"That's the way nearly everybody would do," said Madison, laughing.

"There's at least a few similar kinks common to our n.o.ble race--we're busy most of the time trying to fool ourselves one way or another. Well, that's about all. I can't lay out a programme for every minute of the day--you and Helena have got to use your heads and work along that general idea. You play up your grat.i.tude strong. And, oh yes--keep the altar box well baited. Let Helena put some of her near-diamond rings and joujabs in until we collect some genuine ones--and then keep the genuine ones going--change every day for variety, you know. And take the silver money out every time you see any in--not that we scorn it in the great aggregate, far from it--it's just psychology again, Flopper. I went to church once and sat beside a duck with a white waistcoat and chop whiskers, who wore the dollar sign sticking out so thick all over him that you couldn't see anything else; and when it came time for collection he peeled a bill off a roll the size of a house, and waited for the collection plate to come along. But he got his eye on the plate a couple of pews ahead and it was full of coppers and chicken feed, and he did the palming act with the bill slicker than a faro dealer--and whispered to me to change a quarter for him."

"And did you?" asked the Flopper anxiously.

"Oh, wake up, Flopper!" grinned Madison; then, suddenly: "Hullo! Who's that?"

Across the lawn, coming through the row of maples from the direction of the wagon track, appeared two figures.

"Dat's who," said the Flopper, after gazing an instant. "It's Helena an'

Thornton."

"So it is," agreed Madison. "Get behind the trellis here then--it wouldn't do for him to see me out here at this time of night."

They rose noiselessly from the bench, and slipped quickly behind the trellis. Toward them, walking slowly came the two figures, Helena leaning on Thornton's arm. Thornton was talking, but in too low a tone to be overheard. Then a silence appeared to fall between the two, and it was not until they reached the porch, close to Madison and the Flopper, that either spoke again.

Then Thornton held out his hand.

"Good-night, Miss Vail--and good-by temporarily," he said. "I suppose I shall be gone four or five days; I'm going up on the morning train, you know. I wish you'd go as often as you can to see Naida in the car while I'm away--will you? Her condition worries me, though she insists that she is completely cured, and she will not listen to any advice. I have an idea that she has overtaxed herself--apart from her hip disease, her heart was in a very critical state. You'll go to her, won't you?"

"Yes," said Helena, "of course, I will."

Their voices dropped lower, and for a moment only a murmur reached Madison; and then, with another "Good-night, Miss Vail," Thornton started back across the lawn.

Madison could hear Helena fumbling with the door latch, and by the time she had succeeded in opening the door the retreating figure of Thornton was a safe distance away. Madison called in a whisper:

"Here, Helena! Wait a minute!"

There was a quick, startled little exclamation from the doorway, and Helena came out hurriedly from the porch.

"Who's there?" she cried in a low voice. "Oh"--as they stepped into view--"you, Doc, and the Flopper! What were you doing behind that trellis?"

"Keeping out of Thornton's road," said Madison. "So he's going away, eh?

What for?"

"Business," replied Helena. "Has to go to some meeting in Chicago--he's leaving his wife and the private car here. What did you come at this hour for?"

"Lines for the next act," said Madison; "but the Flopper's got it all, and he'll put you on." He stepped toward Helena and slipped his arm around her waist. "Come on, it's early yet, let's go for a little walk.

The Flopper'll excuse us, and I--"

"I thought you said," Helena interrupted, disengaging herself quietly, "that we had to play the game to the limit and take no chances."

"Well, so I did," admitted Madison, and his arm crept around her again; "but I guess we've earned a little holiday and--"

"'Nix on that,' I think was what you said," said Helena with a queer little laugh, drawing away again. "And I really think you were right, Doc--we ought to play the game without breaking the rules, and so--good-night"--and she turned and ran from him into the cottage.

Madison stared after her in a sort of helpless state of chagrin.

"Mabbe," said the Flopper, "mabbe she's lonely."

--XV--

A MIRACLE OVERDONE

Helena sat in the Patriarch's room, and her piquant little face was pursed up into a scowl so daintily grim as to be almost ludicrous. The Patriarch, in his armchair, had been scrawling words upon the slate all evening--and she had been wiping them off! He scrawled another now--and mechanically, without looking at it, by way of answer she pressed his arm to appease him.

