"On my two feet, you stupid Oliver," cried Miss Lavinia, shaking her curls at him. "Did you think somebody carried me?"

"No, I didn't; but that wouldn't be much to carry, Miss Midget." His pet name for her. "But which way did you come? I looked up and down every path and--"

"And went all the way round by Sue Clayton's to find me, didn't you?

Oh, you can't throw dust in the Midget's eyes, you young rascal!" and she stretched up her two dainty hands; drew his face toward her, and kissed him on the lips.

"There--" and she patted his cheek--"now tell me all about it, you dear Ollie. What did you want to see me for?" she added with one of those quick divinations that made her so helpful a confidante. Then, in a lowered voice--"What has Sue done?"

"Nothing--not one thing. She isn't bothering her head about me. I only stopped there to leave a book, and--"

Mrs. Horn, with laughing, inquiring eyes, looked up from her chair at Miss Clendenning, and made a little doubting sound with her lips.

Black-eyed Sue Clayton, with her curls down her back, home from boarding-school for the Easter holidays, was Oliver's latest flame. His mother loved to tease him about his love-affairs; and always liked him to have a new one. She could see farther into his heart she thought when the face of some sweet girl lay mirrored in its depths.

Oliver heard the doubting sound his mother made, and, reaching over her chair, flung his arms about her neck and kissed her as if she had been a girl.

"Now, don't you laugh, you dear old motherkins," he cried, drawing her nearer to him until her face touched his. "Sue don't care a thing about me, and I did promise her the book, and I ran every step of the way to give it to her--didn't I, Uncle Nat?" he added, gayly, hoping to divert the topic. "You were behind the sun-dial when I pa.s.sed--don't you remember?" He shrank a little from the badinage.

The old musician heard the question, but only waved his flute behind him in answer. He did not even lift his head from beside Richard's at the score.

Oliver waited an instant, and getting no further reply, released his hold about his mother's neck, now that he had kissed her into silence, and turned to Miss Clendenning again.

"Come, Miss Lavinia--come into the library. I've something very important to talk to you about. Really, now; no nonsense about it!

You've plenty of time--old Max won't be here for an hour, he's always late, isn't he, mother?"

Miss Clendenning turned quietly, lifted her eyes in a martyr-like way toward Mrs. Horn, who shook her head playfully in answer, and with Oliver's arm about her entered the library. She could never refuse any one of the young people when they came to her with their secrets--most important and never-to-be-postponed secrets, of course, that could hardly wait the telling. Her little tea-room across the Square, with its red damask curtains, its shiny bra.s.s andirons, easy-chairs and lounges, was really more of a confessional than a boudoir. Many a sorrow had been drowned in the cups of tea that she had served with her own hand in egg-sh.e.l.l Spode cups, and many a young girl and youth who had entered its cosey interior with heavy hearts had left it with the sunshine of a new hope breaking through their tears. But then everybody knew the bigness of Miss Clendenning's sympathies. It was one of the things for which they loved her.

She, of course, knew what the boy wanted now. If it were not to talk about Sue Clayton it was sure to be about some one of the other girls.

The young people thought of nothing else but their love-affairs, and talked of nothing else, and the old people loved to live their youth over again in listening. It was one of the traditional customs of Kennedy Square.

Miss Clendenning settled herself in a corner of the carved haircloth sofa, touched her side-combs with her finger to see that they were in place, tucked a red cushion behind her back, crossed her two little feet on a low stool, the two toes peeping out like the heads of two mice, and taking Oliver's hand in hers said, in her sweet, coaxing voice:

"Now, you dear boy, it is Sue, isn't it?"

"No!"

"Not Sue? Who then?"

"Mr. Crocker."

"What Mr. Crocker?" She arched her eyebrows and looked at him in surprise. The name came as a shock. She knew of Mr. Crocker, of course, but she wanted Oliver to describe him. Surely, she thought, with a sudden sense of alarm, the boy has not fallen in love with the daughter of that shabby old man.

