"No, Uncle Phil. I don't. He cares so much for me--so terribly much. And I don't know whether I care enough or not. I should have to care a great deal to overlook what he has been and done. Maybe it wasn't anything but midsummer madness and his wonderful dancing. We danced almost every night until I sent him away. And when we danced we seemed to be just one person. Aside from his dancing he fascinated me. I couldn't forget him or ignore him. He was--is--different from any man I ever knew. I feel differently about him from what I ever felt about any other man. Maybe it is love. Maybe it isn't. I--I thought it was last month."

Doctor Holiday shook his head dubiously.

"And you are not so sure now?" he questioned.

"Not always," admitted Tony. "I didn't want to love him. I fought it with all my might. I didn't want to be bothered with love. I wanted to be happy and free and make a great success of my work. But after Alan came all those things didn't seem to matter. I am afraid it goes rather deep, Uncle Phil. Sometimes I think he means more to me than even you and Larry and Ted do. It is strange. It isn't kind or loyal or decent. But that is the way it is. I have to be honest, even if it hurts."

Her dark eyes were wistful and beseeched forgiveness as they sought her uncle's. He did not speak and she went on swiftly, earnestly.

"Please don't ask me to break off with him, Uncle Phil. I couldn't do it, not only because I care for him too much, but because it would be cruel to him. He has gotten out of his dark forest. I don't want to drive him back into it. And that is what it would mean if I deserted him now. I have to go on, no matter what you or Larry or any one thinks about it."

She had risen now and stood before her uncle earnestly pleading her lover's cause and her own.

"It isn't fair to condemn a man forever because he has made mistakes back in the past. We don't any of us know what we would have been like if things had been different. Larry and Ted are fine. I am proud of their clean record. It would be horrible if people said things about either of them such as they say about Alan. But Larry and Ted have every reason to be fine. They have had you and Dad and Grandfather Holiday and the rest of them to go by. They have lived all their lives in the Holiday tradition of what a man should be. Alan has had n.o.body, nothing. n.o.body ever helped him to see the difference between right and wrong and why it mattered which you chose. He does see now. He is trying to begin all over again and begin right. And I'm going to stand by him. I have to--even if I have to go against you, Uncle Phil."

There was a quiver--almost a sob in Tony's voice Her uncle drew her into his arms.

"All right, little girl. It is not an easy thing to swallow. I hate to have your shining whiteness touch pitch even for a minute. No, wait, dear. I am not going to condemn your lover. If he is sincerely in earnest in trying to clean the slate, I have only respect for the effort. You are right about much of it. We can none of us afford to do over much judging.

We are all sinners, more or less. And there are a million things to be taken into consideration before we may dare to sit in judgment upon any human being. It takes a G.o.d to do that. I am not going to ask you to give him up, or to stop writing or even seeing him. But I do want you to go slow. Marriage is a solemn thing. Don't wreck your life from pity or mistaken devotion. Better a heart-ache now than a life-long regret. Let your lover prove himself just as you have set him to do. A woman can't save a man. He has to save himself. But if he will save himself for love of her the chances are he will stay saved and his love is the real thing.

I shall accept your decision. I shan't fight it in any way, whatever it is. All I ask is that you will wait the full year before you make any definite promise of marriage."

"I will," said Tony. "I meant to do that any way. I am not such a foolish child as maybe you have been thinking I was. I am pretty much grown up, Uncle Phil. And I have plenty of sense. It I hadn't--I should be married to Alan this minute."

He smiled a little sadly at that.

"Youth! Youth! Yes, Tony, I believe you have sense. Maybe I have under-estimated it. Any way I thank the good Lord for it. No more secrets? Everything clear?"

He lifted her face in his hands and looked down into her eyes with tender searching.

"Not a secret. I am very glad to have you know. We all feel better the moment we dump all our woes on you," she sighed.

He smiled and stroked her hair.

"I had much rather be a dumping ground than be shut out of the confidence of any one of you. That hurts. We all have to stand by Larry, just now.

Not in words but in--well, we'll call it moral support. The poor lad needs it."

"Oh, Uncle Phil! Did he tell you or did you guess?"

"A little of both. The boy is in a bad hole, Tony. But he will keep out of the worst of the bog. He has grit and chivalry enough to pull through somehow. And maybe before many weeks the mystery will be cleared for better or worse. We can only hope for the best and hold on tight to Larry, and Ruth too, till they are out of the woods."

CHAPTER XX

A YOUNG MAN NOT FOR SALE

Philip Lambert was rather taken by surprise when Harrison Cressy appeared at the store one day late in August, announcing that he had come to talk business and practically commanding the young man to lunch with him that noon. It was Sat.u.r.day and Phil had little time for idle conjecture, but he did wonder every now and then that morning what business Carlotta's father could possibly have with himself, and if by any chance Carlotta had sent him.

