Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 29

"What did you do--box his young ears?"

"No." Margaret's eyes laughed, but she shook her head reprovingly. "I thought it was so DEAR of him to feel that way, yet never give you even a hint, that I--"

"Well?" smiled her husband, as she paused.

"Well," hesitated Mrs. Coppered. And then in a little burst she added: "I said, 'Duncan, if you ask me to I WILL tell him!'"

"And what do you think you gain by THAT, Sapphira?" said Carey, much amused.

"Why, don't you see? Don't you see it means EVERYTHING to him to have stood by me in this, and now to clear it all up between us! Don't you see that it makes him one of us, in a way? He's done his adored father a real service--"

"And his adored mother, too?"

His tone brought the happy tears to her eyes.

"And the favor?" he said presently.

"Oh! Well, you see, I'm supposed to be 'fessing up the whole horrible business, Carey, and in a day or two I want you to thank him, just in some general way,--you'll know how!--for looking out for me so well while you were away. Will you?"

"I will," he promised slowly.

"He's coming downstairs--so good-by!" said she. She came around the table to kiss him, and, suddenly smitten with a sense of youth and well-being and the glory of the spring morning, she added a little wistfully:

"I wonder what I've done to be so happy, Carey--I wonder what I've ever done to be so loved?"

"I wonder!" said Carey, smiling.

MISS MIX, KIDNAPPER

I

"Well, he has done it now, confound his nerve!" said Anthony Fox, Sr., in a tone of almost triumphant fury. He spread the loosely written sheets of a long letter on the breakfast table. "Here I am, just out of a sick-bed!" he pursued fretfully; "just home from a month's idling abroad, and now I'll have to go away out to California to lick some sense into that young fool!"

"For Heaven's sake, Tony, don't get yourself all worked up!" said handsome, stately Mrs. Fox, much more concerned for father than for son. She sighed resignedly as she folded a flattering request from her club for an address ent.i.tled, "Do We Forget Our Maids?" and gave him her full attention. "Read me the letter, dear," said she, placidly.

"Of course I always knew some woman would get hold of him," said Anthony, Sr., fumbling blindly for his mouth with a bit of toast, his eyes still on the letter; "but, by George, this sounds like Charlie Ross!"

"Woman!" repeated Mrs. Fox, with a relieved laugh. "Buddy's in love, is he? Don't worry, Tony, it won't last! Of all boys in the world he's the least likely to be foolish that way!"

"Of all boys in the world he's the kind that is easiest taken in!" said his father, dryly, securing the toast at last with a savage snap.

"H-m--she's his landlady! Keeps fancy fowls and takes boarders--ha!

Says they rather hope to be married in June. This has quite a settled tone to it, for Buddy. I don't like the look of it!"

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Fox, with dawning uneasiness. "You don't mean to say he considers himself seriously engaged? At twenty! And to his landlady, too--I never heard such nonsense! Buddy's in no position to marry. Who IS the girl, anyway?"

"GIRL is good!" said the reader, bitterly. "She's thirty-two!"

Mrs. Fox, her hand hovering over a finger-bowl, grew rigid.

"Thirty-two!" she echoed blankly. Then sharply: "Anthony, do you think you can stop it?"

"I'll do what I can, believe me!" he a.s.sured her grimly. "Yes, sir, she's thirty-two! By the way, f.a.n.n.y, this letter's already a month old.

Why haven't I had it before?"

"You told them to hold only the office mail while you were travelling, you know," Mrs. Fox reminded him. "That one evidently has been following you. Anthony, can Tony marry without your consent?"

"No-o, but of course he's of age in five months, and if she's got her hooks deep enough into him, she--oh, confound such a complication, anyway!"

"It looks to me as if she wanted his money," said Mrs. Fox.

"H-m!" said his father, again deep in the letter. "That's just occurred to you, has it? Poor old Buddy--poor old Bud!"

"Oh, he'll surely get over it," said Mrs. Fox, uncertainly.

"He may, but you can bet SHE won't! Not before they're married, anyway.

No, Bud's the sort that gets it hard, when he does get it!" his father said. "There's a final tone about the whole thing that I don't like.

Listen to this!" He quoted from the letter with a rueful shake of the head. "'I don't know what the darling girl sees in me, dad, but she has turned down enough other fellows to know her own mind. At last I realize what Mrs. Browning's wonderful sonnets--'"

"He DOESN'T say that?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the listener, incredulously.

"'She doesn't know I am writing you,'" Mr. Fox read on grimly, "'because I don't want her to worry about your objecting. But you won't object when you know her. She doesn't care anything about money, and says she will stick by me if we have to begin on an eighty-dollar-a-month job. You don't know how I love her, dad; it has changed my whole life. It's not just because she's beautiful, and all that. You will say that I am pretty young, but I know I can count on you for some sort of job to begin with, and things will work out all right.'"

"H-m!" said Mrs. Fox. "Yes, you're right, Tony. This is serious!"

"All worked out, you see," said the man, gloomily, as he drummed absently on the letter.

"Oh, Anthony, I can't help thinking of the Page boy, and that awful woman! Anthony, shall I go? Could I do any good if I went?"

"No," he said thoughtfully. "No, I'll go myself. Don't worry, f.a.n.n.y, there's still time. Isn't it a curious thing that it's a quiet little fellow like Bud that--well, we'll see what can be done. I'll talk to this woman. She may think he has money of his own, you know. I'll buy her off if I can. Perhaps I can get him to go off somewhere with me for a trip. I'll see. Barker can look me up a train, and things here will have to wait. You'll see about my things, will you, f.a.n.n.y--have 'em packed? Oh, and here's the letter--pretty sick reading you'll find it!"

"Be gentle with him!" said Mrs. Fox, deep in the boy's letter.

"Thirty-two! Why, she might be his mother--in some countries she might, anyway. Anthony!"--her voice stopped him at the door--"IS her name Sally Mix?"

"Apparently," he said. "Can you beat it? It sounds like a drink!"

"Well," said Mrs. Fox, firmly, as if the name clenched the matter, "it must be STOPPED, that's all! Sally Mix! I hope she's WHITE!"

II

Just a week later, in Palo Alto, California, Anthony Fox slammed the gate of Miss Mix's garden loudly behind him, and eyed the Mix homestead with disapproval. The house was square and white, with doors and windows open to spring sunlight and air, and was surrounded by a garden s.p.a.ce of flowers and trees and trim brick walks. The click of the gate brought a maid to the doorway.

"Mr. Fox won't be here until noon," said the maid, in answer to his question.