The Fortune Hunter Part 34

Betty moved into Duncan's range of vision, apparently intending to come and call him. She turned at the question, and he saw her small, thin little body and pinched face _en silhouette_ against the fading light beyond. He saw, too, that she was stiffening herself as if for some unequal contest.

"The invitation?" she questioned dully, but with her head up and steady.

"Why," said Josie, "I sent you one. To the party, you know--my lawn feet next week."

I give the local p.r.o.nunciation as it is.

"Did you?"

"I gave it to Tracey for you," persisted the tormentor. "Didn't you get it?"

Betty caught at her breath, inaudibly; only Duncan could see the little spasm of mortification and anger that shook her.

"Oh, perhaps I did," she said shortly. "I--I'll ask Mr. Duncan to wait on you."

She swung quickly out into the hallway, slamming the door behind her and so darkening it that she didn't detect Duncan's shadowed figure.

And if she had meant to call him, she must have forgotten it; for an instant later he heard her stumbling up the stairs, and as she disappeared he caught the echo of a smothered sob.

He waited, motionless, too disturbed at the time to care to enter the store and endure Josie's vapid advances; and through the thin part.i.tion there came to him their comments on Betty's ungracious behaviour.

"Well!... _did_ you ever!"

That was Angle; Josie chimed in the same key: "Oh, what did you expect from that kind of a girl?"

"_Ss.h.!.+_ maybe he's coming!"

After a moment's silence, Josie: "Oh, come on. Don't let's wait any longer. I don't think it's healthy to drink sody so soon before dinner, anyway."

"And, besides, we only wanted to hear--"

Their voices with their footsteps diminished. Duncan allowed a prudent interval to elapse, entered the store and began to bestow the goods he had brought in.

While he was at work the light failed. He stopped for lack of it just as Betty came downstairs.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said cheerfully. "Know where the matches are?"

"Yes." She moved behind a counter and fetched him a few. "Are you 'most done?" she inquired, not unfriendly, as he took down from its bracket one of the oil lamps.

"Hardly," he responded, touching a light to the wick and replacing the chimney. "It's a good deal of a job."

"Yes..."

He replaced the lamp, and in the act of turning toward another caught a glimpse of the girl's face, pale and drawn, her eyes a trifle reddened.

And with that commonsense departed from him, leaving him wholly a prey to his impulse of pity. "Oh, thunder!" he told himself, thrusting a hand into his pocket. "I might as well be broke as the way I am now."

He produced the scanty remains of his "grubstake."

"Miss Graham..."

"Yes?" she asked, wondering.

"Could you get a party dress for thirty-four dollars?"

"Thirty-four dollars!" she faltered.

He discovered what small change he had in his pocket: it was like him to be extravagant, even extreme. "And fifty-three cents?" he pursued, with a nervous laugh.

"Heavens!" the girl gasped. "I should think so!"

"Then go ahead!" He offered her the money, but she could only stare, incredulous. "I'll stake you."

"Oh..._no_, Mr. Duncan," she managed to say.

"Oh, yes!" He tried to catch one of the hands that involuntarily had risen toward her face in a gesture of wonder. "Please do," he begged, his tone persuasive, "as a favour to me."

But she evaded him, stepping back. "I couldn't take it; I couldn't really."

"Yes, you can. Just try it once, and see how easy it is," he persisted, pursuing.

"No, I can't." She looked up shyly and shook her head, that smile of her mother's for the moment illuminating her face almost with the radiance of beauty. "But I--I thank you very much--just the same."

"But I want you to go to that party..."

"You're awful' kind," she said softly, still smiling, "but I don't care to go, now. I--"

"Don't care to! Why, you were insisting on going, a little while ago."

"Yes," she admitted simply, "I know I was. But ... I've been thinking over what you said, since then, and I ... I've made up my mind I'd be out of place there."

"Out of place!" he echoed, thunderstruck.

"Yes. I've concluded I belong here in the store with father." She half turned away. "And I guess folks is better off if they stay where they belong...."

She went slowly from the room, and he remained staring, stupefied.

"You never can tell about a woman," he concluded with all the gravity of an original philosopher.

XV

MANOEUVRES OF JOSIE

Nat didn't go to the Lockwood lawn fete, and did excuse himself on the plea of being unable to leave the store. I'm afraid the young man had a faint, fond hope that Josie would be offended; but his excuse was accepted without remonstrance. And, indeed, it was at that time quite a reasonable one. Tracey had not been added to the staff, although business was booming, and Sat.u.r.day night is, as everyone who has lived in a Radville knows, the busiest of the week; all the stores keep open late on Sat.u.r.day--some as late as eleven--and frequently take in half the week's income between noon and the closing hour. Duncan really couldn't be spared; so it's probable that Josie cloaked her disappointment and comforted herself with the a.s.surance that her selection of the day had been an error in judgment, of which she would not again be guilty.

But the party came off, without fail, and that on a wonderful, still, moonlit night; and everybody voted it a splendid success. The _Citizen_ in its next issue recorded the event to the extent of a column and a half of reading matter, called it a social function, and described the gowns of the leading ladies of society present in bewildering phrases. I was not invited, but the owner of the paper was, and his wife wrote the description with the a.s.sistance of the entire editorial and reportorial force, a dictionary and some evil if suppressed language from the foreman of the composing-room. I read the proofs with an admiration strongly tinctured with awe, and found it lacking in one particular only: no mention was made of Roland Barnette's first open-faced suit.