The next hour was one Eleanor never forgot. She and Quin, confident of the success of their conspiracy, were also jubilant over what they regarded as Mr. Ranny's possible emanc.i.p.ation. They already saw him a reformed character, a prosperous and contented farmer, no longer a menace to the peace of the family. So elated were they that, instead of going to the road, they explored the woods, and ended by racing down the hill like a couple of irresponsible children.

When they at last got back to the car, Eleanor, disheveled and limp, sank on the running-board and laughingly made room for Quin beside her. She had quite forgotten to be grown up and temperamental, a fact that Quin was prompt to take advantage of.

"See here!" he said. "Am I going to get a commission for all this?"

"How much do you want?"

"I want a lot!" he threatened.

He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, tracing figures in the sand with his shoe. Eleanor noticed the nice way his hair grew on the back of his neck and the white skin that met the clear brown skin at the collar-line. In spite of his bigness and his strength, he seemed very young and defenseless when it came to his dealings with girls.

It was useless to deny that she knew what he wanted. His eyes had been saying it persistently each time they had met hers for three months. They had whispered it after that first dance at the Hawaiian Garden; they had murmured it through the hospital days; they had shouted it this afternoon at Uncle Ranny's, so loud that she thought every one must surely hear.

But when a young lady is engaged in the exciting business of playing with fire she doesn't always heed even a shouted warning. As long as she was very careful, she told herself, and snuffed out every blaze that threatened to become unmanageable, no damage would be done. The present moment was one requiring snuffers.

"We can't begin to pay you what we owe you," she said in her most conventional tone. "If things go as we hope they will, it will mean everything to Uncle Ranny as well as to Papa Claude."

"I didn't do it for them only," Quin blurted out. "I didn't want you to borrow money from Captain Phipps."

The temptation to encourage this special spark was not to be resisted.

"You don't love Mr. Phipps very much, do you?" she said.

"No; do you?"

"Well, I _like_ him. He is one of my very best friends."

"Am I?" demanded Quin with terrible directness.

It was Eleanor's turn to trace patterns in the sand.

"Well, you see----" she began.

"No, I don't." Quin rose indignantly. "There's n.o.body in the world that would do any more for you than I would. I may be chasing the kite in thinking that you _want_ me to do anything, but if you'll just let me under the ribbon, you bet your life I'll give Phipps and the rest of the talent a run for their money!"

He stood staring hard down the road for a moment, while she sat in embarra.s.sed silence; then he broke forth again:

"I know you don't want me to say these things. I know every time you head me off. But if you'll just let me get it off my chest this once, then I promise to keep the cork in if it busts the bottle!"

Eleanor laughed in spite of herself.

"All right," she said; "I'll listen."

"Well," said Quin, "it's this way. I know you don't care a tinker's d.a.m.n for me in the way I care for you. But you can't deny that you do like me some. You wouldn't talk to me like you do and let me do things for you if you didn't. What I want you to promise is that whenever you need a friend--a _best_ friend, mind you--you will come straight to me."

He looked worth coming to as he stood there, big and strong and earnest; and Eleanor, being young and a woman, promptly forgot her good resolutions not to encourage him, and rose impulsively and held out her hand.

"I do promise, Quin," she said, "and I thank you with all my heart."

Then a curious and unexpected thing happened to her. As she stood there on the lonely country road with her hand in his, a curious, deep, still feeling crept over her, a queer sensation of complete satisfaction that she never remembered to have felt before. For a long moment she stood there, her cheek almost touching that outrageous plaid tie that had so recently excited her derision. Then she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away. "Look out!" she warned. "They are coming."

Two minutes later Mr. and Mrs. Ranny, emerging from the thicket with their hands full of wild flowers, found Eleanor seated in the car in a bored att.i.tude, while Quin solicitously examined a rear tire.

"It's all settled!" Mr. Ranny cried exultingly. "The farm is ours!"

CHAPTER 17

Although Quin had taken himself and his career seriously before Eleanor's home-coming, it was nothing in comparison to the fever of energy that possessed him after her departure. He was determined to forge ahead in business, get an education, and become versed in the gentler branches of social life at the earliest possible moment. His chief trouble was that the days contained only twenty-four hours. Even his dreams were a jumble of plows and personal p.r.o.nouns, of mathematical problems and social proprieties.

At the factory he flung himself into the affairs of the firm with a zeal that at times bordered on officiousness. But Mr. Bangs was beginning to find him useful, and, while he continued to snub him and correct him, he also came to depend upon him, especially in an emergency. Quin, on his part, was for the first time turning a critical eye on his own achievements in relation to those of bigger and abler men, and the result was chastening.

