He found a suitable farm and, applying the brakes, gathered up William Bannister and knocked at the door.
His surmise as to the hospitality of farmers proved correct, and presently they were sitting down to a breakfast which it did his famished soul good to contemplate.
William Bannister seemed less enthusiastic. Steve, having disposed of two eggs in quick succession, turned to see how his young charge was progressing with his repast, and found him eyeing a bowl of bread-and-milk in a sort of frozen horror.
“What’s the matter, kid?” he asked. “Get busy.”
“No paper,” said William Bannister.
“For the love of Pete! Do you expect your morning paper out in the woods?”
“No paper,” repeated the White Hope firmly.
Steve regarded him thoughtfully.
“I didn’t have this trip planned out right,” he said regretfully. “I ought to have got Mamie to come along. I bet a hundred dollars she would have got next to your meanings in a second. I pass. What’s your kick, anyway? What’s all this about paper?”
“Aunty Lora says not to eat bread that doesn’t come wrapped up in paper,” said the White Hope, becoming surprisingly lucid. “Mamie undoes it out of crinkly paper.”
“I get you. They feed you rolls at home wrapped up in tissue-paper, is that it?”
“What’s tissue?”
“Same as crinkly. Well, see here. You remember what we was talking about last night about germs?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s one thing germs never do, eat bread out of crinkly paper. You want to forget all the dope they shot into you back in New York and start fresh. You do what I tell you and you can’t go wrong. If you’re going to be a regular germ, what you’ve got to do is to wrap yourself round that bread-and-milk the quickest you can. Get me? Till you do that we can’t begin to start out to have a good time.”
William Bannister made no more objections. He attacked his meal with an easy conscience, and about a quarter of an hour later leaned back with a deep sigh of repletion.
Steve, meanwhile had entered into conversation with the lady of the house.
“Say, I guess you ain’t got a kid of your own anywheres, have you?”
“Sure I have,” said the hostess proudly. “He’s out in the field with his pop this minute. His name’s Jim.”
“Fine. I want to get hold of a kid to play with this kid here. Jim sounds pretty good to me. About the same age as this one?”
“For the Lord’s sake! Jim’s eighteen and weighs two hundred pounds.”
“Cut out Jim. I thought from the way you spoke he was a regular kid. Know anyone in these parts who’s got something about the same weight as this one?”
The farmer’s wife reflected.
“Kids is pretty scarce round here,” she said. “I reckon you won’t get one that I knows of. There’s that Tom Whiting, but he’s a bad boy. He ain’t been raised right.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“I don’t want to speak harm of no one, but his father used to be a low prizefighter, and you know what they are.”
Steve nodded sympathetically.
“Regular plug-uglies,” he said. “A friend of mine used to have to mix with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of scrappy kid, is that it?”
“He’s a bad boy.”
“Well, maybe I’d better look him over, just in case. Where’s he to be found?”
“They live in the cottage by the big house you can see through them trees. His pop looks after Mr. Wilson’s prize dawgs. That’s his job.”
“What’s Wilson?” asked the White Hope, coming out of his stupor.
“You beat me to it by a second, kid. I was just going to ask it myself.”
“He’s one of them rich New Yawkers. He has his summer place here, and this Whiting looks after his prize dawgs.”
“Well, I guess I’ll give him a call. It’s going to be lonesome for my kid if he ain’t got someone to show him how to hit it up. He’s not used to country life. Come along. We’ll get into the bubble and go and send your pop a telegram.”
“What’s telegram?” asked William Bannister.
“I got you placed now,” said Steve, regarding him with interest. “You’re not going to turn into an ambassador or an artist or any of them things. You’re going to be the greatest district attorney that ever came down the pike.”
XIV
The Sixty-First Street Cyclone
It was past seven o’clock when Kirk, bending over the wheel, with Mamie at his side came in sight of the shack. The journey had been checked just outside the city by a blowout in one of the back tyres. Kirk had spent the time, while the shirt-sleeved rescuer from the garage toiled over the injured wheel, walking up and down with a cigar. Neither he nor Mamie had shown much tendency towards conversation. Mamie was habitually of a silent disposition, and Kirk’s mind was too full of his thoughts to admit of speech.
Ever since he had read Steve’s telegram he had been in the grip of a wild exhilaration. He had not stopped to ask himself what this mad freak of Steve’s could possibly lead to in the end—he was satisfied to feel that its immediate result would be that for a brief while, at any rate, he would have his son to himself, away from all the chilling surroundings which had curbed him and frozen his natural feelings in the past.
He tried to keep his mind from dwelling upon Ruth. He had thought too much of her of late for his comfort. Since they had parted that day
