this was no ordinary visitor.
Many years of living by his wits had developed in Percy highly
sensitive powers of observation. Brief as his visit was, he came away
as certain that Kirk was in love with this girl, and the girl was in
love with Kirk, as he had ever been of anything in his life.
As he walked slowly down-town he was thinking hard. The subject
occupying his mind was the problem of how this thing was to be stopped.
Percy Shanklyn was a sleek, suave, unpleasant youth who had been
imported by a theatrical manager two years before to play the part of
an English dude in a new comedy. The comedy had been what its
enthusiastic backer had described in the newspaper advertisements as a
'rousing live-wire success.' That is to say, it had staggered along for
six weeks on Broadway to extremely poor houses, and after three weeks
on the road, had perished for all time, leaving Percy out of work.
Since then, no other English dude part having happened along, he had
rested, living in the mysterious way in which out-of-work actors do live.
He had a number of acquaintances, such as the amiable Burrows, who were
good for occasional loans, but Kirk Winfield was the king of them all.
There was something princely about the careless open-handedness of Kirk's
methods, and Percy's whole soul rose in revolt against the prospect of
being deprived of this source of revenue, as something, possibly Ruth's
determined chin, told him that he would be, should Kirk marry this girl.
He had placed Ruth at once, directly he had heard her name. He
remembered having seen her photograph in the society section of the
Sunday paper which he borrowed each week. This was the daughter of old
John Bannister. There was no doubt about that. How she had found her
way to Kirk's studio he could not understand; but there she certainly
was, and Percy was willing to bet the twenty dollars which, despite the
excitement of the moment, he had forgotten to extract from Kirk in a
hurried conversation at the door, that her presence there was not known
and approved by her father.
The only reasonable explanation that Kirk was painting her portrait he
dismissed. There had been no signs of any portrait, and Kirk's
embarrassment had been so obvious that, if there had been any such
explanation, he would certainly have given it. No, Ruth had been there
for other reasons than those of art.
'Unchaperoned, too, by Jove!' thought Percy virtuously, ignorant of
Mrs. Lora Delane Porter, who at the time of his call, had been busily
occupied in a back room instilling into George Pennicut the gospel of
the fit body. For George, now restored to health, had ceased to be a
mere student of 'Elementary Rules for the Preservation of the Body' and
had become an active, though unwilling, practiser of its precepts.
Every morning Mrs. Porter called and, having shepherded him into the
back room, put him relentlessly through his exercises. George's groans,
as he moved his stout limbs along the dotted lines indicated in the
book's illustrated plates, might have stirred a faint heart to pity.
But Lora Delane Porter was made of sterner stuff. If George so much as
bent his knees while touching his toes he heard of it instantly, in no
uncertain voice.
