"Well, Grant, I'm in trouble--Oh, it's not that," he laughed as Grant looked quickly into the clean, alert old face. "That's not bothered me for--Oh, for two years now. But it's Violet--she wants me to marry her."

He blurted it out as if it had been pent in, and was hard to hold.

"Why--well--what makes you--well, has she proposed, Henry?" asked the younger man.

"Naw--of course not," answered Fenn. "Boy, you don't know anything about women."

Fenn shook his head knowingly, and winked one eye slowly.

"Children--she's set the children on me. You know, Grant--" he turned his smile on with what candlepower he could muster, "that's my other weakness--children. And they're the nicest children in the world. But I can't--I tell you, man, I can't," protested Mr. Fenn, as if he believed Grant in league with the woman to kidnap him.

"Well, then, don't," said Grant, rising and gathering up his mail.

"But how can I help it?" Fenn cried helplessly. "What can a man do?

Those kids need a father. I need a family--I've always needed a family--but I don't want Violet--nor any one else." Grant towed him along to the restaurant, and they sat alone. After Grant had ordered his supper he asked, "Henry--why can't you marry Violet? She's a sensible, honest woman--she's got over her foolishness; what's wrong with her?"

"Why, of course, she is a good woman. If you'd see her chasing out nights--picking up girls, mothering 'em, loving 'em, working with 'em--she knows their language; she can talk to 'em so they get it. And I've known her time and again to get scent of a new girl over there at Bessie Wilson's and go after her and pull her out and start her right again. I tell you, Grant, Violet has her weaknesses--as to hair ribbons and shirtwaists and frills for the kids--but she's got a heart, Grant--a mighty big heart."

"Then why not marry her?" persisted Grant.

"That's just it," answered Fenn.

He looked hopelessly at Grant and finally said as he reached his hands across the table and grasped Grant's big flinty paw, "Grant--let me tell you something--it's Margaret. I'm a fool--a motley fool i' the forest, Grant, but I can't help it; I can't help it," he cried. "So long as she lives--she may need me. I don't trust that d.a.m.n scoundrel, Grant. She may need me, and I stand ready to go to h.e.l.l itself with her if I live a thousand years. It's not that I want her any more; but, Grant--maybe you know her; maybe you understand. She used to hate you for some reason, and maybe that will help you to know how I feel. But--I know I'm weak--G.o.d knows I'm putty in my soul. And I'm ashamed. But I mustn't get married. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be square to Violet, nor the kids, nor to any one. So long as Margaret is on this earth--it's my job to stand guard and wait till she needs me."

He turned a troubled, heartbroken face up to the younger man and concluded, "I know she despises me--that she loathes me. But I can't help it, Grant--and I came to you to kind of help me with Violet. It wouldn't be right to--well, to let this thing go on." He heaved a deep sigh, then he added as he fumbled with the red tablecloth, "What a fool a man is--Lord, what a fool!"

In the end, Grant had to agree to let Violet know, by some round about procedure devised by Mr. Fenn's legal mind, that he was not a marriageable person. At the same time, Grant had to agree not to frighten away the Hogan children.

The next morning as Grant and his father rode from their home into town, Grant told his father of the invitation to the Captain's party.

"If your mother could have lived just to see the Captain on his grand plutocratic spree, Grant--" said his father. He did not finish the sentence, but cracked the lines on the old mare's back and looked at the sky. He turned his white beard and gentle eyes upon his son and said, "There was a time last night, before you came in, when I thought I had her. Some one was greatly interested in you and some new project you have in mind. Emerson thinks well of it," said Amos, "though," he added, "Emerson thinks it won't amount to much--in practical immediate results.

But I think, Grant, now of course, I can't be sure," the father rubbed his jaw and shook a meditative head, "it certainly did seem to me mother was there for a time. Something kept bothering Emerson--calling Grantie--the way she used to--all the time he was talking!"

The father let Grant out of the buggy at the Vanderbilt House in South Harvey, and the old mare and her driver jogged up town to the _Tribune_ office. There he creaked out of the buggy and went to his work. It was nine o'clock before the Captain came capering in, and the two old codgers in their seventies went into the plot of the surprise party with the enthusiasm of boys.

