He was a trifle afraid of Trudy and he did not know how best to advise her that her slips in speech and manners would be more easily remedied by setting her an example of the correct thing than by staying in Hanover and leading a cat-and-dog life, getting nowhere at all.

Trudy kissed him again. "Hurrah for the eternal frolic!" she said, adding: "But we'll know Beatrice and Steve socially, won't we?"

"Of course!" he said, in helpless concession.

His one-cylinder little brain had not yet reckoned with Trudy's determination to conquer the social arena. He knew he must have her to help him; his efforts with creditors were failing sadly of late.

Besides, he admired her tremendously; he felt like a rake and a deuce of a chap when they went out together, and he relied on her vivacity--Pep had been his pet name for her before he originated Babseley--to carry him through. It really would be quite an easy matter to live on nothing a year until something turned up. The graft from Beatrice was the open sesame, however, and the Gorgeous Girl would never suspect the truth.

"Keep right on working hard," Trudy said, fondly, as they kissed each other good-night. "I'll tell Mary to-morrow. I want to leave my big trunk here because we might want to stay here for a few days when we come back."

"Never!"--masterfully pointing his cane at the moon. "My wife is going to have her own apartment. One of father's friends has built several apartment houses and he'll be sure to let me in."

"Are we dreaming?" Trudy asked, thinking of how indebted she was to Beatrice O'Valley, yet how she envied and hated her.

"No, Babseley, I'll phone you to-morrow and come down. If you see me flying about in a machine don't be surprised; I'm to use their big car as much as I like. But it would be a little thick to have us seen together--just yet."

"I'll see that the whole social set gets a draft from me that will open their eyes," Trudy promised, loath to have him go.

"If old man Constantine knew I drew that money down!" Gay chuckled with delight. "When his favourite after-dinner story is to tell how Steve O'Valley lay on his stomach and watched goats for an education."

"I'd hate to have my finger between his teeth when he learns the truth," Trudy prompted.

She spent half the night taking inventory of her wardrobe, her debts, and her personal charms, practising airs and graces before her mirror and calculating how long the thousand would last them. All the world was before her, to Trudy's way of thinking. She would be Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d Vondeplosshe, and with Gay's name and her brain--well, to give Trudy's own sentiments, they would soon be able to carry the whole show in their grip and use the baggage cars to bring back the profits!

CHAPTER V

g.a.y.l.o.r.d's sudden marriage and departure for New York caused no small comment. In the Faithful family Mary and Luke stood against Mrs.

Faithful, who declared with meaning emphasis that some girls had more sense than others and it was better to marry and make a mistake the first time than to remain an old maid. With Trudy's style and high spirits she was going to carry g.a.y.l.o.r.d into the front ranks without any effort. Luke described the event by saying that a bad pair of disturbers had teamed for life, and relied upon Mary to take up the burden of the proof.

"Don't mourn so, mother. I'm a happy old maid," she insisted when the comments grew too numerous for her peace of mind. "Trudy was not the sort to blush unseen, and it's a relief not to have to cover up her mistakes at the office. Everything will be serene once more. As for Gay's future--I suppose he is likely to bring home anything from a mousetrap to a diamond tiara. I don't pretend to understand his ways."

"Of course it isn't like Mrs. O'Valley's wedding," her mother resumed, with a resonant sniffle. "You have been so used to hearing about her ways that poor little Trudy seems cheap. Perhaps your mother and brother and the little home seem so, too. But we can't all be Gorgeous Girls, and I think Trudy was right to take g.a.y.l.o.r.d when he had the money for a ring and a license."

"He had more than that," Mary ruminated. "People don't walk to New York."

"Did he win it on a horse race?" Luke had an eye to the future.

"Maybe his father's friends helped him," Mrs. Faithful added.

"Can't prove anything by me." Mary shook her head.

Neither Trudy nor g.a.y.l.o.r.d knew that all Beatrice's bills were sent to Mary to discount, and Mary, not without a certain shrewdness, had her own ideas on the matter. But it amused more than it annoyed her. Gay might as well have a few hundred to spend in getting a wife and caretaker as tradesmen whose weakness it was to swell their profits beyond all respectability.

"I wonder where they will live." Mrs. Faithful found the subject entirely too fascinating to let alone.

"Not here," her daughter a.s.sured her. "And if you'd only say yes I could get such a sunny, pretty flat where the work would be worlds easier."

"Leave my home? Never! It would be like uprooting an oak forest. Time for that when I am dead and gone." The double chin quivered with indignation. "I don't see why Trudy and Gay won't come here and take the two front rooms. They'd be company for me."

She approved of Trudy's views of life as much as she disapproved and was rather afraid of this young woman who wanted to bustle her into trim house dresses instead of the eternal wrappers.

"I kept Trudy only because she needed work--and a home," Mary said, frankly; "and because you wanted her. But my salary does nicely for us. Besides, it would be a bad influence for Luke to have such a person as Gay about. We must make a man out of Luke."

"Don't go upsetting him. He eats his three good meals a day and always acts like a little gentleman. You'll nag at him until he runs away like my brother Amos did."

"Better run away from us than run over us," Mary argued; "but there is no need of planning for Trudy's return. Their home will be in a good part of the city, if it consists in merely hanging onto a lamp-post.

