“What the hell does this mean, Jim?” John demanded, his voice shaking with suppressed feeling and his manner almost threatening.
“I think you know about as well as I do, John.”
“The devil I do! I won’t have it, that’s all! It’s a shame!” He seemed ready for battle as he spoke.
“All right, John,” answered Jim quietly.
John went out into the office again, slamming the door behind him.
Miss Brennan was close to the corridor entrance.
“I think I’d better go, Mr. Winter. You are so good to me, but I couldn’t stay in Mr. Sprague’s employ,” she answered, when John insisted on her remaining.
So she went away, and whether she and John met again was a mystery which Jim did not try to solve, but he felt that he had at least kept the affair from reaching a development which would come to Lucy’s ears.
The partners tacitly avoided employing a successor to Miss Brennan, going across the hall of their office building to a public stenographer, when a stenographer was necessary, while Jim posted and cast their accounts in his room each evening after his day’s work.
The incident caused a passing coolness between them. Indeed there were some weeks during which John scarcely spoke to Jim. The clouds were dispelled however. John showed a sudden warmth and simultaneously came an invitation to dinner from Lucy.
Jim did not question the impulse or try to guess whether it had originated with John or his wife. He was too anxious to accept any terms which allowed him to go to the Winter home as before and enjoy the companionship of Lucy who treated him like a good friend and a brother.
John told himself, after the incident of the stenographer, that he was a little disappointed in Jim, who lacked the qualifications for comprehending the finer feelings, but the change in John’s regard did not appear on the surface.
Jim remained the counselor for the family in all practical matters, and was looked upon by the expansive Dimmie as almost the equal of his father. Jim paid frequent visits to the house at Rosedene, often remaining from Saturday until Monday. A bedroom which Lucy had referred to as “Jim’s room” when the house was under construction, was always at his disposal, and when he was present Lucy accepted him with a naturalness and lack of ceremony which he found more flattering than the most exaggerated attention.
After his return from Rosedene on the night of his first tête-à-tête with Mrs. Merwent, who had rather taken his breath away by her display of mingled clumsiness and cunning, he sat and smoked in silence in his room until very late. An amazing new factor had entered his world. As he finally grew sleepy and prepared himself for bed, he decided that his first problem was to help Lucy in her immediate predicament.
“Poor child,” he murmured as he knocked out his last pipe and lay down.
XIV
It was eight o’clock in the morning and Rosedene was looking its best. The late spring weather was perfect and the flower beds and shrubs about the Winters’ home were faintly misted with bloom.
Lucy was weeding a border of violets and Dimmie assisted her. She wore a clean gingham dress and the customary wide apron. An old hat tied on with a black silk ribbon, and worn gloves of John’s completed her costume. There was a light wind and her skirts billowed out as she bent over the flowers and the ribbon under her chin fluttered.
“Don’t sit down in the mud. You’ll take cold, Dimmie,” Lucy admonished, observing the clayey tint on the seat of Dimmie’s rompers as, panting and perspiring with his exertions, he laboriously replanted an uprooted violet.
Nannie came in from the street. She had been seeing John off to his train and was in a simple but charming morning costume.
“I met the postman on the way,” she observed as she stood removing her gloves.
“Were there any letters for us?” Lucy asked.
“None for you. I got one.” Nannie hesitated. “It was from Professor Walsh,” she added, laughing rather uneasily.
“So you’ve read it already, have you?” Lucy smiled as she spoke but did not look up from her work.
“Now, Lucy, you are trying to make game of me!”
“Indeed I’m not, Mamma. I always like to see what’s in a letter as soon as I get one.”
“I didn’t have to think very hard to guess what would be in this one. The poor man is so alone in Russellville. You know yourself how in a small place there are so few really cultured people.” Mrs. Merwent smoothed out the fingers of the gloves she held.
“I thought you always stood up for Russellville, Mamma,” Lucy said.
“Now, Lucy, I didn’t mean of course that there were no really well bred people in Russellville. There are few enough here in the North, heaven knows, but Professor Walsh is an unusually well educated man.”
“Yes. There are few enough anywhere,” Lucy continued, ignoring Mrs. Merwent’s last allusion.
“But you and John lead such an isolated life,” Nannie went on. “I don’t see how you can judge. Don’t you know any of your neighbors, Lucy?”
“Well, we haven’t any neighbors in the sense we used to have in Russellville, but there are a few really pleasant people near by. There are the Hamiltons just back of us. She is the one who sent the jellied chicken for our luncheon the day you came. Don’t put so much water on the flowers, dear.” (This last remark was addressed to Dimmie.)
Dimmie began to drum on the tin sprinkler with a trowel.
“Jimmie, for heaven’s sake stop that noise,” exclaimed Nannie. “You’ll split my head. I can’t hear myself talk.”
Dimmie ceased drumming and ran off to swing.
“Of course I know you don’t have neighbors like in small towns,” Nannie pursued, speaking to Lucy again, “but I don’t mean people like the Hamiltons. I meant your social circle. Don’t you know any smart people?”
“I
