his best.  Like
+Fillmore, he was a man who responded to the sunshine of prosperity. His
+moodiness had vanished, and all his old charm had returned. And yet...
+it seemed to Sally, as the car slid smoothly through the pleasant woods
+and fields by the river, that there was something that jarred.
+
+Gerald was cheerful and talkative.  He, at any rate, found nothing wrong
+with life. He held forth spaciously on the big things he intended to do.
+
+"If this play get over--and it's going to--I'll show 'em!" His jaw was
+squared, and his eyes glowed as they stared into the inviting future.
+"One success--that's all I need--then watch me! I haven't had a chance
+yet, but..."
+
+His voice rolled on, but Sally had ceased to listen.  It was the time of
+year when the chill of evening follows swiftly on the mellow warmth of
+afternoon. The sun had gone behind the trees, and a cold wind was
+blowing up from the river. And quite suddenly, as though it was the wind
+that had cleared her mind, she understood what it was that had been
+lurking at the back of her thoughts. For an instant it stood out nakedly
+without concealment, and the world became a forlorn place. She had
+realized the fundamental difference between man's outlook on life and
+woman's.
+
+Success! How men worshipped it, and how little of themselves they had
+to spare for anything else. Ironically, it was the theme of this very
+play of Gerald's which she had saved from destruction. Of all the men
+she knew, how many had any view of life except as a race which they must
+strain every nerve to win, regardless of what they missed by the wayside
+in their haste? Fillmore--Gerald--all of them. There might be a woman in
+each of their lives, but she came second--an afterthought--a thing for
+their spare time. Gerald was everything to her. His success would never
+be more than a side-issue as far as she was concerned. He himself,
+without any of the trappings of success, was enough for her. But she was
+not enough for him. A spasm of futile jealousy shook her. She shivered.
+
+"Cold?" said Gerald.  "I'll tell the man to drive back... I don't see
+any reason why this play shouldn't run a year in New York. Everybody
+says it's good... if it does get over, they'll all be after me. I..."
+
+Sally stared out into a bleak world.  The sky was a leaden grey, and the
+wind from the river blew with a dismal chill.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+REAPPEARANCE OF MR. CARMYLE--AND GINGER
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+When Sally left Detroit on the following Saturday, accompanied by
+Fillmore, who was returning to the metropolis for a few days in order to
+secure offices and generally make his presence felt along Broadway, her
+spirits had completely recovered. She felt guiltily that she had been
+fanciful, even morbid. Naturally men wanted to get on in the world. It
+was their job. She told herself that she was bound up with Gerald's
+success, and that the last thing of which she ought to complain was the
+energy he put into efforts of which she as well as he would reap the
+reward.
+
+To this happier frame of mind the excitement of the last few days had
+contributed. Detroit, that city of amiable audiences, had liked "The
+Primrose Way." The theatre, in fulfilment of Teddy's prophecy, had been
+allowed to open on the Tuesday, and a full house, hungry for
+entertainment after its enforced abstinence, had welcomed the play
+wholeheartedly. The papers, not always in agreement with the applause
+of a first-night audience, had on this occasion endorsed the verdict,
+with agreeable unanimity hailing Gerald as the coming author and Elsa
+Doland as the coming star. There had even been a brief mention of
+Fillmore as the coming manager. But there is always some trifle that
+jars in our greatest moments, and Fillmore's triumph had been almost
+spoilt by the fact that the only notice taken of Gladys Winch was by the
+critic who printed her name--spelt Wunch--in the list of those whom the
+cast "also included."
+
+"One of the greatest character actresses on the stage," said Fillmore
+bitterly, talking over this outrage with Sally on the morning after the
+production.
+
+From this blow, however, his buoyant nature had soon enabled him to
+rally. Life contained so much that was bright that it would have been
+churlish to concentrate the attention on the one dark spot. Business had
+been excellent all through the week. Elsa Doland had got better at every
+performance. The receipt of a long and agitated telegram from Mr.
+Cracknell, pleading to be allowed to buy the piece back, the passage of
+time having apparently softened Miss Hobson, was a pleasant incident.
+And, best of all, the great Ike Schumann, who owned half the theatres in
+New York and had been in Detroit superintending one of his musical
+productions, had looked in one evening and stamped "The Primrose Way"
+with the seal of his approval. As Fillmore sat opposite Sally on the
+train, he radiated contentment and importance.
+
+"Yes, do," said Sally, breaking a long silence.
+
+Fillmore awoke from happy dreams.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I said 'Yes, do.' I think you owe it to your position."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Buy a fur coat.  Wasn't that what you were meditating about?"
+
+"Don't be a chump," said Fillmore, blushing nevertheless.  It was true
+that once or twice during the past week he had toyed negligently, as Mr.
+Bunbury would have said, with the notion, and why not? A fellow must
+keep warm.
+
+"With an astrakhan collar," insisted Sally.
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Fillmore loftily, his great soul ill-attuned
+to this badinage, "what I was really thinking about at the moment was
+something Ike said."
+
+"Ike?"
+
+"Ike Schumann.  He's on the train.  I met him just now."
+
+"We call him Ike!"
+
+"Of course I call him Ike," said Fillmore heatedly.  "Everyone calls
+him Ike."
+
+"He wears a fur coat," Sally murmured.
+
+Fillmore registered annoyance.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep on harping on that damned coat.  And, anyway,
+why shouldn't I have a fur coat?"
+
+"Fill... ! How can you be so brutal as to suggest that I ever said you
+shouldn't? Why, I'm one of the strongest supporters of the fur coat.
+With big cuffs. And you must roll up Fifth Avenue in your car, and I'll
+point and say 'That's my brother!' 'Your brother? No!' 'He is, really.'
+'You're joking. Why, that's the great Fillmore Nicholas.' 'I know. But
+he really is my brother. And I was with him when he bought that coat.'"
+
+"Do leave off about the coat!"
+
+"'And it isn't only the coat,' I shall say.  'It's what's underneath.
+Tucked away inside that mass of fur, dodging about behind that dollar
+cigar, is one to whom we point with pride... '"
+
+Fillmore looked coldly at his watch.
+
+"I've got to go and see Ike Schumann."
+
+"We are in hourly consultation with Ike."
+
+"He wants to see me about the show.  He suggests putting it into Chicago
+before opening in New York."
+
+"Oh no," cried Sally, dismayed.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Sally recovered herself.  Identifying Gerald so closely with his play,
+she had supposed for a moment that if the piece opened in Chicago it
+would mean a further prolonged separation from him. But of course there
+would be no need, she realized, for him to stay with the company after
+the first day or two.
+
+"You're thinking that we ought to have a New York reputation before
+tackling Chicago. There's a lot to be said for that. Still, it works
+both ways. A Chicago run would help us in New York. Well, I'll have to
+think it over," said Fillmore, importantly, "I'll have to think it
+over."
+
+He mused with drawn brows.
+
+"All wrong," said Sally.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not a bit like it.  The lips should be compressed and the forefinger of
+the right hand laid in a careworn way against the right temple. You've a
+lot to learn. Fill."
+
+"Oh, stop it!"
+
+"Fillmore Nicholas," said Sally, "if you knew what pain it gives me to
+josh my only brother, you'd be sorry for me. But you know it's for your
+good. Now run along and put Ike out of his misery. I know he's waiting
+for you with his watch out. 'You do think he'll come, Miss Nicholas?'
+were his last words to me as he stepped on the train, and oh, Fill, the
+yearning in his voice. 'Why, of course he will, Mr. Schumann,' I said.
+'For all his exalted position, my brother is kindliness itself. Of
+course he'll come.' 'If I could only think so!' he said with a gulp. 'If
+I could only think so. But you know what these managers are. A thousand
+calls on their time. They get brooding on their fur coats and forget
+everything else.' 'Have no fear, Mr. Schumann,' I said. 'Fillmore
+Nicholas is a man of his word.'"
+
+She would have been willing, for she was a girl who never believed in
+sparing herself where it was a question of entertaining her nearest and
+dearest, to continue the dialogue, but Fillmore was already moving down
+the car, his rigid back a silent protest against sisterly levity. Sally
+watched him disappear, then picked up a magazine and began to read.
+
+She had just finished tracking a story of gripping interest through a
+jungle of advertisements, only to find that it was in two parts, of
+which the one she was reading was the first, when a voice spoke.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Nicholas?"
+
+Into the seat before her, recently released from the weight of the
+coming manager, Bruce Carmyle of all people in the world insinuated
+himself with that well-bred air of deferential restraint which never
+left him.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Sally was considerably startled.  Everybody travels nowadays, of
+course, and there is nothing really remarkable in finding a man in
+America whom you had supposed to be in Europe: but nevertheless she was
+conscious of a dream-like sensation, as though the clock had been turned
+back and a chapter of her life reopened which she had thought closed for
+ever.
+
+"Mr. Carmyle!" she cried.
+
+If Sally had been constantly in Bruce Carmyle's thoughts since they had
+parted on the Paris express, Mr. Carmyle had been very little in
+Sally's--so little, indeed, that she had had to search her memory for a
+moment before she identified him.
+
+"We're always meeting on trains, aren't we?" she went on, her composure
+returning. "I never expected to see you in America."
+
+"I came over."
+
+Sally was tempted to reply that she gathered that, but a sudden
+embarrassment curbed her tongue. She had just remembered that at their
+last meeting she had been abominably rude to this man. She was never
+rude to anyone, without subsequent remorse. She contented herself with a
+tame "Yes."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Carmyle, "it is a good many years since I have taken a
+real holiday. My doctor seemed to think I was a trifle run down. It
+seemed a good opportunity to visit America. Everybody," said Mr. Carmyle
+oracularly, endeavouring, as he had often done since his ship had left
+England, to persuade himself that his object in making the trip had not
+been merely to renew his acquaintance with Sally, "everybody ought to
+visit America at least once. It is part of one's education."
+
+"And what are your impressions of our glorious country?" said Sally
+rallying.
+
+Mr. Carmyle seemed glad of the opportunity of lecturing on an impersonal
+subject. He, too, though his face had shown no trace of it, had been
+embarrassed in the opening stages of the conversation. The sound of his
+voice restored him.
+
+"I have been visiting Chicago," he said after a brief travelogue.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"A wonderful city."
+
+"I've never seen it.  I've come from Detroit."
+
+"Yes, I heard you were in Detroit."
+
+Sally's eyes opened.
+
+"You heard I was in Detroit? Good gracious! How?"
+
+"I--ah--called at your New York address and made inquiries," said Mr.
+Carmyle a little awkwardly.
+
+"But how did you know where I lived?"
+
+"My cousin--er--Lancelot told me."
+
+Sally was silent for a moment.  She had much the same feeling that comes
+to the man in the detective story who realizes that he is being
+shadowed. Even if this almost complete stranger had not actually come
+to America in direct pursuit of her, there was no disguising the fact
+that he evidently found her an object of considerable interest. It was
+a compliment, but Sally was not at all sure that she liked it. Bruce
+Carmyle meant nothing to her, and it was rather disturbing to find that
+she was apparently of great importance to him. She seized on the mention
+of Ginger as a lever for diverting the conversation from its present too
+intimate course.
+
+"How is Mr. Kemp?" she asked.
+
+Mr. Carmyle's dark face seemed to become a trifle darker.
+
+"We have had no news of him," he said shortly.
+
+"No news? How do you mean? You speak as though he had disappeared."
+
+"He has disappeared!"
+
+"Good heavens! When?"
+
+"Shortly after I saw you last."
+
+"Disappeared!"
+
+Mr. Carmyle frowned.  Sally, watching him, found her antipathy stirring
+again. There was something about this man which she had disliked
+instinctively from the first, a sort of hardness.
+
+"But where has he gone to?"
+
+"I don't know." Mr. Carmyle frowned again.  The subject of Ginger was
+plainly a sore one. "And I don't want to know," he went on heatedly, a
+dull flush rising in the cheeks which Sally was sure he had to shave
+twice a day. "I don't care to know. The Family have washed their hands
+of him. For the future he may look after himself as best he can. I
+believe he is off his head."
+
+Sally's rebellious temper was well ablaze now, but she fought it down.
+She would dearly have loved to give battle to Mr. Carmyle--it was odd,
+she felt, how she seemed to have constituted herself Ginger's champion
+and protector--but she perceived that, if she wished, as she did, to
+hear more of her red-headed friend, he must be humoured and
+conciliated.
+
+"But what happened? What was all the trouble about?"
+
+Mr. Carmyle's eyebrows met.
+
+"He--insulted his uncle.  His uncle Donald.  He insulted him--grossly.
+The one man in the world he should have made a point of--er--"
+
+"Keeping in with?"
+
+"Yes.  His future depended upon him."
+
+"But what did he do?" cried Sally, trying hard to keep a thoroughly
+reprehensible joy out of her voice.
+
+"I have heard no details.  My uncle is reticent as to what actually took
+place. He invited Lancelot to dinner to discuss his plans, and it
+appears that Lancelot--defied him. Defied him! He was rude and
+insulting. My uncle refuses to have anything more to do with him.
+Apparently the young fool managed to win some money at the tables at
+Roville, and this seems to have turned his head completely. My uncle
+insists that he is mad. I agree with him. Since the night of that dinner
+nothing has been heard of Lancelot."
+
+Mr. Carmyle broke off to brood once more, and before Sally could speak
+the impressive bulk of Fillmore loomed up in the aisle beside them.
+Explanations seemed to Fillmore to be in order. He cast a questioning
+glance at the mysterious stranger, who, in addition to being in
+conversation with his sister, had collared his seat.
+
+"Oh, hullo, Fill," said Sally.  "Fillmore, this is Mr. Carmyle.  We met
+abroad. My brother Fillmore, Mr. Carmyle."
+
+Proper introduction having been thus effected, Fillmore approved of Mr.
+Carmyle. His air of being someone in particular appealed to him.
+
+"Strange you meeting again like this," he said affably.
+
+The porter, who had been making up berths along the car, was now
+hovering expectantly in the offing.
+
+"You two had better go into the smoking room," suggested Sally.  "I'm
+going to bed."
+
+She wanted to be alone, to think.  Mr. Carmyle's tale of a roused and
+revolting Ginger had stirred her.
+
+The two men went off to the smoking-room, and Sally found an empty seat
+and sat down to wait for her berth to be made up. She was aglow with a
+curious exhilaration. So Ginger had taken her advice! Excellent Ginger!
+She felt proud of him. She also had that feeling of complacency,
+amounting almost to sinful pride, which comes to those who give advice
+and find it acted upon. She had the emotions of a creator. After all,
+had she not created this new Ginger? It was she who had stirred him up.
+It was she who had unleashed him. She had changed him from a meek
+dependent of the Family to a ravening creature, who went about the place
+insulting uncles.
+
+It was a feat, there was no denying it.  It was something attempted,
+something done: and by all the rules laid down by the poet it should,
+therefore, have earned a night's repose. Yet, Sally, jolted by the
+train, which towards the small hours seemed to be trying out some new
+buck-and-wing steps of its own invention, slept ill, and presently, as
+she lay awake, there came to her bedside the Spectre of Doubt, gaunt and
+questioning. Had she, after all, wrought so well? Had she been wise in
+tampering with this young man's life?
+
+"What about it?" said the Spectre of Doubt.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+Daylight brought no comforting answer to the question.  Breakfast failed
+to manufacture an easy mind. Sally got off the train, at the Grand
+Central station in a state of remorseful concern. She declined the offer
+of Mr. Carmyle to drive her to the boarding-house, and started to walk
+there, hoping that the crisp morning air would effect a cure.
+
+She wondered now how she could ever have looked with approval on her
+rash act. She wondered what demon of interference and meddling had
+possessed her, to make her blunder into people's lives, upsetting them.
+She wondered that she was allowed to go around loose. She was nothing
+more nor less than a menace to society. Here was an estimable young man,
+obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted
+through life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him on to
+wreck his prospects. She blushed hotly as she remembered that mad
+wireless she had sent him from the boat.
+
+Miserable Ginger! She pictured him, his little stock of money gone,
+wandering foot-sore about London, seeking in vain for work; forcing
+himself to call on Uncle Donald; being thrown down the front steps by
+haughty footmen; sleeping on the Embankment; gazing into the dark waters
+of the Thames with the stare of hopelessness; climbing to the parapet
+and...
+
+"Ugh!" said Sally.
+
+She had arrived at the door of the boarding-house, and Mrs. Meecher was
+regarding her with welcoming eyes, little knowing that to all practical
+intents and purposes she had slain in his prime a red-headed young man
+of amiable manners and--when not ill-advised by meddling, muddling
+females--of excellent behaviour.
+
+Mrs. Meecher was friendly and garrulous.  Variety, the journal which,
+next to the dog Toto, was the thing she loved best in the world, had
+informed her on the Friday morning that Mr. Foster's play had got over
+big in Detroit, and that Miss Doland had made every kind of hit. It was
+not often that the old alumni of the boarding-house forced their way
+after this fashion into the Hall of Fame, and, according to Mrs.
+Meecher, the establishment was ringing with the news. That blue ribbon
+round Toto's neck was worn in honour of the triumph. There was also,
+though you could not see it, a chicken dinner in Toto's interior, by way
+of further celebration.
+
+And was it true that Mr. Fillmore had bought the piece? A great man, was
+Mrs. Meecher's verdict. Mr. Faucitt had always said so...
+
+"Oh, how is Mr. Faucitt?" Sally asked, reproaching herself for having
+allowed the pressure of other matters to drive all thoughts of her late
+patient from her mind.
+
+"He's gone," said Mrs. Meecher with such relish that to Sally, in her
+morbid condition, the words had only one meaning. She turned white and
+clutched at the banisters.
+
+"Gone!"
+
+"To England," added Mrs. Meecher.  Sally was vastly relieved.
+
+"Oh, I thought you meant..."
+
+"Oh no, not that." Mrs. Meecher sighed, for she had been a little
+disappointed in the old gentleman, who started out as such a promising
+invalid, only to fall away into the dullness of robust health once more.
+"He's well enough. I never seen anybody better. You'd think," said Mrs.
+Meecher, bearing bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, "you'd
+think this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic or somep'n,
+the way he looks now. Of course," she added, trying to find
+justification for a respected lodger, "he's had good news. His brother's
+dead."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Not, I don't mean, that that was good news, far from it, though, come
+to think of it, all flesh is as grass and we all got to be prepared for
+somep'n of the sort breaking loose...but it seems this here new brother of
+his--I didn't know he'd a brother, and I don't suppose you knew he had a
+brother. Men are secretive, ain't they!--this brother of his has left
+him a parcel of money, and Mr. Faucitt he had to get on the Wednesday
+boat quick as he could and go right over to the other side to look after
+things. Wind up the estate, I believe they call it. Left in a awful
+hurry, he did. Sent his love to you and said he'd write. Funny him
+having a brother, now, wasn't it? Not," said Mrs. Meecher, at heart a
+reasonable woman, "that folks don't have brothers. I got two myself, one
+in Portland, Oregon, and the other goodness knows where he is. But what
+I'm trying to say..."
+
+Sally disengaged herself, and went up to her room.  For a brief while
+the excitement which comes of hearing good news about those of whom we
+are fond acted as a stimulant, and she felt almost cheerful. Dear old
+Mr. Faucitt. She was sorry for his brother, of course, though she had
+never had the pleasure of his acquaintance and had only just heard that
+he had ever existed; but it was nice to think that her old friend's
+remaining years would be years of affluence.
+
+Presently, however, she found her thoughts wandering back into their
+melancholy groove. She threw herself wearily on the bed. She was tired
+after her bad night.
+
+But she could not sleep.  Remorse kept her awake.  Besides, she could
+hear Mrs. Meecher prowling disturbingly about the house, apparently in
+search of someone, her progress indicated by creaking boards and the
+strenuous yapping of Toto.
+
+Sally turned restlessly, and, having turned remained for a long instant
+transfixed and rigid. She had seen something, and what she had seen was
+enough to surprise any girl in the privacy of her bedroom. From
+underneath the bed there peeped coyly forth an undeniably masculine shoe
+and six inches of a grey trouser-leg.
+
+Sally bounded to the floor.  She was a girl of courage, and she meant to
+probe this matter thoroughly.
+
+"What are you doing under my bed?"
+
+The question was a reasonable one, and evidently seemed to the intruder
+to deserve an answer. There was a muffled sneeze, and he began to crawl
+out.
+
+The shoe came first.  Then the legs.  Then a sturdy body in a dusty
+coat. And finally there flashed on Sally's fascinated gaze a head of so
+nearly the maximum redness that it could only belong to one person in
+the world.
+
+"Ginger!"
+
+Mr. Lancelot Kemp, on all fours, blinked up at her.
+
+"Oh, hullo!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+GINGER BECOMES A RIGHT-HAND MAN
+
+
+
+It was not till she saw him actually standing there before her with his
+hair rumpled and a large smut on the tip of his nose, that Sally really
+understood how profoundly troubled she had been about this young man,
+and how vivid had been that vision of him bobbing about on the waters of
+the Thames, a cold and unappreciated corpse. She was a girl of keen
+imagination, and she had allowed her imagination to riot unchecked.
+Astonishment, therefore, at the extraordinary fact of his being there
+was for the moment thrust aside by relief. Never before in her life had
+she experienced such an overwhelming rush of exhilaration. She flung
+herself into a chair and burst into a screech of laughter which even to
+her own ears sounded strange. It struck Ginger as hysterical.
+
+"I say, you know!" said Ginger, as the merriment showed no signs of
+abating. Ginger was concerned. Nasty shock for a girl, finding blighters
+under her bed.
+
+Sally sat up, gurgling, and wiped her eyes.
+
+"Oh, I am glad to see you," she gasped.
+
+"No, really?" said Ginger, gratified.  "That's fine." It occurred to him
+that some sort of apology would be a graceful act. "I say, you know,
+awfully sorry. About barging in here, I mean. Never dreamed it was your
+room. Unoccupied, I thought."
+
+"Don't mention it.  I ought not to have disturbed you.  You were having
+a nice sleep, of course. Do you always sleep on the floor?"
+
+"It was like this..."
+
+"Of course, if you're wearing it for ornament, as a sort of
+beauty-spot," said Sally, "all right. But in case you don't know, you've
+a smut on your nose."
+
+"Oh, my aunt! Not really?"
+
+"Now would I deceive you on an important point like that?"
+
+"Do you mind if I have a look in the glass?"
+
+"Certainly, if you can stand it."
+
+Ginger moved hurriedly to the dressing-table.
+
+"You're perfectly right," he announced, applying his handkerchief.
+
+"I thought I was.  I'm very quick at noticing things."
+
+"My hair's a bit rumpled, too."
+
+"Very much so."
+
+"You take my tis," said Ginger, earnestly, "and never lie about under
+beds. There's nothing in it."
+
+"That reminds me.  You won't be offended if I asked you something?"
+
+"No, no.  Go ahead."
+
+"It's rather an impertinent question.  You may resent it."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Well, then, what were you doing under my bed?"
+
+"Oh, under your bed?"
+
+"Yes.  Under my bed.  This.  It's a bed, you know.  Mine.  My bed.  You
+were under it. Why? Or putting it another way, why were you under my
+bed?"
+
+"I was hiding."
+
+"Playing hide-and-seek? That explains it."
+
+"Mrs. What's-her-name--Beecher--Meecher--was after me.
+
+Sally shook her head disapprovingly.
+
+"You mustn't encourage Mrs. Meecher in these childish pastimes.  It
+unsettles her."
+
+Ginger passed an agitated hand over his forehead.
+
+"It's like this..."
+
+"I hate to keep criticizing your appearance," said Sally, "and
+personally I like it; but, when you clutched your brow just then, you
+put about a pound of dust on it. Your hands are probably grubby."
+
+Ginger inspected them.
+
+"They are!"
+
+"Why not make a really good job of it and have a wash?"
+
+"Do you mind?"
+
+"I'd prefer it."
+
+"Thanks awfully.  I mean to say it's your basin, you know, and all that.
+What I mean is, seem to be making myself pretty well at home."
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Touching the matter of soap..."
+
+"Use mine.  We Americans are famous for our hospitality."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"The towel is on your right."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+"And I've a clothes brush in my bag."
+
+"Thanks awfully."
+
+Splashing followed like a sea-lion taking a dip.  "Now, then," said
+Sally, "why were you hiding from Mrs. Meecher?"
+
+A careworn, almost hunted look came into Ginger's face.  "I say, you
+know, that woman is rather by way of being one of the lads, what! Scares
+me! Word was brought that she was on the prowl, so it seemed to me a
+judicious move to take cover till she sort of blew over. If she'd found
+me, she'd have made me take that dog of hers for a walk."
+
+"Toto?"
+
+"Toto.  You know," said Ginger, with a strong sense of injury, "no dog's
+got a right to be a dog like that. I don't suppose there's anyone keener
+on dogs than I am, but a thing like a woolly rat." He shuddered
+slightly. "Well, one hates to be seen about with it in the public
+streets."
+
+"Why couldn't you have refused in a firm but gentlemanly manner to take
+Toto out?"
+
+"Ah! There you rather touch the spot.  You see, the fact of the matter
+is, I'm a bit behind with the rent, and that makes it rather hard to
+take what you might call a firm stand."
+
+"But how can you be behind with the rent? I only left here the Saturday
+before last and you weren't in the place then. You can't have been here
+more than a week."
+
+"I've been here just a week.  That's the week I'm behind with."
+
+"But why? You were a millionaire when I left you at Roville."
+
+"Well, the fact of the matter is, I went back to the tables that night
+and lost a goodish bit of what I'd won. And, somehow or another, when I
+got to America, the stuff seemed to slip away."
+
+"What made you come to America at all?" said Sally, asking the question
+which, she felt, any sensible person would have asked at the opening of
+the conversation.
+
+One of his familiar blushes raced over Ginger's face.  "Oh, I thought I
+would. Land of opportunity, you know."
+
+"Have you managed to find any of the opportunities yet?"
+
+"Well, I have got a job of sorts, I'm a waiter at a rummy little place
+on Second Avenue. The salary isn't big, but I'd have wangled enough out
+of it to pay last week's rent, only they docked me a goodish bit for
+breaking plates and what not. The fact is, I'm making rather a hash of
+it."
+
+"Oh, Ginger! You oughtn't to be a waiter!"
+
+"That's what the boss seems to think."
+
+"I mean, you ought to be doing something ever so much better."
+
+"But what? You've no notion how well all these blighters here seem to be
+able to get along without my help. I've tramped all over the place,
+offering my services, but they all say they'll try to carry on as they
+are."
+
+Sally reflected.
+
+"I know!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'll make Fillmore give you a job.  I wonder I didn't think of it
+before."
+
+"Fillmore?"
+
+"My brother.  Yes, he'll be able to use you."
+
+"What as?"
+
+Sally considered.
+
+"As a--as a--oh, as his right-hand man."
+
+"Does he want a right-hand man?"
+
+"Sure to.  He's a young fellow trying to get along.  Sure to want a
+right-hand man."
+
+"'M yes," said Ginger reflectively.  "Of course, I've never been a
+right-hand man, you know."
+
+"Oh, you'd pick it up.  I'll take you round to him now.  He's staying at
+the Astor."
+
+"There's just one thing," said Ginger.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I might make a hash of it."
+
+"Heavens, Ginger! There must be something in this world that you
+wouldn't make a hash of. Don't stand arguing any longer. Are you dry?
+and clean? Very well, then. Let's be off."
+
+"Right ho."
+
+Ginger took a step towards the door, then paused, rigid, with one leg in
+the air, as though some spell had been cast upon him. From the passage
+outside there had sounded a shrill yapping. Ginger looked at Sally. Then
+he looked--longingly--at the bed.
+
+"Don't be such a coward," said Sally, severely.
+
+"Yes, but..."
+
+"How much do you owe Mrs. Meecher?"
+
+"Round about twelve dollars, I think it is."
+
+"I'll pay her."
+
+Ginger flushed awkwardly.
+
+"No, I'm hanged if you will! I mean," he stammered, "it's frightfully
+good of you and all that, and I can't tell you how grateful I am, but
+honestly, I couldn't..."
+
+Sally did not press the point.  She liked him the better for a rugged
+independence, which in the days of his impecuniousness her brother
+Fillmore had never dreamed of exhibiting.
+
+"Very well," she said.  "Have it your own way.  Proud.  That's me all
+over, Mabel. Ginger!" She broke off sharply. "Pull yourself together.
+Where is your manly spirit? I'd be ashamed to be such a coward."
+
+"Awfully sorry, but, honestly, that woolly dog..."
+
+"Never mind the dog.  I'll see you through."
+
+They came out into the passage almost on top of Toto, who was stalking
+phantom rats. Mrs. Meecher was manoeuvring in the background. Her face
+lit up grimly at the sight of Ginger.
+
+"Mister Kemp!  I been looking for you."
+
+Sally intervened brightly.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Meecher," she said, shepherding her young charge through the
+danger zone, "I was so surprised to meet Mr. Kemp here. He is a great
+friend of mine. We met in France. We're going off now to have a long
+talk about old times, and then I'm taking him to see my brother..."
+
+"Toto..."
+
+"Dear little thing! You ought to take him for a walk," said Sally.
+"It's a lovely day. Mr. Kemp was saying just now that he would have
+liked to take him, but we're rather in a hurry and shall probably have
+to get into a taxi. You've no idea how busy my brother is just now. If
+we're late, he'll never forgive us."
+
+She passed on down the stairs, leaving Mrs. Meecher dissatisfied but
+irresolute. There was something about Sally which even in her
+pre-wealthy days had always baffled Mrs. Meecher and cramped her style,
+and now that she was rich and independent she inspired in the chatelaine
+of the boarding-house an emotion which was almost awe. The front door
+had closed before Mrs. Meecher had collected her faculties; and Ginger,
+pausing on the sidewalk, drew a long breath.
+
+"You know, you're wonderful!" he said, regarding Sally with unconcealed
+admiration.
+
+She accepted the compliment composedly.
+
+"Now we'll go and hunt up Fillmore," she said.  "But there's no need to
+hurry, of course, really. We'll go for a walk first, and then call at
+the Astor and make him give us lunch. I want to hear all about you. I've
+heard something already. I met your cousin, Mr. Carmyle. He was on the
+train coming from Detroit. Did you know that he was in America?"
+
+"No, I've--er--rather lost touch with the Family."
