Little Miss Grouch Part 11

"Daddleskink Manor," ruminated the girl, in mocking solemnity. "Shall you restore the ancient glory of the name? By the way, Dr. Alderson's researches don't seem to have brought your clan to light, in the records of the house."

"Oh, my interest is on my mother's side," said the Tyro hastily. "That's why I'm buying the property."

"You're not!" said the girl, with a little stamp of her foot. Her companion moved back apprehensively. "Can you pay a million dollars for it?"

"No. Can you?"

"Never mind. Dad said he'd get it for me if--if--well, he promised to, anyway."

"If you'd marry the marionette who recently faded from view?"

"Ye--yes."

"Far be it from me," said the Tyro modestly, "to enter the lists against so redoubtable a champion on such short notice. Still, if you _are_ marrying real estate, rather than wealth, intellect, or beauty, I may mention that I've got an option on that very house, and that it will cost me pretty much every cent I've made since I left college to pay for it."

"That you've made? Haven't you got any money of your own?"

"Whose do you suppose the money I've made is?"

"But anything to _live_ on, I mean. Do you have to work?"

"Oh, no. The poorhouse is contiguous and hospitable. But I've always had a puerile prejudice against pauperdom as a career."

"You know what I mean," she accused. "Haven't your people got money?"

"Enough. And they can use what they have. Why should they waste it on me?"

"But the men I know don't have to work," said the young lady.

There was nothing patronizing or superior in her tone, but the curiosity with which she regarded her companion was in itself an irritant.

"Oh, well," he said, "after you've bought an old historic house and maybe a coat of arms, I dare say you'll come to know some decent citizens by and by."

"You mustn't think I have any feeling about your working," she explained magnanimously. "Lots of nice men do. I know that. Only I don't happen to know them. Young men, I mean. Of course dad works, but that's different. I suppose Mrs. Denyse told you who dad is."

"She did. But I didn't know any more after she got through telling than before."

The slanted brows went up to a high pitch of incredulity. "Where in the world do you live?"

"Why, I've been in the West mostly for some years. My work has kept me there."

"Oh, your haberdashery isn't in New York?"

"My haber--er--well--no; that is, I don't depend on the--er--trade entirely. I'm a sort of a kind of a chemist, too."

"In a college?" inquired the young lady, whose impressions of chemistry as a pursuit were derived chiefly from her schooldays.

"Mainly in mining-camps. Far out of the world. That's why I don't know who you and your father are."

"Don't you really? Well, never mind us. Tell me more about your work,"

she besought, setting the feminine pitfall--half unconsciously--into which trapper and prey so often walk hand in hand.

He answered in the words duly made and provided for such occasions: "Not much to tell," and, as the natural sequence, proceeded to tell it, encouraged by her interested eyes, at no small length.

Little Miss Grouch was genuinely entertained. From the young men whom she knew she had heard sundry tales of the wild, untamed portions of our country, but these gilded ones had peeked into such places from the windows of transcontinental trains, or lingered briefly in them on private-car junkets, or used them as bases of supply for luxurious hunting-trips. Here was a youth--he looked hardly more--who had gone out in dead earnest and fought the far and dry West for a living, and, as nearly as she could make out from this gray-eyed Oth.e.l.lo's modest narrative, had won his battle all along the line.

I am violating no confidence in stating that this was the beginning of trouble for Little Miss Grouch, though she was far from appreciating her danger at the time, or of realizing that her dire design of vengeance was becoming diluted with a very different sentiment.

"So," concluded the narrator, "here I am, a tenderfoot of the ocean, having marketed my ore-reducing process for a sufficient profit to give me a vacation, and also to permit of my buying a little old house on the Battery."

"I'm sorry," said Little Miss Grouch, imitatively.

"What are you sorry for?"

"Your disappointment. Still, disappointment is good for the soul.

Anyway, I'm not going to quarrel with you now. You're too brutal. I think I'm feeling better. How do I look?"

"Like a perfect wond--hum!" broke off the Tyro, nearly choking over his sudden recollection of the terms of acquaintance. "I can't see any improvement."

"Perhaps walking would help. They say the plainest face looks better under the stimulus of exercise. Is your foot fit to walk on?"

"It's fit for me to walk on," said the Tyro cautiously.

"Come along, then," and she set out at a brisk, swinging stride which told its own tale of pulsing life and joyous energy. After half a dozen turns, she paused to lean over the rail which shuts off the carefully caged creatures of the steerage from the superior above.

"My grandfather came over steerage," she remarked casually. "I don't think I should like it."

A big-eyed baby, in its mother's st.u.r.dy arms below, caught sight of her and crowed with delight, stretching up its arms.

"Oh," she cried with a little intake of the breath, "look at that adorable baby!"

As she spoke the Tyro surprised in her face a change; a look of infinite wistfulness and tenderness, the yearning of the eternal mother that rises in every true woman when she gazes upon the child that might have been her own; and suddenly a great longing surged over his soul and mastered him for the moment. But the baby was lisping something in German.

"What is it saying?" Little Miss Grouch asked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "OH, LOOK AT THAT ADORABLE BABY!"]

"'Pretty-pretty,' substantially," translated the Tyro, recovering himself. "Madam," he continued, addressing the mother, "it is evident that your offspring suffers from some defect of vision. I advise you to consult an oculist at once."

"_Bitte?_" said the mother, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested young madonna.

"He says," explained Little Miss Grouch, "that it is a beautiful baby, with a wonderful intelligence and unusually keen eyes. What is her name?"

"Karl, lady," said the mother.

"Let's adopt Karl," said the corrected one, to the Tyro. "We'll come here every day, and bring him nougats and candied violets--"

"And some pate de foie gras, and brandied peaches, and dry Martini c.o.c.ktails," concluded the Tyro. "And then there'll be a burial at sea.