After the Captain had explained the purpose of the surprise, Amos Adams sat with his hands on his knees and smiled. "Well--well, Ezry--I didn't realize it. Time certainly does fly. And it's all right," he added, "I'm glad you're going to do it. She certainly will approve it. And the girls--" the old man chuckled, "you surely will settle them for good and all."

He laughed a little treble laugh, cracked and yet gleeful. "Nice girls--all of 'em. But Grant says j.a.p's a kind of shining around your Ruth--that's the singing one, isn't it? Well, I suppose, Ezry, either of 'em might do worse. Of course, this singing one doesn't remember her mother much, so I suppose she won't be much affected by your surprise?"

He asked a question, but after his manner went on, "Well, maybe it was j.a.p and Ruth that was bothering Mary last night. I kind of thought someway, for the first time maybe I'd get her. But nothing much came of it," he said sadly. "It's funny about the way I've never been able to get her direct, when every one else comes--isn't it?"

The Captain was in no humor for occult things, so he cut in with: "Now listen here, Amos--what do you think of me asking Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker to sit at one end of the table, eh? Of course I know what the girls will think--but then," he winked with immense slyness, "that's all right. I was talking to her about it, and she's going to have a brand new dress--somepin swell--eh? By the jumping John Rogers, Amos--there's a woman--eh?"

And tightening up his necktie--a scarlet creation of much pride--he pulled his hat over his eyes, as one who has great affairs under it, and marched double-quick out of the office.

You may be sure that some kind friend told the Morton girls of what was in store for them, the kind friend being Mr. George Brotherton, who being thoroughly married, regarded any secret from his wife in the light of a real infidelity. So he told her all that he and Market Street knew.

Now the news of the party--a party in whose preparations they were to have no share, roused in the Misses Morton, and their married sister, jointly and severally, that devil of suspicion which always tormented their dreams.

"And, Emma," gasped Martha, when Emma came over for her daily visit, "just listen! Mrs. Herd.i.c.ker is having the grandest dress made for the party! She told the girls in the store she had twenty-seven dollars'

worth of jet on it--just jet alone." Here the handsome Miss Morton turned pale with the gravity of the news. "She told the girls to-day, this very afternoon, that she was going to take the three o'clock morning train right after the party for New York to do her fall buying.

Fall buying, indeed! Fall buying," the handsome Miss Morton's voice thickened and she cried, "just because papa's got a little money, she thinks--"

But what she thought Miss Morton never said, for Mrs. Brotherton, still familiar with the gossip of the schoolhouse, cut in to say: "And, Martha, what do you think those Copini children say? They say father's got their father's orchestra to practice all the old sentimental music you ever heard of--'Silver Threads Among the Gold,' and 'Do You Love Me, Molly Darling,' and 'Lorena,' and 'Robin Adair,'--and oh," cried Mrs.

Brotherton, shaking a hopeless head, "I don't know what other silly things."

"And yes, girls," exclaimed the youngest Miss Morton flippantly, "he's sent around to the Music School for Miss Howe to come and sing 'O Promise Me'!"

"The idea!" cried the new Mrs. Brotherton.

"Why, the very idea!" broke out the handsome Miss Morton, sitting by the dining-room table.

"The idea!" echoed the youngest Miss Morton, putting away her music roll, and adding in gasping excitement: "And that isn't the worst. He sent word for her to sing it just after the band had finished playing the wedding march!"

Now terror came into the house of Morton, and when the tailor's boy brought home a package, the daughters tore it open ruthlessly, and discovered--as they sat limply with it spread out in its pristine beauty on the sofa before them--a white broadcloth dinner suit--with a watered silk vest. Half an hour later, when a pleated dress shirt with pearl b.u.t.tons came, it found three daughters sitting with tight lips waiting for their father--and six tigers' eyes glaring hungrily at the door through which he was expected. At six o'clock, when they heard his nimble step on the porch, they looked at one another in fear, and as he burst into the room, each looked decisively at the other as indicating a command to begin.

He came in enveloping them in one all-encompa.s.sing hug and cried:

"Well 'y gory, girls, you certainly are the three graces, the three fates, and the world, the flesh and the devil all in one--what say?"