She had been restless all day, and she was restless now. What had induced her to treat Madison the way she had the night before? Pique, probably. No; it wasn't pique. It was just getting back at him--and he deserved it. He hadn't seemed to mind it much, though--he had only laughed and teased her about it that morning when he had joined the Patriarch and herself in their walk along the beach.

With her chin in her hands, she began to study the Patriarch through half closed eyes--deaf and dumb and blind--and somehow it all seemed excruciatingly funny and she wanted to laugh hysterically. He seemed to sense the fact that she was looking at him, and, with quick, instant intuition, he smiled and reached out his hand toward her.

Unconsciously, involuntarily, she drew back--then, recovering herself the next instant, she took his hand. Now, why had she done that? What was the matter with her? Again she felt that sudden impulse to scream, or laugh, or shout, or make some noise--it seemed as though she were penned in, smothered somehow, imprisoned. What _was_ the matter? Nerves?

She had never known what nerves were in all her life! Couldn't she play the game and act her part without making a fool of herself? She had played a part all her life, hadn't she? Maybe it was quite a shock to her system to take a place amongst really good and simple folk!

She laughed a little shortly--then rose abruptly from her chair, and began to walk up and down the room. The trouble was that the soft pedal was getting unbearable. That air of awed hush and solemnity, morning, noon and night, without anything to relieve it, was just a trifle too drastic and sudden a change in life for her to accept calmly and swallow in one dose without feeling any effects from it! If she could be transported now for an hour, say, to the Roost, or Heligman's and the turkey trot, or the Rivoli, or any old place--except Needley, Maine!

"Gee!" said Helena to herself. "If I don't break loose and kick the traces over for a minute or two, I'll be clawing the bars of a dippy asylum before I'm through--and just listen to the sweet, girlish language I'm using--I'd like to bite something!"

She turned impulsively to the door, stepped out into the hall, and called the Flopper from his room.

"Flopper, you go in there and stay with the Patriarch for awhile," she ordered curtly. "I'm going down on the beach to yell."

"Yell?" inquired the Flopper, blinking helplessly.

"I'm going outside to yell--_yell._ You know what 'yell' means, don't you?" she snapped.

"Swipe me!" observed the Flopper, gazing at her anxiously. "Skirts is all de same--youse never know wot dey'll do next. Wot you wanter yell fer?"

"You mind your own business and do as you're told!" said Helena tartly.

"Go in there and stay with the Patriarch."

"Sure," said the Flopper, grinning a little now. "Sure t'ing--but youse needn't get on yer ear about it. Cheer up, mabbe de Doc'll be out to-night, an' if he don't hear youse yellin' himself will I tell him youse are out on de beach t'rowin' a fit?"

"No," Helena answered sharply; "tell him nothing--I'm out." Then, quite as quickly, changing her mind: "Yes; tell him I'm down there--or come and get me yourself"--and she walked abruptly into her own room.

"Now wot do youse t'ink of dat?" demanded the Flopper of the universe.

He blinked at the door she had closed in his face. "Say," he a.s.serted, with sublime inconsistency, "if Mamie Rodgers was like all de rest of dem, I'd t'row up me dukes before de gong rang." The Flopper went into the Patriarch's room, and took the chair beside the other that Helena had vacated. "Swipe me, if I wouldn't!" he added fervently, by way of confirmation.

Helena, in her own room, opened one of her trunks, lifted out the tray, worked somewhat impatiently down through several layers of yellow, paper-covered literature, that would have made the cla.s.sics on the Patriarch's bookshelves shrivel up and draw their skirts hurriedly around them in righteous horror could they but have known or been capable of such intensely human characteristics, and finally produced a daintily jewelled little cigarette case and match box. She slammed the tray back, slammed the cover of the trunk down, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a wrap, flung it over her head and shoulders--and left the cottage.

She ran down to the beach at top speed, as if she couldn't get there fast enough.

"And now I'm just going to yell and go crazy as much as ever I like!"

panted Helena to the rollers.

Instead, she sat down with her back to a rock, and opened her cigarette case. She took out a cigarette, extracted a match from the match box, lighted the match--and flung both cigarette and match from her.