“Cigarettes, gambling, and drinking go hand in hand,” continued the man of the house. “I couldn’t trust a cigarette fiend with a nickel.”
“There are only two or three kinds he could get for that,” said Billy.
“What say?” demanded Mr. McDonald, but before Billy was obliged to wriggle out of it, Aunt Mary came in and reminded her brother-in-law that it was nearly church time.
Mr. McDonald and Aunt Mary went to church. Mrs. McDonald, pleading weariness, stayed home with “the children.” She wanted a chance to get acquainted with this pleasant-faced boy who was going to rob her of one of her five dearest treasures.
The three were no sooner settled in front of the fireplace than Ellen adroitly brought up the subject of auction bridge, knowing that it would relieve Billy of the conversational burden.
“Mother is really quite a shark, aren’t you, mother?” she said.
“I don’t fancy being called a fish,” said the mother.
“She’s written two books on it, and she and father have won so many prizes that they may have to lease a warehouse. If they’d only play for money, just think how rich we’d all be!”
“The game is fascinating enough without adding to it the excitements and evils of gambling,” said Mrs. McDonald.
“It is a fascinating game,” agreed Billy.
“It is,” said Mrs. McDonald, and away she went.
Before father and Aunt Mary got home from church, Mr. Bowen was a strong disciple of conservativeness in bidding and thoroughly convinced that all the rules that had been taught were dead wrong. He saw the shark’s points so quickly and agreed so wholeheartedly with her arguments that he impressed her as one of the most intelligent young men she had ever talked to. It was too bad it was Sunday night, but some evening soon he must come over for a game.
“I’d like awfully well to read your books,” said Billy.
“The first one’s usefulness died with the changes in the rules,” replied Mrs. McDonald. “But I think I have one of the new ones in the house, and I’ll be glad to have you take it.”
“I don’t like to have you give me your only copy.”
“Oh, I believe we have two.”
She knew perfectly well she had two dozen.
Aunt Mary announced that Walter had been seen in church with Kathryn. He had made it his business to be seen. He and the lady had come early and had maneuvered into the third row from the back, on the aisle leading to the McDonald family pew. He had nudged his aunt as she passed on the way to her seat, and she had turned and spoken to him. She could not know that he and Kathryn had “ducked” before the end of the processional.
After reporting favorably on the Case, Aunt Mary launched into a description of the service. About seventy had turned out. The music had been good, but not quite as good as in the morning. Mr. Pratt had sung “Fear Ye Not, O Israel!” for the offertory. Dr. Gish was still sick and a lay reader had served. She had heard from Allie French that Dr. Gish expected to be out by the middle of the week and certainly would be able to preach next Sunday morning. The church had been cold at first, but very comfortable finally.
Ellen rose and said she and Billy would go out in the kitchen and make some fudge.
“I was afraid Aunt Mary would bore you to death,” she told Billy, when they had kissed for the first time since five o’clock. “She just lives for the church and can talk on no other subject.”
“I wouldn’t hold that against her,” said Billy charitably.
The fudge was a failure, as it was bound to be. But the Case, who came in just as it was being passed round, was the only one rude enough to say so.
“Is this a new stunt?” he inquired, when he had tested it.
“Is what a new stunt?” asked Ellen.
“Using cheese instead of chocolate.”
“That will do, Walter,” said his father. “You can go to bed.”
Walter got up and started for the hall. At the threshold he stopped.
“I don’t suppose there’ll be any of that fudge left,” he said. “But if there should be, you’d better put it in the mouse trap.”
Billy called a taxi and departed soon after Walter’s exit. When he got out at his South Side abode, the floor of the tonneau was littered with recent cigarettes.
And that night he dreamed that he was president of the anti-cigarette league; that Dr. Gish was vice-president, and that the motto of the organization was “No trump.”
Billy Bowen’s business took him out of town the second week in December, and it was not until the twentieth that he returned. He had been East and had ridden home from Buffalo on the same train with Wilma and Edith McDonald. But he didn’t know it and neither did they. They could not be expected to recognize him from Ellen’s description—that he was horribly good-looking. The dining-car conductor was all of that.
Ellen had further written them that he (not the dining-car conductor) was a man of many moods; that sometimes he was just nice and deep, and sometimes he was screamingly funny, and sometimes so serious and silent that she was almost afraid of him.
They were wild to see him and the journey through Ohio and Indiana would not have been half so long in his company. Edith, the athletic, would have revelled in his wit. Wilma would gleefully have fathomed his depths. They would both have been proud to flaunt his looks before the hundreds of their kind aboard the train. Their loss was greater than Billy’s, for he, smoking cigarettes as fast as he could light them and playing bridge that would have brought tears of compassion to the shark’s eyes, enjoyed the trip, every minute of it.
Ellen and her