+
+"So I gathered from Mr. Carmyle.  And I feel hideously responsible.  It
+was all through me that all this happened."
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Of course it was.  I made you what you are to-day--I hope I'm
+satisfied--I dragged and dragged you down until the soul within you
+died, so to speak. I know perfectly well that you wouldn't have dreamed
+of savaging the Family as you seem to have done if it hadn't been for
+what I said to you at Roville. Ginger, tell me, what did happen? I'm
+dying to know. Mr. Carmyle said you insulted your uncle!"
+
+"Donald.  Yes, we did have a bit of a scrap, as a matter of fact.  He
+made me go out to dinner with him and we--er--sort of disagreed. To
+start with, he wanted me to apologize to old Scrymgeour, and I rather
+gave it a miss."
+
+"Noble fellow!"
+
+"Scrymgeour?"
+
+"No, silly! You."
+
+"Oh, ah!" Ginger blushed.  "And then there was all that about the soup,
+you know."
+
+"How do you mean, 'all that about the soup'? What about the soup? What
+soup?"
+
+"Well, things sort of hotted up a bit when the soup arrived."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"I mean, the trouble seemed to start, as it were, when the waiter had
+finished ladling out the mulligatawny. Thick soup, you know."
+
+"I know mulligatawny is a thick soup.  Yes?"
+
+"Well, my old uncle--I'm not blaming him, don't you know--more his
+misfortune than his fault--I can see that now--but he's got a heavy
+moustache. Like a walrus, rather, and he's a bit apt to inhale the stuff
+through it. And I--well, I asked him not to. It was just a suggestion,
+you know. He cut up fairly rough, and by the time the fish came round we
+were more or less down on the mat chewing holes in one another. My
+fault, probably. I wasn't feeling particularly well-disposed towards the
+Family that night. I'd just had a talk with Bruce--my cousin, you
+know--in Piccadilly, and that had rather got the wind up me. Bruce
+always seems to get on my nerves a bit somehow and--Uncle Donald asking
+me to dinner and all that. By the way, did you get the books?"
+
+"What books?"
+
+"Bruce said he wanted to send you some books.  That was why I gave him
+your address." Sally stared.
+
+"He never sent me any books."
+
+"Well, he said he was going to, and I had to tell him where to send
+them."
+
+Sally walked on, a little thoughtfully.  She was not a vain girl, but it
+was impossible not to perceive in the light of this fresh evidence that
+Mr. Carmyle had made a journey of three thousand miles with the sole
+object of renewing his acquaintance with her. It did not matter, of
+course, but it was vaguely disturbing. No girl cares to be dogged by a
+man she rather dislikes.
+
+"Go on telling me about your uncle," she said.
+
+"Well, there's not much more to tell.  I'd happened to get that wireless
+of yours just before I started out to dinner with him, and I was more or
+less feeling that I wasn't going to stand any rot from the Family. I'd
+got to the fish course, hadn't I? Well, we managed to get through that
+somehow, but we didn't survive the fillet steak. One thing seemed to
+lead to another, and the show sort of bust up. He called me a good many
+things, and I got a bit fed-up, and finally I told him I hadn't any more
+use for the Family and was going to start out on my own. And--well, I
+did, don't you know. And here I am."
+
+Sally listened to this saga breathlessly.  More than ever did she feel
+responsible for her young protégé, and any faint qualms which she had
+entertained as to the wisdom of transferring practically the whole of
+her patrimony to the care of so erratic a financier as her brother
+vanished. It was her plain duty to see that Ginger was started well in
+the race of life, and Fillmore was going to come in uncommonly handy.
+
+"We'll go to the Astor now," she said, "and I'll introduce you to
+Fillmore. He's a theatrical manager and he's sure to have something for
+you."
+
+"It's awfully good of you to bother about me."
+
+"Ginger," said Sally, "I regard you as a grandson.  Hail that cab, will
+you?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+SALLY IN THE SHADOWS
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+It seemed to Sally in the weeks that followed her reunion with Ginger
+Kemp that a sort of golden age had set in. On all the frontiers of her
+little kingdom there was peace and prosperity, and she woke each morning
+in a world so neatly smoothed and ironed out that the most captious
+pessimist could hardly have found anything in it to criticize.
+
+True, Gerald was still a thousand miles away.  Going to Chicago to
+superintend the opening of "The Primrose Way"; for Fillmore had acceded
+to his friend Ike's suggestion in the matter of producing it first in
+Chicago, and he had been called in by a distracted manager to revise the
+work of a brother dramatist, whose comedy was in difficulties at one of
+the theatres in that city; and this meant he would have to remain on the
+spot for some time to come. It was disappointing, for Sally had been
+looking forward to having him back in New York in a few days; but she
+refused to allow herself to be depressed. Life as a whole was much too
+satisfactory for that. Life indeed, in every other respect, seemed
+perfect. Fillmore was going strong; Ginger was off her conscience; she
+had found an apartment; her new hat suited her; and "The Primrose Way"
+was a tremendous success. Chicago, it appeared from Fillmore's account,
+was paying little attention to anything except "The Primrose Way."
+National problems had ceased to interest the citizens. Local problems
+left them cold. Their minds were riveted to the exclusion of all else on
+the problem of how to secure seats. The production of the piece,
+according to Fillmore, had been the most terrific experience that had
+come to stir Chicago since the great fire.
+
+Of all these satisfactory happenings, the most satisfactory, to Sally's
+thinking, was the fact that the problem of Ginger's future had been
+solved. Ginger had entered the service of the Fillmore Nicholas
+Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. (Managing Director, Fillmore
+Nicholas)--Fillmore would have made the title longer, only that was all
+that would go on the brass plate--and was to be found daily in the outer
+office, his duties consisting mainly, it seemed, in reading the evening
+papers. What exactly he was, even Ginger hardly knew. Sometimes he felt
+like the man at the wheel, sometimes like a glorified office boy, and
+not so very glorified at that. For the most part he had to prevent the
+mob rushing and getting at Fillmore, who sat in semi-regal state in the
+inner office pondering great schemes.
+
+But, though there might be an occasional passing uncertainty in
+Ginger's mind as to just what he was supposed to be doing in exchange
+for the fifty dollars he drew every Friday, there was nothing uncertain
+about his gratitude to Sally for having pulled the strings and enabled
+him to do it. He tried to thank her every time they met, and nowadays
+they were meeting frequently; for Ginger was helping her to furnish her
+new apartment. In this task, he spared no efforts. He said that it kept
+him in condition.
+
+"And what I mean to say is," said Ginger, pausing in the act of carrying
+a massive easy chair to the third spot which Sally had selected in the
+last ten minutes, "if I didn't sweat about a bit and help you after the
+way you got me that job..."
+
+"Ginger, desist," said Sally.
+
+"Yes, but honestly..."
+
+"If you don't stop it, I'll make you move that chair into the next
+room."
+
+"Shall I?" Ginger rubbed his blistered hands and took a new grip.
+"Anything you say."
+
+"Silly! Of course not.  The only other rooms are my bedroom, the
+bathroom and the kitchen. What on earth would I want a great lumbering
+chair in them for? All the same, I believe the first we chose was the
+best."
+
+"Back she goes, then, what?"
+
+Sally reflected frowningly.  This business of setting up house was
+causing her much thought.
+
+"No," she decided.  "By the window is better." She looked at him
+remorsefully. "I'm giving you a lot of trouble."
+
+"Trouble!" Ginger, accompanied by a chair, staggered across the room.
+"The way I look at it is this." He wiped a bead of perspiration from his
+freckled forehead. "You got me that job, and..."
+
+"Stop!"
+
+"Right ho... Still, you did, you know."
+
+Sally sat down in the armchair and stretched herself.  Watching Ginger
+work had given her a vicarious fatigue. She surveyed the room proudly.
+It was certainly beginning to look cosy. The pictures were up, the
+carpet down, the furniture very neatly in order. For almost the first
+time in her life she had the restful sensation of being at home. She had
+always longed, during the past three years of boarding-house existence,
+for a settled abode, a place where she could lock the door on herself
+and be alone. The apartment was small, but it was undeniably a haven.
+She looked about her and could see no flaw in it... except... She had a
+sudden sense of something missing.
+
+"Hullo!" she said.  "Where's that photograph of me? I'm sure I put it on
+the mantelpiece yesterday."
+
+His exertions seemed to have brought the blood to Ginger's face.  He was
+a rich red. He inspected the mantelpiece narrowly.
+
+"No.  No photograph here."
+
+"I know there isn't.  But it was there yesterday.  Or was it? I know I
+meant to put it there. Perhaps I forgot. It's the most beautiful thing
+you ever saw. Not a bit like me; but what of that? They touch 'em up in
+the dark-room, you know. I value it because it looks the way I should
+like to look if I could."
+
+"I've never had a beautiful photograph taken of myself," said Ginger,
+solemnly, with gentle regret.
+
+"Cheer up!"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind.  I only mentioned..."
+
+"Ginger," said Sally, "pardon my interrupting your remarks, which I know
+are valuable, but this chair is--not--right! It ought to be where it
+was at the beginning. Could you give your imitation of a pack-mule just
+once more? And after that I'll make you some tea. If there's any tea--
+or milk--or cups."
+
+"There are cups all right.  I know, because I smashed two the day before
+yesterday. I'll nip round the corner for some milk, shall I?"
+
+"Yes, please nip.  All this hard work has taken it out of me terribly."
+
+Over the tea-table Sally became inquisitive.
+
+"What I can't understand about this job of yours.  Ginger--which as you
+are just about to observe, I was noble enough to secure for you--is the
+amount of leisure that seems to go with it. How is it that you are able
+to spend your valuable time--Fillmore's valuable time, rather--juggling
+with my furniture every day?"
+
+"Oh, I can usually get off."
+
+"But oughtn't you to be at your post doing--whatever it is you do? What
+do you do?"
+
+Ginger stirred his tea thoughtfully and gave his mind to the question.
+
+"Well, I sort of mess about, you know." He pondered. "I interview
+divers blighters and tell 'em your brother is out and take their
+names and addresses and... oh, all that sort of thing."
+
+"Does Fillmore consult you much?"
+
+"He lets me read some of the plays that are sent in.  Awful tosh most of
+them. Sometimes he sends me off to a vaudeville house of an evening."
+
+"As a treat?"
+
+"To see some special act, you know.  To report on it.  In case he might
+want to use it for this revue of his."
+
+"Which revue?"
+
+"Didn't you know he was going to put on a revue? Oh, rather.  A whacking
+big affair. Going to cut out the Follies and all that sort of thing."
+
+"But--my goodness!" Sally was alarmed.  It was just like Fillmore, she
+felt, to go branching out into these expensive schemes when he ought to
+be moving warily and trying to consolidate the small success he had had.
+All his life he had thought in millions where the prudent man would have
+been content with hundreds. An inexhaustible fount of optimism bubbled
+eternally within him. "That's rather ambitious," she said.
+
+"Yes.  Ambitious sort of cove, your brother.  Quite the Napoleon."
+
+"I shall have to talk to him," said Sally decidedly.  She was annoyed
+with Fillmore. Everything had been going so beautifully, with everybody
+peaceful and happy and prosperous and no anxiety anywhere, till he had
+spoiled things. Now she would have to start worrying again.
+
+"Of course," argued Ginger, "there's money in revues.  Over in London
+fellows make pots out of them."
+
+Sally shook her head.
+
+"It won't do," she said.  "And I'll tell you another thing that won't
+do. This armchair. Of course it ought to be over by the window. You can
+see that yourself, can't you."
+
+"Absolutely!" said Ginger, patiently preparing for action once more.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Sally's anxiety with regard to her ebullient brother was not lessened by
+the receipt shortly afterwards of a telegram from Miss Winch in Chicago.
+
+Have you been feeding Fillmore meat?
+
+the telegram ran: and, while Sally could not have claimed that she
+completely understood it, there was a sinister suggestion about the
+message which decided her to wait no longer before making
+investigations. She tore herself away from the joys of furnishing and
+went round to the headquarters of the Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical
+Enterprises Ltd. (Managing Director, Fillmore Nicholas) without delay.
+
+Ginger, she discovered on arrival, was absent from his customary post,
+his place in the outer office being taken by a lad of tender years and
+pimply exterior, who thawed and cast off a proud reserve on hearing
+Sally's name, and told her to walk right in. Sally walked right in, and
+found Fillmore with his feet on an untidy desk, studying what appeared
+to be costume-designs.
+
+"Ah, Sally!" he said in the distrait, tired voice which speaks of vast
+preoccupations. Prosperity was still putting in its silent, deadly work
+on the Hope of the American Theatre. What, even at as late an epoch as
+the return from Detroit, had been merely a smooth fullness around the
+angle of the jaw was now frankly and without disguise a double chin. He
+was wearing a new waistcoat and it was unbuttoned. "I am rather busy,"
+he went on. "Always glad to see you, but I am rather busy. I have a
+hundred things to attend to."
+
+"Well, attend to me.  That'll only make a hundred and one.  Fill, what's
+all this I hear about a revue?"
+
+Fillmore looked as like a small boy caught in the act of stealing jam as
+it is possible for a great theatrical manager to look. He had been
+wondering in his darker moments what Sally would say about that project
+when she heard of it, and he had hoped that she would not hear of it
+until all the preparations were so complete that interference would be
+impossible. He was extremely fond of Sally, but there was, he knew, a
+lamentable vein of caution in her make-up which might lead her to
+criticize. And how can your man of affairs carry on if women are buzzing
+round criticizing all the time? He picked up a pen and put it down;
+buttoned his waistcoat and unbuttoned it; and scratched his ear with one
+of the costume-designs.
+
+"Oh yes, the revue!"
+
+"It's no good saying 'Oh yes'! You know perfectly well it's a crazy
+idea."
+
+"Really... these business matters... this interference..."
+
+"I don't want to run your affairs for you, Fill, but that money of mine
+does make me a sort of partner, I suppose, and I think I have a right to
+raise a loud yell of agony when I see you risking it on a..."
+
+"Pardon me," said Fillmore loftily, looking happier.  "Let me explain.
+Women never understand business matters. Your money is tied up
+exclusively in 'The Primrose Way,' which, as you know, is a tremendous
+success. You have nothing whatever to worry about as regards any new
+production I may make."
+
+"I'm not worrying about the money.  I'm worrying about you."
+
+A tolerant smile played about the lower slopes of Fillmore's face.
+
+"Don't be alarmed about me.  I'm all right."
+
+"You aren't all right.  You've no business, when you've only just got
+started as a manager, to be rushing into an enormous production like
+this. You can't afford it."
+
+"My dear child, as I said before, women cannot understand these things.
+A man in my position can always command money for a new venture."
+
+"Do you mean to say you have found somebody silly enough to put up
+money?"
+
+"Certainly.  I don't know that there is any secret about it.  Your
+friend, Mr. Carmyle, has taken an interest in some of my forthcoming
+productions."
+
+"What!" Sally had been disturbed before, but she was aghast now.
+
+This was something she had never anticipated.  Bruce Carmyle seemed to
+be creeping into her life like an advancing tide. There appeared to be
+no eluding him. Wherever she turned, there he was, and she could do
+nothing but rage impotently. The situation was becoming impossible.
+
+Fillmore misinterpreted the note of dismay in her voice.
+
+"It's quite all right," he assured her.  "He's a very rich man.  Large
+private means, besides his big income. Even if anything goes wrong..."
+
+"It isn't that.  It's..."
+
+The hopelessness of explaining to Fillmore stopped Sally.  And while she
+was chafing at this new complication which had come to upset the orderly
+routine of her life there was an outburst of voices in the other office.
+Ginger's understudy seemed to be endeavouring to convince somebody that
+the Big Chief was engaged and not to be intruded upon. In this he was
+unsuccessful, for the door opened tempestuously and Miss Winch sailed
+in.
+
+"Fillmore, you poor nut," said Miss Winch, for though she might wrap up
+her meaning somewhat obscurely in her telegraphic communications, when
+it came to the spoken word she was directness itself, "stop picking
+straws in your hair and listen to me. You're dippy!"
+
+The last time Sally had seen Fillmore's fiancée, she had been impressed
+by her imperturbable calm. Miss Winch, in Detroit, had seemed a girl
+whom nothing could ruffle. That she had lapsed now from this serene
+placidity, struck Sally as ominous. Slightly though she knew her, she
+felt that it could be no ordinary happening that had so animated her
+sister-in-law-to-be.
+
+"Ah! Here you are!" said Fillmore.  He had started to his feet
+indignantly at the opening of the door, like a lion bearded in its den,
+but calm had returned when he saw who the intruder was.
+
+"Yes, here I am!" Miss Winch dropped despairingly into a swivel-chair,
+and endeavoured to restore herself with a stick of chewing-gum.
+"Fillmore, darling, you're the sweetest thing on earth, and I love you,
+but on present form you could just walk straight into Bloomingdale and
+they'd give you the royal suite."
+
+"My dear girl..."
+
+"What do you think?" demanded Miss Winch, turning to Sally.
+
+"I've just been telling him," said Sally, welcoming this ally, "I think
+it's absurd at this stage of things for him to put on an enormous
+revue..."
+
+"Revue?" Miss Winch stopped in the act of gnawing her gum.  "What
+revue?" She flung up her arms. "I shall have to swallow this gum," she
+said. "You can't chew with your head going round. Are you putting on a
+revue too?"
+
+Fillmore was buttoning and unbuttoning his waistcoat.  He had a hounded
+look.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," he replied in a tone of some feverishness.  "I
+wish you girls would leave me to manage..."
+
+"Dippy!" said Miss Winch once more.  "Telegraphic address: Tea-Pot,
+Matteawan." She swivelled round to Sally again. "Say, listen! This boy
+must be stopped. We must form a gang in his best interests and get him
+put away. What do you think he proposes doing? I'll give you three
+guesses. Oh, what's the use? You'd never hit it. This poor wandering lad
+has got it all fixed up to star me--me--in a new show!"
+
+Fillmore removed a hand from his waistcoat buttons and waved it
+protestingly.
+
+"I have used my own judgment..."
+
+"Yes, sir!" proceeded Miss Winch, riding over the interruption.
+"That's what he's planning to spring on an unsuspicious public. I'm
+sitting peacefully in my room at the hotel in Chicago, pronging a few
+cents' worth of scrambled eggs and reading the morning paper, when the
+telephone rings. Gentleman below would like to see me. Oh, ask him to
+wait. Business of flinging on a few clothes. Down in elevator. Bright
+sunrise effects in lobby."
+
+"What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"The gentleman had a head of red hair which had to be seen to be
+believed," explained Miss Winch. "Lit up the lobby. Management had
+switched off all the electrics for sake of economy. An Englishman he
+was. Nice fellow. Named Kemp."
+
+"Oh, is Ginger in Chicago?" said Sally.  "I wondered why he wasn't on
+his little chair in the outer office.
+
+"I sent Kemp to Chicago," said Fillmore, "to have a look at the show.
+It is my policy, if I am unable to pay periodical visits myself, to send
+a representative..."
+
+"Save it up for the long winter evenings," advised Miss Winch, cutting
+in on this statement of managerial tactics. "Mr. Kemp may have been
+there to look at the show, but his chief reason for coming was to tell
+me to beat it back to New York to enter into my kingdom. Fillmore wanted
+me on the spot, he told me, so that I could sit around in this office
+here, interviewing my supporting company. Me! Can you or can you not,"
+inquired Miss Winch frankly, "tie it?"
+
+"Well..." Sally hesitated.
+
+"Don't say it! I know it just as well as you do.  It's too sad for
+words."
+
+"You persist in underestimating your abilities, Gladys," said Fillmore
+reproachfully. "I have had a certain amount of experience in theatrical
+matters--I have seen a good deal of acting--and I assure you that as a
+character-actress you..."
+
+Miss Winch rose swiftly from her seat, kissed Fillmore energetically,
+and sat down again. She produced another stick of chewing-gum, then
+shook her head and replaced it in her bag.
+
+"You're a darling old thing to talk like that," she said, "and I hate to
+wake you out of your daydreams, but, honestly, Fillmore, dear, do just
+step out of the padded cell for one moment and listen to reason. I know
+exactly what has been passing in your poor disordered bean. You took
+Elsa Doland out of a minor part and made her a star overnight. She goes
+to Chicago, and the critics and everybody else rave about her. As a
+matter of fact," she said to Sally with enthusiasm, for hers was an
+honest and generous nature, "you can't realize, not having seen her play
+there, what an amazing hit she has made. She really is a sensation.
+Everybody says she's going to be the biggest thing on record. Very well,
+then, what does Fillmore do? The poor fish claps his hand to his
+forehead and cries 'Gadzooks! An idea! I've done it before, I'll do it
+again. I'm the fellow who can make a star out of anything.' And he picks
+on me!"
+
+"My dear girl..."
+
+"Now, the flaw in the scheme is this.  Elsa is a genius, and if he
+hadn't made her a star somebody else would have done. But little Gladys?
+That's something else again." She turned to Sally. "You've seen me in
+action, and let me tell you you've seen me at my best. Give me a maid's
+part, with a tray to carry on in act one and a couple of 'Yes, madam's'
+in act two, and I'm there! Ellen Terry hasn't anything on me when it
+comes to saying 'Yes, madam,' and I'm willing to back myself for gold,
+notes, or lima beans against Sarah Bernhardt as a tray-carrier. But
+there I finish. That lets me out. And anybody who thinks otherwise is
+going to lose a lot of money. Between ourselves the only thing I can do
+really well is to cook..."
+
+"My dear Gladys!" cried Fillmore revolted.
+
+"I'm a heaven-born cook, and I don't mind notifying the world to that
+effect. I can cook a chicken casserole so that you would leave home and
+mother for it. Also my English pork-pies! One of these days I'll take an
+afternoon off and assemble one for you. You'd be surprised! But
+acting--no. I can't do it, and I don't want to do it. I only went on the
+stage for fun, and my idea of fun isn't to plough through a star part
+with all the critics waving their axes in the front row, and me knowing
+all the time that it's taking money out of Fillmore's bankroll that
+ought to be going towards buying the little home with stationary
+wash-tubs... Well, that's that, Fillmore, old darling. I thought I'd
+just mention it."
+
+Sally could not help being sorry for Fillmore.  He was sitting with his
+chin on his hands, staring moodily before him--Napoleon at Elba. It was
+plain that this project of taking Miss Winch by the scruff of the neck
+and hurling her to the heights had been very near his heart.
+
+"If that's how you feel," he said in a stricken voice, "there is nothing
+more to say."
+
+"Oh, yes there is.  We will now talk about this revue of yours.  It's
+off!"
+
+Fillmore bounded to his feet; he thumped the desk with a well-nourished
+fist. A man can stand just so much.
+
+"It is not off! Great heavens! It's too much! I will not put up with
+this interference with my business concerns. I will not be tied and
+hampered. Here am I, a man of broad vision and... and... broad vision...
+I form my plans... my plans... I form them... I shape my schemes... and
+what happens? A horde of girls flock into my private office while I am
+endeavouring to concentrate... and concentrate... I won't stand it.
+Advice, yes. Interference, no. I... I... I... and kindly remember that!"
+
+The door closed with a bang.  A fainter detonation announced the
+whirlwind passage through the outer office. Footsteps died away down the
+corridor.
+
+Sally looked at Miss Winch, stunned.  A roused and militant Fillmore was
+new to her.
+
+Miss Winch took out the stick of chewing-gum again and unwrapped it.
+
+"Isn't he cute!" she said.  "I hope he doesn't get the soft kind," she
+murmured, chewing reflectively.
+
+"The soft kind."
+
+"He'll be back soon with a box of candy," explained Miss Winch, "and he
+will get that sloshy, creamy sort, though I keep telling him I like the
+other. Well, one thing's certain. Fillmore's got it up his nose. He's
+beginning to hop about and sing in the sunlight. It's going to be hard
+work to get that boy down to earth again." Miss Winch heaved a gentle
+sigh. "I should like him to have enough left in the old stocking to pay
+the first year's rent when the wedding bells ring out." She bit
+meditatively on her chewing-gum. "Not," she said, "that it matters. I'd
+be just as happy in two rooms and a kitchenette, so long as Fillmore was
+there. You've no notion how dippy I am about him." Her freckled face
+glowed. "He grows on me like a darned drug. And the funny thing is that
+I keep right on admiring him though I can see all the while that he's
+the most perfect chump. He is a chump, you know. That's what I love
+about him. That and the way his ears wiggle when he gets excited. Chumps
+always make the best husbands. When you marry. Sally, grab a chump. Tap
+his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the
+unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are
+brains to a man? They only unsettle him." She broke off and scrutinized
+Sally closely. "Say, what do you do with your skin?"
+
+She spoke with solemn earnestness which made Sally laugh.
+
+"What do I do with my skin? I just carry it around with me."
+
+"Well," said Miss Winch enviously, "I wish I could train my darned fool
+of a complexion to get that way. Freckles are the devil. When I was
+eight I had the finest collection in the Middle West, and I've been
+adding to it right along. Some folks say lemon-juice'll cure 'em. Mine
+lap up all I give 'em and ask for more. There's only one way of getting
+rid of freckles, and that is to saw the head off at the neck."
+
+"But why do you want to get rid of them?"
+
+"Why? Because a sensitive girl, anxious to retain her future husband's
+love, doesn't enjoy going about looking like something out of a dime
+museum."
+
+"How absurd! Fillmore worships freckles."
+
+"Did he tell you so?" asked Miss Winch eagerly.
+
+"Not in so many words, but you can see it in his eye."
+
+"Well, he certainly asked me to marry him, knowing all about them, I
+will say that. And, what's more, I don't think feminine loveliness means
+much to Fillmore, or he'd never have picked on me. Still, it is
+calculated to give a girl a jar, you must admit, when she picks up a
+magazine and reads an advertisement of a face-cream beginning, 'Your
+husband is growing cold to you. Can you blame him? Have you really tried
+to cure those unsightly blemishes?'--meaning what I've got. Still, I
+haven't noticed Fillmore growing cold to me, so maybe it's all right."
+
+It was a subdued Sally who received Ginger when he called at her
+apartment a few days later on his return from Chicago. It seemed to her,
+thinking over the recent scene, that matters were even worse than she
+had feared. This absurd revue, which she had looked on as a mere
+isolated outbreak of foolishness, was, it would appear, only a specimen
+of the sort of thing her misguided brother proposed to do, a sample
+selected at random from a wholesale lot of frantic schemes. Fillmore,
+there was no longer any room for doubt, was preparing to express his
+great soul on a vast scale. And she could not dissuade him. A
+humiliating thought. She had grown so accustomed through the years to
+being the dominating mind that this revolt from her authority made her
+feel helpless and inadequate. Her self-confidence was shaken.
+
+And Bruce Carmyle was financing him... It was illogical, but Sally could
+not help feeling that when--she had not the optimism to say "if"--he
+lost his money, she would somehow be under an obligation to him, as if
+the disaster had been her fault. She disliked, with a whole-hearted
+intensity, the thought of being under an obligation to Mr. Carmyle.
+
+Ginger said he had looked in to inspect the furniture on the chance that
+Sally might want it shifted again: but Sally had no criticisms to make
+on that subject. Weightier matters occupied her mind. She sat Ginger
+down in the armchair and started to pour out her troubles. It soothed
+her to talk to him. In a world which had somehow become chaotic again
+after an all too brief period of peace, he was solid and consoling.
+
+"I shouldn't worry," observed Ginger with Winch-like calm, when she had
+finished drawing for him the picture of a Fillmore rampant against a
+background of expensive revues. Sally nearly shook him.
+
+"It's all very well to tell me not to worry," she cried.  "How can I
+help worrying? Fillmore's simply a baby, and he's just playing the fool.
+He has lost his head completely. And I can't stop him! That is the awful
+part of it. I used to be able to look him in the eye, and he would wag
+his tail and crawl back into his basket, but now I seem to have no
+influence at all over him. He just snorts and goes on running round in
+circles, breathing fire."
+
+Ginger did not abandon his attempts to indicate the silver lining.
+
+"I think you are making too much of all this, you know.  I mean to say,
+it's quite likely he's found some mug... what I mean is, it's just
+possible that your brother isn't standing the entire racket himself.
+Perhaps some rich Johnnie has breezed along with a pot of money. It
+often happens like that, you know. You read in the paper that some
+manager or other is putting on some show or other, when really the chap
+who's actually supplying the pieces of eight is some anonymous lad in
+the background."
+
+"That is just what has happened, and it makes it worse than ever.
+Fillmore tells me that your cousin, Mr. Carmyle, is providing the
+money."
+
+This did interest Ginger.  He sat up with a jerk.
+
+"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes," said Sally, still agitated but pleased that she had at last
+shaken him out of his trying attitude of detachment.
+
+Ginger was scowling.
+
+"That's a bit off," he observed.
+
+"I think so, too."
+
+"I don't like that."
+
+"Nor do I."
+
+"Do you know what I think?" said Ginger, ever a man of plain speech and
+a reckless plunger into delicate subjects. "The blighter's in love with
+you."
+
+Sally flushed.  After examining the evidence before her, she had reached
+the same conclusion in the privacy of her thoughts, but it embarrassed
+her to hear the thing put into bald words.
+
+"I know Bruce," continued Ginger, "and, believe me, he isn't the sort of
+cove to take any kind of flutter without a jolly good motive. Of course,
+he's got tons of money. His old guvnor was the Carmyle of Carmyle, Brent
+& Co.--coal mines up in Wales, and all that sort of thing--and I
+suppose he must have left Bruce something like half a million. No need
+for the fellow to have worked at all, if he hadn't wanted to. As far as
+having the stuff goes, he's in a position to back all the shows he wants
+to. But the point is, it's right out of his line. He doesn't do that
+sort of thing. Not a drop of sporting blood in the chap. Why I've known
+him stick the whole family on to me just because it got noised about
+that I'd dropped a couple of quid on the Grand National. If he's really
+brought himself to the point of shelling out on a risky proposition like
+a show, it means something, take my word for it. And I don't see what
+else it can mean except... well, I mean to say, is it likely that he's
+doing it simply to make your brother look on him as a good egg and a
+pal, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"No, it's not," agreed Sally.  "But don't let's talk about it any more.
+Tell me all about your trip to Chicago."
+
+"All right.  But, returning to this binge for a moment, I don't see how
+it matters to you one way or the other. You're engaged to another
+fellow, and when Bruce rolls up and says: 'What about it?' you've simply
+to tell him that the shot isn't on the board and will he kindly melt
+away. Then you hand him his hat and out he goes."
