"What if I told you she had accepted?" the wolf snapped.

Tony saw the swift shadow cloud her uncle's face and hated the manager for hurting him like that.

"I didn't," she protested indignantly. "You know I wouldn't promise anything without talking to you, Uncle Phil. I told him I couldn't go."

"But you wanted to," persisted the wolf, bound to get his fangs in somewhere.

Tony smiled a little wistfully.

"I wanted to most awfully," she confessed, patting her uncle's arm to take the sting out of her admission. "Will you ask me again some day?"

she appealed to the manager.

He snorted at that.

"You'll come asking me, young lady, and before long, too. Laura LaRue's daughter isn't going to settle down to being either a b.u.t.terfly or a blue-stocking. You are going on the stage and you know it. No use, Holiday. You won't be able to hold her back. It's in the blood. You may be able to dam the tide for a time, but not forever."

"I don't intend to dam it," said the doctor gravely. "If, when the time comes, Tony wishes to go on the stage, I shall not try to prevent her. In fact I shall help her in every way in my power."

"Uncle Phil!" Tony's voice had a tiny catch in it. She knew her grandmother would be bitterly opposed to her going on the stage, and had imagined she would have to win even her uncle over by slow degrees to the gratifying of this desire of her heart. It had hurt her even to think of hurting him or going against him in any way--he who was, "father and mother and a'" to her. Dear Uncle Phil! How he always understood and took the big, broad viewpoint!

The manager grunted approval at that. His belligerency waned.

"Congratulate you, sir. That's spoken like a man of sense. Evidently you are able to see over the wall farther than most of the witch-ridden New Englanders I've met. I should like the chance to launch this Rosalind of yours. But don't make it too far off. Youth is the biggest drawing card in the world and--the most transient. You have to get in the game early to get away with it. I'll start her whenever you say--next week--next month--next year. Guarantee to have her ready to understudy a star in three months and perhaps a star herself in six. She might jump into the heavens overnight. Stranger things have happened. What do you say? May I have an option on the young lady?"

"That is rather too big a question to settle off hand at midnight. Tony is barely twenty-two and she has home obligations which will have to be considered. Her grandmother is old and frail and--a New Englander of the old school."

"Too bad," commiserated the manager. "But never mind all that. All I ask is that you won't let her sign up with anybody else without giving me a chance first."

"I think we may safely promise that and thank you. Tony and I both appreciate that you are doing her a good deal of honor for one small school girl, eh Tony?" The doctor smiled down at his flushed, starry-eyed niece. He understood precisely what a big moment it was for her.

"Oh, I should think so!" sighed Tony. "You are awfully kind, Mr. Hempel.

It is like a wonderful dream--almost too good to be true."

Both men smiled at that. For youth no dream is quite too extravagant or incredible to be potentially true. No grim specters of failure and disillusionment and frustration dog its bright path. All possibilities are its divine inheritance.

"Mr. Hempel, did you know my mother?" Tony asked suddenly, with a shadow of wistfulness in her dark eyes. There were so few people whom she met that had known her mother. It was as if Laura LaRue had moved in a different orbit from that of her daughter. It always hurt Tony to feel that. But here was one who was of her mother's own world. No wonder her eyes were beseeching as they sought the great manager's.

He bowed gravely.

"I knew her very well. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen--and one of the greatest actresses. Your father was a lucky man, my dear. Few women would have given up for any man what she gave up for him."

"Oh, but--she loved him," explained Laura LaRue's daughter simply.

Again Hempel nodded.

"She did," he admitted grimly. After all these years there was no use admitting that that had been the deepest rub of all, that Laura had loved Ned Holiday and had never, for even the span of a moment, thought of caring for himself. "I repeat, your father was a very lucky man--a d.a.m.nably lucky one."

And with that they shook hands and parted.

It was many months before Tony was to see Max Hempel again and many waters were to run under the bridge before the meeting came to pa.s.s.

Outside in the car, Ted, d.i.c.k and the twins waited the arrival of the heroine of the evening. The three latter greeted her with a burst of prideful congratulation; the former, being merely a brother, was distinctly cross at having been kept waiting so long and did not hesitate to express his sentiments fully out loud. But Doctor Holiday cut short his nephew's somewhat ungracious speech by a quiet reminder that the car was here primarily for Tony's use, and the boy subsided, having no more to say until, having deposited the occupants of the car at their various destinations, he announced to his uncle with elaborate carelessness that he would take the car around to the garage.

But he did not turn in at the side street where the garage was. Instead he shot out Elm Street, "hitting her up" at forty. There had been a reason for his impatience. Ted Holiday had important private business to transact ere c.o.c.k crow.

Tony lay awake a long time that night, dreaming dreams that carried her far and far into the future, until Rosalind's happy triumph of the evening almost faded away in the glory of the yet-to-be. It was characteristic of the girl's stage of development that in all her dreams, no lovers, much less a possible husband, ever once entered. Tony Holiday was in love with life and life alone that wonderful June night. As Hempel had shrewdly perceived she was conscious of having wings and desirous of flying far and free with them ere she came to pause.

