The girls told him why it was they were so anxious to know more of Alson's private affairs.

"I would like to prove that your Aunt Sue and I are right, you know," said Mary.

"Well," said Will, turning to his sister's guest, "don't let them prejudice you against Al. He is off the track just now, I know. The girls are not having much to do with him, but I have seen worse than he is." Will went off whistling. The next day he was ready with his report.

"Girls," he began, "Mary wins in the argument about trifles, and as a result I am feeling pretty mean about the business. I guess I am the trifle in the case."

Both girls laughed as they glanced at his six feet of length, and his great, broad shoulders.

"O, it is no laughing matter," he said, good-naturedly. "This is the way it happened: Washington's birthday, you know, everything in town was closed, and I thought, as Al was living in a boarding-house, I would better ask mother if I might bring him home the night before, and have him spend the day here with us; we were going to have a kind of celebration anyway, you know. So about seven o'clock that evening, just before I started for the travel lecture, I ran up to mother's room. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she would not include Al in the number of her guests, when I noticed that she looked pretty blue. I know she whisked away a tear so I should not get sight of it. I pretended I didn't see it but I said, 'Got some troubles, little mother?'"

Helen knew in just what a hearty, cheerful way he said it.

"'Not very many, dear,' she said; but I didn't feel like bothering her about anything then, and decided it would do just as well to bring Al home the following Sat.u.r.day night and keep him over Sunday."

Will looked dubious.

"But it didn't do," he continued. "Having nothing to keep him busy that holiday, Al went off with a crowd he had always before refused to join--a pretty gay set, I am afraid. The man who had half promised him the position he had been slaving for during the past year happened to see him with those people, and the very next day he informed Al very curtly that, after due consideration, he found he had no place for him. Alson guessed why, and now he feels reckless, and says he might as well have the game as the name, might as well be really bad since he has to suffer anyway. He talked in a desperate sort of way this morning when he told me about it. Somehow I feel responsible for the whole thing, because I hesitated about asking mother."

Will looked thoughtfully across at the girls, whose faces expressed real sympathy. Suddenly Helen exclaimed:--

"The night before Washington's birthday, you say?"

"Yes."

"Mother was nearly crying alone in her room?"

"Yes."

"About seven o'clock?"

"Yes. Is this a cross-examination?"

"Then," said Helen, sitting upright and paying no attention to her brother's question, "it's all my fault."

"How?"

"Bridget was out that evening, and I had to stay home from the lecture to put away the dinner things and I said I did not see why I always had to do such disagreeable things. I did not see why all our relations were rich, and why we had to be always scrimping and missing everything. Of course I repented in a little while and apologized. It made mother feel pretty bad, I knew, but I did not think she minded it as much as that, though."

"It was a pretty serious mix-up all around, wasn't it, sister?" Will spoke consolingly, but he looked worried.

"Well," came Mary's soothing tones, "you must not take all the blame, for probably there were a great many more 'little nothings' that had something to do with it. Al must take his share, too."

"Yes, perhaps," said Will; "but we have to take the blame that belongs to us."

Helen was aghast at the enormous result of her few minutes' irritability.

Such outbursts were not common with her. There was a catch in her voice as she said, "Poor Al!"

Mary went directly to the heart of the matter. "It is done," she said. "It is somebody's fault, of course, but what is to be done first to rectify it?"

"I don't know, I am sure," Helen answered, musingly. "I have not had a thought of anything but the garden picnic for the last two days, and I don't seem to have any idea but picnic in my head."

"O, good!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mary. The joy of the discoverer shone in her eyes.

"The picnic! That is just the thing. Ask him, of course."

Alson Jarvis had hidden the hurts of his schoolmates' recent slights under a nonchalant manner. Each one, while it cut deeply, seemed to aggravate him to greater wilfulness. Well bred as he was, took no real pleasure in the sports of the company of which he had made a part since the loss of the position he so desired, and for which he had worked so faithfully. He felt himself disgraced and barred from the old a.s.sociates; so, from pure discouragement, he continued with the new.

Helen Fairmont's note of invitation came as a surprise. It ran:--

"DEAR ALSON: I am inviting, for Aunt Sue, a number of my friends to meet Miss Mary Sutton, my guest from Amosville. We are to have a garden picnic Thursday evening. I think you will enjoy meeting Miss Sutton, as she has the same love for golf you have, and I have already told her of the scores you made last summer. Yours sincerely,

"HELEN FAIRMONT."

He read it with pleasure. Then the acc.u.mulated unkindnesses of his old friends came before him. A spirit of resentment took hold of him. No, they had shown how little they cared for him. Why should he go among them again?

There was plenty of other company he could enter. But why had she asked him if she did not want him? O, well, they were all alike anyway! Even if she had not already done so, Helen would pa.s.s him by sooner or later, like so many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught sight of the little note.

"Friendly enough," he said. "Sounds as honest and sincere as her brother."

Then he added: "I might give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. Yes, I will go, if for no other reason than that she is Will's sister."

He went. And he enjoyed himself thoroughly thanks partially to Mrs.

Armour's knowledge of human nature. Where others saw only weakness, she found smarting hurts. She felt that he was on dangerous ground, that he was ashamed of himself, and that his self-pride and self-respect needed propping, and she immediately proceeded to prop them.

Helen's grief over her own unsuspected part in his career resulted in an especial effort to make the picnic a pleasure and success for him. With that kindly compliance which is more common in those about us than we sometimes think, the other young people accepted the idea of Alson's being one of them again, and he found himself, before the termination of the evening, on almost his old footing with them.

"Wasn't it a success all round?" said Mary that night. "I congratulate you, Helen, on your ability to extend real hospitality. It was just lovely."

"They did seem to have a good time, didn't they? Al Jarvis was on my conscience all the evening. Do you think he enjoyed himself?"

"Yes, I do, Helen."

"After what I did it was such a little return to make."

Simultaneously the girls laughed.

"Trifles again! They keep bobbing up, don't they? I suppose this is one of those of little consequence."

"'Time will tell,'" sententiously quoted Mary.

Time did tell. Years afterward two successful lawyers sat in an office, one congratulating the other on his brilliant speech of the day.

"It might never have been, Will," said Alson Jarvis, "if your aunt hadn't somehow, without a single definite word on the subject, shown me the broken road down which I had about decided to travel through It was at a party she had in her grounds one night long ago for your sister and Mary Sutton. Do you remember it?"

Did he? Will's heart glowed with pleasure and grat.i.tude as he thought of the great result of Mary's little suggestion about inviting Al. How unlike this was the outcome of that miserable trifle which had played so important a part in the lawyer's experience.--_Elisabeth Golden, in the Wellspring_.

Finish Thy Work