+
+Sally gave a troubled laugh.
+
+"You think that's simple, do you? I suppose you imagine that a girl
+enjoys that sort of thing? Oh, what's the use of talking about it? It's
+horrible, and no amount of arguing will make it anything else. Do let's
+change the subject. How did you like Chicago?"
+
+"Oh, all right.  Rather a grubby sort of place."
+
+"So I've always heard.  But you ought not to mind that, being a
+Londoner."
+
+"Oh, I didn't mind it.  As a matter of fact, I had rather a good time.
+Saw one or two shows, you know. Got in on my face as your brother's
+representative, which was all to the good. By the way, it's rummy how
+you run into people when you move about, isn't it?"
+
+"You talk as if you had been dashing about the streets with your eyes
+shut. Did you meet somebody you knew?"
+
+"Chap I hadn't seen for years.  Was at school with him, as a matter of
+fact. Fellow named Foster. But I expect you know him, too, don't you? By
+name, at any rate. He wrote your brother's show."
+
+Sally's heart jumped.
+
+"Oh! Did you meet Gerald--Foster?"
+
+"Ran into him one night at the theatre."
+
+"And you were really at school with him?"
+
+"Yes.  He was in the footer team with me my last year."
+
+"Was he a scrum-half, too?" asked Sally, dimpling.
+
+Ginger looked shocked.
+
+"You don't have two scrum-halves in a team," he said, pained at this
+ignorance on a vital matter. "The scrum-half is the half who works the
+scrum and..."
+
+"Yes, you told me that at Roville.  What was Gerald--Mr. Foster then? A
+six and seven-eighths, or something?"
+
+"He was a wing-three," said Ginger with a gravity befitting his theme.
+"Rather fast, with a fairly decent swerve. But he would not learn to
+give the reverse pass inside to the centre."
+
+"Ghastly!" said Sally.
+
+"If," said Ginger earnestly, "a wing's bottled up by his wing and the
+back, the only thing he can do, if he doesn't want to be bundled into
+touch, is to give the reverse pass."
+
+"I know," said Sally.  "If I've thought that once, I've thought it a
+hundred times. How nice it must have been for you meeting again. I
+suppose you had all sorts of things to talk about?"
+
+Ginger shook his head.
+
+"Not such a frightful lot.  We were never very thick.  You see, this
+chap Foster was by way of being a bit of a worm."
+
+"What!"
+
+"A tick," explained Ginger.  "A rotter.  He was pretty generally barred
+at school. Personally, I never had any use for him at all."
+
+Sally stiffened.  She had liked Ginger up to that moment, and later on,
+no doubt, she would resume her liking for him: but in the immediate
+moment which followed these words she found herself regarding him with
+stormy hostility. How dare he sit there saying things like that about
+Gerald?
+
+Ginger, who was lighting a cigarette without a care in the world,
+proceeded to develop his theme.
+
+"It's a rummy thing about school.  Generally, if a fellow's good at
+games--in the cricket team or the footer team and so forth--he can
+hardly help being fairly popular. But this blighter Foster
+somehow--nobody seemed very keen on him. Of course, he had a few of his
+own pals, but most of the chaps rather gave him a miss. It may have been
+because he was a bit sidey... had rather an edge on him, you know...
+Personally, the reason I barred him was because he wasn't straight. You
+didn't notice it if you weren't thrown a goodish bit with him, of
+course, but he and I were in the same house, and..."
+
+Sally managed to control her voice, though it shook a little.
+
+"I ought to tell you," she said, and her tone would have warned him had
+he been less occupied, "that Mr. Foster is a great friend of mine."
+
+But Ginger was intent on the lighting of his cigarette, a delicate
+operation with the breeze blowing in through the open window. His head
+was bent, and he had formed his hands into a protective framework which
+half hid his face.
+
+"If you take my tip," he mumbled, "you'll drop him.  He's a wrong 'un."
+
+He spoke with the absent-minded drawl of preoccupation, and Sally could
+keep the conflagration under no longer. She was aflame from head to
+foot.
+
+"It may interest you to know," she said, shooting the words out like
+bullets from between clenched teeth, "that Gerald Foster is the man I am
+engaged to marry."
+
+Ginger's head came slowly up from his cupped hands.  Amazement was in
+his eyes, and a sort of horror. The cigarette hung limply from his
+mouth. He did not speak, but sat looking at her, dazed. Then the match
+burnt his fingers, and he dropped it with a start. The sharp sting of it
+seemed to wake him. He blinked.
+
+"You're joking," he said, feebly.  There was a note of wistfulness in
+his voice. "It isn't true?"
+
+Sally kicked the leg of her chair irritably.  She read insolent
+disapproval into the words. He was daring to criticize...
+
+"Of course it's true..."
+
+"But..." A look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face.  He
+hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful,
+but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes,
+which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the
+carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a foot on it.
+
+"Foster's married," he said shortly.  "He was married the day before I
+left Chicago."
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+It seemed to Ginger that in the silence which followed, brooding over
+the room like a living presence, even the noises in the street had
+ceased, as though what he had said had been a spell cutting Sally and
+himself off from the outer world. Only the little clock on the
+mantelpiece ticked--ticked--ticked, like a heart beating fast.
+
+He stared straight before him, conscious of a strange rigidity.  He felt
+incapable of movement, as he had sometimes felt in nightmares; and not
+for all the wealth of America could he have raised his eyes just then to
+Sally's face. He could see her hands. They had tightened on the arm of
+the chair. The knuckles were white.
+
+He was blaming himself bitterly now for his oafish clumsiness in
+blurting out the news so abruptly. And yet, curiously, in his remorse
+there was something of elation. Never before had he felt so near to her.
+It was as though a barrier that had been between them had fallen.
+
+Something moved... It was Sally's hand, slowly relaxing.  The fingers
+loosened their grip, tightened again, then, as if reluctantly relaxed
+once more. The blood flowed back.
+
+"Your cigarette's out."
+
+Ginger started violently.  Her voice, coming suddenly out of the
+silence, had struck him like a blow.
+
+"Oh, thanks!"
+
+He forced himself to light another match.  It sputtered noisily in the
+stillness. He blew it out, and the uncanny quiet fell again.
+
+Ginger drew at his cigarette mechanically.  For an instant he had seen
+Sally's face, white-cheeked and bright-eyed, the chin tilted like a flag
+flying over a stricken field. His mood changed. All his emotions had
+crystallized into a dull, futile rage, a helpless fury directed at a man
+a thousand miles away.
+
+Sally spoke again.  Her voice sounded small and far off, an odd flatness
+in it.
+
+"Married?"
+
+Ginger threw his cigarette out of the window.  He was shocked to find
+that he was smoking. Nothing could have been farther from his intention
+than to smoke. He nodded.
+
+"Whom has he married?"
+
+Ginger coughed.  Something was sticking in his throat, and speech was
+difficult.
+
+"A girl called Doland."
+
+"Oh, Elsa Doland?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Elsa Doland." Sally drummed with her fingers on the arm of the chair.
+"Oh, Elsa Doland?"
+
+There was silence again.  The little clock ticked fussily on the
+mantelpiece. Out in the street automobile horns were blowing. From
+somewhere in the distance came faintly the rumble of an elevated train.
+Familiar sounds, but they came to Sally now with a curious, unreal sense
+of novelty. She felt as though she had been projected into another world
+where everything was new and strange and horrible--everything except
+Ginger. About him, in the mere sight of him, there was something known
+and heartening.
+
+Suddenly, she became aware that she was feeling that Ginger was behaving
+extremely well. She seemed to have been taken out of herself and to be
+regarding the scene from outside, regarding it coolly and critically;
+and it was plain to her that Ginger, in this upheaval of all things, was
+bearing himself perfectly. He had attempted no banal words of sympathy.
+He had said nothing and he was not looking at her. And Sally felt that
+sympathy just now would be torture, and that she could not have borne to
+be looked at.
+
+Ginger was wonderful.  In that curious, detached spirit that had come
+upon her, she examined him impartially, and gratitude welled up from the
+very depths of her. There he sat, saying nothing and doing nothing, as
+if he knew that all she needed, the only thing that could keep her sane
+in this world of nightmare, was the sight of that dear, flaming head of
+his that made her feel that the world had not slipped away from her
+altogether.
+
+Ginger did not move.  The room had grown almost dark now.  A spear of
+light from a street lamp shone in through the window.
+
+Sally got up abruptly.  Slowly, gradually, inch by inch, the great
+suffocating cloud which had been crushing her had lifted. She felt alive
+again. Her black hour had gone, and she was back in the world of living
+things once more. She was afire with a fierce, tearing pain that
+tormented her almost beyond endurance, but dimly she sensed the fact
+that she had passed through something that was worse than pain, and,
+with Ginger's stolid presence to aid her, had passed triumphantly.
+
+"Go and have dinner, Ginger," she said.  "You must be starving."
+
+Ginger came to life like a courtier in the palace of the Sleeping
+Beauty. He shook himself, and rose stiffly from his chair.
+
+"Oh, no," he said.  "Not a bit, really."
+
+Sally switched on the light and set him blinking.  She could bear to be
+looked at now.
+
+"Go and dine," she said.  "Dine lavishly and luxuriously.  You've
+certainly earned..." Her voice faltered for a moment. She held out her
+hand. "Ginger," she said shakily, "I... Ginger, you're a pal."
+
+When he had gone.  Sally sat down and began to cry.  Then she dried her
+eyes in a business-like manner.
+
+"There, Miss Nicholas!" she said.  "You couldn't have done that an hour
+ago... We will now boil you an egg for your dinner and see how that
+suits you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+SALLY RUNS AWAY
+
+
+
+If Ginger Kemp had been asked to enumerate his good qualities, it is not
+probable that he would have drawn up a very lengthy list. He might have
+started by claiming for himself the virtue of meaning well, but after
+that he would have had to chew the pencil in prolonged meditation. And,
+even if he could eventually have added one or two further items to the
+catalogue, tact and delicacy of feeling would not have been among them.
+
+Yet, by staying away from Sally during the next few days he showed
+considerable delicacy. It was not easy to stay away from her, but he
+forced himself to do so. He argued from his own tastes, and was strongly
+of opinion that in times of travail, solitude was what the sufferer most
+desired. In his time he, too, had had what he would have described as
+nasty jars, and on these occasions all he had asked was to be allowed to
+sit and think things over and fight his battle out by himself.
+
+By Saturday, however, he had come to the conclusion that some form of
+action might now be taken. Saturday was rather a good day for picking up
+the threads again. He had not to go to the office, and, what was still
+more to the point, he had just drawn his week's salary. Mrs. Meecher had
+deftly taken a certain amount of this off him, but enough remained to
+enable him to attempt consolation on a fairly princely scale. There
+presented itself to him as a judicious move the idea of hiring a car and
+taking Sally out to dinner at one of the road-houses he had heard about
+up the Boston Post Road. He examined the scheme. The more he looked at
+it, the better it seemed.
+
+He was helped to this decision by the extraordinary perfection of the
+weather. The weather of late had been a revelation to Ginger. It was his
+first experience of America's Indian Summer, and it had quite overcome
+him. As he stood on the roof of Mrs. Meecher's establishment on the
+Saturday morning, thrilled by the velvet wonder of the sunshine, it
+seemed to him that the only possible way of passing such a day was to
+take Sally for a ride in an open car.
+
+The Maison Meecher was a lofty building on one of the side-streets at
+the lower end of the avenue. From its roof, after you had worked your
+way through the groves of washing which hung limply from the
+clothes-line, you could see many things of interest. To the left lay
+Washington Square, full of somnolent Italians and roller-skating
+children; to the right was a spectacle which never failed to intrigue
+Ginger, the high smoke-stacks of a Cunard liner moving slowly down the
+river, sticking up over the house-tops as if the boat was travelling
+down Ninth Avenue.
+
+To-day there were four of these funnels, causing Ginger to deduce the
+Mauritania. As the boat on which he had come over from England, the
+Mauritania had a sentimental interest for him. He stood watching her
+stately progress till the higher buildings farther down the town shut
+her from his sight; then picked his way through the washing and went
+down to his room to get his hat. A quarter of an hour later he was in
+the hall-way of Sally's apartment house, gazing with ill-concealed
+disgust at the serge-clad back of his cousin Mr. Carmyle, who was
+engaged in conversation with a gentleman in overalls.
+
+No care-free prospector, singing his way through the Mojave Desert and
+suddenly finding himself confronted by a rattlesnake, could have
+experienced so abrupt a change of mood as did Ginger at this revolting
+spectacle. Even in their native Piccadilly it had been unpleasant to run
+into Mr. Carmyle. To find him here now was nothing short of nauseating.
+Only one thing could have brought him to this place. Obviously, he must
+have come to see Sally; and with a sudden sinking of the heart Ginger
+remembered the shiny, expensive automobile which he had seen waiting at
+the door. He, it was clear, was not the only person to whom the idea had
+occurred of taking Sally for a drive on this golden day.
+
+He was still standing there when Mr. Carmyle swung round with a frown on
+his dark face which seemed to say that he had not found the janitor's
+conversation entertaining. The sight of Ginger plainly did nothing to
+lighten his gloom.
+
+"Hullo!" he said.
+
+"Hullo!" said Ginger.
+
+Uncomfortable silence followed these civilities.
+
+"Have you come to see Miss Nicholas?"
+
+"Why, yes."
+
+"She isn't here," said Mr. Carmyle, and the fact that he had found
+someone to share the bad news, seemed to cheer him a little.
+
+"Not here?"
+
+"No.  Apparently..." Bruce Carmyle's scowl betrayed that resentment
+which a well-balanced man cannot but feel at the unreasonableness of
+others. "... Apparently, for some extraordinary reason, she has taken it
+into her head to dash over to England."
+
+Ginger tottered.  The unexpectedness of the blow was crushing.  He
+followed his cousin out into the sunshine in a sort of dream. Bruce
+Carmyle was addressing the driver of the expensive automobile.
+
+"I find I shall not want the car.  You can take it back to the garage."
+
+The chauffeur, a moody man, opened one half-closed eye and spat
+cautiously. It was the way Rockefeller would have spat when approaching
+the crisis of some delicate financial negotiation.
+
+"You'll have to pay just the same," he observed, opening his other eye
+to lend emphasis to the words.
+
+"Of course I shall pay," snapped Mr. Carmyle, irritably.  "How much is
+it?"
+
+Money passed.  The car rolled off.
+
+"Gone to England?" said Ginger, dizzily.
+
+"Yes, gone to England."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"How the devil do I know why?" Bruce Carmyle would have found his best
+friend trying at this moment. Gaping Ginger gave him almost a physical
+pain. "All I know is what the janitor told me, that she sailed on the
+Mauretania this morning."
+
+The tragic irony of this overcame Ginger.  That he should have stood on
+the roof, calmly watching the boat down the river...
+
+He nodded absently to Mr. Carmyle and walked off.  He had no further
+remarks to make. The warmth had gone out of the sunshine and all
+interest had departed from his life. He felt dull, listless, at a loose
+end. Not even the thought that his cousin, a careful man with his money,
+had had to pay a day's hire for a car which he could not use brought him
+any balm. He loafed aimlessly about the streets. He wandered in the Park
+and out again. The Park bored him. The streets bored him. The whole city
+bored him. A city without Sally in it was a drab, futile city, and
+nothing that the sun could do to brighten it could make it otherwise.
+
+Night came at last, and with it a letter.  It was the first even
+passably pleasant thing that had happened to Ginger in the whole of this
+dreary and unprofitable day: for the envelope bore the crest of the good
+ship Mauretania. He snatched it covetously from the letter-rack, and
+carried it upstairs to his room.
+
+Very few of the rooms at Mrs. Meecher's boarding-house struck any note
+of luxury. Mrs. Meecher was not one of your fashionable interior
+decorators. She considered that when she had added a Morris chair to the
+essentials which make up a bedroom, she had gone as far in the direction
+of pomp as any guest at seven-and-a-half per could expect her to go. As
+a rule, the severity of his surroundings afflicted Ginger with a touch
+of gloom when he went to bed; but to-night--such is the magic of a
+letter from the right person--he was uplifted and almost gay. There are
+moments when even illuminated texts over the wash-stand cannot wholly
+quell us.
+
+There was nothing of haste and much of ceremony in Ginger's method of
+approaching the perusal of his correspondence. He bore himself after
+the manner of a small boy in the presence of unexpected ice-cream,
+gloating for awhile before embarking on the treat, anxious to make it
+last out. His first move was to feel in the breast-pocket of his coat
+and produce the photograph of Sally which he had feloniously removed
+from her apartment. At this he looked long and earnestly before propping
+it up within easy reach against his basin, to be handy, if required, for
+purposes of reference. He then took off his coat, collar, and shoes,
+filled and lit a pipe, placed pouch and matches on the arm of the Morris
+chair, and drew that chair up so that he could sit with his feet on the
+bed. Having manoeuvred himself into a position of ease, he lit his pipe
+again and took up the letter. He looked at the crest, the handwriting of
+the address, and the postmark. He weighed it in his hand. It was a
+bulky letter.
+
+He took Sally's photograph from the wash-stand and scrutinized it once
+more. Then he lit his pipe again, and, finally, wriggling himself into
+the depths of the chair, opened the envelope.
+
+"Ginger, dear."
+
+Having read so far, Ginger found it necessary to take up the photograph
+and study it with an even greater intentness than before. He gazed at it
+for many minutes, then laid it down and lit his pipe again. Then he went
+on with the letter.
+
+"Ginger, dear--I'm afraid this address is going to give you rather a
+shock, and I'm feeling very guilty. I'm running away, and I haven't even
+stopped to say good-bye. I can't help it. I know it's weak and cowardly,
+but I simply can't help it. I stood it for a day or two, and then I saw
+that it was no good. (Thank you for leaving me alone and not coming
+round to see me. Nobody else but you would have done that. But then,
+nobody ever has been or ever could be so understanding as you.)"
+
+Ginger found himself compelled at this point to look at the photograph
+again.
+
+"There was too much in New York to remind me.  That's the worst of being
+happy in a place. When things go wrong you find there are too many
+ghosts about. I just couldn't stand it. I tried, but I couldn't. I'm
+going away to get cured--if I can. Mr. Faucitt is over in England, and
+when I went down to Mrs. Meecher for my letters, I found one from him.
+His brother is dead, you know, and he has inherited, of all things, a
+fashionable dress-making place in Regent Street. His brother was
+Laurette et Cie. I suppose he will sell the business later on, but, just
+at present, the poor old dear is apparently quite bewildered and that
+doesn't seem to have occurred to him. He kept saying in his letter how
+much he wished I was with him, to help him, and I was tempted and ran.
+Anything to get away from the ghosts and have something to do. I don't
+suppose I shall feel much better in England, but, at least, every street
+corner won't have associations. Don't ever be happy anywhere, Ginger.
+It's too big a risk, much too big a risk.
+
+"There was a letter from Elsa Doland, too.  Bubbling over with
+affection. We had always been tremendous friends. Of course, she never
+knew anything about my being engaged to Gerald. I lent Fillmore the
+money to buy that piece, which gave Elsa her first big chance, and so
+she's very grateful. She says, if ever she gets the opportunity of doing
+me a good turn... Aren't things muddled?
+
+"And there was a letter from Gerald.  I was expecting one, of course,
+but... what would you have done, Ginger? Would you have read it? I sat
+with it in front of me for an hour, I should think, just looking at the
+envelope, and then... You see, what was the use? I could guess exactly
+the sort of thing that would be in it, and reading it would only have
+hurt a lot more. The thing was done, so why bother about explanations?
+What good are explanations, anyway? They don't help. They don't do
+anything... I burned it, Ginger. The last letter I shall ever get from
+him. I made a bonfire on the bathroom floor, and it smouldered and went
+brown, and then flared a little, and every now and then I lit another
+match and kept it burning, and at last it was just black ashes and a
+stain on the tiles. Just a mess!
+
+"Ginger, burn this letter, too.  I'm pouring out all the poison to you,
+hoping it will make me feel better. You don't mind, do you? But I know
+you don't. If ever anybody had a real pal...
+
+"It's a dreadful thing, fascination, Ginger.  It grips you and you are
+helpless. One can be so sensible and reasonable about other people's
+love affairs. When I was working at the dance place I told you about
+there was a girl who fell in love with the most awful little beast. He
+had a mean mouth and shiny black hair brushed straight back, and
+anybody would have seen what he was. But this girl wouldn't listen to a
+word. I talked to her by the hour. It makes me smile now when I think
+how sensible and level-headed I was. But she wouldn't listen. In some
+mysterious way this was the man she wanted, and, of course, everything
+happened that one knew would happen.
+
+"If one could manage one's own life as well as one can manage other
+people's! If all this wretched thing of mine had happened to some other
+girl, how beautifully I could have proved that it was the best thing
+that could have happened, and that a man who could behave as Gerald has
+done wasn't worth worrying about. I can just hear myself. But, you see,
+whatever he has done, Gerald is still Gerald and Sally is still Sally
+and, however much I argue, I can't get away from that. All I can do is
+to come howling to my redheaded pal, when I know just as well as he
+does that a girl of any spirit would be dignified and keep her troubles
+to herself and be much too proud to let anyone know that she was hurt.
+
+"Proud! That's the real trouble, Ginger.  My pride has been battered and
+chopped up and broken into as many pieces as you broke Mr. Scrymgeour's
+stick! What pitiful creatures we are. Girls, I mean. At least, I suppose
+a good many girls are like me. If Gerald had died and I had lost him
+that way, I know quite well I shouldn't be feeling as I do now. I should
+have been broken-hearted, but it wouldn't have been the same. It's my
+pride that is hurt. I have always been a bossy, cocksure little
+creature, swaggering about the world like an English sparrow; and now
+I'm paying for it! Oh, Ginger, I'm paying for it! I wonder if running
+away is going to do me any good at all. Perhaps, if Mr. Faucitt has some
+real hard work for me to do...
+
+"Of course, I know exactly how all this has come about.  Elsa's pretty
+and attractive. But the point is that she is a success, and as a success
+she appeals to Gerald's weakest side. He worships success. She is going
+to have a marvellous career, and she can help Gerald on in his. He can
+write plays for her to star in. What have I to offer against that? Yes,
+I know it's grovelling and contemptible of me to say that, Ginger. I
+ought to be above it, oughtn't I--talking as if I were competing for
+some prize... But I haven't any pride left. Oh, well!
+
+"There! I've poured it all out and I really do feel a little better just
+for the moment. It won't last, of course, but even a minute is
+something. Ginger, dear, I shan't see you for ever so long, even if we
+ever do meet again, but you'll try to remember that I'm thinking of you
+a whole lot, won't you? I feel responsible for you. You're my baby.
+You've got started now and you've only to stick to it. Please, please,
+please don't 'make a hash of it'! Good-bye. I never did find that
+photograph of me that we were looking for that afternoon in the
+apartment, or I would send it to you. Then you could have kept it on
+your mantelpiece, and whenever you felt inclined to make a hash of
+anything I would have caught your eye sternly and you would have pulled
+up.
+
+"Good-bye, Ginger.  I shall have to stop now.  The mail is just closing.
+
+"Always your pal, wherever I am.---SALLY."
+
+Ginger laid the letter down, and a little sound escaped him that was
+half a sigh, half an oath. He was wondering whether even now some
+desirable end might not be achieved by going to Chicago and breaking
+Gerald Foster's neck. Abandoning this scheme as impracticable, and not
+being able to think of anything else to do he re-lit his pipe and
+started to read the letter again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+SOME LETTERS FOR GINGER
+
+
+
+Laurette et Cie,
+
+Regent Street,
+
+London, W.,
+
+England.
+
+
+
+January 21st.
+
+Dear Ginger,--I'm feeling better.  As it's three months since I last
+wrote to you, no doubt you will say to yourself that I would be a poor,
+weak-minded creature if I wasn't. I suppose one ought to be able to get
+over anything in three months. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I haven't
+quite succeeded in doing that, but at least I have managed to get my
+troubles stowed away in the cellar, and I'm not dragging them out and
+looking at them all the time. That's something, isn't it?
+
+I ought to give you all my impressions of London, I suppose; but I've
+grown so used to the place that I don't think I have any now. I seem to
+have been here years and years.
+
+You will see by the address that Mr. Faucitt has not yet sold his
+inheritance. He expects to do so very soon, he tells me--there is a
+rich-looking man with whiskers and a keen eye whom he is always lunching
+with, and I think big deals are in progress. Poor dear! he is crazy to
+get away into the country and settle down and grow ducks and things.
+London has disappointed him. It is not the place it used to be. Until
+quite lately, when he grew resigned, he used to wander about in a
+disconsolate sort of way, trying to locate the landmarks of his youth.
+(He has not been in England for nearly thirty years!) The trouble is, it
+seems, that about once in every thirty years a sort of craze for change
+comes over London, and they paint a shop-front red instead of blue, and
+that upsets the returned exile dreadfully. Mr. Faucitt feels like Rip
+Van Winkle. His first shock was when he found that the Empire was a
+theatre now instead of a music-hall. Then he was told that another
+music-hall, the Tivoli, had been pulled down altogether. And when on top
+of that he went to look at the baker's shop in Rupert Street, over which
+he had lodgings in the eighties, and discovered that it had been turned
+into a dressmaker's, he grew very melancholy, and only cheered up a
+little when a lovely magenta fog came on and showed him that some things
+were still going along as in the good old days.
+
+I am kept quite busy at Laurette et Cie., thank goodness.  (Not being a
+French scholar like you--do you remember Jules?--I thought at first that
+Cie was the name of the junior partner, and looked forward to meeting
+him. "Miss Nicholas, shake hands with Mr. Cie, one of your greatest
+admirers.") I hold down the female equivalent of your job at the
+Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd.--that is to say, I'm a
+sort of right-hand woman. I hang around and sidle up to the customers
+when they come in, and say, "Chawming weather, moddom!" (which is
+usually a black lie) and pass them on to the staff, who do the actual
+work. I shouldn't mind going on like this for the next few years, but
+Mr. Faucitt is determined to sell. I don't know if you are like that,
+but every other Englishman I've ever met seems to have an ambition to
+own a house and lot in Loamshire or Hants or Salop or somewhere. Their
+one object in life is to make some money and "buy back the old place"--
+which was sold, of course, at the end of act one to pay the heir's
+gambling debts.
+
+Mr. Faucitt, when he was a small boy, used to live in a little village
+in Gloucestershire, near a place called Cirencester--at least, it isn't:
+it's called Cissister, which I bet you didn't know--and after forgetting
+about it for fifty years, he has suddenly been bitten by the desire to
+end his days there, surrounded by pigs and chickens. He took me down to
+see the place the other day. Oh, Ginger, this English country! Why any
+of you ever live in towns I can't think. Old, old grey stone houses with
+yellow haystacks and lovely squelchy muddy lanes and great fat trees and
+blue hills in the distance. The peace of it! If ever I sell my soul, I
+shall insist on the devil giving me at least forty years in some English
+country place in exchange.
+
+Perhaps you will think from all this that I am too much occupied to
+remember your existence. Just to show how interested I am in you, let me
+tell you that, when I was reading the paper a week ago, I happened to
+see the headline, "International Match." It didn't seem to mean anything
+at first, and then I suddenly recollected. This was the thing you had
+once been a snip for! So I went down to a place called Twickenham, where
+this football game was to be, to see the sort of thing you used to do
+before I took charge of you and made you a respectable right-hand man.
+There was an enormous crowd there, and I was nearly squeezed to death,
+but I bore it for your sake. I found out that the English team were the
+ones wearing white shirts, and that the ones in red were the Welsh. I
+said to the man next to me, after he had finished yelling himself black
+in the face, "Could you kindly inform me which is the English
+scrum-half?" And just at that moment the players came quite near where I
+was, and about a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently on
+top of a meek-looking little fellow who had just fallen on the ball.
+Ginger, you are well out of it! That was the scrum-half, and I gathered
+that that sort of thing was a mere commonplace in his existence.
+Stopping a rush, it is called, and he is expected to do it all the time.
+The idea of you ever going in for such brutal sports! You thank your
+stars that you are safe on your little stool in Fillmore's outer office,
+and that, if anybody jumps on top of you now, you can call a cop. Do you
+mean to say you really used to do these daredevil feats? You must have
+hidden depths in you which I have never suspected.
+
+As I was taking a ride down Piccadilly the other day on top of a bus, I
+saw somebody walking along who seemed familiar. It was Mr. Carmyle. So
+he's back in England again. He didn't see me, thank goodness. I don't
+want to meet anybody just at present who reminds me of New York.
+
+Thanks for telling me all the news, but please don't do it again.  It
+makes me remember, and I don't want to. It's this way, Ginger. Let me
+write to you, because it really does relieve me, but don't answer my
+letters. Do you mind? I'm sure you'll understand.
+
+So Fillmore and Gladys Winch are married! From what I have seen of her,
+it's the best thing that has ever happened to Brother F. She is a
+splendid girl. I must write to him...
+
+
+
+Laurette et Cie..
+
+London
+
+
+
+March 12th.
+
+Dear Ginger,--I saw in a Sunday paper last week that "The Primrose Way"
+had been produced in New York, and was a great success. Well, I'm very
+glad. But I don't think the papers ought to print things like that. It's
+unsettling.
+
+Next day, I did one of those funny things you do when you're feeling
+blue and lonely and a long way away from everybody. I called at your
+club and asked for you! Such a nice old man in uniform at the desk said
+in a fatherly way that you hadn't been in lately, and he rather fancied
+you were out of town, but would I take a seat while he inquired. He then
+summoned a tiny boy, also in uniform, and the child skipped off
+chanting, "Mister Kemp! Mister Kemp!" in a shrill treble. It gave me
+such an odd feeling to hear your name echoing in the distance. I felt so
+ashamed for giving them all that trouble; and when the boy came back I
+slipped twopence into his palm, which I suppose was against all the
+rules, though he seemed to like it.
+
+Mr. Faucitt has sold the business and retired to the country, and I am
+rather at a loose end...
+
+
+
+                                                 Monk's Crofton,
+                                                 (whatever that means)
+                                                 Much Middleford,
+                                                 Salop,
+                                                 (slang for Shropshire)
+                                                 England.
+
+
+
+April 18th.
