Robert Kimberly Part 43

They had never hitherto talked with this boy and they now stopped their car and backed up. Alice usually asked the questions. "I thought you lived away at the other end of the village, laddie?"

"Yes'm, I do."

"You haven't wheeled yourself all this way?"

"Yes'm."

"What's the matter with you that you can't walk, Tommie?" demanded Kimberly.

"My back is broken."

Alice made a sympathetic exclamation. "My dear little fellow--I'm very sorry for you!"

The boy smiled. "Oh, don't be sorry for me."

"Not sorry for you?"

"I have a pretty good time; it's my mother--I'm sorry for her."

"Ah, indeed, your mother!" echoed Alice, struck by his words. "I am sorry for both of you then. And how did you break your back?"

"In our yard--climbing, ma'am."

"Poor devil, he's not the first one that has broken his back climbing,"

muttered Kimberly, taking a note from his waistcoat. "Give him something, Alice."

"As much as this?" cried Alice under her breath, looking at the note and at Kimberly.

"Why not? It's of no possible use to us, and it will be a nine-months'

wonder in that little household."

Alice folded the note up and stretched her white-gloved hand toward the boy. "Take this home to your mother."

"Thank you. I can make little baskets," he added shyly.

"Can you?" echoed Alice, pleased. "Would you make one for me?"

"I will bring one up to your house if you want me to."

"That would be too far! And you don't know where I live."

The boy looked at the green and black car as if he could not be mistaken. "Up at The Towers, ma'am."

Brice, who took more than a mild interest in the situation, grinned inwardly.

Kimberly and Alice laughed together. "Very well; bring it to The Towers," directed Kimberly, "I'll see that she gets it."

"Yes, sir."

"And see here; don't lose that note, Tommie. By Heavens, he handles money more carelessly than I do. No matter, wait till his mother sees it."

While they were talking to the boy, Dolly drove up in her car and stopped a moment to chat and scold. They laughed at her and she drove away as if they were hopeless.

"Your sister is the dearest woman," remarked Alice as Dolly's car disappeared. "I am so fond of her, I believe I am growing like her."

"Don't grow too like her."

"Why not?"

"Dolly has too much heart. It gets her into trouble."

"She says you have too much, yourself."

"I've paid for it, too; I've been in trouble."

"And I shall be, if you don't take me home pretty soon."

"Don't let us go home as long as we can go anywhere else," pleaded Kimberly. "When we go home we are separated."

He often attempted to talk with Alice of her husband. "Does he persecute you in any way?" demanded Kimberly, trying vainly to get to details.

Alice's answer was always the same. "Not now."

"But he used to?" Kimberly would persist.

"Don't ask me about that."

"If he ever should lay a hand on you, Alice----"

"Pray, pray," she cried, "don't look like that. And don't get excited; he is not going to lay a hand on me."

They did not reach Cedar Lodge until sundown and when they drove up to the house MacBirney, out from town, was seated on the big porch alone.

They called a greeting to him as they slowed up and he answered in kind.

Kimberly, without any embarra.s.sment, got out to a.s.sist Alice from the car. The courtesy of his manner toward her seemed emphasized in MacBirney's presence.

On this night, it was, perhaps, the picture of Kimberly standing at the door of his own car giving his hand to MacBirney's wife to alight, that angered the husband more than anything that had gone before. Kimberly's consideration for Alice was so p.r.o.nounced as completely to ignore MacBirney himself.

The small talk between the two when Alice alighted, the laughing exchanges, the amiable familiarity, all seemed to leave no place in the situation for MacBirney, and were undoubtedly meant so to be understood.

Kimberly good-humoredly proffered his attentions to that end and Alice could now accept them with the utmost composure.

Fritzie had already come over to Cedar Lodge from Imogene's for dinner and Kimberly returned afterward from The Towers, talking till late in the evening with MacBirney on business affairs. He then drove Fritzie back to The Cliffs.

MacBirney, smarting with the stings of jealousy, found no outlet for his feeling until he was left alone with his wife. It was after eleven o'clock when Alice, reading in her sitting-room, heard her husband try the door connecting from his apartments. Finding it bolted, as usual, MacBirney walked out on the loggia and came into her room through the east door which she had left open for the sea-breeze. He was smoking and he sat down on a divan. Alice laid her book on her knee.

It was a moment before he spoke. "You seem to be making Kimberly a pretty intimate member of the family," he began.

"Oh, do you think so? Charles or Robert?"

"You know very well who I mean."