Vaniman turned his back on the others. He talked directly to Vona. The agonized query in her eyes demanded a reply from him. "Mr. Britt has in his hand a letter from some banking friend of his. The letter says that my father was sentenced to the penitentiary, charged with embezzlement.

That is so. My father died there. But it was wicked injustice. You and your father and mother are ent.i.tled to know that an honest man was made a scapegoat."

"Excuse me!" broke in Harnden. "We are outsiders and will probably remain so, and have no hankering to pry into family matters."

"I did not intend to tell the story now, Mr. Harnden. It's too sacred a matter to be discussed in the presence of that man who stands there trying to make a club of the thing to ruin my hopes and my life. This is a hateful situation. I apologize. But he has forced me to speak out, as I have done, telling you and your wife of my love for Vona."

"I don't see how you dare to speak of it, seeing what the circ.u.mstances are," declared the father; there was a murmur of corroboration from the mother.

"It's a cheeky insult to all concerned," shouted Britt.

"No, it's my best attempt to be honest and open and a man," insisted Vaniman. "I have left no chance for gossip to bring tales to you, Mr.

Harnden."

But Mr. Harnden sliced the air with a hand that sought to sever further conference. "Absolutely impossible, young man."

"Vona's prospects must not be ruined by anybody's selfishness," stated Mrs. Harnden.

In his eagerness, encouraged by this parental backing, Mr. Britt did not employ a happy metaphor. "It has been my rule, in the case of bitter medicine, to take it quick and have the agony over with." He put all the appeal he could muster into his gaze at Vona. "That's why I have sprung the thing this evening, on the spur of the moment. I ain't either young or handsome, Vona. I know my shortcomings. But I've got everything to make you happy; all you've got to do is turn around and take me as your husband and make me and your folks happy, too."

Mr. Harnden's optimism bobbed up with its usual serenity. "We're making a whole lot out of a little, come to think it over!" He turned to Vona, feeling that he was fortified against any appeal he might find in her eyes.

In the silence that she had imposed on herself while her champion was battling she had been gathering courage, piling up the ammunition of resolution. Love lighted her eyes and flung out its signal banners of challenge on her cheeks.

"Why, our girl has never said that she is in love with anybody," prated the father.

"I'll say it now, when there's a good reason for saying it," cried the girl, her tones thrilling the listeners. "I'll say it in my own way to the one who is ent.i.tled to know, and you may listen, father and mother!"

She went to Frank, stretching her hands to him, and he took them in his grasp. "I understand! I can wait," she told him. "And when the time comes and you call to me, I'll say, as Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d.'" Impulsively, heeding only him, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then she ran from the room.

And finding the light gone out of the place, Frank groped to the door, like a blind man feeling his way, and departed.

CHAPTER IX

THE NIGHT BROUGHT COUNSEL

Mr. Britt, left with the father and mother, got his voice first because he had been p.r.i.c.ked most deeply; furthermore, the girl's method of expression had touched him on the spot which had been abraded by Prophet Elias's daily rasping.

The suitor drove his fist down on the center table with a force that caused the model of Mr. Harnden's doors to jump and snap. "By the joo-dinged, hump-backed Hosea, I've just about got to my limit in this text business!"

"The dear girl is all wrought up. She don't realize what she's saying.

I'll run up to her room and reason with her. Don't mind what a girl says in a tantrum, Mr. Britt," Mrs. Harnden pleaded.

Mr. Britt, left with the father, began to stride back and forth across the room. The t.i.tle of the book jeered up at him from the carpet where he had tossed the volume; he kicked the book under the table.

"The wife said a whole lot just now," affirmed Mr. Harnden, soothingly.

"Consider where the girl has been this evening, Tasper! Off elocuting dramatic stuff! Comes back full of high-flown nonsense. Gets off something that was running in her head. Torched on by that fly-by-night who'll be getting out of town and who'll be forgotten inside a week.

Where's your optimism?" He reached up and slapped Britt's back when the banker pa.s.sed him.

"She is in love with him," complained the suitor; his anger was succeeded by woe; his face "squizzled" as if he were about to weep a second time that day.

"Piffle! She's a queer girl if she didn't have the usual run of childish ailments, along with the whooping cough and the measles. I have always known how to manage my womenfolks, Tasper. Not by threats and by tumulting around as you have been doing! You've got a lot to learn.

Listen to me!"

Mr. Britt paused and blinked and listened.

Mr. Harnden plucked out a pencil and made believe write a screed on the palm of his hand while he talked. "'By the twining tendrils of their affections you can sway 'em to and fro,' as the poet said, speaking of women. I am loved in my home. I have important prospects, now that you are backing me."

Mr. Britt blinked more energetically, but he did not dispute.

"Another poet has said that's it's all right to lie for love's sake--or words to that effect. I know the right line of talk to give Vona. And I won't have to lie such a great lot to make her know how bad off I am right now. She has always had a lot of sympathy for me," declared Mr.

Harnden, complacently. "I may as well cash in on it. She won't ruin a loving father and a happy home when she wakes up after a good cry on the wife's shoulder and gets her second wind and understands where she's at in this thing. Tasper, you sit down there in a comfortable chair and let me rub on some optimism anodyne where you're smarting the worst."

When Mrs. Harnden came into the room a half hour later she looked promptly relieved to find Mr. Britt in such a calm mood; when she had hurried out he was acting as if he were intending to kick the furniture about the place.

"A good cry--and all at peace, eh?--and a new view of things in the morning?" purred the optimist in the way of query.

"She didn't cry," reported the mother, with a disconsolateness that did not agree with the cheering words of the reports.

"Oh, very well," remarked Mr. Harnden, optimism unspecked. "That shows she is taking a common-sense view and is using her head. What says she?"

"I may as well post you on how the matter stands, Mr. Britt. By being honest all 'round we can operate together better."

Britt agreed by an emphatic nod.

After an inhalation which suggested the charging of an air gun, Mrs.

Harnden pulled the verbal trigger. "Vona says she is all through at the bank."

"Oh, I know my girl," said Mr. Harnden, airily. "I'll handle her when morning's light is bright, and forgotten is the night!"

"I thought I knew my girl, too," the mother declared, gloomily. "But I guess I don't. I never saw her stiffen up like this before. She sat and looked at me, and I felt like a cushion being jabbed by a couple of hatpins--if there's any such thing as a cushion having feelings."

Mrs. Harnden, settling her flounces, a soft and sighing example of "a languishing Lydia," was as unfortunate in her metaphor as Britt had been when he mentioned a bitter medicine.

"Tell her that I'll pay her ten dollars more a week," said President Britt, looking desperate. "She mustn't leave me in the lurch."

"She'll do it! Nothing to worry about!" affirmed the father. "And I'll grab in as cashier till my bigger projects get started. I've got a natural knack for handling money, Tasper."

The banker winced.

"We can make it all snug, right in the family," insisted Harnden.

He jumped up, opened the door into the hallway, and called. He kept calling, his tones growing more emphatic, till the girl replied from abovestairs.

"She's coming down," reported the general manager of the household, taking his stand in front of the fireplace. He pulled on a chain and dragged out a bunch of keys and whirled them like a David taking aim with a sling.

Vona came no farther than the doorway, and stood framed there.

"What's this last nonsense--that you won't go to your work in the morning?"