+
+Dear Ginger,--What's the use? What is the use? I do all I can to get
+right away from New York, and New York comes after me and tracks me down
+in my hiding-place. A week or so ago, as I was walking down the Strand
+in an aimless sort of way, out there came right on top of me--who do
+you think? Fillmore, arm in arm with Mr. Carmyle! I couldn't dodge. In
+the first place, Mr. Carmyle had seen me; in the second place, it is a
+day's journey to dodge poor dear Fillmore now. I blushed for him.
+Ginger! Right there in the Strand I blushed for him. In my worst dreams
+I had never pictured him so enormous. Upon what meat doth this our
+Fillmore feed that he is grown so great? Poor Gladys! When she looks at
+him she must feel like a bigamist.
+
+Apparently Fillmore is still full of big schemes, for he talked airily
+about buying all sorts of English plays. He has come over, as I suppose
+you know, to arrange about putting on "The Primrose Way" over here. He
+is staying at the Savoy, and they took me off there to lunch, whooping
+joyfully as over a strayed lamb. It was the worst thing that could
+possibly have happened to me. Fillmore talked Broadway without a pause,
+till by the time he had worked his way past the French pastry and was
+lolling back, breathing a little stertorously, waiting for the coffee
+and liqueurs, he had got me so homesick that, if it hadn't been that I
+didn't want to make a public exhibition of myself, I should have broken
+down and howled. It was crazy of me ever to go near the Savoy. Of
+course, it's simply an annex to Broadway. There were Americans at every
+table as far as the eye could reach. I might just as well have been at
+the Astor.
+
+Well, if Fate insists in bringing New York to England for my special
+discomfiture, I suppose I have got to put up with it. I just let events
+take their course, and I have been drifting ever since. Two days ago I
+drifted here. Mr. Carmyle invited Fillmore--he seems to love
+Fillmore--and me to Monk's Crofton, and I hadn't even the shadow of an
+excuse for refusing. So I came, and I am now sitting writing to you in
+an enormous bedroom with an open fire and armchairs and every other sort
+of luxury. Fillmore is out golfing. He sails for New York on Saturday on
+the Mauretania. I am horrified to hear from him that, in addition to all
+his other big schemes, he is now promoting a fight for the light-weight
+championship in Jersey City, and guaranteeing enormous sums to both
+boxers. It's no good arguing with him. If you do, he simply quotes
+figures to show the fortunes other people have made out of these things.
+Besides, it's too late now, anyway. As far as I can make out, the fight
+is going to take place in another week or two. All the same, it makes my
+flesh creep.
+
+Well, it's no use worrying, I suppose.  Let's change the subject.  Do
+you know Monk's Crofton? Probably you don't, as I seem to remember
+hearing something said about it being a recent purchase. Mr. Carmyle
+bought it from some lord or other who had been losing money on the Stock
+Exchange. I hope you haven't seen it, anyway, because I want to
+describe it at great length. I want to pour out my soul about it.
+Ginger, what has England ever done to deserve such paradises? I thought,
+in my ignorance, that Mr. Faucitt's Cissister place was pretty good, but
+it doesn't even begin. It can't compete. Of course, his is just an
+ordinary country house, and this is a Seat. Monk's Crofton is the sort
+of place they used to write about in the English novels. You know. "The
+sunset was falling on the walls of G---- Castle, in B----shire, hard by
+the picturesque village of H----, and not a stone's throw from the
+hamlet of J----." I can imagine Tennyson's Maud living here. It is one
+of the stately homes of England; how beautiful they stand, and I'm crazy
+about it.
+
+You motor up from the station, and after you have gone about three
+miles, you turn in at a big iron gate with stone posts on each side with
+stone beasts on them. Close by the gate is the cutest little house with
+an old man inside it who pops out and touches his hat. This is only the
+lodge, really, but you think you have arrived; so you get all ready to
+jump out, and then the car goes rolling on for another fifty miles or so
+through beech woods full of rabbits and open meadows with deer in them.
+Finally, just as you think you are going on for ever, you whizz round a
+corner, and there's the house. You don't get a glimpse of it till then,
+because the trees are too thick.
+
+It's very large, and sort of low and square, with a kind of tower at one
+side and the most fascinating upper porch sort of thing with
+battlements. I suppose in the old days you used to stand on this and
+drop molten lead on visitors' heads. Wonderful lawns all round, and
+shrubberies and a lake that you can just see where the ground dips
+beyond the fields. Of course it's too early yet for them to be out, but
+to the left of the house there's a place where there will be about a
+million roses when June comes round, and all along the side of the
+rose-garden is a high wall of old red brick which shuts off the kitchen
+garden. I went exploring there this morning. It's an enormous place,
+with hot-houses and things, and there's the cunningest farm at one end
+with a stable yard full of puppies that just tear the heart out of you,
+they're so sweet. And a big, sleepy cat, which sits and blinks in the
+sun and lets the puppies run all over her. And there's a lovely
+stillness, and you can hear everything growing. And thrushes and
+blackbirds... Oh, Ginger, it's heavenly!
+
+But there's a catch.  It's a case of "Where every prospect pleases and
+only man is vile." At least, not exactly vile, I suppose, but terribly
+stodgy. I can see now why you couldn't hit it off with the Family.
+Because I've seen 'em all! They're here! Yes, Uncle Donald and all of
+them. Is it a habit of your family to collect in gangs, or have I just
+happened to stumble into an accidental Old Home Week? When I came down
+to dinner the first evening, the drawing-room was full to bursting
+point--not simply because Fillmore was there, but because there were
+uncles and aunts all over the place. I felt like a small lion in a den
+of Daniels. I know exactly now what you mean about the Family. They look
+at you! Of course, it's all right for me, because I am snowy white clear
+through, but I can just imagine what it must have been like for you with
+your permanently guilty conscience. You must have had an awful time.
+
+By the way, it's going to be a delicate business getting this letter
+through to you--rather like carrying the despatches through the enemy's
+lines in a Civil War play. You're supposed to leave letters on the table
+in the hall, and someone collects them in the afternoon and takes them
+down to the village on a bicycle. But, if I do that some aunt or uncle
+is bound to see it, and I shall be an object of loathing, for it is no
+light matter, my lad, to be caught having correspondence with a human
+Jimpson weed like you. It would blast me socially. At least, so I gather
+from the way they behaved when your name came up at dinner last night.
+Somebody mentioned you, and the most awful roasting party broke loose.
+Uncle Donald acting as cheer-leader. I said feebly that I had met you
+and had found you part human, and there was an awful silence till they
+all started at the same time to show me where I was wrong, and how
+cruelly my girlish inexperience had deceived me. A young and innocent
+half-portion like me, it appears, is absolutely incapable of suspecting
+the true infamy of the dregs of society. You aren't fit to speak to the
+likes of me, being at the kindest estimate little more than a blot on
+the human race. I tell you this in case you may imagine you're popular
+with the Family. You're not.
+
+So I shall have to exercise a good deal of snaky craft in smuggling this
+letter through. I'll take it down to the village myself if I can sneak
+away. But it's going to be pretty difficult, because for some reason I
+seem to be a centre of attraction. Except when I take refuge in my room,
+hardly a moment passes without an aunt or an uncle popping out and
+having a cosy talk with me. It sometimes seems as though they were
+weighing me in the balance. Well, let 'em weigh!
+
+Time to dress for dinner now.  Good-bye.
+
+Yours in the balance,
+
+sally.
+
+P.S.--You were perfectly right about your Uncle Donald's moustache, but
+I don't agree with you that it is more his misfortune than his fault. I
+think he does it on purpose.
+
+
+
+                                                  (Just for the moment)
+                                                  Monk's Crofton,
+                                                  Much Middleford,
+                                                  Salop,
+                                                  England.
+
+
+
+April 20th.
+
+Dear Ginger,--Leaving here to-day.  In disgrace.  Hard, cold looks from
+the family. Strained silences. Uncle Donald far from chummy. You can
+guess what has happened. I might have seen it coming. I can see now that
+it was in the air all along.
+
+Fillmore knows nothing about it.  He left just before it happened.  I
+shall see him very soon, for I have decided to come back and stop
+running away from things any longer. It's cowardly to skulk about over
+here. Besides, I'm feeling so much better that I believe I can face the
+ghosts. Anyway, I'm going to try. See you almost as soon as you get
+this.
+
+I shall mail this in London, and I suppose it will come over by the same
+boat as me. It's hardly worth writing, really, of course, but I have
+sneaked up to my room to wait till the motor arrives to take me to the
+station, and it's something to do. I can hear muffled voices. The
+Family talking me over, probably. Saying they never really liked me all
+along. Oh, well!
+
+Yours moving in an orderly manner to the exit,
+
+sally.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+
+STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF A SPARRING-PARTNER
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+Sally's emotions, as she sat in her apartment on the morning of her
+return to New York, resembled somewhat those of a swimmer who, after
+wavering on a raw morning at the brink of a chill pool, nerves himself
+to the plunge. She was aching, but she knew that she had done well. If
+she wanted happiness, she must fight for it, and for all these months
+she had been shirking the fight. She had done with wavering on the
+brink, and here she was, in mid-stream, ready for whatever might befall.
+It hurt, this coming to grips. She had expected it to hurt. But it was a
+pain that stimulated, not a dull melancholy that smothered. She felt
+alive and defiant.
+
+She had finished unpacking and tidying up.  The next move was certainly
+to go and see Ginger. She had suddenly become aware that she wanted very
+badly to see Ginger. His stolid friendliness would be a support and a
+prop. She wished now that she had sent him a cable, so that he could
+have met her at the dock. It had been rather terrible at the dock. The
+echoing customs sheds had sapped her valour and she felt alone and
+forlorn.
+
+She looked at her watch, and was surprised to find how early it was.
+She could catch him at the office and make him take her out to lunch.
+She put on her hat and went out.
+
+The restless hand of change, always active in New York, had not spared
+the outer office of the Fillmore Nicholas Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. in
+the months of her absence. She was greeted on her arrival by an entirely
+new and original stripling in the place of the one with whom at her last
+visit she had established such cordial relations. Like his predecessor
+he was generously pimpled, but there the resemblance stopped. He was a
+grim boy, and his manner was stern and suspicious. He peered narrowly at
+Sally for a moment as if he had caught her in the act of purloining the
+office blotting-paper, then, with no little acerbity, desired her to
+state her business.
+
+"I want Mr. Kemp," said Sally.
+
+The office-boy scratched his cheek dourly with a ruler.  No one would
+have guessed, so austere was his aspect, that a moment before her
+entrance he had been trying to balance it on his chin, juggling the
+while with a pair of paper-weights. For, impervious as he seemed to
+human weaknesses, it was this lad's ambition one day to go into
+vaudeville.
+
+"What name?" he said, coldly.
+
+"Nicholas," said Sally.  "I am Mr. Nicholas' sister."
+
+On a previous occasion when she had made this announcement, disastrous
+results had ensued; but to-day it went well. It seemed to hit the
+office-boy like a bullet. He started convulsively, opened his mouth,
+and dropped the ruler. In the interval of stooping and recovering it he
+was able to pull himself together. He had not been curious about Sally's
+name. What he had wished was to have the name of the person for whom she
+was asking repeated. He now perceived that he had had a bit of luck. A
+wearying period of disappointment in the matter of keeping the
+paper-weights circulating while balancing the ruler, had left him
+peevish, and it had been his intention to work off his ill-humour on the
+young visitor. The discovery that it was the boss's sister who was
+taking up his time, suggested the advisability of a radical change of
+tactics. He had stooped with a frown: he returned to the perpendicular
+with a smile that was positively winning. It was like the sun suddenly
+bursting through a London fog.
+
+"Will you take a seat, lady?" he said, with polished courtesy even
+unbending so far as to reach out and dust one with the sleeve of his
+coat. He added that the morning was a fine one.
+
+"Thank you," said Sally.  "Will you tell him I'm here."
+
+"Mr. Nicholas is out, miss," said the office-boy, with gentlemanly
+regret. "He's back in New York, but he's gone out."
+
+"I don't want Mr. Nicholas.  I want Mr. Kemp."
+
+"Mr. Kemp?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Kemp."
+
+Sorrow at his inability to oblige shone from every hill-top on the boy's
+face.
+
+"Don't know of anyone of that name around here," he said,
+apologetically.
+
+"But surely..." Sally broke off suddenly.  A grim foreboding had come to
+her. "How long have you been here?" she asked.
+
+"All day, ma'am," said the office-boy, with the manner of a Casablanca.
+
+"I mean, how long have you been employed here?"
+
+"Just over a month, miss."
+
+"Hasn't Mr. Kemp been in the office all that time?"
+
+"Name's new to me, lady.  Does he look like anything? I meanter say,
+what's he look like?"
+
+"He has very red hair."
+
+"Never seen him in here," said the office-boy.  The truth shone coldly
+on Sally. She blamed herself for ever having gone away, and told herself
+that she might have known what would happen. Left to his own resources,
+the unhappy Ginger had once more made a hash of it. And this hash must
+have been a more notable and outstanding hash than any of his previous
+efforts, for, surely, Fillmore would not lightly have dismissed one who
+had come to him under her special protection.
+
+"Where is Mr. Nicholas?" she asked.  It seemed to her that Fillmore was
+the only possible source of information. "Did you say he was out?"
+
+"Really out, miss," said the office-boy, with engaging candour.  "He
+went off to White Plains in his automobile half-an-hour ago."
+
+"White Plains? What for?"
+
+The pimpled stripling had now given himself up wholeheartedly to social
+chit-chat. Usually he liked his time to himself and resented the
+intrusion of the outer world, for he who had chosen jugglery for his
+walk in life must neglect no opportunity of practising: but so
+favourable was the impression which Sally had made on his plastic mind
+that he was delighted to converse with her as long as she wished.
+
+"I guess what's happened is, he's gone up to take a look at Bugs
+Butler," he said.
+
+"Whose butler?" said Sally mystified.
+
+The office-boy smiled a tolerant smile.  Though an admirer of the sex,
+he was aware that women were seldom hep to the really important things
+in life. He did not blame them. That was the way they were constructed,
+and one simply had to accept it.
+
+"Bugs Butler is training up at White Plains, miss."
+
+"Who is Bugs Butler?"
+
+Something of his former bleakness of aspect returned to the office-boy.
+Sally's question had opened up a subject on which he felt deeply.
+
+"Ah!" he replied, losing his air of respectful deference as he
+approached the topic. "Who is he! That's what they're all saying, all
+the wise guys. Who has Bugs Butler ever licked?"
+
+"I don't know," said Sally, for he had fixed her with a penetrating gaze
+and seemed to be pausing for a reply.
+
+"Nor nobody else," said the stripling vehemently.  "A lot of stiffs out
+on the coast, that's all. Ginks nobody has ever heard of, except Cyclone
+Mullins, and it took that false alarm fifteen rounds to get a referee's
+decision over him. The boss would go and give him a chance against the
+champ, but I could have told him that the legitimate contender was K-leg
+Binns. K-leg put Cyclone Mullins out in the fifth. Well," said the
+office-boy in the overwrought tone of one chafing at human folly, "if
+anybody thinks Bugs Butler can last six rounds with Lew Lucas, I've two
+bucks right here in my vest pocket that says it ain't so."
+
+Sally began to see daylight.
+
+"Oh, Bugs--Mr. Butler is one of the boxers in this fight that my brother
+is interested in?"
+
+"That's right.  He's going up against the lightweight champ.  Lew Lucas
+is the lightweight champ. He's a bird!"
+
+"Yes?" said Sally.  This youth had a way of looking at her with his head
+cocked on one side as though he expected her to say something.
+
+"Yes, sir!" said the stripling with emphasis.  "Lew Lucas is a hot
+sketch. He used to live on the next street to me," he added as clinching
+evidence of his hero's prowess. "I've seen his old mother as close as I
+am to you. Say, I seen her a hundred times. Is any stiff of a Bugs
+Butler going to lick a fellow like that?"
+
+"It doesn't seem likely."
+
+"You spoke it!" said the lad crisply, striking unsuccessfully at a fly
+which had settled on the blotting-paper.
+
+There was a pause.  Sally started to rise.
+
+"And there's another thing," said the office-boy, loath to close the
+subject. "Can Bugs Butler make a hundred and thirty-five ringside
+without being weak?"
+
+"It sounds awfully difficult."
+
+"They say he's clever." The expert laughed satirically.  "Well, what's
+that going to get him? The poor fish can't punch a hole in a
+nut-sundae."
+
+"You don't seem to like Mr. Butler."
+
+"Oh, I've nothing against him," said the office-boy magnanimously.
+"I'm only saying he's no licence to be mixing it with Lew Lucas."
+
+Sally got up.  Absorbing as this chat on current form was, more
+important matters claimed her attention.
+
+"How shall I find my brother when I get to White Plains?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, anybody'll show you the way to the training-camp.  If you hurry,
+there's a train you can make now."
+
+"Thank you very much."
+
+"You're welcome."
+
+He opened the door for her with an old-world politeness which disuse had
+rendered a little rusty: then, with an air of getting back to business
+after a pleasant but frivolous interlude, he took up the paper-weights
+once more and placed the ruler with nice care on his upturned chin.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Fillmore heaved a sigh of relief and began to sidle from the room.  It
+was a large room, half barn, half gymnasium. Athletic appliances of
+various kinds hung on the walls and in the middle there was a wide
+roped-off space, around which a small crowd had distributed itself with
+an air of expectancy. This is a commercial age, and the days when a
+prominent pugilist's training activities used to be hidden from the
+public gaze are over. To-day, if the public can lay its hands on fifty
+cents, it may come and gaze its fill. This afternoon, plutocrats to the
+number of about forty had assembled, though not all of these, to the
+regret of Mr. Lester Burrowes, the manager of the eminent Bugs Butler,
+had parted with solid coin. Many of those present were newspaper
+representatives and on the free list--writers who would polish up Mr.
+Butler's somewhat crude prognostications as to what he proposed to do to
+Mr. Lew Lucas, and would report him as saying, "I am in really superb
+condition and feel little apprehension of the issue," and artists who
+would depict him in a state of semi-nudity with feet several sizes too
+large for any man.
+
+The reason for Fillmore's relief was that Mr. Burrowes, who was a great
+talker and had buttonholed him a quarter of an hour ago, had at last had
+his attention distracted elsewhere, and had gone off to investigate
+some matter that called for his personal handling, leaving Fillmore free
+to slide away to the hotel and get a bite to eat, which he sorely
+needed. The zeal which had brought him to the training-camp to inspect
+the final day of Mr. Butler's preparation--for the fight was to take
+place on the morrow--had been so great that he had omitted to lunch
+before leaving New York.
+
+So Fillmore made thankfully for the door.  And it was at the door that
+he encountered Sally. He was looking over his shoulder at the moment,
+and was not aware of her presence till she spoke.
+
+"Hallo, Fillmore!"
+
+Sally had spoken softly, but a dynamite explosion could not have
+shattered her brother's composure with more completeness. In the leaping
+twist which brought him facing her, he rose a clear three inches from
+the floor. He had a confused sensation, as though his nervous system had
+been stirred up with a pole. He struggled for breath and moistened his
+lips with the tip of his tongue, staring at her continuously during the
+process.
+
+Great men, in their moments of weakness, are to be pitied rather than
+scorned. If ever a man had an excuse for leaping like a young ram,
+Fillmore had it. He had left Sally not much more than a week ago in
+England, in Shropshire, at Monk's Crofton. She had said nothing of any
+intention on her part of leaving the country, the county, or the house.
+Yet here she was, in Bugs Butler's training-camp at White Plains, in the
+State of New York, speaking softly in his ear without even going through
+the preliminary of tapping him on the shoulder to advertise her
+presence. No wonder that Fillmore was startled. And no wonder that, as
+he adjusted his faculties to the situation, there crept upon him a chill
+apprehension.
+
+For Fillmore had not been blind to the significance of that invitation
+to Monk's Crofton. Nowadays your wooer does not formally approach a
+girl's nearest relative and ask permission to pay his addresses; but,
+when he invites her and that nearest relative to his country home and
+collects all the rest of the family to meet her, the thing may be said
+to have advanced beyond the realms of mere speculation. Shrewdly
+Fillmore had deduced that Bruce Carmyle was in love with Sally, and
+mentally he had joined their hands and given them a brother's blessing.
+And now it was only too plain that disaster must have occurred. If the
+invitation could mean only one thing, so also could Sally's presence at
+White Plains mean only one thing.
+
+"Sally!" A croaking whisper was the best he could achieve.  "What...
+what... ?"
+
+"Did I startle you? I'm sorry."
+
+"What are you doing here? Why aren't you at Monk's Crofton?"
+
+Sally glanced past him at the ring and the crowd around it.
+
+"I decided I wanted to get back to America.  Circumstances arose which
+made it pleasanter to leave Monk's Crofton."
+
+"Do you mean to say... ?"
+
+"Yes.  Don't let's talk about it."
+
+"Do you mean to say," persisted Fillmore, "that Carmyle proposed to you
+and you turned him down?"
+
+Sally flushed.
+
+"I don't think it's particularly nice to talk about that sort of thing,
+but--yes."
+
+A feeling of desolation overcame Fillmore.  That conviction, which
+saddens us at all times, of the wilful bone-headedness of our fellows
+swept coldly upon him. Everything had been so perfect, the whole
+arrangement so ideal, that it had never occurred to him as a possibility
+that Sally might take it into her head to spoil it by declining to play
+the part allotted to her. The match was so obviously the best thing that
+could happen. It was not merely the suitor's impressive wealth that made
+him hold this opinion, though it would be idle to deny that the prospect
+of having a brother-in-lawful claim on the Carmyle bank-balance had cast
+a rosy glamour over the future as he had envisaged it. He honestly liked
+and respected the man. He appreciated his quiet and aristocratic
+reserve. A well-bred fellow, sensible withal, just the sort of husband a
+girl like Sally needed. And now she had ruined everything. With the
+capricious perversity which so characterizes her otherwise delightful
+sex, she had spilled the beans.
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Oh, Fill!" Sally had expected that realization of the facts would
+produce these symptoms in him, but now that they had presented
+themselves she was finding them rasping to the nerves. "I should have
+thought the reason was obvious."
+
+"You mean you don't like him?"
+
+"I don't know whether I do or not.  I certainly don't like him enough to
+marry him."
+
+"He's a darned good fellow."
+
+"Is he? You say so.  I don't know."
+
+The imperious desire for bodily sustenance began to compete
+successfully for Fillmore's notice with his spiritual anguish.
+
+"Let's go to the hotel and talk it over.  We'll go to the hotel and I'll
+give you something to eat."
+
+"I don't want anything to eat, thanks."
+
+"You don't want anything to eat?" said Fillmore incredulously.  He
+supposed in a vague sort of way that there were eccentric people of this
+sort, but it was hard to realize that he had met one of them. "I'm
+starving."
+
+"Well, run along then."
+
+"Yes, but I want to talk..."
+
+He was not the only person who wanted to talk.  At the moment a small
+man of sporting exterior hurried up. He wore what his tailor's
+advertisements would have called a "nobbly" suit of checked tweed
+and--in defiance of popular prejudice--a brown bowler hat. Mr. Lester
+Burrowes, having dealt with the business which had interrupted their
+conversation a few minutes before, was anxious to resume his remarks on
+the subject of the supreme excellence in every respect of his young
+charge.
+
+"Say, Mr. Nicholas, you ain't going'? Bugs is just getting ready to
+spar."
+
+He glanced inquiringly at Sally.
+
+"My sister--Mr. Burrowes," said Fillmore faintly.  "Mr. Burrowes is Bugs
+Butler's manager."
+
+"How do you do?" said Sally.
+
+"Pleased to meecher," said Mr. Burrowes.  "Say..."
+
+"I was just going to the hotel to get something to eat," said Fillmore.
+
+Mr. Burrowes clutched at his coat-button with a swoop, and held him with
+a glittering eye.
+
+"Yes, but, say, before-you-go-lemme-tell-ya-somef'n.  You've never seen
+this boy of mine, not when he was feeling right. Believe me, he's there!
+He's a wizard. He's a Hindoo! Say, he's been practising up a left shift
+that..."
+
+Fillmore's eye met Sally's wanly, and she pitied him.  Presently she
+would require him to explain to her how he had dared to dismiss Ginger
+from his employment--and make that explanation a good one: but in the
+meantime she remembered that he was her brother and was suffering.
+
+"He's the cleverest lightweight," proceeded Mr. Burrowes fervently,
+"since Joe Gans. I'm telling you and I know! He..."
+
+"Can he make a hundred and thirty-five ringside without being weak?"
+asked Sally.
+
+The effect of this simple question on Mr. Burrowes was stupendous.  He
+dropped away from Fillmore's coat-button like an exhausted bivalve, and
+his small mouth opened feebly. It was as if a child had suddenly
+propounded to an eminent mathematician some abstruse problem in the
+higher algebra. Females who took an interest in boxing had come into Mr.
+Burrowes' life before---in his younger days, when he was a famous
+featherweight, the first of his three wives had been accustomed to sit
+at the ringside during his contests and urge him in language of the
+severest technicality to knock opponents' blocks off--but somehow he had
+not supposed from her appearance and manner that Sally was one of the
+elect. He gaped at her, and the relieved Fillmore sidled off like a bird
+hopping from the compelling gaze of a snake. He was not quite sure that
+he was acting correctly in allowing his sister to roam at large among
+the somewhat Bohemian surroundings of a training-camp, but the instinct
+of self-preservation turned the scale. He had breakfasted early, and if
+he did not eat right speedily it seemed to him that dissolution would
+set in.
+
+"Whazzat?" said Mr. Burrowes feebly.
+
+"It took him fifteen rounds to get a referee's decision over Cyclone
+Mullins," said Sally severely, "and K-leg Binns..."
+
+Mr. Burrowes rallies.
+
+"You ain't got it right" he protested.  "Say, you mustn't believe what
+you see in the papers. The referee was dead against us, and Cyclone was
+down once for all of half a minute and they wouldn't count him out. Gee!
+You got to kill a guy in some towns before they'll give you a decision.
+At that, they couldn't do nothing so raw as make it anything but a win
+for my boy, after him leading by a mile all the way. Have you ever seen
+Bugs, ma'am?"
+
+Sally had to admit that she had not had that privilege.  Mr. Burrowes
+with growing excitement felt in his breast-pocket and produced a
+picture-postcard, which he thrust into her hand.
+
+"That's Bugs," he said.  "Take a slant at that and then tell me if he
+don't look the goods."
+
+The photograph represented a young man in the irreducible minimum of
+clothing who crouched painfully, as though stricken with one of the
+acuter forms of gastritis.
+
+"I'll call him over and have him sign it for you," said Mr. Burrowes,
+before Sally had had time to grasp the fact that this work of art was a
+gift and no mere loan. "Here, Bugs--wantcher."
+
+A youth enveloped in a bath-robe, who had been talking to a group of
+admirers near the ring, turned, started languidly towards them, then,
+seeing Sally, quickened his pace. He was an admirer of the sex.
+
+Mr. Burrowes did the honours.
+
+"Bugs, this is Miss Nicholas, come to see you work out.  I have been
+telling her she's going to have a treat." And to Sally. "Shake hands
+with Bugs Butler, ma'am, the coming lightweight champion of the world."
+
+Mr. Butler's photograph, Sally considered, had flattered him.  He was,
+in the flesh, a singularly repellent young man. There was a mean and
+cruel curve to his lips and a cold arrogance in his eye; a something
+dangerous and sinister in the atmosphere he radiated. Moreover, she did
+not like the way he smirked at her.
+
+However, she exerted herself to be amiable.
+
+"I hope you are going to win, Mr. Butler," she said.
+
+The smile which she forced as she spoke the words removed the coming
+champion's doubts, though they had never been serious. He was convinced
+now that he had made a hit. He always did, he reflected, with the girls.
+It was something about him. His chest swelled complacently beneath the
+bath-robe.
+
+"You betcher," he asserted briefly.
+
+Mr. Burrows looked at his watch.
+
+"Time you were starting, Bugs."
+
+The coming champion removed his gaze from Sally's face, into which he
+had been peering in a conquering manner, and cast a disparaging glance
+at the audience. It was far from being as large as he could have wished,
+and at least a third of it was composed of non-payers from the
+newspapers.
+
+"All right," he said, bored.
+
+His languor left him, as his gaze fell on Sally again, and his spirits
+revived somewhat. After all, small though the numbers of spectators
+might be, bright eyes would watch and admire him.
+
+"I'll go a couple of rounds with Reddy for a starter," he said.  "Seen
+him anywheres? He's never around when he's wanted."
+
+"I'll fetch him," said Mr. Burrowes.  "He's back there somewheres."
+
+"I'm going to show that guy up this afternoon," said Mr. Butler coldly.
+"He's been getting too fresh."
+
+The manager bustled off, and Bugs Butler, with a final smirk, left Sally
+and dived under the ropes. There was a stir of interest in the audience,
+though the newspaper men, blasé through familiarity, exhibited no
+emotion. Presently Mr. Burrowes reappeared, shepherding a young man
+whose face was hidden by the sweater which he was pulling over his head.
+He was a sturdily built young man. The sweater, moving from his body,
+revealed a good pair of shoulders.
+
+A last tug, and the sweater was off.  Red hair flashed into view,
+tousled and disordered: and, as she saw it, Sally uttered an involuntary
+gasp of astonishment which caused many eyes to turn towards her. And the
+red-headed young man, who had been stooping to pick up his gloves,
+straightened himself with a jerk and stood staring at her blankly and
+incredulously, his face slowly crimsoning.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+It was the energetic Mr. Burrowes who broke the spell.
+
+"Come on, come on," he said impatiently.  "Li'l speed there, Reddy."
+
+Ginger Kemp started like a sleep-walker awakened; then recovering
+himself, slowly began to pull on the gloves. Embarrassment was stamped
+on his agreeable features. His face matched his hair.
+
+Sally plucked at the little manager's elbow.  He turned irritably, but
+beamed in a distrait sort of manner when he perceived the source of the
+interruption.
+
+"Who--him?" he said in answer to Sally's whispered question.  "He's just
+one of Bugs' sparring-partners."
+
+"But..."
+
+Mr. Burrowes, fussy now that the time had come for action, interrupted
+her.
+
+"You'll excuse me, miss, but I have to hold the watch.  We mustn't waste
+any time."
