"What's the sense of any rules to any game on earth?" I retorted. "If I hadn't learned to respect rules--if I hadn't learned to be thankful for what the game allows me, however little it may be--" I paused, for the water was deeper than I had thought.

"Well?"

"Well--well _then_--I shouldn't be as thankful as I am this instant for--for many things that I can't have more of."

She straightened herself and favored me with a curious look that melted at last into a puzzling smile.

"I don't understand you," she said. With a shade more of encouragement in her voice I had been near to forgetting my honor as a truce-observing enemy. I was grateful, indeed, afterwards, that her wish to understand me was not sufficiently implied to bring me thus low.

"Neither do I understand the morbid psychology that finds satisfaction in cheating at solitaire," I succeeded in saying. "I never can see how they fix it up with themselves."

"I believe you think and talk a great deal of foolishness," said Miss Kate, in tones of reproof; and with this she was off the porch before I could rise.

She wore pink, with bits of blue spotting it in no systematic order that I could discern, and a pink rose lay abashed in her hair.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ABDICATION OF THE BOSS

There is no need to conceal that I was by this time put to it for matters to think upon not clearly related to myself; in other words for matters extraneous to my neighbor's troublesome daughter. In sheer self-defence was I driven to look abroad for interests that would suffice without disquieting me. I was now compelled to admit that there was plainly to be observed in Miss Kate Lansdale something more than a mere winning faith in my powers of self-control. It was difficult at first to suspect that she actually meant to try me to the breaking point. The suspicion brought a false note to that harmony of chastened grief wherein, I had divined, she meant to live out her life. It seemed too Peavey and perverse a thing that she should, finding our truce honorably observed by myself, behave toward me as if with a cold design to bring me down in disgrace--as a proof of her superior powers and my own wretched weakness. Yet this very thing was I obliged regretfully to concede of her before many days. And it was behavior that I could palliate only by reminding myself constantly that she was not only a woman but the daughter of Miss Caroline, and by that token subject inevitably to certain infirmities of character. And still did she at times evince for me that shyness which only enhanced my peril.

I managed to refrain, though in so grievous a plight, from wishing for another war; though I did concede that if we must ever again be cursed with war, it might as well come now as later. Regrettable though I must consider it, I should there find, spite of my disability, some field of active endeavor to engage my mind.

Lacking war, I sought distraction in a matter close at hand--one which possessed quite all the vivacity of war without its violence.

Early in the summer Mrs. Aurelia Potts had resumed her activities in behalf of our broader culture, whereupon our people murmured promptly at Solon Denney; for him did Little Arcady still hold to account for the infliction of this relentless evangel.

It was known that something still remained to Mrs. Potts, even after a year, of the pittance secured from the railway company, so that it was not necessity which drove her. To a considerable element of the town it seemed to be mere innate perversity. "It's _in_ her," was an explanation which Westley Keyts thought all-sufficient, though he added by way, as it were, of putting this into raised letters for the blind, "she'd have to raise h.e.l.l just the same if it had cost that there railroad eight million 'stead of eight hundred to exterminate Potts!"

For myself, I should have set this thing to different words. I regarded Mrs. Potts as a zealot whom no advantage of worldly resource could blind to our shortcomings, nor deter from ministering unto them. Had it been unnecessary to earn bread for herself and little Roscoe, I am persuaded that she would still have been unremitting in her efforts to uplift us.

In that event she might, it is true, have read us more papers and sold us fewer books; but she would have allowed herself as little leisure.

That Little Arcady was unequal to this broader view, however, was to be inferred from comments made in the hearing of and often, in truth, meant for the ears of Solon Denney. The burden was shifted to his poor shoulders with as little concern as if our best citizens had not cooperated with him in the original move, with grateful applause for its ingenious and fanciful daring. In ways devoid of his own vaunted subtlety, it was conveyed to Solon that Little Arcady expected him to do something. This was after the town had been cleanly canva.s.sed for two monthly magazines--one of which had a dress-pattern in each number, to be cut out on the dotted line--and after our heroine had gallantly returned to the charge with a rather heavy "Handbook of Science for the Home,"--a book costing two dollars and fifty cents and treating of many matters, such as, how to conduct electrical experiments in a drawing-room, how to cleanse linen of ink-stains, how the world was made, who invented gun-powder, and how to restore the drowned. I recite these from memory, not having at hand either of my own two copies of this valuable work. Upon myself Mrs. Potts was never to call in vain, for to me she was an important card miraculously shuffled into the right place in the game. It was the custom of Miss Caroline, also, to sign gladly for whatsoever Mrs. Potts signified would be to her advantage.

She gave the "Handbook of Science" to Clem, who, being strongly moved by any group of figures over six, rejoiced pa.s.sionately to read the weight of the earth in net tons, and to dwell upon those vastly extensive distances affected by astronomers.

