She was insistent. "Won't you answer my question?" she begged.

"It's a hard one. Perhaps I can't answer it."

"Oh, yes, you can. Try."

He made the attempt. "Perhaps it is because I have known girls like Miss Knight all of my life. I played with them when I was a kid, went to school with them, and, since I have been older, called on them and took them to dances."

"Did you ever take them out on your motorcycle?" demanded Virginia almost sharply.

The question surprised him. "No, I never had another seat on my wheel.

Why?"

"Oh, nothing." She was very indifferent now. "I don't think that I approve of girls on motorcycles. Go on," she urged. "You were telling about taking girls to dances. Where else did you take them?"

He thought a moment. "Sometimes I took them to Vivian's and had ice cream or took them to a motion picture show."

"Oh, what fun." Virginia was thinking aloud.

"What?" he asked.

She very calmly disregarded his question. "You haven't told me how I am different," she relentlessly persisted. "Please do."

"It was the way we met, I suppose--the way I saw you first," he confessed, fighting back his embarra.s.sment.

"Tell me about it, Joe," she pleaded softly.

"I was regaining consciousness after the accident. My whole body was a great pain. I was trying to understand what had happened." He hesitated and then went on. "I opened my eyes. For an instant everything was blurred and indistinct. Things were whirling about in mists and billowy clouds. They rolled apart and through them, constantly growing clearer, came your face." He was almost whispering now. "You looked too beautiful for this world and I believed that I was dead." A little smile like a wavelet before a summer's zephyr swept over his face.

"You are a girl from the clouds to me," he said gently.

A very flushed Virginia leaned towards him. A great tenderness for this big fellow held her, and for a moment she could not trust herself to speak. She reached for his hand and held it in her own. "I must go,"

she murmured, as if driven away by her own timidity, and then, giving him a smile of ineffable sweetness, she left him.

Joe Curtis was so tumultuously happy for the rest of that afternoon that it was necessary for Miss Knight to reprove him on no less than three occasions.

Virginia called again upon Mr. Wilkins after leaving the hospital. Her business with the lawyer was speedily dispatched, and upon her departure for home, Hezekiah presented himself before Obadiah for conference.

The manufacturer glanced at his counsel and indicated a seat. "I was on the point of sending for you," he told Hezekiah, and in a characteristic way went right to the matter upon his mind. "The river water is bothering somebody again. They have started that old row about the chemicals and dyes in the waste from the dye-house at the mill poisoning the water. The State Board of Health is trying to tell me that it makes the water unfit for consumption in the towns below and is responsible for certain forms of sickness which have appeared."

"That's bad." Hezekiah looked at the ceiling.

"What's bad?" demanded Obadiah with asperity.

"The sickness," the lawyer explained thoughtfully.

"Oh, I thought you meant the waste from the dye-house," snarled Obadiah.

"Well, isn't that bad, too? I certainly am glad that South Ridgefield doesn't take the water for its supply below your mill. I shouldn't care to drink it, would you?" Hezekiah could be frank.

"What I want to drink is not the question," snapped Obadiah, raising his voice a tone. The att.i.tude of his attorney had aroused his displeasure.

"No," Hezekiah went on, "it's what you can make the other fellow drink which interests you."

Obadiah considered the lawyer's remarks unfortunate even if true. "I am not trying to make anybody drink. These people have been drinking the same water for years and now some troublemaker stirs up a hornets'

nest," he stormed. "They want to force me to build three thousand feet of sewer to connect up with the city system and its new fangled sewage disposal plant. I suppose this town would want rent for that, too. Did you ever hear of such foolishness?"

The lawyer cast a keen glance at his employer. "Don't forget," he suggested, "that you have doubled the capacity of your mill in the last few years and are running twice as much waste into the river as formerly."

"I don't care," roared Obadiah, in a high key. "It will cost several thousand dollars to do what they want. Let those towns take care of themselves. They must mistake me for a philanthropist trying to give my money away."

Hezekiah removed his gla.s.ses and closed his eyes as if desirous that no point, in the interesting thought of Obadiah giving anything away, might perchance escape him.

"I won't do it," bleated Obadiah, striking the desk a resounding thump which made Hezekiah open his eyes with a start. "I have been running waste into that river for years and I intend to keep on doing it." He glared at the lawyer. "You look up the decisions and be prepared to make those people drink ink if I want to put it into the river."

Hezekiah arose and moved over to the window. Possibly the ascertainment of a legal method to force citizens to accept writing fluid as a beverage perplexed him. Yet, it couldn't have been that, because his eyes danced with the glee of a mischievous school boy, and he seemed to have difficulty in suppressing inward mirth, as one wishing to perpetrate a huge joke with appropriate gravity.

In a moment he came back and faced Obadiah. "You will be glad to know that a settlement has been reached with young Curtis," he announced impressively.

"You have kept Virginia out of court proceedings?"

Hezekiah nodded.

Obadiah appeared relieved. "That is fine. I would look like a fool with my own daughter testifying against me in court."

Hezekiah was trying to catch Obadiah's eye. "It is going to cost you some money," he explained. "I warned you that young people have no idea of the value of money. Remember, you authorized me to make the best settlement that I could," he sternly reminded the mill owner.

Obadiah shrugged his shoulders irritably. "Yes, I am bound by any nonsensical agreement you have made."

The attorney's voice was cold, and there was a glint of steel in his eyes as he answered, "If you don't care to accept the compromise for which I accept sole responsibility, it is your privilege to reject it and take--the consequences."

Obadiah leaped to his feet and rushing to his lawyer patted him upon the shoulder. "Don't be so touchy, Hezekiah," he exclaimed. "Have I ever failed to support you?"

"No," Hezekiah admitted, "and you never will--but once."

Obadiah was desirous of placating his counsel. "You misunderstand me."

"I probably understand you better than any one else on earth."

The remark made the manufacturer uncomfortable. "Forget it," he pleaded. "I agree to any arrangement which you have made, because of my friendship, if for no other reason." He shook the lawyer's hand.

"Explain the agreement. I consent."

Hezekiah's manner was too calm. It was like the lull before a storm.

"You pay no money to the injured man," he announced.

Obadiah's face registered his surprise. "What the devil?" he cried.

Hezekiah gave no heed to this remark but went on with the solemnity of a judge sentencing a prisoner. "You have agreed to furnish and to endow for a period of five years, a private room at the South Ridgefield Hospital to be used exclusively for the care and treatment of injured motorcyclists."