+
+Sally drew back.  She felt like an infidel who intrudes upon the
+celebration of strange rites. This was Man's hour, and women must keep
+in the background. She had the sensation of being very small and yet
+very much in the way, like a puppy who has wandered into a church. The
+novelty and solemnity of the scene awed her.
+
+She looked at Ginger, who with averted gaze was fiddling with his
+clothes in the opposite corner of the ring. He was as removed from
+communication as if he had been in another world. She continued to
+stare, wide-eyed, and Ginger, shuffling his feet self-consciously,
+plucked at his gloves.
+
+Mr. Butler, meanwhile, having doffed his bath-robe, stretched himself,
+and with leisurely nonchalance put on a second pair of gloves, was
+filling in the time with a little shadow boxing. He moved rhythmically
+to and fro, now ducking his head, now striking out with his muffled
+hands, and a sickening realization of the man's animal power swept over
+Sally and turned her cold. Swathed in his bath-robe, Bugs Butler had
+conveyed an atmosphere of dangerousness: in the boxing-tights which
+showed up every rippling muscle, he was horrible and sinister, a machine
+built for destruction, a human panther.
+
+So he appeared to Sally, but a stout and bulbous eyed man standing at
+her side was not equally impressed. Obviously one of the Wise Guys of
+whom her friend the sporting office-boy had spoken, he was frankly
+dissatisfied with the exhibition.
+
+"Shadow-boxing," he observed in a cavilling spirit to his companion.
+"Yes, he can do that all right, just like I can fox-trot if I ain't got
+a partner to get in the way. But one good wallop, and then watch him."
+
+His friend, also plainly a guy of established wisdom, assented with a
+curt nod.
+
+"Ah!" he agreed.
+
+"Lew Lucas," said the first wise guy, "is just as shifty, and he can
+punch."
+
+"Ah!" said the second wise guy.
+
+"Just because he beats up a few poor mutts of sparring-partners," said
+the first wise guy disparagingly, "he thinks he's someone."
+
+"Ah!" said the second wise guy.
+
+As far as Sally could interpret these remarks, the full meaning of which
+was shrouded from her, they seemed to be reassuring. For a comforting
+moment she ceased to regard Ginger as a martyr waiting to be devoured by
+a lion. Mr. Butler, she gathered, was not so formidable as he appeared.
+But her relief was not to be long-lived.
+
+"Of course he'll eat this red-headed gink," went on the first wise guy.
+"That's the thing he does best, killing his sparring-partners. But Lew
+Lucas..."
+
+Sally was not interested in Lew Lucas.  That numbing fear had come back
+to her. Even these cognoscenti, little as they esteemed Mr. Butler, had
+plainly no doubts as to what he would do to Ginger. She tried to tear
+herself away, but something stronger than her own will kept her there
+standing where she was, holding on to the rope and staring forlornly
+into the ring.
+
+"Ready, Bugs?" asked Mr. Burrowes.
+
+The coming champion nodded carelessly.
+
+"Go to it," said Mr. Burrowes.
+
+Ginger ceased to pluck at his gloves and advanced into the ring.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+
+Of all the learned professions, pugilism is the one in which the trained
+expert is most sharply divided from the mere dabbler. In other fields
+the amateur may occasionally hope to compete successfully with the man
+who has made a business of what is to him but a sport, but at boxing
+never: and the whole demeanour of Bugs Butler showed that he had laid
+this truth to heart. It would be too little to say that his bearing was
+confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an
+infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer. Cyclone
+Mullinses might withstand him for fifteen rounds where they yielded to a
+K-leg Binns in the fifth, but, when it came to beating up a
+sparring-partner and an amateur at that, Bugs Butler knew his
+potentialities. He was there forty ways and he did not attempt to
+conceal it. Crouching as was his wont, he uncoiled himself like a
+striking rattlesnake and flicked Ginger lightly over his guard. Then he
+returned to his crouch and circled sinuously about the ring with the
+amiable intention of showing the crowd, payers and deadheads alike, what
+real footwork was. If there was one thing on which Bugs Butler prided
+himself, it was footwork.
+
+The adverb "lightly" is a relative term, and the blow which had just
+planted a dull patch on Ginger's cheekbone affected those present in
+different degrees. Ginger himself appeared stolidly callous. Sally
+shuddered to the core of her being and had to hold more tightly to the
+rope to support herself. The two wise guys mocked openly. To the wise
+guys, expert connoisseurs of swat, the thing had appeared richly
+farcical. They seemed to consider the blow, administered to a third
+party and not to themselves, hardly worth calling a blow at all. Two
+more, landing as quickly and neatly as the first, left them equally
+cold.
+
+"Call that punching?" said the first wise guy.
+
+"Ah!" said the second wise guy.
+
+But Mr. Butler, if he heard this criticism--and it is probable that he
+did--for the wise ones had been restrained by no delicacy of feeling
+from raising their voices, was in no way discommoded by it. Bugs Butler
+knew what he was about. Bright eyes were watching him, and he meant to
+give them a treat. The girls like smooth work. Any roughneck could sail
+into a guy and knock the daylights out of him, but how few could be
+clever and flashy and scientific? Few, few, indeed, thought Mr. Butler
+as he slid in and led once more.
+
+Something solid smote Mr. Butler's nose, rocking him on to his heels and
+inducing an unpleasant smarting sensation about his eyes. He backed away
+and regarded Ginger with astonishment, almost with pain. Until this
+moment he had scarcely considered him as an active participant in the
+scene at all, and he felt strongly that this sort of thing was bad form.
+It was not being done by sparring-partners.
+
+A juster man might have reflected that he himself was to blame.  He had
+undeniably been careless. In the very act of leading he had allowed his
+eyes to flicker sideways to see how Sally was taking this exhibition of
+science, and he had paid the penalty. Nevertheless, he was piqued. He
+shimmered about the ring, thinking it over. And the more he thought it
+over, the less did he approve of his young assistant's conduct. Hard
+thoughts towards Ginger began to float in his mind.
+
+Ginger, too, was thinking hard thoughts.  He had not had an easy time
+since he had come to the training camp, but never till to-day had he
+experienced any resentment towards his employer. Until this afternoon
+Bugs Butler had pounded him honestly and without malice, and he had gone
+through it, as the other sparring-partners did, phlegmatically, taking
+it as part of the day's work. But this afternoon there had been a
+difference. Those careless flicks had been an insult, a deliberate
+offence. The man was trying to make a fool of him, playing to the
+gallery: and the thought of who was in that gallery inflamed Ginger past
+thought of consequences. No one, not even Mr. Butler, was more keenly
+alive than he to the fact that in a serious conflict with a man who
+to-morrow night might be light-weight champion of the world he stood no
+chance whatever: but he did not intend to be made an exhibition of in
+front of Sally without doing something to hold his end up. He proposed
+to go down with his flag flying, and in pursuance of this object he dug
+Mr. Butler heavily in the lower ribs with his right, causing that expert
+to clinch and the two wise guys to utter sharp barking sounds expressive
+of derision.
+
+"Say, what the hell d'ya think you're getting at?" demanded the
+aggrieved pugilist in a heated whisper in Ginger's ear as they fell into
+the embrace. "What's the idea, you jelly bean?"
+
+Ginger maintained a pink silence.  His jaw was set, and the temper which
+Nature had bestowed upon him to go with his hair had reached white heat.
+He dodged a vicious right which whizzed up at his chin out of the
+breaking clinch, and rushed. A left hook shook him, but was too high to
+do more. There was rough work in the far corner, and suddenly with
+startling abruptness Bugs Butler, bothered by the ropes at his back and
+trying to side-step, ran into a swing and fell.
+
+"Time!" shouted the scandalized Mr. Burrowes, utterly aghast at this
+frightful misadventure. In the whole course of his professional
+experience he could recall no such devastating occurrence.
+
+The audience was no less startled.  There was audible gasping.  The
+newspaper men looked at each other with a wild surmise and conjured up
+pleasant pictures of their sporting editors receiving this sensational
+item of news later on over the telephone. The two wise guys, continuing
+to pursue Mr. Butler with their dislike, emitted loud and raucous
+laughs, and one of them, forming his hands into a megaphone, urged the
+fallen warrior to go away and get a rep. As for Sally, she was conscious
+of a sudden, fierce, cave-womanly rush of happiness which swept away
+completely the sickening qualms of the last few minutes. Her teeth were
+clenched and her eyes blazed with joyous excitement. She looked at
+Ginger yearningly, longing to forget a gentle upbringing and shout
+congratulation to him. She was proud of him. And mingled with the pride
+was a curious feeling that was almost fear. This was not the mild and
+amiable young man whom she was wont to mother through the difficulties
+of a world in which he was unfitted to struggle for himself. This was a
+new Ginger, a stranger to her.
+
+On the rare occasions on which he had been knocked down in the past, it
+had been Bugs Butler's canny practice to pause for a while and rest
+before rising and continuing the argument, but now he was up almost
+before he had touched the boards, and the satire of the second wise guy,
+who had begun to saw the air with his hand and count loudly, lost its
+point. It was only too plain that Mr. Butler's motto was that a man may
+be down, but he is never out. And, indeed, the knock-down had been
+largely a stumble. Bugs Butler's educated feet, which had carried him
+unscathed through so many contests, had for this single occasion managed
+to get themselves crossed just as Ginger's blow landed, and it was to
+his lack of balance rather than the force of the swing that his downfall
+had been due.
+
+"Time!" he snarled, casting a malevolent side-glance at his manager.
+"Like hell it's time!"
+
+And in a whirlwind of flying gloves he flung himself upon Ginger,
+driving him across the ring, while Mr. Burrowes, watch in hand, stared
+with dropping jaw. If Ginger had seemed a new Ginger to Sally, still
+more did this seem a new Bugs Butler to Mr. Burrowes, and the manager
+groaned in spirit. Coolness, skill and science--these had been the
+qualities in his protégé which had always so endeared him to Mr. Lester
+Burrowes and had so enriched their respective bank accounts: and now, on
+the eve of the most important fight in his life, before an audience of
+newspaper men, he had thrown them all aside and was making an exhibition
+of himself with a common sparring-partner.
+
+That was the bitter blow to Mr. Burrowes.  Had this lapse into the
+unscientific primitive happened in a regular fight, he might have
+mourned and poured reproof into Bug's ear when he got him back in his
+corner at the end of the round; but he would not have experienced this
+feeling of helpless horror--the sort of horror an elder of the church
+might feel if he saw his favourite bishop yielding in public to the
+fascination of jazz. It was the fact that Bugs Butler was lowering
+himself to extend his powers against a sparring-partner that shocked Mr.
+Burrowes. There is an etiquette in these things. A champion may batter
+his sparring-partners into insensibility if he pleases, but he must do
+it with nonchalance. He must not appear to be really trying.
+
+And nothing could be more manifest than that Bugs Butler was trying.
+His whole fighting soul was in his efforts to corner Ginger and destroy
+him. The battle was raging across the ring and down the ring, and up the
+ring and back again; yet always Ginger, like a storm-driven ship,
+contrived somehow to weather the tempest. Out of the flurry of swinging
+arms he emerged time after time bruised, bleeding, but fighting hard.
+
+For Bugs Butler's fury was defeating its object.  Had he remained his
+cool and scientific self, he could have demolished Ginger and cut
+through his defence in a matter of seconds. But he had lapsed back into
+the methods of his unskilled novitiate. He swung and missed, swung and
+missed again, struck but found no vital spot. And now there was blood on
+his face, too. In some wild mêlée the sacred fount had been tapped, and
+his teeth gleamed through a crimson mist.
+
+The Wise Guys were beyond speech.  They were leaning against one
+another, punching each other feebly in the back. One was crying.
+
+And then suddenly the end came, as swiftly and unexpectedly as the
+thing had begun. His wild swings had tired Bugs Butler, and with fatigue
+prudence returned to him. His feet began once more their subtle weaving
+in and out. Twice his left hand flickered home. A quick feint, a short,
+jolting stab, and Ginger's guard was down and he was swaying in the
+middle of the ring, his hands hanging and his knees a-quiver.
+
+Bugs Butler measured his distance, and Sally shut her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+
+MR. ABRAHAMS RE-ENGAGES AN OLD EMPLOYEE
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+The only real happiness, we are told, is to be obtained by bringing
+happiness to others. Bugs Butler's mood, accordingly, when some thirty
+hours after the painful episode recorded in the last chapter he awoke
+from a state of coma in the ring at Jersey City to discover that Mr. Lew
+Lucas had knocked him out in the middle of the third round, should have
+been one of quiet contentment. His inability to block a short left-hook
+followed by a right to the point of the jaw had ameliorated quite a
+number of existences.
+
+Mr. Lew Lucas, for one, was noticeably pleased.  So were Mr. Lucas's
+seconds, one of whom went so far as to kiss him. And most of the crowd,
+who had betted heavily on the champion, were delighted. Yet Bugs Butler
+did not rejoice. It is not too much to say that his peevish bearing
+struck a jarring note in the general gaiety. A heavy frown disfigured
+his face as he slouched from the ring.
+
+But the happiness which he had spread went on spreading.  The two Wise
+Guys, who had been unable to attend the fight in person, received the
+result on the ticker and exuberantly proclaimed themselves the richer by
+five hundred dollars. The pimpled office-boy at the Fillmore Nicholas
+Theatrical Enterprises Ltd. caused remark in the Subway by whooping
+gleefully when he read the news in his morning paper, for he, too, had
+been rendered wealthier by the brittleness of Mr. Butler's chin. And it
+was with fierce satisfaction that Sally, breakfasting in her little
+apartment, informed herself through the sporting page of the details of
+the contender's downfall. She was not a girl who disliked many people,
+but she had acquired a lively distaste for Bugs Butler.
+
+Lew Lucas seemed a man after her own heart.  If he had been a personal
+friend of Ginger's he could not, considering the brief time at his
+disposal, have avenged him with more thoroughness. In round one he had
+done all sorts of diverting things to Mr. Butler's left eye: in round
+two he had continued the good work on that gentleman's body; and in
+round three he had knocked him out. Could anyone have done more? Sally
+thought not, and she drank Lew Lucas's health in a cup of coffee and
+hoped his old mother was proud of him.
+
+The telephone bell rang at her elbow.  She unhooked the receiver.
+
+"Hullo?"
+
+"Oh, hullo," said a voice.
+
+"Ginger!" cried Sally delightedly.
+
+"I say, I'm awfully glad you're back.  I only got your letter this
+morning. Found it at the boarding-house. I happened to look in there
+and..."
+
+"Ginger," interrupted Sally, "your voice is music, but I want to see
+you. Where are you?"
+
+"I'm at a chemist's shop across the street.  I was wondering if..."
+
+"Come here at once!"
+
+"I say, may I? I was just going to ask."
+
+"You miserable creature, why haven't you been round to see me before?"
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact, I haven't been going about much for the last
+day. You see..."
+
+"I know.  Of course." Quick sympathy came into Sally's voice.  She gave
+a sidelong glance of approval and gratitude at the large picture of Lew
+Lucas which beamed up at her from the morning paper. "You poor thing!
+How are you?"
+
+"Oh, all right, thanks."
+
+"Well, hurry."
+
+There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire.
+
+"I say."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I'm not much to look at, you know."
+
+"You never were.  Stop talking and hurry over."
+
+"I mean to say..."
+
+Sally hung up the receiver firmly.  She waited eagerly for some minutes,
+and then footsteps came along the passage. They stopped at her door and
+the bell rang. Sally ran to the door, flung it open, and recoiled in
+consternation.
+
+"Oh, Ginger!"
+
+He had stated the facts accurately when he had said that he was not much
+to look at. He gazed at her devotedly out of an unblemished right eye,
+but the other was hidden altogether by a puffy swelling of dull purple.
+A great bruise marred his left cheek-bone, and he spoke with some
+difficulty through swollen lips.
+
+"It's all right, you know," he assured her.
+
+"It isn't.  It's awful! Oh, you poor darling!" She clenched her teeth
+viciously. "I wish he had killed him!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I wish Lew Lucas or whatever his name is had murdered him.  Brute!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, you know." Ginger's sense of fairness compelled him
+to defend his late employer against these harsh sentiments. "He isn't a
+bad sort of chap, really. Bugs Butler, I mean."
+
+"Do you seriously mean to stand there and tell me you don't loathe the
+creature?"
+
+"Oh, he's all right.  See his point of view and all that.  Can't blame
+him, if you come to think of it, for getting the wind up a bit in the
+circs. Bit thick, I mean to say, a sparring-partner going at him like
+that. Naturally he didn't think it much of a wheeze. It was my fault
+right along. Oughtn't to have done it, of course, but somehow, when he
+started making an ass of me and I knew you were looking on... well, it
+seemed a good idea to have a dash at doing something on my own. No right
+to, of course. A sparring-partner isn't supposed..."
+
+"Sit down," said Sally.
+
+Ginger sat down.
+
+"Ginger," said Sally, "you're too good to live."
+
+"Oh, I say!"
+
+"I believe if someone sandbagged you and stole your watch and chain
+you'd say there were faults on both sides or something. I'm just a cat,
+and I say I wish your beast of a Bugs Butler had perished miserably. I'd
+have gone and danced on his grave... But whatever made you go in for
+that sort of thing?"
+
+"Well, it seemed the only job that was going at the moment.  I've always
+done a goodish bit of boxing and I was very fit and so on, and it looked
+to me rather an opening. Gave me something to get along with. You get
+paid quite fairly decently, you know, and it's rather a jolly life..."
+
+"Jolly? Being hammered about like that?"
+
+"Oh, you don't notice it much.  I've always enjoyed scrapping rather.
+And, you see, when your brother gave me the push..."
+
+Sally uttered an exclamation.
+
+"What an extraordinary thing it is--I went all the way out to White
+Plains that afternoon to find Fillmore and tackle him about that and I
+didn't say a word about it. And I haven't seen or been able to get hold
+of him since."
+
+"No? Busy sort of cove, your brother."
+
+"Why did Fillmore let you go?"
+
+"Let me go? Oh, you mean... well, there was a sort of mix-up.  A kind of
+misunderstanding."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+"Oh, it was nothing.  Just a..."
+
+"What happened?"
+
+Ginger's disfigured countenance betrayed embarrassment.  He looked
+awkwardly about the room.
+
+"It's not worth talking about."
+
+"It is worth talking about.  I've a right to know.  It was I who sent
+you to Fillmore..."
+
+"Now that," said Ginger, "was jolly decent of you."
+
+"Don't interrupt! I sent you to Fillmore, and he had no business to let
+you go without saying a word to me. What happened?"
+
+Ginger twiddled his fingers unhappily.
+
+"Well, it was rather unfortunate.  You see, his wife--I don't know if
+you know her?..."
+
+"Of course I know her."
+
+"Why, yes, you would, wouldn't you? Your brother's wife, I mean," said
+Ginger acutely. "Though, as a matter of fact, you often find
+sisters-in-law who won't have anything to do with one another. I know a
+fellow..."
+
+"Ginger," said Sally, "it's no good your thinking you can get out of
+telling me by rambling off on other subjects. I'm grim and resolute and
+relentless, and I mean to get this story out of you if I have to use a
+corkscrew. Fillmore's wife, you were saying..."
+
+Ginger came back reluctantly to the main theme.
+
+"Well, she came into the office one morning, and we started fooling
+about..."
+
+"Fooling about?"
+
+"Well, kind of chivvying each other."
+
+"Chivvying?"
+
+"At least I was."
+
+"You were what?"
+
+"Sort of chasing her a bit, you know."
+
+Sally regarded this apostle of frivolity with amazement.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Ginger's embarrassment increased.
+
+"The thing was, you see, she happened to trickle in rather quietly when
+I happened to be looking at something, and I didn't know she was there
+till she suddenly grabbed it..."
+
+"Grabbed what?"
+
+"The thing.  The thing I happened to be looking at.  She bagged it...
+collared it... took it away from me, you know, and wouldn't give it back
+and generally started to rot about a bit, so I rather began to chivvy
+her to some extent, and I'd just caught her when your brother happened
+to roll in. I suppose," said Ginger, putting two and two together, "he
+had really come with her to the office and had happened to hang back for
+a minute or two, to talk to somebody or something... well, of course,
+he was considerably fed to see me apparently doing jiu-jitsu with his
+wife. Enough to rattle any man, if you come to think of it," said
+Ginger, ever fair-minded. "Well, he didn't say anything at the time, but
+a bit later in the day he called me in and administered the push."
+
+Sally shook her head.
+
+"It sounds the craziest story to me.  What was it that Mrs. Fillmore
+took from you?"
+
+"Oh, just something."
+
+Sally rapped the table imperiously.
+
+"Ginger!"
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact," said her goaded visitor, "It was a
+photograph."
+
+"Who of? Or, if you're particular, of whom?"
+
+"Well... you, to be absolutely accurate."
+
+"Me?" Sally stared.  "But I've never given you a photograph of myself."
+
+Ginger's face was a study in scarlet and purple.
+
+"You didn't exactly give it to me," he mumbled.  "When I say give, I
+mean..."
+
+"Good gracious!" Sudden enlightenment came upon Sally.  "That photograph
+we were hunting for when I first came here! Had you stolen it all the
+time?"
+
+"Why, yes, I did sort of pinch it..."
+
+"You fraud! You humbug! And you pretended to help me look for it." She
+gazed at him almost with respect. "I never knew you were so deep and
+snaky. I'm discovering all sorts of new things about you."
+
+There was a brief silence.  Ginger, confession over, seemed a trifle
+happier.
+
+"I hope you're not frightfully sick about it?" he said at length.  "It
+was lying about, you know, and I rather felt I must have it. Hadn't the
+cheek to ask you for it, so..."
+
+"Don't apologize," said Sally cordially.  "Great compliment.  So I have
+caused your downfall again, have I? I'm certainly your evil genius,
+Ginger. I'm beginning to feel like a regular rag and a bone and a hank
+of hair. First I egged you on to insult your family--oh, by the way, I
+want to thank you about that. Now that I've met your Uncle Donald I can
+see how public-spirited you were. I ruined your prospects there, and now
+my fatal beauty--cabinet size--has led to your destruction once more.
+It's certainly up to me to find you another job, I can see that."
+
+"No, really, I say, you mustn't bother.  I shall be all right."
+
+"It's my duty.  Now what is there that you really can do? Burglary, of
+course, but it's not respectable. You've tried being a waiter and a
+prize-fighter and a right-hand man, and none of those seems to be just
+right. Can't you suggest anything?"
+
+Ginger shook his head.
+
+"I shall wangle something, I expect." '
+
+"Yes, but what? It must be something good this time.  I don't want to be
+walking along Broadway and come on you suddenly as a street-cleaner. I
+don't want to send for an express-man and find you popping up. My idea
+would be to go to my bank to arrange an overdraft and be told the
+president could give me two minutes and crawl in humbly and find you
+prezzing away to beat the band in a big chair. Isn't there anything in
+the world that you can do that's solid and substantial and will keep you
+out of the poor-house in your old age? Think!"
+
+"Of course, if I had a bit of capital..."
+
+"Ah! The business man! And what," inquired Sally, "would you do, Mr.
+Morgan, if you had a bit of capital?"
+
+"Run a dog-thingummy," said Ginger promptly.
+
+"What's a dog-thingummy?"
+
+"Why, a thingamajig.  For dogs, you know."
+
+Sally nodded.
+
+"Oh, a thingamajig for dogs? Now I understand.  You will put things so
+obscurely at first. Ginger, you poor fish, what are you raving about?
+What on earth is a thingamajig for dogs?"
+
+"I mean a sort of place like fellows have.  Breeding dogs, you know, and
+selling them and winning prizes and all that. There are lots of them
+about."
+
+"Oh, a kennels?"
+
+"Yes, a kennels."
+
+"What a weird mind you have, Ginger.  You couldn't say kennels at first,
+could you? That wouldn't have made it difficult enough. I suppose, if
+anyone asked you where you had your lunch, you would say, 'Oh, at a
+thingamajig for mutton chops'... Ginger, my lad, there is something in
+this. I believe for the first time in our acquaintance you have spoken
+something very nearly resembling a mouthful. You're wonderful with dogs,
+aren't you?"
+
+"I'm dashed keen on them, and I've studied them a bit.  As a matter of
+fact, though it seems rather like swanking, there isn't much about dogs
+that I don't know."
+
+"Of course.  I believe you're a sort of honorary dog yourself.  I could
+tell it by the way you stopped that fight at Roville. You plunged into a
+howling mass of about a million hounds of all species and just whispered
+in their ears and they stopped at once. Why, the more one examines this,
+the better it looks. I do believe it's the one thing you couldn't help
+making a success of. It's very paying, isn't it?"
+
+"Works out at about a hundred per cent on the original outlay, I've been
+told."
+
+"A hundred per cent? That sounds too much like something of Fillmore's
+for comfort. Let's say ninety-nine and be conservative. Ginger, you have
+hit it. Say no more. You shall be the Dog King, the biggest
+thingamajigger for dogs in the country. But how do you start?"
+
+"Well, as a matter of fact, while I was up at White Plains, I ran into a
+cove who had a place of the sort and wanted to sell out. That was what
+made me think of it."
+
+"You must start to-day.  Or early to-morrow."
+
+"Yes," said Ginger doubtfully.  "Of course, there's the catch, you
+know."
+
+"What catch?"
+
+"The capital.  You've got to have that.  This fellow wouldn't sell out
+under five thousand dollars."
+
+"I'll lend you five thousand dollars."
+
+"No!" said Ginger.
+
+Sally looked at him with exasperation.  "Ginger, I'd like to slap you,"
+she said. It was maddening, this intrusion of sentiment into business
+affairs. Why, simply because he was a man and she was a woman, should
+she be restrained from investing money in a sound commercial
+undertaking? If Columbus had taken up this bone-headed stand towards
+Queen Isabella, America would never have been discovered.
+
+"I can't take five thousand dollars off you," said Ginger firmly.
+
+"Who's talking of taking it off me, as you call it?" stormed Sally.
+"Can't you forget your burglarious career for a second? This isn't the
+same thing as going about stealing defenceless girls' photographs. This
+is business. I think you would make an enormous success of a dog-place,
+and you admit you're good, so why make frivolous objections? Why
+shouldn't I put money into a good thing? Don't you want me to get rich,
+or what is it?"
+
+Ginger was becoming confused.  Argument had never been his strong point.
+
+"But it's such a lot of money."
+
+"To you, perhaps.  Not to me.  I'm a plutocrat.  Five thousand dollars!
+What's five thousand dollars? I feed it to the birds."
+
+Ginger pondered woodenly for a while.  His was a literal mind, and he
+knew nothing of Sally's finances beyond the fact that when he had first
+met her she had come into a legacy of some kind. Moreover, he had been
+hugely impressed by Fillmore's magnificence. It seemed plain enough
+that the Nicholases were a wealthy family.
+
+"I don't like it, you know," he said.
+
+"You don't have to like it," said Sally.  "You just do it."
+
+A consoling thought flashed upon Ginger.
+
+"You'd have to let me pay you interest."
+
+"Let you? My lad, you'll have to pay me interest.  What do you think
+this is--a round game? It's a cold business deal."
+
+"Topping!" said Ginger relieved.  "How about twenty-five per cent."
+
+"Don't be silly," said Sally quickly.  "I want three."
+
+"No, that's all rot," protested Ginger.  "I mean to say--three.  I
+don't," he went on, making a concession, "mind saying twenty."
+
+"If you insist, I'll make it five.  Not more."
+
+"Well, ten, then?"
+
+"Five!"
+
+"Suppose," said Ginger insinuatingly, "I said seven?"
+
+"I never saw anyone like you for haggling," said Sally with disapproval.
+"Listen! Six. And that's my last word."
+
+"Six?"
+
+"Six."
+
+Ginger did sums in his head.
+
+"But that would only work out at three hundred dollars a year.  It isn't
+enough."
+
+"What do you know about it? As if I hadn't been handling this sort of
+deal in my life. Six! Do you agree?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Then that's settled.  Is this man you talk about in New York?"
+
+"No, he's down on Long Island at a place on the south shore."
+
+"I mean, can you get him on the 'phone and clinch the thing?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  I know his address, and I suppose his number's in the book."
+
+"Then go off at once and settle with him before somebody else snaps him
+up. Don't waste a minute."
+
+Ginger paused at the door.
+
+"I say, you're absolutely sure about this?'''
+
+"Of course."
+
+"I mean to say..."
+
+"Get on," said Sally.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+The window of Sally's sitting-room looked out on to a street which,
+while not one of the city's important arteries, was capable,
+nevertheless, of affording a certain amount of entertainment to the
+observer: and after Ginger had left, she carried the morning paper to
+the window-sill and proceeded to divide her attention between a third
+reading of the fight-report and a lazy survey of the outer world. It was
+a beautiful day, and the outer world was looking its best.
+
+She had not been at her post for many minutes when a taxi-cab stopped at
+the apartment-house, and she was surprised and interested to see her
+brother Fillmore heave himself out of the interior. He paid the driver,
+and the cab moved off, leaving him on the sidewalk casting a large
+shadow in the sunshine. Sally was on the point of calling to him, when
+his behaviour became so odd that astonishment checked her.
+
+From where she sat Fillmore had all the appearance of a man practising
+the steps of a new dance, and sheer curiosity as to what he would do
+next kept Sally watching in silence. First, he moved in a resolute sort
+of way towards the front door; then, suddenly stopping, scuttled back.
+This movement he repeated twice, after which he stood in deep thought
+before making another dash for the door, which, like the others, came to
+an abrupt end as though he had run into some invisible obstacle. And,
+finally, wheeling sharply, he bustled off down the street and was lost
+to view.
+
+Sally could make nothing of it.  If Fillmore had taken the trouble to
+come in a taxi-cab, obviously to call upon her, why had he abandoned the
+idea at her very threshold? She was still speculating on this mystery
+when the telephone-bell rang, and her brother's voice spoke huskily in
+her ear.
+
+"Sally?"
+
+"Hullo, Fill.  What are you going to call it?"
+
+"What am I... Call what?"
+
+"The dance you were doing outside here just now.  It's your own
+invention, isn't it?"
+
+"Did you see me?" said Fillmore, upset.
+
+"Of course I saw you.  I was fascinated."
+
+"I--er--I was coming to have a talk with you.  Sally..."
+
+Fillmore's voice trailed off.
+
+"Well, why didn't you?"
+
+There was a pause--on Fillmore's part, if the timbre of at his voice
+correctly indicated his feelings, a pause of discomfort. Something was
+plainly vexing Fillmore's great mind.
