“And I haven’t a dollar,” mused Hugh. “One thing is certain: I can’t kill myself until that debt is paid.”
“Is that your answer?” asked the dealer, savagely.
Hugh blinked with the tremor of a somnambulist awaking from a trance. He had been so far away that he had forgot everything, even to the dealer’s presence.
“My answer? My answer to what? Oh, yes, about your friend’s house. Very good, I’ll do it.”
“Now that’s the talk I like. When will you begin? Today? Good enough. Here’s the name and address. Do it up elegant, won’t you? So long.” And with that the dealer took his cigar and pea-green stick away.
Two hours later Hugh was at the house in Irving place. A manservant opened the door, and on learning Hugh’s mission, laughed riotously.
“It’s a good one, isn’t it?” he roared.
And as Hugh only stared, dumbly perplexed, the servant suddenly subsided, and murmured, sepulchrally:
“I beg pardon, sir; I thought as how you were in it!”
“In what, you confounded idiot? Hang your impudence, what do you mean by laughing in my face? If you don’t know your place, your master shall teach you. Where is he?”
The muscles of the man’s face twitched, but he controlled the coming grin by a tight pressure of the lips.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he answered. “He isn’t here yet. I thought you knew he is to be married. If you will step this way, sir.” And fearing perhaps to explode, he drew a portiere aside and Hugh passed into the drawing room.
It was large, high ceiled and furnished in very fair taste. Beyond, another room extended, before which curtains fell. The air was sweet with flowers, and presently, though dusk was approaching, and the light, as is usual in old New York houses, was not plentiful, Hugh perceived that he was not alone. The curtains had parted, and a lady was entering the room. She took a step or two in Hugh’s direction, apparently unconscious of his presence, and then, with a little bleat of surprise, she ran to where he stood.
“Hugh!”
The young man tottered like a drunkard.
“You, Jenny!” he exclaimed, in fine fervor. “Tell me I am not dreaming; tell me it is you.”
His answer was two arms thrown about his neck, two lips on his own, the murmur and gurgle of love and joy.
“Here! here! You’ve no right to do that.”
The curtains had parted again, and on the threshold of the room beyond an old man stood, very cross and disagreeable.
“Stop it, I say!”
And Hugh, more intoxicated than if he had drunk a dozen pints of champagne, looked from Jenny’s blue and sultry eyes into the glowering face of her father.
“Ah! I understand,” he exclaimed—“I understand all now. Thank you, dear Mr. Sisseton; thank you a million times.”
“You!” shrieked the old man. “You! What in the name of a wilderness of gorillas are you doing here?”
“Embracing your daughter.”
“Your conduct is infamous, sir. You lure me here by trick and pretense, and insult me to my face. Stand back, I say.”
“I lure you here? I? Why I didn’t know where you were. I would have given twenty years of my life to find you.”
“Oh, oh!” pouted Jenny. “What about my letters?”
“Letters? I haven’t had one,” answered Hugh, in a crescendo of bewilderment.
“I sent you a dozen at least, and you never took the trouble to answer one of them.”
“Twenty,” snapped the old man. “I have them all in my pocket.”
“Papa, papa!” sobbed the girl, “how could you be so cruel.”
“It must be evident to you,” said Hugh, persuasively, “it must be quite evident to you now, my dear Mr. Sisseton, that I was not the means of bringing you here.”
“Well, then, what in thunder did you come for?”
“Simply to fresco the walls.”
“As I did,” interjected Jenny, “in the hope of securing a position as typewriter.”
“What luck!” the old man growled.
“Luck!” Hugh cried, “It’s the hand of Providence that has led me to you, my dear, dear friend.”
“I forbid you to so address me, sir,” the old man fairly yelped. “You are insane, that’s what you are.”
“Haven’t I had enough to make me?”
“Tell me this, sir—do you still love my daughter?”
“With all my heart.”
“Will you agree not to ask her to marry you?”
“Never in the world.”
“In that case everything between us is at an end. Go to the devil.”
“But—”
“You shan’t have my daughter, that’s flat.”
“But—”
“You shan’t have my daughter—you shan’t have my daughter—you shan’t have my daughter—”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Hugh, with a great show of bluster. “Your daughter is of age and I’ll appeal to the law.”
“You will, will you? It seems to me you said that before. Come, Jenny, we must go at once.”
“Not yet,” called a shrill voice, and suddenly the room was inundated and entered by the glitter of electric lights, and an individual, superbly tailored and groomed, advanced majestically, his fingers in his waistcoat.
“What are you people quarreling about?” he inquired, haughtily. “Don’t you know how to behave? Thundering guns!”
And to the astonishment of those present John Anderson wheeled an armchair before the fire and began the delicate operation of toasting the veneered soles of a pair of patent-leather shoes.
“Draw up,” he said, “these October dusks are chill. Bring a chair for Miss Sisseton, Hugh; bring a chair for yourself.”
In his manner there was an ease, a serenity and self-sufficiency that was simply diabolic. Hugh stared like an oaf at a mountebank, and Mr. Sisseton, gaping with surprise, stood, his crumbling jaws half-parted.
John Anderson looked from one to the other and smiled at Jenny.
“That lover of yours doesn’t appear very grateful to a man who, in spite of wind and weather, has brought him to your side, does he, Miss Sisseton?”
“You don’t mean—” Hugh began and then hesitated, as though he were talking in a dream.
“Yes, I do,” John Anderson answered, encouragingly. “That’s precisely what I do mean.”
“In that case I forgive you.”
“You do, do you? Thundering guns! are we quits on those eighty-seven thousand dollars?”
“Yes,” said Hugh, with an entire absence of