She did remember, in pa.s.sing however, how she had caught d.i.c.k's eyes once as he sat in the box near the stage, and how his rapt gaze had thrilled her to intenser playing of her part. And she remembered how dear he was afterward in the car when he held her roses and told her softly what a wonderful, wonderful Rosalind she was. But, on the whole, d.i.c.k, like most of the rest of the people with whom she had held converse since the curtain went down upon Arden, seemed unimportant and indistinct, like courtiers and foresters, not specifically named among the _dramatis personae_, just put in to fill out and make a more effective stage setting.

d.i.c.k, too, in his room on Greene Street, was wakeful. He sat by the window far into the night. His heart was heavy within him. The gulf between him and Tony had suddenly widened immeasureably. She was a real actress. He hadn't needed a great manager's verdict to teach him that. He had seen it with his own eyes, heard it with his own ears, felt it with his own heart. He had worshiped and adored and been made unutterably sad and lonely by her dazzling success, glad as he was that it had come to her. Tony would go on in her shining path. He would always lag behind in the shadows. They would never come together as long as they both lived.

She had started too far ahead. He could never overtake her.

If only there were some way of finding out who he was, get some clue as to his parentage. He only knew that the man they called Jim, who had kicked and beaten and sworn at him with foul oaths until he could bear it no longer, was no kin of his, though the other had claimed the authority to abuse him as he abused his horses and dogs when drink and ugliness were upon him. If only he could find Jim again after all these years, perhaps he could manage to get the truth out of him, find out what the man knew of himself, and how he had come to be in a circus troupe. Yet after all, perhaps it was better not to know. The facts might separate him from Tony even more than he was separated by his ignorance of them.

As it was, he started even, with neither honor nor shame bequeathed him from the past. What he was, he was in himself. And if by any miracle of fortune Tony ever did come to care for him it would be just himself, plain d.i.c.k, that she would love. He knew that.

The thought was vaguely comforting and he, too, fell adreaming. Most of us foiled humans learn to play the game of make-believe and to find such consolation as we may therein. Often and often in his lonely hours d.i.c.k Carson had summoned Tony Holiday to his side, a Tony as bright and beautiful and all adorable as the real Tony, but a dream Tony, withal, a Tony who loved him even as he loved her. And in his make-believe he was no longer a nameless, impecunious cub reporter, but a man who had arrived somewhere, made himself worthy, so far as any mere man could, of the supreme gift of Tony's caring.

To-night, too, d.i.c.k played the game determinedly, but somehow he found its consolation rather meager, as cold and remote as the sparkle of the June stars, millions of miles away up there in the velvet sky, after having sat by the side of the living, breathing Tony and, looking into her happy eyes, known how little, how very little, he was in her thoughts. She liked him to be near her, he knew, just as she liked her roses to be fragrant, but neither the roses nor himself was a vital necessity to her. She could do very well without either. That was the pity of it.

At last he got up and went to bed. Falling into troubled sleep he dreamed that he and Tony were wandering, hand in hand, in the Forest of Arden.

From afar off came the sound of music, airy voices chanting:

"When birds do sing, hey ding a ding Sweet lovers love the spring."

And then somebody laughed mockingly, like Jacques, and somebody else, clad in motley like Touchstone, but who seemed to speak in d.i.c.k's own voice, murmured, "Ay, now am I in Arden, the more fool I."

And even with these words the forest vanished and Tony with it and the dreamer was left alone on a steep and dusty road, lost and aching for the missing touch of her hand.

But later he woke to the song of a thousand birds greeting the new day with full-throated joy. And his heart, too, began to sing. For it was indeed a new day--a day in which he should see Tony. He was irrationally content. Of such is the kingdom of lad's love!

CHAPTER III

A GIRL WHO COULDN'T STOP BEING A PRINCESS

In the lee of a huge gray bowlder on the summit of Mount Tom sat Philip Lambert and Carlotta Cressy. Below them stretched the wide sweep of the river valley, amethyst and topaz and emerald, rich with lush June verdure, soft shadowed, tranquil, in the late afternoon sunshine. They had been silent for a little time but suddenly Carlotta broke the silence.

"Phil, do you know why I brought you up here?" she asked. As she spoke she drew a little closer to him and her hand touched his as softly as a drifting feather or a blown cherry blossom might have touched it.

He turned to look at her. She was all in white like a lily, and otherwise carried out the lily tradition of belonging obviously to the non-toiling-and-spinning species, justifying the arrangement by looking seraphically lovely in the fruits of the loom and labor of the rest of the world. And after all, sheer loveliness is an end in itself. n.o.body expects a flower to give account of itself and flower-like Carlotta was very, very lovely as she leaned against the granite rock with the valley at her feet. So Phil Lambert's eyes told her eloquently. The valley was not the only thing at Carlotta's feet.

"I labored under the impression that I did the bringing up myself," he remarked, his hand closing over hers. "However, the point is immaterial.

You are here and I am here. Is there a cosmic reason?"

"There is." Carlotta's voice was dreamy. She watched a cloud shadow creep over the green-plumed mountain opposite. "I brought you up here so that you could propose to me suitably and without interruption."