+
+"Sally," he said at last, and coughed hollowly into the receiver.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I--that is to say, I have asked Gladys... Gladys will be coming to see
+you very shortly. Will you be in?"
+
+"I'll stay in.  How is Gladys? I'm longing to see her again."
+
+"She is very well.  A trifle--a little upset."
+
+"Upset? What about?"
+
+"She will tell you when she arrives.  I have just been 'phoning to her.
+She is coming at once." There was another pause. "I'm afraid she has bad
+news."
+
+"What news?"
+
+There was silence at the other end of the wire.
+
+"What news?" repeated Sally, a little sharply.  She hated mysteries.
+
+But Fillmore had rung off.  Sally hung up the receiver thoughtfully.
+She was puzzled and anxious. However, there being nothing to be gained
+by worrying, she carried the breakfast things into the kitchen and
+tried to divert herself by washing up. Presently a ring at the door-bell
+brought her out, to find her sister-in-law.
+
+Marriage, even though it had brought with it the lofty position of
+partnership with the Hope of the American Stage, had effected no
+noticeable alteration in the former Miss Winch. As Mrs. Fillmore she was
+the same square, friendly creature. She hugged Sally in a muscular
+manner and went on in the sitting-room.
+
+"Well, it's great seeing you again," she said.  "I began to think you
+were never coming back. What was the big idea, springing over to England
+like that?"
+
+Sally had been expecting the question, and answered it with composure.
+
+"I wanted to help Mr. Faucitt."
+
+"Who's Mr. Faucitt?"
+
+"Hasn't Fillmore ever mentioned him? He was a dear old man at the
+boarding-house, and his brother died and left him a dressmaking
+establishment in London. He screamed to me to come and tell him what to
+do about it. He has sold it now and is quite happy in the country."
+
+"Well, the trip's done you good," said Mrs. Fillmore.  "You're prettier
+than ever."
+
+There was a pause.  Already, in these trivial opening exchanges, Sally
+had sensed a suggestion of unwonted gravity in her companion. She missed
+that careless whimsicality which had been the chief characteristic of
+Miss Gladys Winch and seemed to have been cast off by Mrs. Fillmore
+Nicholas. At their meeting, before she had spoken, Sally had not noticed
+this, but now it was apparent that something was weighing on her
+companion. Mrs. Fillmore's honest eyes were troubled.
+
+"What's the bad news?" asked Sally abruptly.  She wanted to end the
+suspense. "Fillmore was telling me over the 'phone that you had some bad
+news for me."
+
+Mrs. Fillmore scratched at the carpet for a moment with the end of her
+parasol without replying. When she spoke it was not in answer to the
+question.
+
+"Sally, who's this man Carmyle over in England?"
+
+"Oh, did Fillmore tell you about him?"
+
+"He told me there was a rich fellow over in England who was crazy about
+you and had asked you to marry him, and that you had turned him down."
+
+Sally's momentary annoyance faded.  She could hardly, she felt, have
+expected Fillmore to refrain from mentioning the matter to his wife.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "That's true."
+
+"You couldn't write and say you've changed your mind?"
+
+Sally's annoyance returned.  All her life she had been intensely
+independent, resentful of interference with her private concerns.
+
+"I suppose I could if I had--but I haven't.  Did Fillmore tell you to
+try to talk me round?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not trying to talk you round," said Mrs. Fillmore quickly.
+"Goodness knows, I'm the last person to try and jolly anyone into
+marrying anybody if they didn't feel like it. I've seen too many
+marriages go wrong to do that. Look at Elsa Doland."
+
+Sally's heart jumped as if an exposed nerve had been touched.
+
+"Elsa?" she stammered, and hated herself because her voice shook.
+"Has--has her marriage gone wrong?"
+
+"Gone all to bits," said Mrs. Fillmore shortly.  "You remember she
+married Gerald Foster, the man who wrote 'The Primrose Way'?"
+
+Sally with an effort repressed an hysterical laugh.
+
+"Yes, I remember," she said.
+
+"Well, it's all gone bloo-ey.  I'll tell you about that in a minute.
+Coming back to this man in England, if you're in any doubt about it... I
+mean, you can't always tell right away whether you're fond of a man or
+not... When first I met Fillmore, I couldn't see him with a spy-glass,
+and now he's just the whole shooting-match... But that's not what I
+wanted to talk about. I was saying one doesn't always know one's own
+mind at first, and if this fellow really is a good fellow... and
+Fillmore tells me he's got all the money in the world..."
+
+Sally stopped her.
+
+"No, it's no good.  I don't want to marry Mr. Carmyle."
+
+"That's that, then," said Mrs. Fillmore.  "It's a pity, though."
+
+"Why are you taking it so much to heart?" said Sally with a nervous
+laugh.
+
+"Well..." Mrs. Fillmore paused.  Sally's anxiety was growing.  It must,
+she realized, be something very serious indeed that had happened if it
+had the power to make her forthright sister-in-law disjointed in her
+talk. "You see..." went on Mrs. Fillmore, and stopped again. "Gee! I'm
+hating this!" she murmured.
+
+"What is it? I don't understand."
+
+"You'll find it's all too darned clear by the time I'm through," said
+Mrs. Fillmore mournfully. "If I'm going to explain this thing, I guess
+I'd best start at the beginning. You remember that revue of
+Fillmore's--the one we both begged him not to put on. It flopped!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes.  It flopped on the road and died there.  Never got to New York at
+all. Ike Schumann wouldn't let Fillmore have a theatre. The book wanted
+fixing and the numbers wanted fixing and the scenery wasn't right: and
+while they were tinkering with all that there was trouble about the cast
+and the Actors Equity closed the show. Best thing that could have
+happened, really, and I was glad at the time, because going on with it
+would only have meant wasting more money, and it had cost a fortune
+already. After that Fillmore put on a play of Gerald Foster's and that
+was a frost, too. It ran a week at the Booth. I hear the new piece he's
+got in rehearsal now is no good either. It's called 'The Wild Rose,' or
+something. But Fillmore's got nothing to do with that."
+
+"But..." Sally tried to speak, but Mrs. Fillmore went on.
+
+"Don't talk just yet, or I shall never get this thing straight.  Well,
+you know Fillmore, poor darling. Anyone else would have pulled in his
+horns and gone slow for a spell, but he's one of those fellows whose
+horse is always going to win the next race. The big killing is always
+just round the corner with him. Funny how you can see what a chump a man
+is and yet love him to death... I remember saying something like that to
+you before... He thought he could get it all back by staging this fight
+of his that came off in Jersey City last night. And if everything had
+gone right he might have got afloat again. But it seems as if he can't
+touch anything without it turning to mud. On the very day before the
+fight was to come off, the poor mutt who was going against the champion
+goes and lets a sparring-partner of his own knock him down and fool
+around with him. With all the newspaper men there too! You probably saw
+about it in the papers. It made a great story for them. Well, that
+killed the whole thing. The public had never been any too sure that this
+fellow Bugs Butler had a chance of putting up a scrap with the champion
+that would be worth paying to see; and, when they read that he couldn't
+even stop his sparring-partners slamming him all around the place they
+simply decided to stay away. Poor old Fill! It was a finisher for him.
+The house wasn't a quarter full, and after he'd paid these two
+pluguglies their guarantees, which they insisted on having before they'd
+so much as go into the ring, he was just about cleaned out. So there you
+are!"
+
+Sally had listened with dismay to this catalogue of misfortunes.
+
+"Oh, poor Fill!" she cried.  "How dreadful!"
+
+"Pretty tough."
+
+"But 'The Primrose Way' is a big success, isn't it?" said Sally, anxious
+to discover something of brightness in the situation.
+
+"It was." Mrs. Fillmore flushed again.  "This is the part I hate having
+to tell you."
+
+"It was? Do you mean it isn't still? I thought Elsa had made such a
+tremendous hit. I read about it when I was over in London. It was even
+in one of the English papers."
+
+"Yes, she made a hit all right," said Mrs. Fillmore drily.  "She made
+such a hit that all the other managements in New York were after her
+right away, and Fillmore had hardly sailed when she handed in her notice
+and signed up with Goble and Cohn for a new piece they are starring her
+in."
+
+"Ah, she couldn't!" cried Sally.
+
+"My dear, she did! She's out on the road with it now.  I had to break
+the news to poor old Fillmore at the dock when he landed. It was rather
+a blow. I must say it wasn't what I would call playing the game. I know
+there isn't supposed to be any sentiment in business, but after all we
+had given Elsa her big chance. But Fillmore wouldn't put her name up
+over the theatre in electrics, and Goble and Cohn made it a clause in
+her contract that they would, so nothing else mattered. People are like
+that."
+
+"But Elsa... She used not to be like that."
+
+"They all get that way.  They must grab success if it's to be grabbed.
+I suppose you can't blame them. You might just as well expect a cat to
+keep off catnip. Still, she might have waited to the end of the New York
+run." Mrs. Fillmore put out her hand and touched Sally's. "Well, I've
+got it out now," she said, "and, believe me, it was one rotten job. You
+don't know how sorry I am. Sally. I wouldn't have had it happen for a
+million dollars. Nor would Fillmore. I'm not sure that I blame him for
+getting cold feet and backing out of telling you himself. He just hadn't
+the nerve to come and confess that he had fooled away your money. He was
+hoping all along that this fight would pan out big and that he'd be able
+to pay you back what you had loaned him, but things didn't happen
+right."
+
+Sally was silent.  She was thinking how strange it was that this room in
+which she had hoped to be so happy had been from the first moment of her
+occupancy a storm centre of bad news and miserable disillusionment. In
+this first shock of the tidings, it was the disillusionment that hurt
+most. She had always been so fond of Elsa, and Elsa had always seemed so
+fond of her. She remembered that letter of Elsa's with all its
+protestations of gratitude... It wasn't straight. It was horrible.
+Callous, selfish, altogether horrible...
+
+"It's..." She choked, as a rush of indignation brought the tears to her
+eyes. "It's... beastly! I'm... I'm not thinking about my money. That's
+just bad luck. But Elsa..."
+
+Mrs. Fillmore shrugged her square shoulders.
+
+"Well, it's happening all the time in the show business," she said.
+"And in every other business, too, I guess, if one only knew enough
+about them to be able to say. Of course, it hits you hard because Elsa
+was a pal of yours, and you're thinking she might have considered you
+after all you've done for her. I can't say I'm much surprised myself."
+Mrs. Fillmore was talking rapidly, and dimly Sally understood that she
+was talking so that talk would carry her over this bad moment. Silence
+now would have been unendurable. "I was in the company with her, and it
+sometimes seems to me as if you can't get to know a person right through
+till you've been in the same company with them. Elsa's all right, but
+she's two people really, like these dual identity cases you read about.
+She's awfully fond of you. I know she is. She was always saying so, and
+it was quite genuine. If it didn't interfere with business there's
+nothing she wouldn't do for you. But when it's a case of her career you
+don't count. Nobody counts. Not even her husband. Now that's funny. If
+you think that sort of thing funny. Personally, it gives me the
+willies."
+
+"What's funny?" asked Sally, dully.
+
+"Well, you weren't there, so you didn't see it, but I was on the spot
+all the time, and I know as well as I know anything that he simply
+married her because he thought she could get him on in the game. He
+hardly paid any attention to her at all till she was such a riot in
+Chicago, and then he was all over her. And now he's got stung. She
+throws down his show and goes off to another fellow's. It's like
+marrying for money and finding the girl hasn't any. And she's got stung,
+too, in a way, because I'm pretty sure she married him mostly because
+she thought he was going to be the next big man in the play-writing
+business and could boost her up the ladder. And now it doesn't look as
+though he had another success in him. The result is they're at outs. I
+hear he's drinking. Somebody who'd seen him told me he had gone all to
+pieces. You haven't seen him, I suppose?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought maybe you might have run into him.  He lives right opposite."
+
+Sally clutched at the arm of her chair.
+
+"Lives right opposite? Gerald Foster? What do you mean?"
+
+"Across the passage there," said Mrs. Fillmore, jerking her thumb at the
+door. "Didn't you know? That's right, I suppose you didn't. They moved
+in after you had beaten it for England. Elsa wanted to be near you, and
+she was tickled to death when she found there was an apartment to be had
+right across from you. Now, that just proves what I was saying a while
+ago about Elsa. If she wasn't fond of you, would she go out of her way
+to camp next door? And yet, though she's so fond of you, she doesn't
+hesitate about wrecking your property by quitting the show when she
+sees a chance of doing herself a bit of good. It's funny, isn't it?"
+
+The telephone-bell, tinkling sharply, rescued Sally from the necessity
+of a reply. She forced herself across the room to answer it.
+
+"Hullo?"
+
+Ginger's voice spoke jubilantly.
+
+"Hullo.  Are you there? I say, it's all right, about that binge, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, yes?"
+
+"That dog fellow, you know," said Ginger, with a slight diminution of
+exuberance. His sensitive ear had seemed to detect a lack of animation
+in her voice. "I've just been talking to him over the 'phone, and it's
+all settled. If," he added, with a touch of doubt, "you still feel like
+going into it, I mean."
+
+There was an instant in which Sally hesitated, but it was only an
+instant.
+
+"Why, of course," she said, steadily.  "Why should you think I had
+changed my mind?"
+
+"Well, I thought... that is to say, you seemed... oh, I don't know."
+
+"You imagine things.  I was a little worried about something when you
+called me up, and my mind wasn't working properly. Of course, go ahead
+with it. Ginger. I'm delighted."
+
+"I say, I'm awfully sorry you're worried."
+
+"Oh.  it's all right."
+
+"Something bad?"
+
+"Nothing that'll kill me.  I'm young and strong."
+
+Ginger was silent for a moment.
+
+"I say, I don't want to butt in, but can I do anything?"
+
+"No, really, Ginger, I know you would do anything you could, but this is
+just something I must worry through by myself. When do you go down to
+this place?"
+
+"I was thinking of popping down this afternoon, just to take a look
+round."
+
+"Let me know what train you're making and I'll come and see you off."
+
+"That's ripping of you.  Right ho.  Well, so long."
+
+"So long," said Sally.
+
+Mrs. Fillmore, who had been sitting in that state of suspended
+animation which comes upon people who are present at a telephone
+conversation which has nothing to do with themselves, came to life as
+Sally replaced the receiver.
+
+"Sally," she said, "I think we ought to have a talk now about what
+you're going to do."
+
+Sally was not feeling equal to any discussion of the future.   All she
+asked of the world at the moment was to be left alone.
+
+"Oh, that's all right.  I shall manage.  You ought to be worrying about
+Fillmore."
+
+"Fillmore's got me to look after him," said Gladys, with quiet
+determination. "You're the one that's on my mind. I lay awake all last
+night thinking about you. As far as I can make out from Fillmore, you've
+still a few thousand dollars left. Well, as it happens, I can put you on
+to a really good thing. I know a girl..."
+
+"I'm afraid," interrupted Sally, "all the rest of my money, what there
+is of it, is tied up."
+
+"You can't get hold of it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But listen," said Mrs. Fillmore, urgently.  "This is a really good
+thing. This girl I know started an interior decorating business some
+time ago and is pulling in the money in handfuls. But she wants more
+capital, and she's willing to let go of a third of the business to
+anyone who'll put in a few thousand. She won't have any difficulty
+getting it, but I 'phoned her this morning to hold off till I'd heard
+from you. Honestly, Sally, it's the chance of a lifetime. It would put
+you right on easy street. Isn't there really any way you could get your
+money out of this other thing and take on this deal?"
+
+"There really isn't.  I'm awfully obliged to you, Gladys dear, but it's
+impossible."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Fillmore, prodding the carpet energetically with her
+parasol, "I don't know what you've gone into, but, unless they've given
+you a share in the Mint or something, you'll be losing by not making
+the switch. You're sure you can't do it?"
+
+"I really can't."
+
+Mrs. Fillmore rose, plainly disappointed.
+
+"Well, you know best, of course.  Gosh! What a muddle everything is.
+Sally," she said, suddenly stopping at the door, "you're not going to
+hate poor old Fillmore over this, are you?"
+
+"Why, of course not.  The whole thing was just bad luck."
+
+"He's worried stiff about it."
+
+"Well, give him my love, and tell him not to be so silly."
+
+Mrs. Fillmore crossed the room and kissed Sally impulsively.
+
+"You're an angel," she said.  "I wish there were more like you.  But I
+guess they've lost the pattern. Well, I'll go back and tell Fillmore
+that. It'll relieve him."
+
+The door closed, and Sally sat down with her chin in her hands to think.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+Mr. Isadore Abrahams, the founder and proprietor of that deservedly
+popular dancing resort poetically named "The Flower Garden," leaned back
+in his chair with a contented sigh and laid down the knife and fork with
+which he had been assailing a plateful of succulent goulash. He was
+dining, as was his admirable custom, in the bosom of his family at his
+residence at Far Rockaway. Across the table, his wife, Rebecca, beamed
+at him over her comfortable plinth of chins, and round the table his
+children, David, Jacob, Morris and Saide, would have beamed at him if
+they had not been too busy at the moment ingurgitating goulash. A
+genial, honest, domestic man was Mr. Abrahams, a credit to the
+community.
+
+"Mother," he said.
+
+"Pa?" said Mrs. Abrahams.
+
+"Knew there was something I'd meant to tell you," said Mr. Abrahams,
+absently chasing a piece of bread round his plate with a stout finger.
+"You remember that girl I told you about some time back--girl working at
+the Garden--girl called Nicholas, who came into a bit of money and
+threw up her job..."
+
+"I remember.  You liked her.  Jakie, dear, don't gobble."
+
+"Ain't gobbling," said Master Abrahams.
+
+"Everybody liked her," said Mr. Abrahams.  "The nicest girl I ever
+hired, and I don't hire none but nice girls, because the Garden's a nice
+place, and I like to run it nice. I wouldn't give you a nickel for any
+of your tough joints where you get nothing but low-lifes and scare away
+all the real folks. Everybody liked Sally Nicholas. Always pleasant and
+always smiling, and never anything but the lady. It was a treat to have
+her around. Well, what do you think?"
+
+"Dead?" inquired Mrs. Abrahams, apprehensively.  The story had sounded
+to her as though it were heading that way. "Wipe your mouth, Jakie
+dear."
+
+"No, not dead," said Mr. Abrahams, conscious for the first time that the
+remainder of his narrative might be considered by a critic something of
+an anti-climax and lacking in drama. "But she was in to see me this
+afternoon and wants her job back."
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, rather tonelessly.  An ardent supporter of the
+local motion-picture palace, she had hoped for a slightly more gingery
+denouement, something with a bit more punch.
+
+"Yes, but don't it show you?" continued Mr. Abrahams, gallantly trying
+to work up the interest. "There's this girl, goes out of my place not
+more'n a year ago, with a good bank-roll in her pocket, and here she is,
+back again, all of it spent. Don't it show you what a tragedy life is,
+if you see what I mean, and how careful one ought to be about money?
+It's what I call a human document. Goodness knows how she's been and
+gone and spent it all. I'd never have thought she was the sort of girl
+to go gadding around. Always seemed to me to be kind of sensible."
+
+"What's gadding, Pop?" asked Master Jakie, the goulash having ceased to
+chain his interest.
+
+"Well, she wanted her job back and I gave it to her, and glad to get her
+back again. There's class to that girl. She's the sort of girl I want in
+the place. Don't seem quite to have so much get-up in her as she used
+to... seems kind of quieted down... but she's got class, and I'm glad
+she's back. I hope she'll stay. But don't it show you?"
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Abrahams, with more enthusiasm than before.  It had not
+worked out such a bad story after all. In its essentials it was not
+unlike the film she had seen the previous evening--Gloria Gooch in "A
+Girl against the World."
+
+"Pop!" said Master Abrahams.
+
+"Yes, Jakie?"
+
+"When I'm grown up, I won't never lose no money.  I'll put it in the
+bank and save it."
+
+The slight depression caused by the contemplation of Sally's troubles
+left Mr. Abrahams as mist melts beneath a sunbeam.
+
+"That's a good boy, Jakie," he said.
+
+He felt in his waistcoat pocket, found a dime, put it back again, and
+bent forward and patted Master Abrahams on the head.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+
+UNCLE DONALD SPEAKS HIS MIND
+
+
+
+There is in certain men--and Bruce Carmyle was one of them--a quality of
+resilience, a sturdy refusal to acknowledge defeat, which aids them as
+effectively in affairs of the heart as in encounters of a sterner and
+more practical kind. As a wooer, Bruce Carmyle resembled that durable
+type of pugilist who can only give of his best after he has received at
+least one substantial wallop on some tender spot. Although Sally had
+refused his offer of marriage quite definitely at Monk's Crofton, it
+had never occurred to him to consider the episode closed. All his life
+he had been accustomed to getting what he wanted, and he meant to get
+it now.
+
+He was quite sure that he wanted Sally.  There had been moments when he
+had been conscious of certain doubts, but in the smart of temporary
+defeat these had vanished. That streak of Bohemianism in her which from
+time to time since their first meeting had jarred upon his orderly mind
+was forgotten; and all that Mr. Carmyle could remember was the
+brightness of her eyes, the jaunty lift of her chin, and the gallant
+trimness of her. Her gay prettiness seemed to flick at him like a whip
+in the darkness of wakeful nights, lashing him to pursuit. And quietly
+and methodically, like a respectable wolf settling on the trail of a
+Red Riding Hood, he prepared to pursue. Delicacy and imagination might
+have kept him back, but in these qualities he had never been strong. One
+cannot have everything.
+
+His preparations for departure, though he did his best to make them
+swiftly and secretly, did not escape the notice of the Family. In many
+English families there seems to exist a system of inter-communication
+and news-distribution like that of those savage tribes in Africa who
+pass the latest item of news and interest from point to point over miles
+of intervening jungle by some telepathic method never properly
+explained. On his last night in London, there entered to Bruce Carmyle
+at his apartment in South Audley Street, the Family's chosen
+representative, the man to whom the Family pointed with pride--Uncle
+Donald, in the flesh.
+
+There were two hundred and forty pounds of the flesh Uncle Donald was
+in, and the chair in which he deposited it creaked beneath its burden.
+Once, at Monk's Crofton, Sally had spoiled a whole morning for her
+brother Fillmore, by indicating Uncle Donald as the exact image of what
+he would be when he grew up. A superstition, cherished from early
+schooldays, that he had a weak heart had caused the Family's managing
+director to abstain from every form of exercise for nearly fifty years;
+and, as he combined with a distaste for exercise one of the three
+heartiest appetites in the south-western postal division of London,
+Uncle Donald, at sixty-two, was not a man one would willingly have
+lounging in one's armchairs. Bruce Carmyle's customary respectfulness
+was tinged with something approaching dislike as he looked at him.
+
+Uncle Donald's walrus moustache heaved gently upon his laboured breath,
+like seaweed on a ground-swell. There had been stairs to climb.
+
+"What's this? What's this?" he contrived to ejaculate at last.  "You
+packing?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Carmyle, shortly.  For the first time in his life he was
+conscious of that sensation of furtive guilt which was habitual with his
+cousin Ginger when in the presence of this large, mackerel-eyed man.
+
+"You going away?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where you going?"
+
+"America."
+
+"When you going?"
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"Why you going?"
+
+This dialogue has been set down as though it had been as brisk and
+snappy as any cross-talk between vaudeville comedians, but in reality
+Uncle Donald's peculiar methods of conversation had stretched it over a
+period of nearly three minutes: for after each reply and before each
+question he had puffed and sighed and inhaled his moustache with such
+painful deliberation that his companion's nerves were finding it
+difficult to bear up under the strain.
+
+"You're going after that girl," said Uncle Donald, accusingly.
+
+Bruce Carmyle flushed darkly.  And it is interesting to record that at
+this moment there flitted through his mind the thought that Ginger's
+behaviour at Bleke's Coffee House, on a certain notable occasion, had
+not been so utterly inexcusable as he had supposed. There was no doubt
+that the Family's Chosen One could be trying.
+
+"Will you have a whisky and soda, Uncle Donald?" he said, by way of
+changing the conversation.
+
+"Yes," said his relative, in pursuance of a vow he had made in the early
+eighties never to refuse an offer of this kind. "Gimme!"
+
+You would have thought that that would have put matters on a pleasanter
+footing. But no. Having lapped up the restorative, Uncle Donald returned
+to the attack quite un-softened.
+
+"Never thought you were a fool before," he said severely.
+
+Bruce Carmyle's proud spirit chafed.  This sort of interview, which had
+become a commonplace with his cousin Ginger, was new to him. Hitherto,
+his actions had received neither criticism nor been subjected to it.
+
+"I'm not a fool."
+
+"You are a fool.  A damn fool," continued Uncle Donald, specifying more
+exactly. "Don't like the girl. Never did. Not a nice girl. Didn't like
+her. Right from the first."
+
+"Need we discuss this?" said Bruce Carmyle, dropping, as he was apt to
+do, into the grand manner.
+
+The Head of the Family drank in a layer of moustache and blew it out
+again.
+
+"Need we discuss it?" he said with asperity.  "We're going to discuss
+it! Whatch think I climbed all these blasted stairs for with my weak
+heart? Gimme another!"
+
+Mr. Carmyle gave him another.
+
+"'S a bad business," moaned Uncle Donald, having gone through the
+movements once more. "Shocking bad business. If your poor father were
+alive, whatch think he'd say to your tearing across the world after this
+girl? I'll tell you what he'd say. He'd say... What kind of whisky's
+this?"
+
+"O'Rafferty Special."
+
+"New to me.  Not bad.  Quite good.  Sound.  Mellow.  Wherej get it?"
+
+"Bilby's in Oxford Street."
+
+"Must order some.  Mellow.  He'd say... well, God knows what he'd say.
+Whatch doing it for? Whatch doing it for? That's what I can't see. None
+of us can see. Puzzles your uncle George. Baffles your aunt Geraldine.
+Nobody can understand it. Girl's simply after your money. Anyone can see
+that."
+
+"Pardon me, Uncle Donald," said Mr. Carmyle, stiffly, "but that is
+surely rather absurd. If that were the case, why should she have refused
+me at Monk's Crofton?"
+
+"Drawing you on," said Uncle Donald, promptly.  "Luring you on.
+Well-known trick. Girl in 1881, when I was at Oxford, tried to lure me
+on. If I hadn't had some sense and a weak heart... Whatch know of this
+girl? Whatch know of her? That's the point. Who is she? Wherej meet
+her?"
+
+"I met her at Roville, in France."
+
+"Travelling with her family?"
+
+"Travelling alone," said Bruce Carmyle, reluctantly.
+
+"Not even with that brother of hers? Bad!" said Uncle Donald.  "Bad,
+bad!"
+
+"American girls are accustomed to more independence than English girls."
+
+"That young man," said Uncle Donald, pursuing a train of thought, "is
+going to be fat one of these days, if he doesn't look out. Travelling
+alone, was she? What did you do? Catch her eye on the pier?"
+
+"Really, Uncle Donald!"
+
+"Well, must have got to know her somehow."
+
+"I was introduced to her by Lancelot.  She was a friend of his."
+
+"Lancelot!" exploded Uncle Donald, quivering all over like a smitten
+jelly at the loathed name. "Well, that shows you what sort of a girl she
+is. Any girl that would be a friend of... Unpack!"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"Unpack! Mustn't go on with this foolery.  Out of the question.  Find
+some girl make you a good wife. Your aunt Mary's been meeting some
+people name of Bassington-Bassington, related Kent
+Bassington-Bassingtons... eldest daughter charming girl, just do for
+you."
+
+Outside the pages of the more old-fashioned type of fiction nobody ever
+really ground his teeth, but Bruce Carmyle came nearer to it at that
+moment than anyone had ever come before. He scowled blackly, and the
+last trace of suavity left him.
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind," he said briefly.  "I sail to-morrow."
+
+Uncle Donald had had a previous experience of being defied by a nephew,
+but it had not accustomed him to the sensation. He was aware of an
+unpleasant feeling of impotence. Nothing is harder than to know what to
+do next when defied.
+
+"Eh?" he said.
+
+Mr. Carmyle having started to defy, evidently decided to make a good job
+of it.
+
+"I am over twenty-one," said he.  "I am financially independent.  I
+shall do as I please."
+
+"But, consider!" pleaded Uncle Donald, painfully conscious of the
+weakness of his words. "Reflect!"
+
+"I have reflected."
+
+"Your position in the county..."
+
+"I've thought of that."
+
+"You could marry anyone you pleased."
+
+"I'm going to."
+
+"You are determined to go running off to God-knows-where after this Miss
+I-can't-even-remember-her-dam-name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you considered," said Uncle Donald, portentously, "that you owe a
+duty to the Family."
+
+Bruce Carmyle's patience snapped and he sank like a stone to absolutely
+Gingerian depths of plain-spokenness.
+
+"Oh, damn the Family!" he cried.
+
+There was a painful silence, broken only by the relieved sigh of the
+armchair as Uncle Donald heaved himself out of it.
+
+"After that," said Uncle Donald, "I have nothing more to say."
+
+"Good!" said Mr. Carmyle rudely, lost to all shame.
+
+"'Cept this.  If you come back married to that girl, I'll cut you in
+Piccadilly. By George, I will!"
+
+He moved to the door.  Bruce Carmyle looked down his nose without
+speaking. A tense moment.
+
+"What," asked Uncle Donald, his fingers on the handle, "did you say it
+was called?"
+
+"What was what called?"
+
+"That whisky."
+
+"O'Rafferty Special."
+
+"And wherj get it?"
+
+"Bilby's, in Oxford Street."
+
+"I'll make a note of it," said Uncle Donald.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+
+AT THE FLOWER GARDEN
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+"And after all I've done for her," said Mr. Reginald Cracknell, his
+voice tremulous with self-pity and his eyes moist with the combined
+effects of anguish and over-indulgence in his celebrated private stock,
+"after all I've done for her she throws me down."
+
+Sally did not reply.  The orchestra of the Flower Garden was of a
+calibre that discouraged vocal competition; and she was having,
+moreover, too much difficulty in adjusting her feet to Mr. Cracknell's
+erratic dance-steps to employ her attention elsewhere. They manoeuvred
+jerkily past the table where Miss Mabel Hobson, the Flower Garden's
+newest "hostess," sat watching the revels with a distant hauteur. Miss
+Hobson was looking her most regal in old gold and black, and a sorrowful
+gulp escaped the stricken Mr. Cracknell as he shambled beneath her eye.