But the Morton daughters were not to be silenced. Ruth took in a deep breath and began:

"Well, now see here, father, do you know what people are saying about--"

"Of course--I was just coming to that, Ruthie," answered the Captain.

"Amos Adams he says, 'Well, Cap,' say he, 'I was talking to Cleopatra and she says Queen Victoria had a readin' to the effect that there was a boy named Amos Ezra Morton Adams over on one of the stars in the southwest corner of the milky way that would be busting into this part of the universe in about three years, more or less'--what say?"

The old man laughed and Ruth flushed red, and ran away. The Captain saw his suit lying on the sofa.

"Somepin new--" interjected the Captain. "Thought I'd kind o' bloom out; sort o' to let folks know that the old man had a little kick in him yet--eh? And now, girls--listen; let's all go out to the Country Club for dinner to-night, and I'll put on my new suit and you kind of rig up in your best, and we'll make what George calls a killing--what say?" He put his hands in his pockets and looked critically at his new clothes.

The flight of Ruth had quieted Emma, but Martha came swooping down on him with "Now, father--look here--about that Country Club party--"

The Captain shot a swift glance at Martha, and saw Emma looking at him from the kitchen door.

"What party?" he exclaimed. "Can't I ask my girls out for a little innocent dinner without its being called a party--eh? Now, you girls get your things on and come on. As for me, the limousine will be at the door at eight!"

He disappeared up the stairs and in the Morton household, two young women, woeful and heavy hearted, went about their toilets, while in the Brotherton establishment, one large fat man in suspenders felt the rush of sudden tears on his shirt front and marveled at the ways of the s.e.x.

When the Mortons were in the midst of their moist and lugubrious task, the thin, cracked little voice of the Captain called out:

"Girls--before you go, don't forget to put that cold beef on and stew it to-night for hash in the morning--eh?"

It was a beautiful party that Captain Morton gave at the Country Club house that evening. And at the end of a most gorgeously elaborate dinner, wherein were dishes whose very names the Captain did not know, he rose among his guests seated at the U-shaped table in the big dining room with the heavy brown beams in the ceiling, a little old man by his big chair, which stood beside a chair unoccupied.

"Friends," he said, "when a man gets on in his seventies, at that uncertain time, when he does not know whether to be ashamed of his years or proud of his age," he smiled at Daniel Sands, who clicked his false-teeth in appreciation of the phrase, "it would seem that thoughts of what the poet calls 'the livelier iris' on the 'burnished dove' would not inconvenience him to any great extent--eh? At seventy-five a young fellow's fancy ought to be pretty well done lightly turning to thoughts of love--what say? But by cracky--they don't."

He paused. The Morton girls in shame looked at their plates. "So, I just thought I'd have this little party to tell you about it. I wanted to surprise the girls." There was only a faint clapping of hands; for tears in the eyes of the three Morton daughters discouraged merriment.

"A man, as I was saying, never gets too old--never gets too crabbed, for what my friend Amos's friend Emerson calls 'a ruddy drop of manly blood'--eh? So, when that 'ruddy drop of manly blood' comes a surging up in me, I says I'll just about have a party for that drop of manly blood!

I'm going to tell you all about it. There's a woman in my mind--a very beautiful woman; for years--a feller just as well breakdown and confess--eh?--well for years she's been in my mind pretty much all the time--particularly since Ruthie there was a baby and left alorn and alone--as you may say--eh? And so," he reached down and grasped a goblet of water firmly, and held it before him, "and so," he repeated, and his old eyes glistened and his voice broke, "as it was just fifty years ago to-night that heaven opened and let her come to me, before I marched off to war--so," he hurried along, "I give you this toast--the vacant chair--may it always, always, always be filled in my heart of hearts!"

He could not drink, but sank with his head on his arms, and when they had ceased clapping their hands, the old man looked up, signaled to the orchestra, and cried in a tight, cracked voice, "Now, dern ye--begin yer fiddlin'!"

Whereupon the three Morton daughters wept and the old ladies gathered about them and wept, and Mrs. Hilda Herd.i.c.ker's ton of jet heaved as in a tidal wave, and the old men dried their eyes, and only Lila Van Dorn and Kenyon Adams, holding hands under the table, really knew what it was all about.