[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

AGAIN THE FAIRY STORY.

Kathryn, busy at her postscript, did not hear. Blake stepped swiftly forward.

"No!" he whispered. "No!"

Elinor put him aside.

"Kate!" she said again.

Blake stood for a moment, hesitant. Muriel had come from the house. To her he called.

"Come here, little partner."

Obediently, she came running to him. He seated himself, and took her upon his lap.

"Do you remember the story that I told you a little while ago?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Well, there's more to that story. Would you like to hear it?" He did not wait for her answer; he spoke swiftly, surely. Elinor, across the table, eyed him curiously. Kathryn, still writing, was oblivious quite to all that was going on around her.

Blake continued:

"Well, there came a time when the prince had to go a long, long way off.

The princess was very sorry to see him go, and so was the little princess; and they cried; but they were brave princesses, so they didn't cry much; they stayed at home and wrote him letters with kisses in them.

"And then,--well, the fairy prince met a witch--a wicked, wicked witch-- and she charmed him, and took him away with her. Now the fairy princess had a sister. She was a good woman; and, like all good women, she was hard-headed. The sister heard about the witch, and she wanted to run right home as fast as she could, and tell all about it. And that would have made the princess cry, and the prince go away and die, all alone."

The lids over the violet eyes were blinking; the lips quivered.

"I want to cry, Mr. Tom," she complained. "That's worse than the other story!"

"Ah, but," went on Blake, hurriedly, "the sister didn't tell. She wasn't hard-headed. She listened to the voice of reason, rather than to that of intuition--"

"What's that word you just said, Mr. Tom?"

"Intuition?"

She nodded.

"Eh--ah," he hesitated, then, "why, intuition is a thing that women use for a brain. And," he continued, "bye and bye the fairy prince managed to get away from the wicked witch that had charmed him, and he came back again to the fairy princess, and the little fairy princess; and though of course he had been very, very bad--very, very wicked--he was forgiven; and they were almost as happy as they had been before he went away.... Do you like that story any better, little partner?"

She was all smiles now. She nodded, brightly.

"Heaps, and heaps, and heaps!" she cried.

"That's good," he said, as he set her down.

Kathryn had raised her head from her writing.

"Fairy story, Tom?" she queried, in the half-attention of preoccupation.

"Yes," he replied.

"Does it end happily?"

Ere he could have replied, her thoughts were again of her letter.

Blake walked slowly to where stood Elinor. She was toying with a hanging blossom of white, fragrant, spreading. Her eyes were moist; her hand trembled.

He asked, very softly:

"Does it end happily, Nell?"

She turned to him. Her lips quivered.

"I hope so," she whispered. "Only G.o.d Himself knows how I hope so!" And then she added slowly, "If women were only as loyal to women as men are to men!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

AID.

Blake had suspected; but he had refused to believe. Now he knew. And half an hour later, "The Vagrant," under full head of steam, was surging down the Sound with a great, white bone in her teeth and a great, fan- like wake spreading huge rollers from her trim stern.

She anch.o.r.ed off Thirty-Fourth Street. The launch was ready almost as the chain rattled. Blake's big French car was waiting for him at the pier; and, with scant regard for the speed ordinances, it bore him swiftly through the traffic-thronged streets to lower Fifth Avenue, and to the house of Dr. DeLancey.

The pa.s.sing of the years had made but little change in either the good doctor or his abode. His office looked the same--dry and musty. He looked the same--shrewd and kindly.

"Come in," he said, with the testiness that in him was cordiality concentrated. "Come in. Don't stand there like a gump stretching my bell- wire all out of shape. Come in. Come in."

Blake entered.

"Well," said the doctor, leading the way into his office. "What's the matter now. Sick? You don't look it. If all my patients were like you and the Schuylers, I'd starve to death." He fumbled with an old-fashioned cedar cigar chest. "Smoke?"

Blake took the cigar, and lighted it.