+
+"If I told you," he moaned in Sally's ear, "what... was that your ankle?
+Sorry! Don't know what I'm doing to-night... If I told you what I had
+spent on that woman, you wouldn't believe it. And then she throws me
+down. And all because I said I didn't like her in that hat. She hasn't
+spoken to me for a week, and won't answer when I call up on the 'phone.
+And I was right, too. It was a rotten hat. Didn't suit her a bit. But
+that," said Mr. Cracknell, morosely, "is a woman all over!"
+
+Sally uttered a stifled exclamation as his wandering foot descended on
+hers before she could get it out of the way. Mr. Cracknell interpreted
+the ejaculation as a protest against the sweeping harshness of his last
+remark, and gallantly tried to make amends.
+
+"I don't mean you're like that," he said.  "You're different.  I could
+see that directly I saw you. You have a sympathetic nature. That's why
+I'm telling you all this. You're a sensible and broad-minded girl and
+can understand. I've done everything for that woman. I got her this job
+as hostess here--you wouldn't believe what they pay her. I starred her
+in a show once. Did you see those pearls she was wearing? I gave her
+those. And she won't speak to me. Just because I didn't like her hat. I
+wish you could have seen that hat. You would agree with me, I know,
+because you're a sensible, broad-minded girl and understand hats. I
+don't know what to do. I come here every night." Sally was aware of
+this. She had seen him often, but this was the first time that Lee
+Schoenstein, the gentlemanly master of ceremonies, had inflicted him on
+her. "I come here every night and dance past her table, but she won't
+look at me. What," asked Mr. Cracknell, tears welling in his pale eyes,
+"would you do about it?"
+
+"I don't know," said Sally, frankly.
+
+"Nor do I.  I thought you wouldn't, because you're a sensible,
+broad-minded... I mean, nor do I. I'm having one last try to-night, if
+you can keep a secret. You won't tell anyone, will you?" pleaded Mr.
+Cracknell, urgently. "But I know you won't because you're a sensible...
+I'm giving her a little present. Having it brought here to-night. Little
+present. That ought to soften her, don't you think?"
+
+"A big one would do it better."
+
+Mr. Cracknell kicked her on the shin in a dismayed sort of way.
+
+"I never thought of that.  Perhaps you're right.  But it's too late now.
+Still, it might. Or wouldn't it? Which do you think?"
+
+"Yes," said Sally.
+
+"I thought as much," said Mr. Cracknell.
+
+The orchestra stopped with a thump and a bang, leaving Mr. Cracknell
+clapping feebly in the middle of the floor. Sally slipped back to her
+table. Her late partner, after an uncertain glance about him, as if he
+had mislaid something but could not remember what, zigzagged off in
+search of his own seat. The noise of many conversations, drowned by the
+music, broke out with renewed vigour. The hot, close air was full of
+voices; and Sally, pressing her hands on her closed eyes, was reminded
+once more that she had a headache.
+
+Nearly a month had passed since her return to Mr. Abrahams' employment.
+It had been a dull, leaden month, a monotonous succession of lifeless
+days during which life had become a bad dream. In some strange nightmare
+fashion, she seemed nowadays to be cut off from her kind. It was weeks
+since she had seen a familiar face. None of the companions of her old
+boarding-house days had crossed her path. Fillmore, no doubt from
+uneasiness of conscience, had not sought her out, and Ginger was working
+out his destiny on the south shore of Long Island.
+
+She lowered her hands and opened her eyes and looked at the room.  It
+was crowded, as always. The Flower Garden was one of the many
+establishments of the same kind which had swum to popularity on the
+rising flood of New York's dancing craze; and doubtless because, as its
+proprietor had claimed, it was a nice place and run nice, it had
+continued, unlike many of its rivals, to enjoy unvarying prosperity. In
+its advertisement, it described itself as "a supper-club for
+after-theatre dining and dancing," adding that "large and spacious, and
+sumptuously appointed," it was "one of the town's wonder-places, with
+its incomparable dance-floor, enchanting music, cuisine, and service de
+luxe." From which it may be gathered, even without his personal
+statements to that effect, that Isadore Abrahams thought well of the
+place.
+
+There had been a time when Sally had liked it, too.  In her first period
+of employment there she had found it diverting, stimulating and full of
+entertainment. But in those days she had never had headaches or, what
+was worse, this dreadful listless depression which weighed her down and
+made her nightly work a burden.
+
+"Miss Nicholas."
+
+The orchestra, never silent for long at the Flower Garden, had started
+again, and Lee Schoenstein, the master of ceremonies, was presenting a
+new partner. She got up mechanically.
+
+"This is the first time I have been in this place," said the man, as
+they bumped over the crowded floor. He was big and clumsy, of course.
+To-night it seemed to Sally that the whole world was big and clumsy.
+"It's a swell place. I come from up-state myself. We got nothing like
+this where I come from." He cleared a space before him, using Sally as a
+battering-ram, and Sally, though she had not enjoyed her recent
+excursion with Mr. Cracknell, now began to look back to it almost with
+wistfulness. This man was undoubtedly the worst dancer in America.
+
+"Give me li'l old New York," said the man from up-state,
+unpatriotically. "It's good enough for me. I been to some swell shows
+since I got to town. You seen this year's 'Follies'?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You go," said the man earnestly.  "You go! Take it from me, it's a
+swell show. You seen 'Myrtle takes a Turkish Bath'?"
+
+"I don't go to many theatres."
+
+"You go! It's a scream.  I been to a show every night since I got here.
+Every night regular. Swell shows all of 'em, except this last one. I
+cert'nly picked a lemon to-night all right. I was taking a chance,
+y'see, because it was an opening. Thought it would be something to say,
+when I got home, that I'd been to a New York opening. Set me back
+two-seventy-five, including tax, and I wish I'd got it in my kick right
+now. 'The Wild Rose,' they called it," he said satirically, as if
+exposing a low subterfuge on the part of the management. "'The Wild
+Rose!' It sure made me wild all right. Two dollars seventy-five tossed
+away, just like that."
+
+Something stirred in Sally's memory.  Why did that title seem so
+familiar? Then, with a shock, she remembered. It was Gerald's new play.
+For some time after her return to New York, she had been haunted by the
+fear lest, coming out other apartment, she might meet him coming out of
+his; and then she had seen a paragraph in her morning paper which had
+relieved her of this apprehension. Gerald was out on the road with a new
+play, and "The Wild Rose," she was almost sure, was the name of it.
+
+"Is that Gerald Foster's play?" she asked quickly.
+
+"I don't know who wrote it," said her partner, "but let me tell you he's
+one lucky guy to get away alive. There's fellows breaking stones on the
+Ossining Road that's done a lot less to deserve a sentence. Wild Rose!
+I'll tell the world it made me go good and wild," said the man from
+up-state, an economical soul who disliked waste and was accustomed to
+spread out his humorous efforts so as to give them every chance. "Why,
+before the second act was over, the people were beating it for the
+exits, and if it hadn't been for someone shouting 'Women and children
+first' there'd have been a panic."
+
+Sally found herself back at her table without knowing clearly how she
+had got there.
+
+"Miss Nicholas."
+
+She started to rise, and was aware suddenly that this was not the voice
+of duty calling her once more through the gold teeth of Mr. Schoenstein.
+The man who had spoken her name had seated himself beside her, and was
+talking in precise, clipped accents, oddly familiar. The mist cleared
+from her eyes and she recognized Bruce Carmyle.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+"I called at your place," Mr. Carmyle was saying, "and the hall porter
+told me that you were here, so I ventured to follow you. I hope you do
+not mind? May I smoke?"
+
+He lit a cigarette with something of an air.  His fingers trembled as he
+raised the match, but he flattered himself that there was nothing else
+in his demeanour to indicate that he was violently excited. Bruce
+Carmyle's ideal was the strong man who can rise superior to his
+emotions. He was alive to the fact that this was an embarrassing moment,
+but he was determined not to show that he appreciated it. He cast a
+sideways glance at Sally, and thought that never, not even in the garden
+at Monk's Crofton on a certain momentous occasion, had he seen her
+looking prettier. Her face was flushed and her eyes aflame. The stout
+wraith of Uncle Donald, which had accompanied Mr. Carmyle on this
+expedition of his, faded into nothingness as he gazed.
+
+There was a pause.  Mr. Carmyle, having lighted his cigarette, puffed
+vigorously.
+
+"When did you land?" asked Sally, feeling the need of saying something.
+Her mind was confused. She could not have said whether she was glad or
+sorry that he was there. Glad, she thought, on the whole. There was
+something in his dark, cool, stiff English aspect that gave her a
+curious feeling of relief. He was so unlike Mr. Cracknell and the man
+from up-state and so calmly remote from the feverish atmosphere in
+which she lived her nights that it was restful to look at him.
+
+"I landed to-night," said Bruce Carmyle, turning and faced her squarely.
+
+"To-night!"
+
+"We docked at ten."
+
+He turned away again.  He had made his effect, and was content to leave
+her to think it over.
+
+Sally was silent.  The significance of his words had not escaped her.
+She realized that his presence there was a challenge which she must
+answer. And yet it hardly stirred her. She had been fighting so long,
+and she felt utterly inert. She was like a swimmer who can battle no
+longer and prepares to yield to the numbness of exhaustion. The heat of
+the room pressed down on her like a smothering blanket. Her tired nerves
+cried out under the blare of music and the clatter of voices.
+
+"Shall we dance this?" he asked.
+
+The orchestra had started to play again, a sensuous, creamy melody which
+was making the most of its brief reign as Broadway's leading song-hit,
+overfamiliar to her from a hundred repetitions.
+
+"If you like."
+
+Efficiency was Bruce Carmyle's gospel.  He was one of these men who do
+not attempt anything which they cannot accomplish to perfection.
+Dancing, he had decided early in his life, was a part of a gentleman's
+education, and he had seen to it that he was educated thoroughly. Sally,
+who, as they swept out on to the floor, had braced herself automatically
+for a repetition of the usual bumping struggle which dancing at the
+Flower Garden had come to mean for her, found herself in the arms of a
+masterful expert, a man who danced better than she did, and suddenly
+there came to her a feeling that was almost gratitude, a miraculous
+slackening of her taut nerves, a delicious peace. Soothed and
+contented, she yielded herself with eyes half closed to the rhythm of
+the melody, finding it now robbed in some mysterious manner of all its
+stale cheapness, and in that moment her whole attitude towards Bruce
+Carmyle underwent a complete change.
+
+She had never troubled to examine with any minuteness her feelings
+towards him: but one thing she had known clearly since their first
+meeting--that he was physically distasteful to her. For all his good
+looks, and in his rather sinister way he was a handsome man, she had
+shrunk from him. Now, spirited away by the magic of the dance, that
+repugnance had left her. It was as if some barrier had been broken down
+between them.
+
+"Sally!"
+
+She felt his arm tighten about her, the muscles quivering.  She caught
+sight of his face. His dark eyes suddenly blazed into hers and she
+stumbled with an odd feeling of helplessness; realizing with a shock
+that brought her with a jerk out of the half-dream into which she had
+been lulled that this dance had not postponed the moment of decision, as
+she had looked to it to do. In a hot whisper, the words swept away on
+the flood of the music which had suddenly become raucous and blaring
+once more, he was repeating what he had said under the trees at Monk's
+Crofton on that far-off morning in the English springtime. Dizzily she
+knew that she was resenting the unfairness of the attack at such a
+moment, but her mind seemed numbed.
+
+The music stopped abruptly.  Insistent clapping started it again, but
+Sally moved away to her table, and he followed her like a shadow.
+Neither spoke. Bruce Carmyle had said his say, and Sally was sitting
+staring before her, trying to think. She was tired, tired. Her eyes were
+burning. She tried to force herself to face the situation squarely. Was
+it worth struggling? Was anything in the world worth a struggle? She
+only knew that she was tired, desperately tired, tired to the very
+depths of her soul.
+
+The music stopped.  There was more clapping, but this time the orchestra
+did not respond. Gradually the floor emptied. The shuffling of feet
+ceased. The Flower Garden was as quiet as it was ever able to be. Even
+the voices of the babblers seemed strangely hushed. Sally closed her
+eyes, and as she did so from somewhere up near the roof there came the
+song of a bird.
+
+Isadore Abrahams was a man of his word.  He advertised a Flower Garden,
+and he had tried to give the public something as closely resembling a
+flower-garden as it was possible for an overcrowded, overheated,
+overnoisy Broadway dancing-resort to achieve. Paper roses festooned the
+walls; genuine tulips bloomed in tubs by every pillar; and from the roof
+hung cages with birds in them. One of these, stirred by the sudden
+cessation of the tumult below, had began to sing.
+
+Sally had often pitied these birds, and more than once had pleaded in
+vain with Abrahams for a remission of their sentence, but somehow at
+this moment it did not occur to her that this one was merely praying in
+its own language, as she often had prayed in her thoughts, to be taken
+out of this place. To her, sitting there wrestling with Fate, the song
+seemed cheerful. It soothed her. It healed her to listen to it. And
+suddenly before her eyes there rose a vision of Monk's Crofton, cool,
+green, and peaceful under the mild English sun, luring her as an oasis
+seen in the distance lures the desert traveller ...
+
+She became aware that the master of Monk's Crofton had placed his hand
+on hers and was holding it in a tightening grip. She looked down and
+gave a little shiver. She had always disliked Bruce Carmyle's hands.
+They were strong and bony and black hair grew on the back of them. One
+of the earliest feelings regarding him had been that she would hate to
+have those hands touching her. But she did not move. Again that vision
+of the old garden had flickered across her mind... a haven where she
+could rest...
+
+He was leaning towards her, whispering in her ear.  The room was hotter
+than it had ever been, noisier than it had ever been, fuller than it had
+ever been. The bird on the roof was singing again and now she understood
+what it said. "Take me out of this!" Did anything matter except that?
+What did it matter how one was taken, or where, or by whom, so that one
+was taken.
+
+Monk's Crofton was looking cool and green and peaceful...
+
+"Very well," said Sally.
+
+3
+
+
+
+Bruce Carmyle, in the capacity of accepted suitor, found himself at
+something of a loss. He had a dissatisfied feeling. It was not the
+manner of Sally's acceptance that caused this. It would, of course, have
+pleased him better if she had shown more warmth, but he was prepared to
+wait for warmth. What did trouble him was the fact that his correct mind
+perceived now for the first time that he had chosen an unsuitable
+moment and place for his outburst of emotion. He belonged to the
+orthodox school of thought which looks on moonlight and solitude as the
+proper setting for a proposal of marriage; and the surroundings of the
+Flower Garden, for all its nice-ness and the nice manner in which it was
+conducted, jarred upon him profoundly.
+
+Music had begun again, but it was not the soft music such as a lover
+demands if he is to give of his best. It was a brassy, clashy rendering
+of a ribald one-step, enough to choke the eloquence of the most ardent.
+Couples were dipping and swaying and bumping into one another as far as
+the eye could reach; while just behind him two waiters had halted in
+order to thrash out one of those voluble arguments in which waiters love
+to indulge. To continue the scene at the proper emotional level was
+impossible, and Bruce Carmyle began his career as an engaged man by
+dropping into Smalltalk.
+
+"Deuce of a lot of noise," he said querulously.
+
+"Yes," agreed Sally.
+
+"Is it always like this?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Infernal racket!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The romantic side of Mr. Carmyle's nature could have cried aloud at the
+hideous unworthiness of these banalities. In the visions which he had
+had of himself as a successful wooer, it had always been in the moments
+immediately succeeding the all-important question and its whispered
+reply that he had come out particularly strong. He had been accustomed
+to picture himself bending with a proud tenderness over his partner in
+the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How
+could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce
+Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability.
+
+"Do you often come here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To dance."
+
+Mr. Carmyle chafed helplessly.  The scene, which should be so romantic,
+had suddenly reminded him of the occasion when, at the age of twenty, he
+had attended his first ball and had sat in a corner behind a potted palm
+perspiring shyly and endeavouring to make conversation to a formidable
+nymph in pink. It was one of the few occasions in his life at which he
+had ever been at a complete disadvantage. He could still remember the
+clammy discomfort of his too high collar as it melted on him. Most
+certainly it was not a scene which he enjoyed recalling; and that he
+should be forced to recall it now, at what ought to have been the
+supreme moment of his life, annoyed him intensely. Almost angrily he
+endeavoured to jerk the conversation to a higher level.
+
+"Darling," he murmured, for by moving his chair two feet to the right
+and bending sideways he found that he was in a position to murmur, "you
+have made me so..."
+
+"Batti, batti! I presto ravioli hollandaise," cried one of the disputing
+waiters at his back--or to Bruce Carmyle's prejudiced hearing it
+sounded like that.
+
+"La Donna e mobile spaghetti napoli Tettrazina," rejoined the second
+waiter with spirit.
+
+"... you have made me so..."
+
+"Infanta Isabella lope de Vegas mulligatawny Toronto," said the first
+waiter, weak but coming back pluckily.
+
+"... so happy..."
+
+"Funiculi funicula Vincente y Blasco Ibanez vermicelli sul campo della
+gloria risotto!" said the second waiter clinchingly, and scored a
+technical knockout.
+
+Bruce Carmyle gave it up, and lit a moody cigarette.  He was oppressed
+by that feeling which so many of us have felt in our time, that it was
+all wrong.
+
+The music stopped.  The two leading citizens of Little Italy vanished
+and went their way, probably to start a vendetta. There followed
+comparative calm. But Bruce Carmyle's emotions, like sweet bells
+jangled, were out of tune, and he could not recapture the first fine
+careless rapture. He found nothing within him but small-talk.
+
+"What has become of your party?" he asked.
+
+"My party?"
+
+"The people you are with," said Mr. Carmyle.  Even in the stress of his
+emotion this problem had been exercising him. In his correctly ordered
+world girls did not go to restaurants alone.
+
+"I'm not with anybody."
+
+"You came here by yourself?" exclaimed Bruce Carmyle, frankly aghast.
+And, as he spoke, the wraith of Uncle Donald, banished till now,
+returned as large as ever, puffing disapproval through a walrus
+moustache.
+
+"I am employed here," said Sally.
+
+Mr. Carmyle started violently.
+
+"Employed here?"
+
+"As a dancer, you know.  I..."
+
+Sally broke off, her attention abruptly diverted to something which had
+just caught her eye at a table on the other side of the room. That
+something was a red-headed young man of sturdy build who had just
+appeared beside the chair in which Mr. Reginald Cracknell was sitting in
+huddled gloom. In one hand he carried a basket, and from this basket,
+rising above the din of conversation, there came a sudden sharp yapping.
+Mr. Cracknell roused himself from his stupor, took the basket, raised
+the lid. The yapping increased in volume.
+
+Mr. Cracknell rose, the basket in his arms.  With uncertain steps and a
+look on his face like that of those who lead forlorn hopes he crossed
+the floor to where Miss Mabel Hobson sat, proud and aloof. The next
+moment that haughty lady, the centre of an admiring and curious crowd,
+was hugging to her bosom a protesting Pekingese puppy, and Mr.
+Cracknell, seizing his opportunity like a good general, had deposited
+himself in a chair at her side. The course of true love was running
+smooth again.
+
+The red-headed young man was gazing fixedly at Sally.
+
+"As a dancer!" ejaculated Mr. Carmyle.  Of all those within sight of the
+moving drama which had just taken place, he alone had paid no attention
+to it. Replete as it was with human interest, sex-appeal, the punch, and
+all the other qualities which a drama should possess, it had failed to
+grip him. His thoughts had been elsewhere. The accusing figure of Uncle
+Donald refused to vanish from his mental eye. The stern voice of Uncle
+Donald seemed still to ring in his ear.
+
+A dancer! A professional dancer at a Broadway restaurant! Hideous doubts
+began to creep like snakes into Bruce Carmyle's mind. What, he asked
+himself, did he really know of this girl on whom he had bestowed the
+priceless boon of his society for life? How did he know what she was--he
+could not find the exact adjective to express his meaning, but he knew
+what he meant. Was she worthy of the boon? That was what it amounted to.
+All his life he had had a prim shrinking from the section of the
+feminine world which is connected with the light-life of large cities.
+Club acquaintances of his in London had from time to time married into
+the Gaiety Chorus, and Mr. Carmyle, though he had no objection to the
+Gaiety Chorus in its proper place--on the other side of the
+footlights--had always looked on these young men after as social
+outcasts. The fine dashing frenzy which had brought him all the way from
+South Audley Street to win Sally was ebbing fast.
+
+Sally, hearing him speak, had turned.  And there was a candid honesty in
+her gaze which for a moment sent all those creeping doubts scuttling
+away into the darkness whence they had come. He had not made a fool of
+himself, he protested to the lowering phantom of Uncle Donald. Who, he
+demanded, could look at Sally and think for an instant that she was not
+all that was perfect and lovable? A warm revulsion of feeling swept over
+Bruce Carmyle like a returning tide.
+
+"You see, I lost my money and had to do something," said Sally.
+
+"I see, I see," murmured Mr. Carmyle; and if only Fate had left him
+alone who knows to what heights of tenderness he might not have soared?
+But at this moment Fate, being no respecter of persons, sent into his
+life the disturbing personality of George Washington Williams.
+
+George Washington Williams was the talented coloured gentleman who had
+been extracted from small-time vaudeville by Mr. Abrahams to do a
+nightly speciality at the Flower Garden. He was, in fact, a
+trap-drummer: and it was his amiable practice, after he had done a few
+minutes trap-drumming, to rise from his seat and make a circular tour of
+the tables on the edge of the dancing-floor, whimsically pretending to
+clip the locks of the male patrons with a pair of drumsticks held
+scissor-wise. And so it came about that, just as Mr. Carmyle was bending
+towards Sally in an access of manly sentiment, and was on the very verge
+of pouring out his soul in a series of well-phrased remarks, he was
+surprised and annoyed to find an Ethiopian to whom he had never been
+introduced leaning over him and taking quite unpardonable liberties with
+his back hair.
+
+One says that Mr. Carmyle was annoyed.  The word is weak.  The
+interruption coming at such a moment jarred every ganglion in his body.
+The clicking noise of the drumsticks maddened him. And the gleaming
+whiteness of Mr. Williams' friendly and benignant smile was the last
+straw. His dignity writhed beneath this abominable infliction. People at
+other tables were laughing. At him. A loathing for the Flower Garden
+flowed over Bruce Carmyle, and with it a feeling of suspicion and
+disapproval of everyone connected with the establishment. He sprang to
+his feet.
+
+"I think I will be going," he said.
+
+Sally did not reply.  She was watching Ginger, who still stood beside
+the table recently vacated by Reginald Cracknell .
+
+"Good night," said Mr. Carmyle between his teeth.
+
+"Oh, are you going?" said Sally with a start.  She felt embarrassed.
+Try as she would, she was unable to find words of any intimacy. She
+tried to realize that she had promised to marry this man, but never
+before had he seemed so much a stranger to her, so little a part of her
+life. It came to her with a sensation of the incredible that she had
+done this thing, taken this irrevocable step.
+
+The sudden sight of Ginger had shaken her.  It was as though in the last
+half-hour she had forgotten him and only now realized what marriage with
+Bruce Carmyle would mean to their comradeship. From now on he was dead
+to her. If anything in this world was certain that was. Sally Nicholas
+was Ginger's pal, but Mrs. Carmyle, she realized, would never be allowed
+to see him again. A devastating feeling of loss smote her like a blow.
+
+"Yes, I've had enough of this place," Bruce Carmyle was saying.
+
+"Good night," said Sally.  She hesitated.  "When shall I see you?" she
+asked awkwardly.
+
+It occurred to Bruce Carmyle that he was not showing himself at his
+best. He had, he perceived, allowed his nerves to run away with him.
+
+"You don't mind if I go?" he said more amiably.  "The fact is, I can't
+stand this place any longer. I'll tell you one thing, I'm going to take
+you out of here quick."
+
+"I'm afraid I can't leave at a moment's notice," said Sally, loyal to
+her obligations.
+
+"We'll talk over that to-morrow.  I'll call for you in the morning and
+take you for a drive somewhere in a car. You want some fresh air after
+this." Mr. Carmyle looked about him in stiff disgust, and expressed his
+unalterable sentiments concerning the Flower Garden, that apple of
+Isadore Abrahams' eye, in a snort of loathing. "My God! What a place!"
+
+He walked quickly away and disappeared.  And Ginger, beaming happily,
+swooped on Sally's table like a homing pigeon.
+
+
+
+4
+
+
+
+"Good Lord, I say, what ho!" cried Ginger.  "Fancy meeting you here.
+What a bit of luck!" He glanced over his shoulder warily. "Has that
+blighter pipped?"
+
+"Pipped?"
+
+"Popped," explained Ginger.  "I mean to say, he isn't coming back or any
+rot like that, is he?"
+
+"Mr. Carmyle? No, he has gone."
+
+"Sound egg!" said Ginger with satisfaction.  "For a moment, when I saw
+you yarning away together, I thought he might be with your party. What
+on earth is he doing over here at all, confound him? He's got all Europe
+to play about in, why should he come infesting New York? I say, it
+really is ripping, seeing you again. It seems years... Of course, one
+get's a certain amount of satisfaction writing letters, but it's not the
+same. Besides, I write such rotten letters. I say, this really is rather
+priceless. Can't I get you something? A cup of coffee, I mean, or an egg
+or something? By jove! this really is top-hole."
+
+His homely, honest face glowed with pleasure, and it seemed to Sally as
+though she had come out of a winter's night into a warm friendly room.
+Her mercurial spirits soared.
+
+"Oh, Ginger! If you knew what it's like seeing you!"
+
+"No, really? Do you mean, honestly, you're braced?"
+
+"I should say I am braced."
+
+"Well, isn't that fine! I was afraid you might have forgotten me."
+
+"Forgotten you!"
+
+With something of the effect of a revelation it suddenly struck Sally
+how far she had been from forgetting him, how large was the place he had
+occupied in her thoughts.
+
+"I've missed you dreadfully," she said, and felt the words inadequate as
+she uttered them.
+
+"What ho!" said Ginger, also internally condemning the poverty of speech
+as a vehicle for conveying thought.
+
+There was a brief silence.  The first exhilaration of the reunion over,
+Sally deep down in her heart was aware of a troubled feeling as though
+the world were out of joint. She forced herself to ignore it, but it
+would not be ignored. It grew. Dimly she was beginning to realize what
+Ginger meant to her, and she fought to keep herself from realizing it.
+Strange things were happening to her to-night, strange emotions stirring
+her. Ginger seemed somehow different, as if she were really seeing him
+for the first time.
+
+"You're looking wonderfully well," she said trying to keep the
+conversation on a pedestrian level.
+
+"I am well," said Ginger.  "Never felt fitter in my life.  Been out in
+the open all day long... simple life and all that... working like
+blazes. I say, business is booming. Did you see me just now, handing
+over Percy the Pup to what's-his-name? Five hundred dollars on that one
+deal. Got the cheque in my pocket. But what an extraordinarily rummy
+thing that I should have come to this place to deliver the goods just
+when you happened to be here. I couldn't believe my eyes at first. I
+say, I hope the people you're with won't think I'm butting in. You'll
+have to explain that we're old pals and that you started me in business
+and all that sort of thing. Look here," he said lowering his voice, "I
+know how you hate being thanked, but I simply must say how terrifically
+decent..."
+
+"Miss Nicholas."
+
+Lee Schoenstein was standing at the table, and by his side an expectant
+youth with a small moustache and pince-nez. Sally got up, and the next
+moment Ginger was alone, gaping perplexedly after her as she vanished
+and reappeared in the jogging throng on the dancing floor. It was the
+nearest thing Ginger had seen to a conjuring trick, and at that moment
+he was ill-attuned to conjuring tricks. He brooded, fuming, at what
+seemed to him the supremest exhibition of pure cheek, of monumental
+nerve, and of undiluted crust that had ever come within his notice. To
+come and charge into a private conversation like that and whisk her away
+without a word...
+
+"Who was that blighter?" he demanded with heat, when the music ceased
+and Sally limped back.
+
+"That was Mr. Schoenstein."
+
+"And who was the other?"
+
+"The one I danced with? I don't know."
+
+"You don't know?"
+
+Sally perceived that the conversation had arrived at an embarrassing
+point. There was nothing for it but candour.
+
+"Ginger," she said, "you remember my telling you when we first met that
+I used to dance in a Broadway place? This is the place. I'm working
+again."
+
+Complete unintelligence showed itself on Ginger's every feature.
+
+"I don't understand," he said--unnecessarily, for his face revealed the
+fact.
+
+"I've got my old job back."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"Well, I had to do something." She went on rapidly.  Already a light
+dimly resembling the light of understanding was beginning to appear in
+Ginger's eyes. "Fillmore went smash, you know--it wasn't his fault, poor
+dear. He had the worst kind of luck--and most of my money was tied up in
+his business, so you see..."
+
+She broke off confused by the look in his eyes, conscious of an absurd
+feeling of guilt. There was amazement in that look and a sort of
+incredulous horror.
+
+"Do you mean to say..." Ginger gulped and started again.  "Do you mean
+to tell me that you let me have... all that money... for the
+dog-business... when you were broke? Do you mean to say..."
+
+Sally stole a glance at his crimson face and looked away again quickly.
+There was an electric silence.
+
+"Look here," exploded Ginger with sudden violence, "you've got to marry
+me. You've jolly well got to marry me! I don't mean that," he added
+quickly. "I mean to say I know you're going to marry whoever you
+please... but won't you marry me? Sally, for God's sake have a dash at
+it! I've been keeping it in all this time because it seemed rather
+rotten to bother you about it, but now... .Oh, dammit, I wish I could
+put it into words. I always was rotten at talking. But... well, look
+here, what I mean is, I know I'm not much of a chap, but it seems to me
+you must care for me a bit to do a thing like that for a fellow...
+and... I've loved you like the dickens ever since I met you... I do wish
+you'd have a stab at it, Sally. At least I could look after you, you
+know, and all that... I mean to say, work like the deuce and try to give
+you a good time... I'm not such an ass as to think a girl like you could
+ever really... er... love a blighter like me, but..."
+
+Sally laid her hand oh his.
+
+"Ginger, dear," she said, "I do love you.  I ought to have known it all
+along, but I seem to be understanding myself to-night for the first
+time." She got up and bent over him for a swift moment, whispering in
+his ear, "I shall never love anyone but you, Ginger. Will you try to
+remember that." She was moving away, but he caught at her arm and
+stopped her.
