Little Miss Grouch Part 32

"I'd give the heart out of my body for her."

"Do you know anything about the kind of girl she is? The life she leads?

The things and people that make life for her? The sort of world she lives in?"

"Not very much."

"I suppose not. Well, son, I make up my mind quickly about people. You strike me as something of a man. But I'm afraid you haven't got the backing to carry out this contract."

"We are prepared to show a reasonable income," declared Judge Enderby, "with a juster prospect of permanence than--well, for example, than Wall Street affords, at present."

"Possibly. Of course I could find our young friend here an ornamental and useless position in my office--"

"No, thank you," said the Tyro.

"No. I'd supposed not. Well, Mr. Smith, to keep that amiable young lady running at the rate of speed which she considers legal, trims fifty thousand a year down so fine that I could put the remainder in the plate on New Year's Sunday without a pang."

"Fifty thousand!" gasped the Tyro.

"Oh, the modern American girl is a high-priced luxury. Are you worth a million dollars?"

"No."

"See any prospect of getting a million?"

"Not the slightest."

"Well, do you think it would be fair to a girl like Cecily, with an upbringing which--"

"Which imbecility and sn.o.bbery have combined to make the worst imaginable," cut in Judge Enderby.

"I don't say you're wrong. But it's what she's had. That kind of life is no longer a luxury to her. It's a necessity."

"Twaddle!" observed the judge.

"Have it your own way," allowed the father patiently. "But there's the situation," he added to the Tyro. "What are you going to do with it?"

The Tyro looked him between the eyes. "The best I can," said he, and walked away.

"Now, Enderby," said the great financier, following him with his glance, "it's up to the boy and the girl."

"You've killed him off."

"Not if I know Cecily. She's got a good deal of her mother in her. I've always known it would be once and forever with her. And I'm afraid this boy is the once."

"It might be worse," suggested the lawyer dryly.

"Yes. I've made inquiries. But what can a man know about things?" The great man's regard drifted out into the gray distance of the open sea.

"Ah, if I had her mother back again!"

"The boy is fine and honorable and manful, Wayne," said the old lawyer.

"To be sure, you'll never make a Wall Street dollar-hound out of him--"

"Heaven knows I don't want to."

"But he'll play his part in the world and play it well. I've come to think a good deal of that boy. I wish I were as sure of the girl."

"Cecily? Don't you worry about her." The father chuckled pridefully.

"She's got stuff in her. I'd trust her to start the world with as I did with her mother."

What of Little Miss Grouch, while all these momentous happenings were in progress? Events had piled up on her st.u.r.dy little nerves rather too fast even for their youthful strength. The emotional turmoil of which the Tyro was the cause, the tension of meeting her father again, and, on top of these, the startling occurrences on the deck of the tender had stretched her endurance a little beyond its limit, and it was with a sense of grateful refuge that she had betaken herself to the hospitality of Lady Guenn's cabin. What transpired between the two women is no matter for the pen of a masculine chronicler. Suffice it to note that Lord Guenn, surcharged with instructions to be casual, set out to find the Tyro, and, having found him, blurted out:--

"I say, Smith, Cecily's in our cabin. If I were you I'd lose no time getting there. It's the only one on the port side aft."

No time was lost by the Tyro. He found Cecily alone. At sight of her face, his heart gave one painful thump, and shriveled up.

"You've been crying," he said.

"I haven't!" she denied. "And if I have, there's enough to make me cry."

"What was it?" was his sufficiently lame rejoinder.

"I imagine if you'd seen your father beaten and kicked as I saw mine--"

"I didn't know who it was."

"But if you had been shaken and cursed, yourself--"

"Cursed? Who cursed you?"

"You did."

"I!"

"You said, 'D-d-d.a.m.n you, let me go!'"

"I did _not_. I simply told you to let me go."

"Well you might as well have said 'd.a.m.n you!' You meant it," whimpered Little Miss Grouch.

"She might have been drowned," said the Tyro.

"So might you. I saved your life by not letting you go in after her. And you haven't a spark of grat.i.tude."

"Well," began the Tyro, astounded at this sudden turn of strategy, "I _am_--"

"Go on and curse some more," she advised. "I suppose you'd have kicked _me_ if I hadn't let go."

He stared at her, speechless.