Apparently Lolita had no consciousness whatever of Laura's presence. Instead of replying, she tightened her grasp upon Hedrick and warmly reiterated her request.

"Shut up, you parrot!" hissed the goaded boy.

"Perhaps she'll go if you let her walk with her arms round your neck," suggested Laura.

"If I _what_?"

"Let's try it. We've got to get her home; her mother must be frantic about her. Come, let's see if she'll go with us that way."

With convincing earnestness, Hedrick refused to make the experiment until Laura suggested that he remain with Lolita while she summoned a.s.sistance; then, as no alternative appeared, his spirit broke utterly, and he consented to the trial, stipulating with a last burst of vehemence that the progress of the unthinkable pageant should be through the alley.

"Come, Lolita," said Laura coaxingly. "We're going for a nice walk." At the adjective, Hedrick's burdened shoulders were racked with a brief spasm, which recurred as his sister added: "Your darling little boy will let you keep hold of him."

Lolita seemed content. Laughing gayly, she offered no opposition, but, maintaining her embrace with both arms and walking somewhat sidewise, went willingly enough; and the three slowly crossed the yard, pa.s.sed through the empty stable and out into the alley. When they reached the cross-street at the alley's upper end, Hedrick balked flatly.

Laura expostulated, then entreated. Hedrick refused with sincere loathing to be seen upon the street occupying his present position in the group. Laura a.s.sured him that there was no one to see; he replied that the moon was bright and the evening early; he would die, and readily, but he would not set foot in the street.

Unfortunately, he had selected an unfavourable spot for argument: they were already within a yard or two of the street; and a strange boy, pa.s.sing, stopped and observed, and whistled discourteously.

"Ain't he the spooner!" remarked this unknown with hideous admiration.

"I'll thank you," returned Hedrick haughtily, "to go on about your own business."

"Kiss me some more, darling little boy!" said Lolita.

The strange boy squawked, wailed, screamed with laughter, howled the loving pet.i.tion in a dozen keys of mockery, while Hedrick writhed and Lolita clung. Enriched by a new and great experience, the torturer trotted on, leaving viperish cachinnations in his wake.

But the martyrdom was at an end. A woman, hurrying past, bareheaded, was greeted by a cry of delight from Lolita, who released Hedrick and ran to her with outstretched arms.

"We were bringing her home, Mrs. Martin," said Laura, rea.s.suringly. "She's all right; nothing's the matter except that her dress got torn. We found her playing in our yard."

"I thank you a thousand times, Miss Madison," cried Lolita's mother, and flutteringly plunged into a description of her anxiety, her search for Lolita, and concluded with renewed expressions of grat.i.tude for the child's safe return, an outpouring of thankfulness and joy wholly incomprehensible to Hedrick.

"Not at all," said Laura cheerfully. "Come, Hedrick. We'll go home by the street, I think." She touched his shoulder, and he went with her in stunned obedience. He was not able to face the incredible thing that had happened to him: he walked in a trance of horror.

"Poor little girl!" said Laura gently, with what seemed to her brother an indefensibly misplaced compa.s.sion. "Usually they have her live in an inst.i.tution for people afflicted as she is, but they brought her home for a visit last week, I believe. Of course you didn't understand, but I think you should have been more thoughtful. Really, you shouldn't have flirted with her."

Hedrick stopped short.

"'_Flirted_'!" His voice was beginning to show symptoms of changing, this year; it rose to a falsetto wail, flickered and went out.

With the departure of Lolita in safety, what had seemed bizarre and piteous became obscured, and another aspect of the adventure was presented to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had ever been a master. She began to shake; a convulsion took her, and suddenly she sat upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed as he had never seen her.

A horrid distrust of her rose within him: he began to realize in what plight he stood, what terrors o'erhung.

"Look here," he said miserably, "are you--you aren't--you don't have to go and--and _talk_ about this, do you?"