+
+"Sally..."
+
+She pulled her arm away, her face working as she fought against the
+tears that would not keep back.
+
+"I've made a fool of myself," she said.  "Ginger, your cousin... Mr.
+Carmyle... just now he asked me to marry him, and I said I would."
+
+She was gone, flitting among the tables like some wild creature running
+to its home: and Ginger, motionless, watched her go.
+
+
+
+5
+
+
+
+The telephone-bell in Sally's little sitting-room was ringing jerkily as
+she let herself in at the front door. She guessed who it was at the
+other end of the wire, and the noise of the bell sounded to her like the
+voice of a friend in distress crying for help. Without stopping to close
+the door, she ran to the table and unhooked the receiver. Muffled,
+plaintive sounds were comming over the wire.
+
+"Hullo... Hullo... I say... Hullo..."
+
+"Hullo, Ginger," said Sally quietly.
+
+An ejaculation that was half a shout and half gurgle answered her.
+
+"Sally! Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, here I am, Ginger."
+
+"I've been trying to get you for ages."
+
+"I've only just come in.  I walked home."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Hullo."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Well, I mean..." Ginger seemed to be finding his usual difficulty in
+expressing himself. "About that, you know. What you said."
+
+"Yes?" said Sally, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
+
+"You said..." Again Ginger's vocabulary failed him.  "You said you loved
+me."
+
+"Yes," said Sally simply.
+
+Another odd sound floated over the wire, and there was a moment of
+silence before Ginger found himself able to resume.
+
+"I... I... Well, we can talk about that when we meet.  I mean, it's no
+good trying to say what I think over the 'phone, I'm sort of knocked
+out. I never dreamed... But, I say, what did you mean about Bruce?"
+
+"I told you, I told you." Sally's face was twisted and the receiver
+shook in her hand. "I've made a fool of myself. I never realized... And
+now it's too late."
+
+"Good God!" Ginger's voice rose in a sharp wail.  "You can't mean you
+really... You don't seriously intend to marry the man?"
+
+"I must.  I've promised."
+
+"But, good heavens..."
+
+"It's no good.  I must."
+
+"But the man's a blighter!"
+
+"I can't break my word."
+
+"I never heard such rot," said Ginger vehemently.  "Of course you can.
+A girl isn't expected..."
+
+"I can't, Ginger dear, I really can't."
+
+"But look here..."
+
+"It's really no good talking about it any more, really it isn't... Where
+are you staying to-night?"
+
+"Staying? Me? At the Plaza.  But look here..."
+
+Sally found herself laughing weakly.
+
+"At the Plaza! Oh, Ginger, you really do want somebody to look after
+you. Squandering your pennies like that... Well, don't talk any more
+now. It's so late and I'm so tired. I'll come and see you to-morrow.
+Good night."
+
+She hung up the receiver quickly, to cut short a fresh outburst of
+protest. And as she turned away a voice spoke behind her.
+
+"Sally!"
+
+Gerald Foster was standing in the doorway.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+
+SALLY LAYS A GHOST
+
+
+
+1
+
+
+
+The blood flowed slowly back into Sally's face, and her  heart, which
+had leaped madly for an instant at the sound of his voice, resumed its
+normal beat. The suddenness of the shock over, she was surprised to find
+herself perfectly calm. Always when she had imagined this meeting,
+knowing that it would have to take place sooner or later, she had felt
+something akin to panic: but now that it had actually occurred it hardly
+seemed to stir her. The events of the night had left her incapable of
+any violent emotion.
+
+"Hullo, Sally!" said Gerald.
+
+He spoke thickly, and there was a foolish smile on his face as he stood
+swaying with one hand on the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves,
+collarless: and it was plain that he had been drinking heavily. His face
+was white and puffy, and about him there hung like a nimbus a sodden
+disreputableness.
+
+Sally did not speak.  Weighed down before by a numbing exhaustion, she
+seemed now to have passed into that second phase in which over-tired
+nerves enter upon a sort of Indian summer of abnormal alertness. She
+looked at him quietly, coolly and altogether dispassionately, as if he
+had been a stranger.
+
+"Hullo!" said Gerald again.
+
+"What do you want?" said Sally.
+
+"Heard your voice.  Saw the door open.  Thought I'd come in."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+The weak smile which had seemed pinned on Gerald's face vanished.  A
+tear rolled down his cheek. His intoxication had reached the maudlin
+stage.
+
+"Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable." He slurred awkwardly over the
+difficult syllables. "Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd
+come in."
+
+Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind.  She seemed to have been
+through all this before. Then she remembered. This was simply Mr.
+Reginald Cracknell over again.
+
+"I think you had better go to bed, Gerald," she said steadily.  Nothing
+about him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor his
+shameless misery.
+
+"What's the use? Can't sleep.  No good.  Couldn't sleep.  Sally, you
+don't know how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been."
+
+Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was about to
+develop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment of
+herself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizing
+with tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemed
+that it was not this that was weighing upon his soul.
+
+"I was a fool ever to try writing plays," he went on.  "Got a winner
+first time, but can't repeat. It's no good. Ought to have stuck to
+newspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Had
+another frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go back
+to the old grind, damn it."
+
+He wept softly, full of pity for his hard case.
+
+"Very miserable," he murmured.
+
+He came forward a step into the room, lurched, and retreated to the
+safe support of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm was
+shot through by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was back
+again in her armour of indifference.
+
+"Go to bed, Gerald," she said.  "You'll feel better in the morning."
+
+Perhaps some inkling of how he was going to feel in the morning worked
+through to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his manner
+took on a deeper melancholy.
+
+"May not be alive in the morning," he said solemnly.  "Good mind to end
+it all. End it all!" he repeated with the beginning of a sweeping
+gesture which was cut off abruptly as he clutched at the friendly door.
+
+Sally was not in the mood for melodrama.
+
+"Oh, go to bed," she said impatiently.  The strange frozen indifference
+which had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place a
+growing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degrading
+himself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in the
+man. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed his
+personality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation she
+felt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change had
+come over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing in
+distress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourning over
+the prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal to
+her--a fact which the sufferer noted and commented upon.
+
+"You're very unsymp... unsympathetic," he complained.
+
+"I'm sorry," said Sally.  She walked briskly to the door and gave it a
+push. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into the
+passage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundations
+of whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released the
+handle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own door
+open before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, having
+watched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with the
+intention of terminating this disturbing night by going to sleep.
+
+Almost immediately she changed her mind.  Sleep was out of the question.
+A fever of restlessness had come upon her. She put on a kimono, and went
+into the kitchen to ascertain whether her commissariat arrangements
+would permit of a glass of hot milk.
+
+She had just remembered that she had that morning presented the last of
+the milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped in
+through the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets for
+this thriftless hospitality were interrupted by a muffled crash.
+
+She listened intently.  The sound had seemed to come from across the
+passage. She hurried to the door and opened it. As she did so, from
+behind the door of the apartment opposite there came a perfect fusillade
+of crashes, each seeming to her strained hearing louder and more
+appalling than the last.
+
+There is something about sudden, loud noises in the stillness of the
+night which shatters the most rigid detachment. A short while before,
+Gerald, toying with the idea of ending his sorrows by violence, had left
+Sally unmoved: but now her mind leapt back to what he had said, and
+apprehension succeeded indifference. There was no disputing the fact
+that Gerald was in an irresponsible mood, under the influence of which
+he was capable of doing almost anything. Sally, listening in the
+doorway, felt a momentary panic.
+
+A brief silence had succeeded the fusillade, but, as she stood there
+hesitating, the noise broke out again; and this time it was so loud and
+compelling that Sally hesitated no longer. She ran across the passage
+and beat on the door.
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+Whatever devastating happenings had been going on in his home, it was
+plain a moment later that Gerald had managed to survive them: for there
+came the sound of a dragging footstep, and the door opened. Gerald stood
+on the threshold, the weak smile back on his face.
+
+"Hullo, Sally!"
+
+At the sight of him, disreputable and obviously unscathed, Sally's
+brief alarm died away, leaving in its place the old feeling of impatient
+resentment. In addition to her other grievances against him, he had
+apparently frightened her unnecessarily.
+
+"Whatever was all that noise?" she demanded.
+
+"Noise?" said Gerald, considering the point open-mouthed.
+
+"Yes, noise," snapped Sally.
+
+"I've been cleaning house," said Gerald with the owl-like gravity of a
+man just conscious that he is not wholly himself.
+
+Sally pushed her way past him.  The apartment in which she found herself
+was almost an exact replica of her own, and it was evident that Elsa
+Doland had taken pains to make it pretty and comfortable in a niggly
+feminine way. Amateur interior decoration had always been a hobby of
+hers. Even in the unpromising surroundings of her bedroom at Mrs.
+Meecher's boarding-house she had contrived to create a certain
+daintiness which Sally, who had no ability in that direction herself,
+had always rather envied. As a decorator Elsa's mind ran in the
+direction of small, fragile ornaments, and she was not afraid of
+over-furnishing. Pictures jostled one another on the walls: china of all
+description stood about on little tables: there was a profusion of lamps
+with shades of parti-coloured glass: and plates were ranged along a
+series of shelves.
+
+One says that the plates were ranged and the pictures jostled one
+another, but it would be more correct to put it they had jostled and had
+been ranged, for it was only by guess-work that Sally was able to
+reconstruct the scene as it must have appeared before Gerald had
+started, as he put it, to clean house. She had walked into the flat
+briskly enough, but she pulled up short as she crossed the threshold,
+appalled by the majestic ruin that met her gaze. A shell bursting in the
+little sitting-room could hardly have created more havoc.
+
+The psychology of a man of weak character under the influence of alcohol
+and disappointed ambition is not easy to plumb, for his moods follow one
+another with a rapidity which baffles the observer. Ten minutes before,
+Gerald Foster had been in the grip of a clammy self-pity, and it seemed
+from his aspect at the present moment that this phase had returned. But
+in the interval there had manifestly occurred a brief but adequate spasm
+of what would appear to have been an almost Berserk fury. What had
+caused it and why it should have expended itself so abruptly, Sally was
+not psychologist enough to explain; but that it had existed there was
+ocular evidence of the most convincing kind. A heavy niblick, flung
+petulantly--or remorsefully--into a corner, showed by what medium the
+destruction had been accomplished.
+
+Bleak chaos appeared on every side.  The floor was littered with every
+imaginable shape and size of broken glass and china. Fragments of
+pictures, looking as if they had been chewed by some prehistoric animal,
+lay amid heaps of shattered statuettes and vases. As Sally moved slowly
+into the room after her involuntary pause, china crackled beneath her
+feet. She surveyed the stripped walls with a wondering eye, and turned
+to Gerald for an explanation.
+
+Gerald had subsided on to an occasional table, and was weeping softly
+again. It had come over him once more that he had been very, very badly
+treated.
+
+"Well!" said Sally with a gasp.  "You've certainly made a good job of
+it!"
+
+There was a sharp crack as the occasional table, never designed by its
+maker to bear heavy weights, gave way in a splintering flurry of broken
+legs under the pressure of the master of the house: and Sally's mood
+underwent an abrupt change. There are few situations in life which do
+not hold equal potentialities for both tragedy and farce, and it was the
+ludicrous side of this drama that chanced to appeal to Sally at this
+moment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could have
+analysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking--at the feeble
+sentimental Sally who had once conceived the absurd idea of taking this
+preposterous man seriously. She felt light-hearted and light-headed, and
+she sank into a chair with a gurgling laugh.
+
+The shock of his fall appeared to have had the desirable effect of
+restoring Gerald to something approaching intelligence. He picked
+himself up from the remains of a set of water-colours, gazing at Sally
+with growing disapproval.
+
+"No sympathy," he said austerely.
+
+"I can't help it," cried Sally.  "It's too funny."
+
+"Not funny," corrected Gerald, his brain beginning to cloud once more.
+
+"What did you do it for?"
+
+Gerald returned for a moment to that mood of honest indignation, which
+had so strengthened his arm when wielding the niblick. He bethought him
+once again of his grievance.
+
+"Wasn't going to stand for it any longer," he said heatedly.  "A
+fellow's wife goes and lets him down... ruins his show by going off and
+playing in another show... why shouldn't I smash her things? Why should
+I stand for that sort of treatment? Why should I?"
+
+"Well, you haven't," said Sally, "so there's no need to discuss it.  You
+seem to have acted in a thoroughly manly and independent way."
+
+"That's it.  Manly independent." He waggled his finger impressively.
+"Don't care what she says," he continued. "Don't care if she never comes
+back. That woman..."
+
+Sally was not prepared to embark with him upon a discussion of the
+absent Elsa. Already the amusing aspect of the affair had begun to fade,
+and her hilarity was giving way to a tired distaste for the sordidness
+of the whole business. She had become aware that she could not endure
+the society of Gerald Foster much longer. She got up and spoke
+decidedly.
+
+"And now," she said, "I'm going to tidy up."
+
+Gerald had other views.
+
+"No," he said with sudden solemnity.  "No! Nothing of the kind.  Leave
+it for her to find. Leave it as it is."
+
+"Don't be silly.  All this has got to be cleaned up.  I'll do it.  You
+go and sit in my apartment. I'll come and tell you when you can come
+back."
+
+"No!" said Gerald, wagging his head.
+
+Sally stamped her foot among the crackling ruins.  Quite suddenly the
+sight of him had become intolerable.
+
+"Do as I tell you," she cried.
+
+Gerald wavered for a moment, but his brief militant mood was ebbing
+fast. After a faint protest he shuffled off, and Sally heard him go into
+her room. She breathed a deep breath of relief and turned to her task.
+
+A visit to the kitchen revealed a long-handled broom, and, armed with
+this, Sally was soon busy. She was an efficient little person, and
+presently out of chaos there began to emerge a certain order. Nothing
+short of complete re-decoration would ever make the place look habitable
+again, but at the end of half an hour she had cleared the floor, and the
+fragments of vases, plates, lamp-shades, pictures and glasses were
+stacked in tiny heaps against the walls. She returned the broom to the
+kitchen, and, going back into the sitting-room, flung open the window
+and stood looking out.
+
+With a sense of unreality she perceived that the night had gone.  Over
+the quiet street below there brooded that strange, metallic light which
+ushers in the dawn of a fine day. A cold breeze whispered to and fro.
+Above the house-tops the sky was a faint, level blue.
+
+She left the window and started to cross the room.  And suddenly there
+came over her a feeling of utter weakness. She stumbled to a chair,
+conscious only of being tired beyond the possibility of a further
+effort. Her eyes closed, and almost before her head had touched the
+cushions she was asleep.
+
+
+
+3
+
+
+
+Sally woke.  Sunshine was streaming through the open window, and with it
+the myriad noises of a city awake and about its business. Footsteps
+clattered on the sidewalk, automobile horns were sounding, and she could
+hear the clank of street cars as they passed over the points. She could
+only guess at the hour, but it was evident that the morning was well
+advanced. She got up stiffly. Her head was aching.
+
+She went into the bathroom, bathed her face, and felt better.  The dull
+oppression which comes of a bad night was leaving her. She leaned out of
+the window, revelling in the fresh air, then crossed the passage and
+entered her own apartment. Stertorous breathing greeted her, and she
+perceived that Gerald Foster had also passed the night in a chair. He
+was sprawling by the window with his legs stretched out and his head
+resting on one of the arms, an unlovely spectacle.
+
+Sally stood regarding him for a moment with a return of the distaste
+which she had felt on the previous night. And yet, mingled with the
+distaste, there was a certain elation. A black chapter of her life was
+closed for ever. Whatever the years to come might bring to her, they
+would be free from any wistful yearnings for the man who had once been
+woven so inextricably into the fabric of her life. She had thought that
+his personality had gripped her too strongly ever to be dislodged, but
+now she could look at him calmly and feel only a faint half-pity,
+half-contempt. The glamour had departed.
+
+She shook him gently, and he sat up with a start, blinking in the strong
+light. His mouth was still open. He stared at Sally foolishly, then
+scrambled awkwardly out of the chair.
+
+"Oh, my God!" said Gerald, pressing both his hands to his forehead and
+sitting down again. He licked his lips with a dry tongue and moaned.
+"Oh, I've got a headache!"
+
+Sally might have pointed out to him that he had certainly earned one,
+but she refrained.
+
+"You'd better go and have a wash," she suggested.
+
+"Yes," said Gerald, heaving himself up again.
+
+"Would you like some breakfast?"
+
+"Don't!" said Gerald faintly, and tottered off to the bathroom.
+
+Sally sat down in the chair he had vacated.  She had never felt quite
+like this before in her life. Everything seemed dreamlike. The splashing
+of water in the bathroom came faintly to her, and she realized that she
+had been on the point of falling asleep again. She got up and opened the
+window, and once more the air acted as a restorative. She watched the
+activities of the street with a distant interest. They, too, seemed
+dreamlike and unreal. People were hurrying up and down on mysterious
+errands. An inscrutable cat picked its way daintily across the road. At
+the door of the apartment house an open car purred sleepily.
+
+She was roused by a ring at the bell.  She went to the door and opened
+it, and found Bruce Carmyle standing on the threshold. He wore a light
+motor-coat, and he was plainly endeavouring to soften the severity of
+his saturnine face with a smile of beaming kindliness.
+
+"Well, here I am!" said Bruce Carmyle cheerily.  "Are you ready?"
+
+With the coming of daylight a certain penitence had descended on Mr.
+Carmyle. Thinking things over while shaving and subsequently in his
+bath, he had come to the conclusion that his behaviour overnight had not
+been all that could have been desired. He had not actually been brutal,
+perhaps, but he had undoubtedly not been winning. There had been an
+abruptness in the manner of his leaving Sally at the Flower Garden which
+a perfect lover ought not to have shown. He had allowed his nerves to
+get the better of him, and now he desired to make amends. Hence a
+cheerfulness which he did not usually exhibit so early in the morning.
+
+Sally was staring at him blankly.  She had completely forgotten that he
+had said that he would come and take her for a drive this morning. She
+searched in her mind for words, and found none. And, as Mr. Carmyle was
+debating within himself whether to kiss her now or wait for a more
+suitable moment, embarrassment came upon them both like a fog, and the
+genial smile faded from his face as if the motive-power behind it had
+suddenly failed.
+
+"I've--er--got the car outside, and..."
+
+At this point speech failed Mr. Carmyle, for, even as he began the
+sentence, the door that led to the bathroom opened and Gerald Foster
+came out. Mr. Carmyle gaped at Gerald: Gerald gaped at Mr. Carmyle.
+
+The application of cold water to the face and head is an excellent thing
+on the morning after an imprudent night, but as a tonic it only goes
+part of the way. In the case of Gerald Foster, which was an extremely
+serious and aggravated case, it had gone hardly any way at all. The
+person unknown who had been driving red-hot rivets into the base of
+Gerald Foster's skull ever since the moment of his awakening was still
+busily engaged on that task. He gazed at Mr. Carmyle wanly.
+
+Bruce Carmyle drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, and stood rigid.
+His eyes, burning now with a grim light, flickered over Gerald's person
+and found nothing in it to entertain them. He saw a slouching figure in
+shirt-sleeves and the foundations of evening dress, a disgusting,
+degraded figure with pink eyes and a white face that needed a shave. And
+all the doubts that had ever come to vex Mr. Carmyle's mind since his
+first meeting with Sally became on the instant certainties. So Uncle
+Donald had been right after all! This was the sort of girl she was!
+
+At his elbow the stout phantom of Uncle Donald puffed with satisfaction.
+
+"I told you so!" it said.
+
+Sally had not moved.  The situation was beyond her.  Just as if this had
+really been the dream it seemed, she felt incapable of speech or action.
+
+"So..." said Mr. Carmyle, becoming articulate, and allowed an impressive
+aposiopesis to take the place of the rest of the speech. A cold fury had
+gripped him. He pointed at Gerald, began to speak, found that he was
+stuttering, and gulped back the words. In this supreme moment he was not
+going to have his dignity impaired by a stutter. He gulped and found a
+sentence which, while brief enough to insure against this disaster, was
+sufficiently long to express his meaning.
+
+"Get out!" he said.
+
+Gerald Foster had his dignity, too, and it seemed to him that the time
+had come to assert it. But he also had a most excruciating headache, and
+when he drew himself up haughtily to ask Mr. Carmyle what the devil he
+meant by it, a severe access of pain sent him huddling back immediately
+to a safer attitude. He clasped his forehead and groaned.
+
+"Get out!"
+
+For a moment Gerald hesitated.  Then another sudden shooting spasm
+convinced him that no profit or pleasure was to be derived from a
+continuance of the argument, and he began to shamble slowly across to
+the door. Bruce Carmyle watched him go with twitching hands. There was a
+moment when the human man in him, somewhat atrophied from long disuse,
+stirred him almost to the point of assault; then dignity whispered more
+prudent counsel in his ear, and Gerald was past the danger-zone and out
+in the passage. Mr. Carmyle turned to face Sally, as King Arthur on a
+similar but less impressive occasion must have turned to deal with
+Guinevere.
+
+"So..." he said again.
+
+Sally was eyeing him steadily--considering the circumstances, Mr.
+Carmyle thought with not a little indignation, much too steadily.
+
+"This," he said ponderously, "is very amusing."
+
+He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing.
+
+"I might have expected it," said Mr. Carmyle with a bitter laugh.
+
+Sally forced herself from the lethargy which was gripping her.
+
+"Would you like me to explain?" she said.
+
+"There can be no explanation," said Mr. Carmyle coldly.
+
+"Very well," said Sally.
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Good-bye," said Bruce Carmyle.
+
+"Good-bye," said Sally.
+
+Mr. Carmyle walked to the door.  There he stopped for an instant and
+glanced back at her. Sally had walked to the window and was looking out.
+For one swift instant something about her trim little figure and the
+gleam of her hair where the sunlight shone on it seemed to catch at
+Bruce Carmyle's heart, and he wavered. But the next moment he was strong
+again, and the door had closed behind him with a resolute bang.
+
+Out in the street, climbing into his car, he looked up involuntarily to
+see if she was still there, but she had gone. As the car, gathering
+speed, hummed down the street. Sally was at the telephone listening to
+the sleepy voice of Ginger Kemp, which, as he became aware who it was
+that had woken him from his rest and what she had to say to him,
+magically lost its sleepiness and took on a note of riotous ecstasy.
+
+Five minutes later, Ginger was splashing in his bath, singing
+discordantly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+JOURNEY'S END
+
+
+
+Darkness was beginning to gather slowly and with almost an apologetic
+air, as if it regretted the painful duty of putting an end to the
+perfect summer day. Over to the west beyond the trees there still
+lingered a faint afterglow, and a new moon shone like a silver sickle
+above the big barn. Sally came out of the house and bowed gravely three
+times for luck. She stood on the gravel, outside the porch, drinking in
+the sweet evening scents, and found life good.
+
+The darkness, having shown a certain reluctance at the start, was now
+buckling down to make a quick and thorough job of it. The sky turned to
+a uniform dark blue, picked out with quiet stars. The cement of the
+state road which led to Patchogue, Babylon, and other important centres
+ceased to be a pale blur and became invisible. Lights appeared in the
+windows of the houses across the meadows. From the direction of the
+kennels there came a single sleepy bark, and the small white woolly dog
+which had scampered out at Sally's heels stopped short and uttered a
+challenging squeak.
+
+The evening was so still that Ginger's footsteps, as he pounded along
+the road on his way back from the village, whither he had gone to buy
+provisions, evening papers, and wool for the sweater which Sally was
+knitting, were audible long before he turned in at the gate. Sally could
+not see him, but she looked in the direction of the sound and once again
+felt that pleasant, cosy thrill of happiness which had come to her every
+evening for the last year.
+
+"Ginger," she called.
+
+"What ho!"
+
+The woolly dog, with another important squeak, scuttled down the drive
+to look into the matter, and was coldly greeted. Ginger, for all his
+love of dogs, had never been able to bring himself to regard Toto with
+affection. He had protested when Sally, a month before, finding Mrs.
+Meecher distraught on account of a dreadful lethargy which had seized
+her pet, had begged him to offer hospitality and country air to the
+invalid.
+
+"It's wonderful what you've done for Toto, angel," said Sally, as he
+came up frigidly eluding that curious animal's leaps of welcome. "He's a
+different dog."
+
+"Bit of luck for him," said Ginger.
+
+"In all the years I was at Mrs. Meecher's I never knew him move at
+anything more rapid than a stately walk. Now he runs about all the
+time."
+
+"The blighter had been overeating from birth," said Ginger.  "That was
+all that was wrong with him. A little judicious dieting put him right.
+We'll be able," said Ginger brightening, "to ship him back next week."
+
+"I shall quite miss him."
+
+"I nearly missed him--this morning--with a shoe," said Ginger.  "He was
+up on the kitchen table wolfing the bacon, and I took steps."
+
+"My cave-man!" murmured Sally.  "I always said you had a frightfully
+brutal streak in you. Ginger, what an evening!"
+
+"Good Lord!" said Ginger suddenly, as they walked into the light of the
+open kitchen door.
+
+"Now what?"
+
+He stopped and eyed her intently.
+
+"Do you know you're looking prettier than you were when I started down
+to the village!"
+
+Sally gave his arm a little hug.
+
+"Beloved!" she said.  "Did you get the chops?"
+
+Ginger froze in his tracks, horrified.
+
+"Oh, my aunt! I clean forgot them!"
+
+"Oh, Ginger, you are an old chump.  Well, you'll have to go in for a
+little judicious dieting, like Toto."
+
+"I say, I'm most awfully sorry.  I got the wool."
+
+"If you think I'm going to eat wool..."
+
+"Isn't there anything in the house?"
+
+"Vegetables and fruit."
+
+"Fine! But, of course, if you want chops..."
+
+"Not at all.  I'm spiritual.  Besides, people say that vegetables are
+good for the blood-pressure or something. Of course you forgot to get
+the mail, too?"
+
+"Absolutely not! I was on to it like a knife.  Two letters from fellows
+wanting Airedale puppies."
+
+"No! Ginger, we are getting on!"
+
+"Pretty bloated," agreed Ginger complacently.  "Pretty bloated.  We'll
+be able to get that two-seater if things go buzzing on like this. There
+was a letter for you. Here it is."
+
+"It's from Fillmore," said Sally, examining the envelope as they went
+into the kitchen. "And about time, too. I haven't had a word from him
+for months."
+
+She sat down and opened the letter.  Ginger, heaving  himself on to the
+table, wriggled into a position of comfort and started to read his
+evening paper. But after he had skimmed over the sporting page he
+lowered it and allowed his gaze to rest on Sally's bent head with a
+feeling of utter contentment.
+
+Although a married man of nearly a year's standing, Ginger was still
+moving about a magic world in a state of dazed incredulity, unable fully
+to realize that such bliss could be. Ginger in his time had seen many
+things that looked good from a distance, but not one that had borne the
+test of a closer acquaintance--except this business of marriage.
+
+Marriage, with Sally for a partner, seemed to be one of the very few
+things in the world in which there was no catch. His honest eyes glowed
+as he watched her. Sally broke into a little splutter of laughter.
+
+"Ginger, look at this!"
+
+He reached down and took the slip of paper which she held out to him.
+The following legend met his eye, printed in bold letters:
+
+                                 POPP'S
+
+                              OUTSTANDING
+
+                 SUCCULENT----APPETIZING----NUTRITIOUS.
+
+
+
+                        (JUST SAY "POP!" A CHILD
+
+                              CAN DO IT.)
+
+
+
+Ginger regarded this cipher with a puzzled frown.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"It's Fillmore."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+Sally gurgled.
+
+"Fillmore and Gladys have started a little restaurant in Pittsburg."
+
+"A restaurant!" There was a shocked note in Ginger's voice.  Although he
+knew that the managerial career of that modern Napoleon, his
+brother-in-law, had terminated in something of a smash, he had never
+quite lost his reverence for one whom he considered a bit of a
+master-mind. That Fillmore Nicholas, the Man of Destiny, should have
+descended to conducting a restaurant--and a little restaurant at
+that--struck him as almost indecent.
+
+Sally, on the other hand--for sisters always seem to fail in proper
+reverence for the greatness of their brothers--was delighted.
+
+"It's the most splendid idea," she said with enthusiasm.  "It really
+does look as if Fillmore was going to amount to something at last.
+Apparently they started on quite a small scale, just making
+pork-pies..."
+
+"Why Popp?" interrupted Ginger, ventilating a question which was
+perplexing him deeply.
+
+"Just a trade name, silly.  Gladys is a wonderful cook, you know, and
+she made the pies and Fillmore toddled round selling them. And they did
+so well that now they've started a regular restaurant, and that's a
+success, too. Listen to this." Sally gurgled again and turned over the
+letter. "Where is it? Oh yes! '... sound financial footing. In fact, our
+success has been so instantaneous that I have decided to launch out on a
+really big scale. It is Big Ideas that lead to Big Business. I am
+contemplating a vast extension of this venture of ours, and in a very
+short time I shall organize branches in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and
+all the big cities, each in charge of a manager and each offering as a
+special feature, in addition to the usual restaurant cuisine, these
+Popp's Outstanding Pork-pies of ours. That done, and having established
+all these branches as going concerns, I shall sail for England and
+introduce Popp's Pork-pies there...' Isn't he a little wonder!"
+
+"Dashed brainy chap.  Always said so."
+
+"I must say I was rather uneasy when I read that.  I've seen so many of
+Fillmore's Big Ideas. That's always the way with him. He gets something
+good and then goes and overdoes it and bursts. However, it's all right
+now that he's got Gladys to look after him. She has added a postscript.
+Just four words, but oh! how comforting to a sister's heart. 'Yes, I
+don't think!' is what she says, and I don't know when I've read anything
+more cheering. Thank heaven, she's got poor dear Fillmore well in hand."
+
+"Pork-pies!" said Ginger, musingly, as the pangs of a healthy hunger
+began to assail his interior. "I wish he'd sent us one of the
+outstanding little chaps. I could do with it."
+
+Sally got up and ruffled his red hair.
+
+"Poor old Ginger! I knew you'd never be able to stick it.  Come on, it's
+a lovely night, lets walk to the village and revel at the inn. We're
+going to be millionaires before we know where we are, so we can afford
+it."
+
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Adventures of Sally, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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