"Why, the landscape-painter--the one father knows. I have been taking drawing lessons of him and he says I've got a lot of talent and that all I want is practice. He says that if I begin now and draw from the cast three or four hours a day that by the end of the year I can begin in color; and then I can go to New York and study, and then to Paris."

The little lady scrutinized him from under her eyelids. The boy's enthusiasm always delighted her; she would often forget what he was talking about, so interested was she in following his gestures as he spoke.

"And what then?"

"Why then I can be a painter, of course. Isn't that a great deal better than sitting every day in Judge Ellicott's dingy office reading law-books? I hate the law!"

"And you love Mr. Crocker?"

"Yes, don't you?"

"I don't know him, Ollie. Tell me what he is like."

"Well, he isn't young any more. He's about father's age, but he's a splendid old man, and he's so poor! n.o.body buys his pictures, nor appreciates him, and, just think, he has to paint portraits and dogs and anything he can get to do. Don't you think that's a shame? n.o.body goes to see him but father and Uncle Nat and one or two others. They don't seem to think him a gentleman." He was putting the case so as to enlist all her sympathies at once.

"He has a daughter, hasn't he?" She was probing him quietly and without haste. Time enough for her sympathies to work when she got at the facts.

"Yes, but I don't like her very much, for I don't think she's very good to him." Miss Clendenning smothered a little sigh of relief; there was no danger; thank Heaven, in that direction! What, then, could he want, she thought to herself.

"And he's so different from anybody I ever met," Oliver continued. "He doesn't talk about horses and duck-shooting and politics, or music or cards like everyone you meet, except Daddy, but he talks about pictures and artists and great men. Just think, he was a young student in Dusseldorf for two years, and then he shouldered a knapsack and tramped all through Switzerland, painting as he went, and often paying for his lodgings with his sketches. Then he was in Paris for ever so long, and now he is here, where--"

"Where you tell me he is painting dogs for a living," interrupted Miss Clendenning. "Do you think, you young scapegrace, that this would be better than being a lawyer like Judge Ellicott?" and she turned upon him with one of her quick outbursts of mock indignation.

"But I'm not going to paint dogs," he replied, with some impatience. "I am going to paint women, like the Sir Peter Lely that Uncle John Tilghman has. Oh, she's a beauty! I took Mr. Crocker to see her the other day. It had just been brought in from the country, you know. You should have heard him go on. He says there's n.o.body who can paint a portrait like it nowadays. He raved about her. You know it is Uncle John Tilghman's grandmother when she was a girl." His voice suddenly dropped to a more serious tone as he imparted this last bit of information.

Miss Clendenning knew whose grandmother it was, and knew and loved every tone in the canvas. It had hung in the Tilghman Manor-House for years and was one of its most precious treasures, but she did not intend to stop and discuss it now.

"Mr. Crocker wants me to copy it just as soon as I draw a little better. Uncle John will let me, I know."

Miss Clendenning tapped her foot in a noiseless tattoo upon the stool, and for a time looked off into s.p.a.ce. She wanted to draw him out, to know from what depth this particular enthusiasm had sprung. She was accustomed to his exuberance of spirits, it was one of the many things she loved him for. If this new craze were but an idle fancy, and he had had many of them, it would wear itself out, and the longer they talked about it the better. If, however, it sprang from an inborn taste, and was the first indication of a hitherto undeveloped talent forcing itself to the surface, the situation was one demanding the greatest caution. Twigs like Oliver bent at the wrong time might never straighten out again.

"And why did you come to me about this, Ollie; why don't you talk to your father?"

"I have. He doesn't object. He says that Mr. Crocker is one of the rare men of the time, and that only inexperience among the people here prevents him from being appreciated. That's what he goes to see him for. It isn't father that worries me, it's mother. I know just whet she'll say. She's got her heart set on my studying law, and she won't listen to anything else. I wouldn't object to the law if I cared for it, but I don't. That's what makes it come so hard."

"And you want me to speak to your mother?"