Later, seated in the dining-room of the Eagle Hotel, Dunbury's one hostelry, it seemed to Phil that his host was distinctly nervous, with considerably less than his usual brusque, dogmatic poise of manner.

Having left soup the waiter shuffled away with the congenital air of discouragement which belongs to his cla.s.s, and Harrison Cressy got down to business in regard both to the soup and his mission in Dunbury. He was starting a branch brokerage concern in a small city just out of Boston.

He needed a smart young man to put at the head of it. The smart young man would get a salary of five thousand a year, plus his commissions to start with. If he made good the salary would go up in proportion. In fact the sky would be the limit. He offered the post to Philip Lambert.

Phil laid down his soup spoon and stared at his companion. After a moment he remarked that it was rather unusual, to say the least, to offer a salary like that to an utter greenhorn in a business as technical as brokerage, and that he was afraid he was not in the least fitted for the position in question.

"That is my look out," snapped Mr. Cressy. "Do I look like a born fool, Philip Lambert? You don't suppose I am jumping in the dark do you? I have gone to some pains to look up your record in college. I found out you made good no matter what you attempted, on the gridiron, in the cla.s.sroom, everywhere else. I've been picking men for years and I've gone on the principle that a man who makes good in one place will make good in another if he has sufficient incentive."

"I suppose the five thousand is to be considered in the light of an incentive," said Phil.

"It is five times the incentive and more than I had when I started out,"

grunted his host. "What more do you want?"

"Nothing. I don't want so much. I couldn't earn it. And in any case I cannot consider any change at present. I have gone in with my father."

"So I understood. But that is not a hard and fast arrangement. A young man like you has to look ahead. Your father won't stand in the way of your bettering yourself." Harrison Cressy spoke with conviction. Well he might. Though Philip had not known it his companion had spent an hour in earnest conversation with his father that morning. Harrison Cressy knew his ground there.

"Go ahead, Mr. Cressy," Stewart Lambert had said at the close of the interview. "You have my full permission to offer the position to the boy and he has my full permission to accept it. He is free to go tomorrow if he cares to. If it is for his happiness it is what his mother and I want."

But the younger Lambert was yet to be reckoned with.

"It is a hard and fast arrangement so far as I am concerned," he said quietly now. "Dad can fire me. I shan't fire myself."

Mr. Cressy made a savage lunge at a fly that had ventured to light on the sugar bowl, not knowing it was for the time being Millionaire Cressy's sugar bowl. He hated being balked, even temporarily. He had supposed the hardest sledding would be over when he had won the father's consent. He had authentic inside information that the son had stakes other than financial. He counted on youth's imperious urge to happiness. The lad had done without Carlotta for two months now. It had seemed probable he would be more amenable to reason in August than he had been in June. But it did not look like it just now.

"You are a darn fool, my young man," he gnarled.

"Very likely," said Phil Lambert, with the same quietness which had marked his father's speech earlier in the day. "If you had a son, Mr.

Cressy, wouldn't you want him to be the same kind of a darn fool? Would you expect him to take French leave the first time somebody offered him more money?"

Harrison Cressy snorted, beckoned to the waiter his face purple with rage. Why in blankety blank blank et cetera, et cetera, didn't he bring the fish? Did he think they were there for the season? Philip did not know he had probed an old wound. The one great disappointment of Harrison Cressy's career was the fact that he had no son, or had had one for such a brief s.p.a.ce of hours that he scarcely counted except as a pathetic might-have-been And even as Phil had said, so he would have wanted his son to behave. The boy was a man, every inch of him, just such a man as Harrison Gressy had coveted for his own.

"Hang the money part." he snapped back at Phil, after the interlude with the harra.s.sed waiter. "Let's drop it."

"With all my heart," agreed Phil. "Considering the money part hanged what is left to the offer? Carlotta?"

Mr. Cressy dropped his fork with a resounding clatter to the floor and swore muttered monotonous oaths at the waiter for not being instantaneously on the spot to replace the implement.

"Young man," he said to Phil. "You are too devilish smart. Carlotta--is why I am here."

"So I imagined. Did she send you?"

"Great Scott, no! My life wouldn't be worth a bra.s.s nickel if she knew I was here."

"I am glad she didn't. I wouldn't like Carlotta to think I could be--bribed."

"She didn't. Carlotta has perfectly clear impressions as to where you stand. She gives you entire credit for being the blind, stubborn, pigheaded jack-a.s.s that you are."