"Maybe it is because I do know it and because he is so devilish right that I d.a.m.n him," observed the youngest Holiday sagely, his eyes meeting his uncle's over his sister's head.

It wasn't until he had danced and flirted and made merry for three consecutive hours at the hop, and proposed in the exuberance of his mood to at least three different charmers whose names he had forgotten by the next day, that Ted Holiday remembered Madeline and his promise to keep tryst with her that afternoon. Other things of more moment had swept her clean from his mind.

"Thunder!" he muttered to himself. "Wonder what she is thinking when I swore by all that was holy to come. Oh well; I should worry. I couldn't help it. I'll write and explain how it happened."

So said, so done. He scribbled off a hasty note of explanation and apology which he signed "Yours devotedly, Ted Holiday" and went out to the corner mail box to dispatch the same so it would go out in the early morning collection, and prepared to dismiss the matter from his mind again.

Coming back into his room he found his uncle standing on the threshold.

"Had to get a letter off," murmured the young man as his uncle looked inquiring. He turned to light a cigarette with an air of determined casualness. He didn't care to have Uncle Phil know any more about the Madeline affair.

"It must have been important."

"Was," curtly. "Did you think I was joy riding again?"

"No, I heard you stirring and thought you might be sick. I haven't been able to get to sleep myself."

Seeing how utterly worn out his uncle looked, Ted's resentment took quick, shamed flight. Poor Uncle Phil! He never spared himself, always bore the brunt of everything for them all. And here he himself had just snapped like a cur because he suspected his guardian of desiring to interfere with his high and mighty private business.

"Too bad," he said. "Wish you'd smoke, Uncle Phil. It's great to cool off your nerves. Honest it is! Have one?" He held out his case.

Doctor Holiday smiled at that, though he declined the proffered weed. He understood very well that the boy was making tacit amends for his ungraciousness of a moment before.

"No, I'll get to sleep presently. It has been rather a wearing day."

"Should say it had been. I hope Aunt Margery doesn't know about the wreck. She'll worry, if she knew Larry was coming east."

"I wired her this evening. I didn't want to take any chance of her thinking he was in the smash."

Ted laid down his cigarette.

"You never forget anybody do you, Uncle Phil?" he said rather soberly for him.

"I never forget Margery. She is a very part of myself, lad."

And when he was alone Ted pondered over that last speech of his uncle's.

He wondered if there would ever be a Margery for him, and, if so, what she would think of the Madelines if she knew of them.

CHAPTER VII

DEVELOPMENTS BY MAIL

After the family had rea.s.sembled on the Hill the promised letter from Larry arrived. He was staying on so long as his services were needed. The enormous number of victims of the wreck had strained to the uttermost the city's supply of doctors and nurses, and there was more than enough work for all. The writer spared them the details of the wreck so far as possible; indeed, evidently was not anxious to relive the horrors on his own account. He mentioned a few of the many sad cases only. One of these was the instant death of a famous surgeon whose loss to the world seemed tragic and pitifully wasteful to the young doctor. Another was the crushing to death of a young mother who, with her two children, had been happily on their way to meet the husband who had been in South America for a year. Larry had made friends with her on the train and played with the babies who reminded him of his small cousins, Eric and Hester, Doctor Philip's children.

A third case he went into more fully, that of a young woman--just a mere girl in appearance though she wore a wedding ring--who had received a terrible blow on the base of her brain which had driven out memory entirely. She did not know who she was, where she was going, or whence she had come. Her physical injuries, otherwise, were not serious, a broken arm and some bad bruises, nothing but what she would easily recover from in a short time; but, for all her effort, the past remained as something on the other side of a strange, blank wall.

"She tries pitifully hard to remember, and is so sweet and brave we are all devoted to her. I always stop and talk to her when I go by her. She seems to cling to me, rather, as if I could help her get things back.

Lord knows I wish I could. She is too dainty and fragile a morsel of humanity to be left to fight such a thing alone. She is a regular little Dresden shepherdess, with the tiniest feet and hands and the yellowest hair and bluest eyes I ever saw. Her husband must be about crazy, poor chap, not hearing from her. I suppose he will be turning up soon to claim her. I hope so. I don't know what will become of her if he does not.

"It is late and I must turn in. I don't know when I shall get home. I don't flatter myself Dunbury will miss me much when it has you. Give everybody my love and tell Tony I am awfully sorry I couldn't get to commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself."

The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his nephew and junior a.s.sistant. With it came another epistle from the same city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself, grow up, and had immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he had discovered the relationship.

"You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head, steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality, Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, through and through, and you can tell him I said so when you see him."

The doctor smiled, well pleased at this tribute to Ned's son and this letter, like Larry's, he handed to his wife Margery to read.

The thirties had touched "Miss Margery" lightly. She was still slim and girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot blue shade which her husband particularly loved she seemed scarcely older than she had on that day, some eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a Fourth of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had begun to lose his heart to her then and there. It was not by shedding care and responsibility, however, that she had kept her youth. It was by no means the easiest thing in the world to be a busy doctor's wife, the mother of two lively children and faithful daughter to an invalid and rather "difficult"

mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and an elastic household, which in vacation time included Ned Holiday's children and their friends. Needless to say she did not do any painting these days.

But there is more than one way of being an artist, and of the art of simple, lovely, human living Margery Holiday was past mistress.

"Doesn't sound much like 'Lazy Larry' these days, does it?" she commented, giving the letters back to her husband. "I know you are proud of Doctor Fenton's letter, Phil. You ought to be. It is more than a little due to you that Larry is what he is."

