"Never late in New York," said he, and then rising uncertainly to his feet, he pointed a warning finger. "Or you may call it Nature. Perhaps's Nature's a better word. Nature. Beautiful nature. Trees and things.

Birds mating in--in May. Mustn't go 'gainst beautiful nature, Jim."

"Come on," said Stainton.

But in the street, Holt flung his arms about his unwilling companion's neck.

"I'm--I'm fond of you, Jim," he said. "You save' my life 'n'--an' G.o.d knows I love you." Easy tears were running down his puffed cheeks.

"Only you _are_ old, Jim. You know you are."

Stainton disguised his disgust. He disengaged himself gently.

"No, I'm young, George," he said, "and young blood will have its way, you know."

Holt faced him, swaying on the curb.

"So you really mean--mean to do--to do----? You know what I mean?"

"If she will have me, I do," said Stainton, for the third time that night: "I intend to marry her."

IV

THE APPLE OF THEIR EYE

Mrs. Preston Newberry had risen to the distinction of that name several months before Stainton, as a young Harvard undergraduate, came to know and love her sister. Very likely she had never heard of Jim until his triumphal march to New York, and certainly, if she had ever heard of him, she had long ago forgotten his name. Her early married life had completely occupied itself in an endeavour to live up to her new t.i.tle, and, since this effort was not crowned with a success so secure as to dispense with the necessity of careful watching (for eternal vigilance is the price of more things than liberty), her present existence was sufficiently employed to make her regard the care of her niece with resignation rather than with joy.

Muriel's father had not survived his wife beyond a decade. In that period he managed to spend all the money that the previous portion of his mature career had been devoted to acquiring, and Muriel's grandparents on both sides had long since pa.s.sed to the sphere of celestial compensations; the girl had, therefore, in some measure, been forced upon her aunt. A timid little girl with long dark hair that nearly concealed her face, she was brought to New York.

"And now," Mrs. Newberry had remarked to her husband, "the question is: what are we to do with her?"

It may be that she had entertained from her early reading of the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward a vague hope that Preston would propose to make Muriel the child-light of their otherwise now definitely childless home.

If, however, such an expectation had formed, it was speedily shattered: Preston, like many another husband, inclined to the opinion that one member of his wife's family was enough in his house. He expressed this opinion in his usual manner: briefly, but not directly.

"How the h.e.l.l do I know?" he asked.

When Ethel--Ethel was really the stout Mrs. Newberry's Christian name--when Ethel had evinced a disposition to discuss in further detail the question of Muriel's future, Newberry had done what he usually did when Ethel began any discussion: he recalled an engagement at one of the three of New York's most difficult clubs.

It was a procedure that seldom failed. He disliked deciding anything, even where his own pleasures were involved; and so, he was accustomed to presenting the problem to his wife much as he presented her with an allowance, recalling an engagement at one of the clubs, going out and not returning until he was sure that Ethel had gone to bed "to sleep on it." In this way, even when the subject proved a hard mattress, Preston's couch remained downy, and Ethel would meet him, over the breakfast eggcups, with the riddle solved.

In the instance of the disposal of Muriel, the matter proceeded as always. Mrs. Newberry came downstairs next morning in her newest and pinkest kimono, an embroidered importation from j.a.pan, whose wing-like sleeves showed plumper arms and wrists than such a garment is made to display. Though her eyes were red, she smiled.

"You won't mind paying the child's school bills?" she quavered.

"Not if the school's far enough away," said Preston.

"I had thought----" began his wife.

"Because," said Preston, "it would be wrong to the girl to bring her up at one of these New York finishing-schools. They inculcate extravagant ideals; they're full of a lot of the little children of the rich, and Muriel might acquire there a notion that she was to inherit some of my money--which she isn't."

Ethel Newberry considered this hint final. She dropped at once to the last of the dozen inst.i.tutions of instruction that she had made into a mental list, and Muriel was sent to a convent school.

"Though we are not Catholics," said Mrs. Newberry.

"Excellent discipline," said Preston. "Is it far away?"

"Nearly in Philadelphia."

"Oh, well, at holiday time----"

"She can"--Ethel brightened--"she can come----"

"Yes, she can have you come to see her," said Preston.

Muriel pa.s.sed eight years at this school. So long as Mrs. Newberry's conscience was able to conquer her desires, the young pupil's aunt would run over to Philadelphia for the short vacations; the long ones were, as often as could be arranged, spent by Muriel, by invitation, at the home of one or another of her cla.s.smates. Now, however, the girl had graduated and had remained as a post-graduate as long as the curriculum permitted.

"She'll have to come out," said Mrs. Newberry.

"Of the school," asked Preston, "or into society?"

"Both. The one entails the other."

"What's the hurry?"

"Good heavens, Preston; if she stays there much longer she'll become a nun!"

"Suppose she does?" asked Newberry, who was a Presbyterian. "I'm surprised to hear you refer to a pious life as if it were a smash-up."

Nevertheless, in the end, he agreed that Muriel should pa.s.s the present winter under his hospitable roof ("Though, further than that," he mentally vowed, "I'll be d.a.m.ned if I endure"). So, Muriel had, without too much effort on her guardians' part, been taken about with them on numerous occasions lately, most recently to the Metropolitan, where Stainton had met her.

It was on the morning after this meeting that, with commendable promptness, but at a deplorably early hour--to be exact, at eleven o'clock--Stainton called at the Newberrys'. His card was presented to Mrs. Newberry through the crack of the door while that good lady was in her bath.

Ethel, who was big, blonde, and bovine, struggled into the nearest dressing-gown and hurried to the breakfast-room, where her husband, over a newspaper, was engaged in his matutinal occupation of scolding the coffee. Her face a tragic mask, Mrs. Newberry placed the offending pasteboard by Preston's plate.

"Preston," said she. "Look at that. _Look_ at it!"

Newberry appeared shorter and thinner than ever as he sat crumpled over the newspaper, his grey moustache short and thin and his head covered by grey hair, short and thin and worn in a bang. He obeyed his wife's request. He expressed no surprise.

"Looks like somebody's card," he said.

"It is, Preston," wailed his wife. "It is that awful western person's that George Holt would drag to our box--_our_ box--last night."

"My dear," said Newberry, "Mr.--er--what's his name?--oh, ah: Stainton;--yes--Mr. Stainton appears to be a man of means. Concerning the rich nothing except good."

"But his card, Preston; his card!"