As for his mad thirst for knowledge, even the university cla.s.ses, difficult as they were proving, failed to satisfy him. He purchased an expensive "system" in fifteen volumes, by means of which, the prospectus a.s.sured him, he could easily achieve a college education in eight months.

He wore the covers off the first two booklets, then became disgusted, and devoted himself instead to a small handbook ent.i.tled "Words We Misp.r.o.nounce."

The branch of his education in which he was making least effort and most progress was in the customs and manners of polite society. He did not shine as yet, but he had ceased to offend, and that was a long step forward. Once initiated into the refinements of life, he took to them naturally. Miss Isobel and Miss Enid Bartlett had given him the cue, and Mr. Chester was keeping him up to his standard.

Between him and the latter had sprung up a queer friendship verging on intimacy. Ever since the night of the symphony concert he had served as a connecting link between the long-severed lovers, and out of grat.i.tude he had been adopted as a protege. It was Mr. Chester who a.s.sumed responsibility not only for his musical and literary tastes but for his neckties and hosiery as well. Mr. Chester, in fact, being too negative and conservative, acted as a much-needed soft pedal on Quin's noisy aggressiveness. "Not so loud, Quinby," or, "A little more gently, my boy," he would often say. And Quin would acquiesce good-naturedly and even gratefully. "That's right, call me down," he would say; "I guess I'll learn before I die."

In all that he did and said and thought, one object was paramount. He never lost sight of the fact that he was making himself over for Eleanor, and the prize at stake was so colossal that no obstacles deterred him. To be sure, this was not by any means his first amatory venture. As Rose Martel had said, he "had a way with him"--a way that had kept him involved in affairs of the heart since the early days in Nanking when he had succ.u.mbed to the charms of a slant-eyed little Celestial at the tender age of seven. He had always had a girl, just as he had always had a job; but both had varied with time and place. With a vocabulary of a dozen words and the sign language, he had managed to flirt across France and back again. He had frivoled with half a dozen trained nurses in as many different hospitals, and had even had a sentimental round with a pretty young stewardess on the transport coming home.

But this affair had been quite different. Instead of wading about in the shallows of love, he had tumbled in head first, and found himself beyond his depth and out of sight of land. It was a case of sink or swim, and Quin was determined not to sink if he could help himself.

The fact that Eleanor Bartlett was not of his world, that she apparently never gave him a second thought, that he had less than nothing on which to build his hopes, only made him take a deeper breath and a longer stroke.

The first gleam of encouragement he had received was that Sunday in the country, when for the fraction of a second she had let him hold her hand.

Since then he had written her five letters and received but one brief note in reply. Her silence, however, did not depress him. She had told him she hated to write letters, a sentiment he fully shared. Only in this case he could not help himself. The moment anything of interest happened, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to tell Eleanor. He would rush home from the university at night, go up to his room, and, using the corner of his bureau for a desk, cover pages of lined tablet paper with a detailed account of the day's adventures. When every doubtful word has to be looked up in the dictionary, and newly acquired knowledge concerning participles and personal p.r.o.nouns duly applied, letter-writing is a serious business. Sometimes a page was copied three times before it met with the critical approval of the composer.

Since the pa.s.sing of the acute financial crisis in the Mattel family, Papa Claude had revived amazingly, and was once more wearing a rose in his b.u.t.tonhole and courting the Muse. He and Harold Phipps spent several afternoons a week working on their play, which they hoped to get fully blocked out before the latter left the service and returned to his home in Chicago.

But, even though the sale of the farm had relieved the financial strain, some other trouble was brewing in the family, the cause of which Quin could not make out. The usually sunny atmosphere was disturbed by frequent electric storms between Ca.s.s and Rose, marked by stern disapproval on his part and fiery rebellion on hers. "Rose is going to get herself into trouble!" Ca.s.s predicted darkly to Quin; while Rose, on her part, declared that Ca.s.s should shave his head and enter a monastery.

"What are you two ragging about, anyhow?" Quin asked one morning at breakfast, when things were worse than usual.

"Rose knows what I'm talking about," said Ca.s.s significantly. "Somebody's going to get his face pushed in if things keep on like they are going."

Absorption in his own affairs alone prevented Quin from taking an immediate hand in this new family complication. It was not until late in May that he hit upon the truth, quite by accident.

Coming home rather later than usual one night, he stumbled over Ca.s.s sitting hunched up on the dark stairway, looking in his striped pajamas like an escaped convict.

"What in the devil are you up to?" Quin demanded, rubbing a bruised shin.

"I am waiting for Rose," said Ca.s.s grimly. "Some fellow comes by here every few nights and takes her out in a machine."

"Who is he?"