"We are advertised by our loving wives," he misquoted teasingly. "I have always observed that the things we approve of in the younger generation are the fruit of seeds we planted. The things we disapprove of slipped in inadvertedly like weeds."

The same mail that brought Larry's letter brought one also to Ted from Madeline Taylor, a letter which made him wriggle a little internally, and pull his forelock, as was his habit when things were a bit perturbing.

Madeline had gone to bed that Sunday night after her meeting with Ted in the woods, full of the happiest kind of antic.i.p.ations and shy, foolish, impossible dreams. Her mind told her it was the rankest of nonsense to dream about Ted Holiday, but her heart would do it. She knew the affair with Ted had begun wrong, but she couldn't help hoping it would come out beautifully right. She couldn't help making believe she had found her prince, a bonny laddie who liked her well enough to play straight with her and to come again to see her.

She meant to try so hard, so very hard, to make herself into the kind of girl he was used to and liked. She cut out the picture of Tony Holiday that Max Hempel and d.i.c.k Carson had studied that day on the train. She studied it even harder and hid it away among her very special treasures where she could take it out and look at it often and use it as a model.

She even s.n.a.t.c.hed her hitherto precious earrings from their pink cotton resting place and hurled them as far as she could into the night. She was very sure Tony Holiday did not wear earrings, and she was even surer she had seen Ted's eyes resting disapprovingly on hers. The earrings had to go. They had gone.

The next afternoon she had waited for a while patiently by the brook. The distant clock struck the half hour, the three quarters, the full hour. No Ted Holiday. By this time her patience had long since evaporated and now blazed into blind rage. Ted had forgotten his promise, if indeed he had ever meant to keep it. He was with those other girls--his kind. Maybe he was laughing at her, telling them how "easy" she had been, how gullible.

No, he wouldn't! He would be ashamed to admit he had had anything to do with her. Men did not boast of their conquest of one kind of girl to another. She had read enough fiction to know that.

In any case she hated Ted Holiday with a fine fury of resentment. She wanted to make him suffer, even as she was suffering, though she sensed vaguely that men couldn't suffer that way. It was only women who were capable of such fine-drawn torture. Men went free.

From her rage against her recreant cavalier she went on to rage against life built on a man-made plan for the benefit of man. Women were hurt, no matter what they did. Being good wasn't any use. You got hurt all the worse if you were good. It was silly even to try. It was better to shut your eyes and have a good time.

Pursuing this reasoning brought Madeline Taylor to the sycamore tree that night where Willis Hubbard's car waited. She went with Willis, not to please him, not to please herself, but to spite Ted Holiday. She had hinted to Ted she would do something desperate if he failed her. She had done something desperate, but it was herself, not Ted, that had been hurt. She discovered that too late.

The next morning had brought Ted's pleasant, penitent note, explaining his defection and expressing the hope that they might meet again soon, signed hers "devotedly." Poor Madeline! The cup of her regret was very bitter to the taste as she read that letter of Ted Holiday's.

Something of her misery and self-abas.e.m.e.nt crept into the letter to Ted, together with a pa.s.sionate remorse for having doubted him and her even more vehement regret for having gone out with Willis Hubbard. The whole complex story of her emotional reactions was of course not written down for Ted's eyes; but he read quite enough to permit him to guess more than he cared to know. Hubbard was evidently something of a rotter. Maybe he was a bit of a rotter himself. If he hadn't taken the girl out joy riding himself she wouldn't have gone with the other two nights later. That was plain to be seen with half an eye and Ted Holiday was man enough to look at the fact straight and unblinking for a moment.

Well! He should worry. It wasn't his fault if Madeline had been fool enough to go out with Hubbard, when she knew what kind of a chap he was.

He wasn't her keeper. He didn't see why she had to ask him to forgive her. It was none of his business. And he wished she hadn't begged so earnestly and humbly that he would see her again soon. He didn't want to see her. Yet, down underneath, Ted Holiday had an uneasy feeling he ought to want it, ought to try to make up to her in some way for something which was somehow his fault, even though he did disclaim the responsibility.

Two days later came another letter even more disturbing. It seemed Madeline was going to Holyoke again soon to visit her Cousin Emma and wanted Ted to join her. She was "dying" to see him. He could stay at Cousin Emma's, but maybe he wouldn't like that because there was a raft of children always under foot and Fred, Emma's husband, was a dreadful "ordinary" person who smoked a smelly pipe and sat round in his shirt sleeves. But if he would come and stay at a hotel they could have a wonderful time. She did want to see him so much. Besides, Willis pestered her all the time and said if she went away he would come down in his car every night to see her. So if Ted didn't want her to run around with Willis as he said in his last letter he had better come himself. She didn't like Willis the way she did Ted, though. Some ways she hated him and she wished awfully she hadn't ever had anything to do with him. And finally she liked Ted better than anybody in the world, and would he please, please come to Holyoke, because she wanted him to so very, very much?

And then the postscript. "The cut is going to leave a scar, I am most sure. I don't care. I like it. It makes me think of you and what a wonderful time we had together that night."

Ted read the letter coming up the Hill, and for once forebore to whistle as he made the ascent. His mind was busy. A week of Dunbury calm and sweet do-nothing had sufficed to make him undeniably restless. Madeline's proposal struck him as rather a jolly idea accordingly. After all, she was a dandy little girl, and he owed her a lot for not making any fuss over his nearly killing her. He didn't like this Hubbard fellow, either.

He rather thought it was his duty to go and send him about his business.

Ted was a bit of a knight, at heart, and felt now the chivalric urge, combining with others less unselfish, to go to the rescue of the damsel and set her free of the false besieger.