You don't realize that Gay is a bankrupt sn.o.b and married Trudy only because he could play off cad behind his pretty wife's skirts. Men will like Trudy and the women ridicule and snub her until she finds she has a real use for her claws. Up to now she has only halfway kept them sharpened. In a few years you will find Mr. and Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d Vondeplosshe in Hanover society with capital letters, hobn.o.bbing with Beatrice O'Valley and her set and somehow managing to exist in elegance. Don't ask how they will do it--but they will. However, they would never consider starting from our house. That would be getting off on a sprained ankle."

Mrs. Faithful gulped the rest of her coffee. "No one has any use for me because I haven't money. Our parlour was good enough for them to do their courting in, and if they don't come and see me real often I'll write Trudy a letter and tell her some good plain facts!"

"Be sure to say we all think Gay's mother must have been awful fond of children to have raised him," Luke suggested from the offing.

Mary tossed a sofa pillow at him and disappeared. She could have electrified her mother by telling her that Steve was to return that morning, that the office was prepared to welcome him back, and that Mrs. O'Valley would be anch.o.r.ed at the telephone to get into communication with her dearest and best of friends.

As she walked to the street car she reproached herself for not having told the news. It was a tiny thing to tell a woman whose horizon was bounded by coffee pots, spotted wrappers, and inane movies.

"You're mean in spots," Mary told herself. "You know how it would have pleased her."

She sometimes felt a maternal compa.s.sion for this helpless dear with her double chins and self-sacrificing past, and she wondered whether her father had not had the same att.i.tude during the years of nagging reproach at his lack of material prosperity. She resolved to come home that night with a budget of news items concerning Steve's return, even bringing a rose from the floral offering that was to be placed on his desk.

"After all, she's mother," Mary thought, rounding the corner leading to the office building, "and like most of us she does the best she can!"

She tried to maintain a calm demeanour in the office as she answered inquiries and opened the mail. But all the time she kept glancing at her desk clock. Half-past nine--of course he would be late--surely he must come by ten. She wished she had flung maidenly discretion to the winds and worn the white silk sport blouse she had just bought. But she had made herself dress in a crumpled waist of nondescript type.

The floral piece on Steve's long-deserted desk made her keep glancing up to smile at its almost funeral magnificence.

She answered a telephone call. Yes, Mr. O'Valley was expected--undoubtedly he would wish to reserve a plate for the Chamber of Commerce luncheon--unless they heard to the contrary they could do so. ... Oh, it was to include the wives and so on. Then reserve places for Mr. and Mrs. O'Valley. She hung up the receiver abruptly and went to making memoranda.

Even if she demanded and would receive a share of Steve's time and attention it would be the thankless, almost bitter portion--such as reserving plates for Mr. and Mrs. O'Valley or O.K.ing Mrs. O'Valley's bills. Still it was hers, awarded to her because of keenness of brain and faithfulness of action. Steve needed her as much as he needed to come home to his miniature palace to watch the Gorgeous Girl display her latest creation, to be able to take the Gorgeous Girl fast in his arms and say: "You are mine--mine--mine!" very likely punctuating the words with kisses. Yet he must return each day to Mary Faithful and say: "You are my right-hand man; I need you."

"A penny for your thoughts." Steve O'Valley was standing beside her.

"You look as if work agreed with you. Say something nice now--that a long holiday has improved me!"

She managed to put a shaking hand into his, wondering if she betrayed her thoughts. Being as tall as Steve she was able to look at him, not up at him; and there they stood--the handsome, reckless man with just a suggestion of nervous tension in his Irish blue eyes, and the plain young woman in a rumpled linen blouse.

"Ah--so I don't please," he bantered. "Well, tell us all about it.

I've a thousand questions--my father-in-law says you are the only thing I have that he covets. How about that?" He led the way into his office, Mary following.

Then he fell upon his mountain of mail and memoranda, demands for this charity and that patriotic subscription, and Mary began a careful explanation of affairs and they sat talking and arguing until the general superintendent looked in to suggest that the shop might like to have Mr. O'Valley say h.e.l.lo.

"It's nearly eleven," Steve exclaimed, "and we haven't begun to say a tenth of all there is to discuss. See the funeral piece, Hodges? Why didn't you label it 'Rest in pieces' and be done with it, eh? I shall now appear to make a formal speech." Here he cut a rosebud from the big wreath and handed it gravely to Mary; he cut a second one and fastened it in his own b.u.t.tonhole. "Lead me out, Hodges. I'm a bit unsteady--been playing too long."

Mary stood in the doorway, one hand caressing the little rose. That Beatrice should have had the flower was her first thought. Then it occurred to her that Beatrice would have all the flowers at the formal affairs to be given the bridal couple, besides sitting opposite Steve at his own table. She no longer felt that she had stolen the rose or usurped attention. There was a clapping of hands and the usual laughter which accompanies listening to any generous proprietor's speech, a trifle forced perhaps but very jolly sounding. Then Steve returned to his office to become engrossed in conversation with Mary until Mark Constantine dropped in to bowl him off to the club for luncheon.

"She's kept things humming, hasn't she?" Constantine asked, sinking into the nearest chair.