But abroad in the town there was not enough of this complaisance nor of this pa.s.sion for mere numerals to prevent worry from creasing the brow of Solon Denney.

"The good G.o.d helped him once, but it looks like he'd have to help himself now," said Uncle Billy McCormick, the day he refused to subscribe for an improving book on the ground that the clock-shelf wouldn't hold another one. And this view of the situation came also to be the desperate view of Solon himself. That he suffered a black hour each week when Mrs. Potts read the _Argus_ to him with corrections to make it square with "One Hundred Common Errors" and with good taste, in no way lessened the feeling against him. If he sustained an injury peculiar to his calling, it seemed probable that he would the sooner be moved to action. Little Arcady did not know what he could do, but it had faith that he would do something if he were pushed hard enough. So the good people pushed and trusted and pushed.

To those brutal enough to seek direct speech about it with Solon, he professed to be awaiting only the right opportunity for a brilliant stroke, and he counselled patience.

To me alone, I think, did he confide his utter lack of inspiration. And yet, though he seemed to affect entire candor with me, I was, strangely enough, puzzled by some reserve that still lurked beneath his manner. I hoped this meant that he was slowly finding a way too good to be told as yet, even to his best friend.

"Something must be done, Cal," he said, on one occasion, "but you see, here's the trouble--she's a woman and I'm a man."

"That's a famous old trouble," I remarked.

"And she's _got_ to live, though Wes' Keyts says he isn't so sure of that--he says I'm lucky enough to have an earthquake made up especially for this case--and if she lives, she must have ways and means. And then I have my own troubles. Say, I never knew I was so careless about my language until she came along. She says only an iron will can correct it. Did you ever notice how she says 'i--ron' the way people say it when they're reading poetry out loud? I'll bet, if he had her help, the author of 'One Hundred Common Errors' could take an _Argus_ and run his list up to a hundred and fifty in no time. She keeps finding common errors there that I'll bet this fellow never heard of. You mustn't say 'by the sweat of the brow,' but 'by the perspiration'--perspiration is refined and sweat is coa.r.s.e--and to-day I learned for the first time that it's wrong to say 'Mrs. Henry Peterby of Plum Creek, _nee_ Jennie McCormick, spent Sunday with her parents of this city.' It looks right on the face of it, but it seems you mustn't say 'nee' for the first name--only the last; though it means in French that that was her name before she was married. I tell you, that woman is a stickler. But what can I do?"

"Well, what _can_ you do? Far be it from me to suggest that something must be done."

"Do you know, Cal, sometimes I've thought I'd adopt a tone with her?"

"Better be careful," I cautioned. Mrs. Potts was not a person that one should adopt a tone with except after long and prayerful deliberation.

"Oh, I've considered it long enough--in fact I've considered a lot of things. That woman has bothered me in more ways than one, I tell you frankly. She's such a fine woman, splendid-looking, capable, an intellectual giant--one, I may say, who makes no common errors--and yet--"

"Ah! and yet--?" There was then in Solon's eyes that curious reserve I had before noted--a reserve that hinted of some desperate but still secret design.

"Well, there you are."

"Where?"

"Well--she seems to me to be a born leader of men."

"I see, and you?"

"Oh, nothing--only I'm a man. But something has got to be done. We must use common sense in these matters."

It was early evening a week later when I again saw Solon; one of those still, serene evenings of later summer when the light would yet permit an hour's play at the game. I heard a step, but it was not she I longed, half-expected, and wholly dreaded to see. Instead came Solon, and by his restored confidence of bearing I knew at a glance that something had been done or--since he seemed to be hurried--that he was about to do it.

"It's all over, Cal--it's fixed!"

"Good--how did you fix it?"

"Well--uh--I adopted a tone."

"That was brave, Solon. No other man on G.o.d's earth would have dared--"

"A tone, I was about to say--" he broke in a little uncomfortably, I thought--"which I have long contemplated adopting. If I could tell you just how that woman has impressed herself upon me, you'd understand what I mean when I say that she has _powers_. But I suppose you can't understand it, can you?" His tone, curiously enough, was almost pleading.

"It isn't necessary that I should. I can at least understand that you are the Boss of Little Arcady once more."

"Boss of nothing!--that's all over. Cal, I've abdicated--I'm not even Boss of myself."

"Why, Solon--you can't possibly mean--"

"I do, though! Mrs. Potts is going to marry me and--uh--put an end to everything!"

With this rather curious finish he held out his hand expectantly.

"Well, you certainly _did_ something, Solon."

"We have to use common sense in these matters," he said with an effort to control his excitement. But, looking into his eyes, I saw reason to shake him warmly by the hand. What was my own poor opinion at a crisis like this? Certainly nothing to be obtruded upon my friend. It was clear that he had done a thing which he earnestly wanted and had earnestly dreaded to do--and that the dread was past.