"Yes, of course. That's just what I DO want you to do. n.o.body can help me but you," he cried with that coaxing manner which would have seemed effeminate until one looked at his well-built, muscular body and the firm lines about his mouth. "You tell her of all the painters you knew in London when you lived there, and of what they do and how they are looked up to, and that some of them are gentlemen and not idlers and loafers. Mother will listen to you, I know, and maybe then when I tell her it won't be such a shock to her. Do you know it is incomprehensible to me, all this contempt for people who don't do just the same things that their grandfathers did. And how do I know, too, that they are right about it all? It seems to me that when a man is born a gentleman and is a gentleman he can follow any occupation he pleases. Instead of his trade making him respectable he should make IT so." He spoke with a virility she had never suspected in him before, this boy whom she had held in her arms as a baby and who was still only the child to her.

"But, Ollie," she interrupted, in some surprise, "you must never forget that you are your father's son. No one is absolutely independent in this world; everyone has his family to consider." She was becoming not only interested now, but anxious. Mr. Crocker had evidently been teaching the boy something besides the way to use his pencil. Such democratic ideas were rare in Kennedy Square.

"Yes, I know what you mean." He had sprung from his seat now and was standing over her, she looking up into his face. "You mean that it is all right for me to go into old Mr. Wardell's counting-house because he sells coffee by the cargo, but that I can't take a situation in Griggson's grocery here on the corner because he sells coffee by the pound. You mean, too, that it is possible for a man to be a professor or president of a college and still be a gentleman, but if he teaches in the public school he is done for. You mean, too, that I could saw off a patient's leg and still be invited to Uncle Tilghman's house to dinner, but that if I pulled out one of his teeth I could only eat in his kitchen."

Miss Clendenning threw back her head and laughed until the combs in her side-curls needed refastening, but she did not interrupt him.

"I can't get this sort of thing into my head and I never will. And father doesn't believe in it any more than I do, and I don't think that mother would if it wasn't for a lot of old people who live around this square and who talk of nothing all day but their relations and think there's n.o.body worth knowing but themselves. Now, you've GOT to talk to mother; I won't take no for an answer," and he threw himself down beside her again. "Come, dear Midget, hold up your right hand and promise me now, before I let you go," he pleaded in his wheedling way that made him so lovable to his intimates, catching her two hands in his and holding them tight.

Of course she promised. Had she ever refused him anything? And Oliver, a boy again, now that his confessions were made, kissed her joyously on both cheeks and instantly forgetting his troubles as his habit was when prospects of relief had opened, he launched out into an account of a wonderful adventure Mr. Crocker once had in an old town in Italy, where he was locked up over-night in a convent by mistake; and how he had slept on his knapsack in the chapel, and what the magistrate had said to him the next day, and how he had to paint a portrait of that suspicious officer to prove he was a painter and a man of the best intentions. In his enthusiasm he not only acted the scene, but he imitated the gesture and dialect of the several parties to the escapade so perfectly that the little lady, in her delight over the story, quite forgot her anxiety and even the musicale itself, and only remembered the quartette when Malachi, bowing obsequiously before her, said:

"Dey's a-waitin' for you, Miss Lavinia. Mister Unger done come and Ma.r.s.e Richard say he can't wait a minute."

When she and Oliver entered the drawing-room the 'cellist was the centre of the group. He was stripping off the green baize cover from his instrument and at the same time was apologizing, in his broken English, for being so late. Richard was interrupting him with enthusiastic outbursts over the new score which still lay under the wax candles lighting the piano, and which he and Nathan, while waiting for the musician, had been silently practising in sundry bobs of their heads and rhythmic beatings of their hands.

"My dear Max," Richard continued, with a hand on the musician's shoulder, patting him in appreciation as he spoke, "we will forgive you anything. You have so exactly suited to the 'cello the opening theme.

And the flute pa.s.sages!--they are exquisitely introduced. We will let Miss Clendenning decide when she hears it--" and he turned Unger's head in the direction of the advancing lady. "Here she comes now; you, of course, know the fine quality of Miss Clendenning's ear."

Herr Unger placed his five fat fingers over his waist-baud, bowed as low to Miss Lavinia as his great girth would permit, and said: