Wallingford, grinning over the fatal defect in Fannie Bubble, looked back at the girl.

"She would make a Casino chorus look like a row of Hallowe'en confectionery junk," he admitted.

"Fannie, come right in here and get supper!" shrilled a harsh voice, and in the doorway of the Bubble homestead they saw an overly-plump figure in a green silk dress.

"Gosh!" said Bob, and hit one of the little sorrel horses a vindictive clip. "That's Fannie's stepmother. Jonas Bubble married his hired girl two years ago, and now they don't hire any. She makes Fannie do the work."

CHAPTER XVIII

WALLINGFORD SPECULATES IN THE CHEAPEST REAL ESTATE PROCURABLE

That evening, after supper, Wallingford sat on one of the broad, cane-seated chairs in front of the Atlas Hotel, smoking a big, black cigar from his own private store, and watched the regular evening parade go by. They came, two by two, the girls of the village, up one side of Maple Street, pa.s.sed the Atlas Hotel, crossed over at the corner of the livery stable, went down past the Big Store and as far as the Campbellite church, where they crossed again and began a new round; and each time they pa.s.sed the Atlas Hotel they giggled, or they talked loudly, or pushed one another, or did something to enlarge themselves in the transient eye. The grocery drummer and the dry-goods salesman sat together, a little aloof from J. Rufus, and presently began saying flippant things to the girls as they pa.s.sed. A wake of giggles, after each such occasion, frothed across the street at the livery-stable corner, and down toward the Campbellite church.

Molly presently slipped out of the garden gate and went down Maple Street by herself. Within twenty minutes she, too, had joined the parade, and with her was Fannie Bubble. As these pa.s.sed the Atlas Hotel both the drummers got up.

"h.e.l.lo, Molly," said the grocery drummer. "I've been waiting for you since Hector was a pup," and he caught her arm, while the dry-goods salesman advanced a little uncertainly.

"You 'tend to your own business, Joe Cling," ordered Molly, jerking her arm away, but nevertheless giving an inquiring glance toward her companion. That rigid young lady, however, was looking straight ahead.

She was standing just in front of Wallingford.

"Come on," coaxed the grocery drummer; "I don't bite. Grab hold there on the other side, Billy."

Miss Bubble, however, was still looking so uncompromisingly straight ahead that Billy hesitated, and the willing enough Molly, seeing that the conference had "struck a snag," took matters into her own vigorous hands again.

"You're too fresh," she admonished the grocery drummer. "Let go my arm, I tell you. Come on, Fannie," and she flounced away with her companion, turning into the gate of the hotel garden. Miss Fannie cast back a curious glance, not at the grocery drummer nor the veteran dry-goods salesman, but at the quiet J. Rufus.

The discomfited transients gave short laughs of chagrin and went back to their seats, but the grocery drummer was too young to be daunted for long, and by the time another section or two of the giggling parade had pa.s.sed them he was ready for a second attempt. One couple, a tall, thin girl and a short, chubby one, who had now made the circuit three times, came sweeping past again, exchanging with each other hilarious persiflage which was calculated to attract and tempt.

"Wait a minute," said the grocery drummer to his companion.

He dashed straight across the street, and under the shadow of the big elm intercepted the long and short couple. There was a parley in which the girls two or three times started to walk away, a further parley in which they consented to stand still, a loud male guffaw mingled with a succession of shrill giggles, then suddenly the grocery salesman called:

"Come on, Billy!"

The dry-goods man half rose from his chair and hesitated.

"Come on, Billy!" again invited the grocery drummer. "We're going down to wade in the creek."

A particularly high-pitched set of giggles followed this tremendous joke, and Billy, his timid scruples finally overcome, went across the street, a ridiculous figure with his ancient body and his youthful clothes. Nevertheless, Wallingford felt just a trifle lonesome as he watched his traveling companions of the afternoon go sauntering down the street in company which, if silly, was at least human. While he regretted Broadway, Bob Ranger, dressed no whit different from his attire of the afternoon, except that his sleeves were rolled down, came out of the hotel and stood for an undecided moment in front of the door.

"h.e.l.lo, Bob!" hailed Wallingford cordially, glad to see any face he knew. "Do you smoke?"

"Reckon I do," said Bob. "I was thinkin' just this minute of walkin'

down to Bud Hegler's for some stogies."

"Sit down and have a cigar," offered Wallingford, producing a companion to the one he was then enjoying.

Bob took that cigar and smelled it; he measured its length, its weight, and felt its firmness.

"It ain't got any band on it, but I reckon that's a straight ten-center," he opined.

"I'll buy all you can get me of that brand for a quarter apiece,"

offered Wallingford.

"So?" said Bob, looking at it doubtfully. "I reckon I'd better save this for Sunday."

"No, smoke it now. I'll give you another one for Sunday," promised Wallingford, and he lit a match, whereupon Bob, biting the end off the cigar with his strong, white teeth, moistened it all over with his tongue to keep the curl of the wrapper down.

With vast gratification he sat down to enjoy that awe-inspiring cigar, and, by way of being entertaining, uttered comment upon the pa.s.sing parade--frank, ingeniously told bits of personal history which would have been startling to one who had imbibed the conventional idea that all country folk are without guile. Wallingford was not so much shocked by these revelations, however, as he might have been, for he had himself been raised in a country town, though one not so small as Blakeville.

It was while Bob was in the midst of this more or less profane history that Molly and Fannie Bubble came out of the gate.

"Come here, Molly," invited Bob; "I want to introduce you to a friend of mine. He's going to stop here quite a long time. Mr.

Wallingford--Molly; Miss Bubble--Mr. Wallingford. Come on; let's all take a walk," and confidently taking Molly's arm he started up the crossing, leaving Miss Bubble to Wallingford.

"It's a beautiful evening, isn't it?" said Fannie, as Wallingford caught step with her.

Wallingford had to hark back. Time had been when the line of conversation which went with Miss Bubble's opening remark had been as familiar to him as his own safety razor, but of late he had been entertaining such characters as Beauty Phillips, and conversation with the Beauty had consisted of lightning-witted search through the ends of the earth and the seas therein for extravagant hyperbole and metaphor. Harking back was so difficult that J. Rufus gave it up.

"Lovely evening," he admitted. "I've just been thinking about this weather. I've about decided to build a factory to put it up in boxes for the Chicago Market. They'd pay any price for it there in the fall."

Miss Fannie considered this remark in silence for a moment, and then she laughed, a quiet, silvery laugh that startled J. Rufus by its musical quality.

"I don't see why you should laugh," protested Wallingford gravely. "If a man can get a monopoly on weather-canning it would be even better than the sleep-factory idea I've been considering."

"What was that like?" asked Fannie, interested in spite of the fact that these jokes were not at all the good old standards, which could be laughed at without the painful necessity of thought.

"Well," Wallingford explained, "I figured on building an immense dormitory and hiring about a thousand fat hoboes to sleep for me night and day. Then I intended to take that sleep and condense it and put it up in eight-hour capsules for visitors to New York. There ought to be a fortune in that."

Again a little silence and again that little silvery laugh which Wallingford found himself watching for.

"You're so funny," said Miss Fannie.

"For a long time I was divided between that and my anti-b.u.m serum as a permanent investment," he went on, glancing down at her as he extended himself along the line which had seemed to catch her fancy.

She was looking up at him, her eyes shining, her lips half parted in an antic.i.p.atory smile, and unconsciously her hand had crept upon his arm, where it lay warm and vibrant. "You know," he explained, "they inoculate a guinea-pig or a sheep or something with disease germs, and from this animal, somehow or other, they extract a serum which cures that disease. Well, I propose to get a herd of billy-goats boiling spifflicated, and extract from them the jag serum, and with that inoculate all the rounders on Broadway at so much per inoc. Then they can stand up in front of an onyx bar and guzzle till it oozes out of their ears, without any worse effects than a lifting pain in the right elbow."

This time the laugh came more slowly, for here was a lot of language which, though refreshing, was tangled in knots that must be unraveled.

Nevertheless, the laugh came, and at the sound of it Wallingford involuntarily pressed slightly against his side the hand that lay upon his arm. They were pa.s.sing Hen Moozer's General Merchandise Emporium and Post-Office at the time, and upon the rickety porch, its posts, benches, and even floors whittled like a huge Rosetta stone, sat a group of five young men. Just after the couple had cleared the end of the porch a series of derisive meows broke out. It was the old protest of town boy against city boy, of work clothes against "Sunday duds,"

of native against alien; and again J. Rufus harked back. It only provoked a smile in him, but he felt a sudden tenseness in the hand that lay upon his arm, and he was relieved when Bob and Molly, a half block ahead of them, turned hastily down a delightfully dark and shady cross street, in the shelter of which Bob immediately slipped his arm around Molly's waist. J. Rufus, pondering that movement and regarding it as the entirely conventional and proper one, essayed to do likewise; but Miss Fannie, discussing the unpleasant habit of her young townsmen with some indignation but more sense of humor, gently but firmly unwound J. Rufus' arm, placed it at his side and slipped her hand within it again without the loss of a syllable.

Wallingford was surprised at himself. In the old days he would have fought out this issue and would have conquered. Now, however, something had made this bold young man of the world suddenly tame. He himself helped Miss Fannie to put him back upon grounds of friendly aloofness, and with a gasp he realized that for the first time in his life he had met a girl who had forced his entire respect. It was preposterous!

Unaccountably, however, they seemed to grow more friendly after that, and the talk drifted to J. Rufus himself, the places he had seen, the adventures he had encountered, the richness of luxury that he had sought and found, and the girl listened with breathless eagerness.

They did not go back to Maple Street just now, for the Maple Street parade was only for the unattached. Instead, they followed the others down to the depot and back, and after another half-hour _detour_ through the quiet, shady street, they found Bob and Molly waiting for them at the corner.