"No, Hedrick," she responded, rising and controlling herself somewhat. "Not so long as you're good."

This was no rea.s.suring answer.

"And politer to Cora," she added.

Seemingly he heard the lash of a slave-whip crack in the air. The future grew dark.

"I know you'll try"--she said; and the unhappy lad felt that her a.s.surance was justified; but she had not concluded the sentence--"darling little boy," she capped it, choking slightly.

"No other little girl ever fell in love with you, did there, Hedrick?" she asked, and, receiving an incoherent but furious reply, she was again overcome, so that she must lean against the fence to recover. "It seems--so--so _curious_," she explained, gasping, "that the first one--the--the only one--should be an--a--an----" She was unable to continue.

Hedrick's distrust became painfully increased: he began to feel that he disliked Laura.

She was still wiping her eyes and subject to recurrent outbursts when they reached their own abode; and as he bitterly flung himself into a chair upon the vacant front porch, he heard her stifling an attack as she mounted the stairs to her own room. He swung the chair about, with its back to the street, and sat facing the wall. He saw nothing. There are profundities in the abyss which reveal no glimpse of the sky.

Presently he heard his father coughing near by; and the sound was hateful, because it seemed secure and unshamed. It was a cough of moral superiority; and just then the son would have liked to believe that his parent's boyhood had been one of degradation as complete as his own; but no one with this comfortable cough could ever have plumbed such depths: his imagination refused the picture he was bitterly certain that Mr. Madison had never kissed an idiot.

Hedrick had a dread that his father might speak to him; he was in no condition for light conversation. But Mr. Madison was unaware of his son's near presence, and continued upon his purposeless way. He was smoking his one nightly cigar and enjoying the moonlight. He drifted out toward the sidewalk and was accosted by a pa.s.sing acquaintance, a comfortable burgess of sixty, leading a child of six or seven, by the hand.

"Out taking the air, are you, Mr. Madison?" said the pedestrian, pausing.

"Yes; just trying to cool off," returned the other. "How are you, Pryor, anyway? I haven't seen you for a long time."

"Not since last summer," said Pryor. "I only get here once or twice a year, to see my married daughter. I always try to spend August with her if I can. She's still living in that little house, over on the next street, I bought for her through your real-estate company. I suppose you're still in the same business?"

"Yes. Pretty slack, these days."

"I suppose so, I suppose so," responded Mr. Pryor, nodding.

"Summer, I suppose it usually is. Well, I don't know when I'll be going out on the road again myself. Business is pretty slack all over the country this year."

"Let's see--I've forgotten," said Madison ruminatively. "You travel, don't you?"

"For a New York house," affirmed Mr. Pryor. He did not, however, mention his "line." "Yes-sir," he added, merely as a decoration, and then said briskly: "I see you have a fine family, Mr. Madison; yes-sir, a fine family; I've pa.s.sed here several times lately and I've noticed 'em: fine family. Let's see, you've got four, haven't you?"

"Three," said Madison. "Two girls and a boy."

"Well, sir, that's mighty nice," observed Mr. Pryor; "_mighty_ nice! I only have my one daughter, and of course me living in New York when I'm at home, and her here, why, I don't get to see much of her. You got both your daughters living with you, haven't you?"

"Yes, right here at home."

"Let's see: neither of 'em's married, I believe?"

"No; not yet."

"Seems to me now," said Pryor, taking off his gla.s.ses and wiping them, "seems to me I did hear somebody say one of 'em was going to be married engaged, maybe."

"No," said Madison. "Not that I know of."

"Well, I suppose you'd be the first to know! Yes-sir." And both men laughed their appreciation of this folly. "They're mighty good-looking girls, _that's_ certain," continued Mr. Pryor. "And one of 'em's as fine a dresser as you'll meet this side the Rue de la Paix."

"You mean in Paris?" asked Madison, slightly surprised at this allusion. "You've been over there, Pryor?"