Amazing Grace Part 5

For a moment I was silent.

"But what shall I tramp in?" I finally asked severely. "What can I walk out the Waverley Pike in?"

Then mother took fresh courage.

"You're not going to walk!" she answered triumphantly. "You're going to ride--in your very--own--electric--coupe! Here's the catalogue."

She scrambled about for a book on a table near at hand--and I began to see daylight.

"Oh, a player-piano, and an electric coupe--all in one day! I see! My fairy G.o.dmother--who was old Aunt Patricia, and she looked exactly like one--has turned the pumpkin into a gold coach! You two plotters have been putting your heads together to have me get rich quick and gracefully!"

"We understand that this stroke of fortune is going to make a great change in your life, Grace," Guilford said gravely. He was always grave--and old. The only way you could tell his demeanor from that of a septuagenarian was that he didn't drag his feet as he walked.

"'Stroke of fortune?'" I repeated.

"The Coburn--" mother began.

"Colt--" he re-enforced, then they both hesitated, and looked at me meaningly.

I gave a hysterical laugh.

"You and mother have counted your Coburn-Colts before they were hatched!" I exclaimed wickedly, sitting down and looking over the music rolls. I did want that player-piano tremendously--although I had about as much use for an electric coupe, under my present conditions in life, as I had for a perambulator.

"Grace, you're--indelicate!" mother said, her voice trembling.

"Guilford's a man!"

"A man's a man--especially a Kentuckian!" I answered. "You're not shocked at my mention of colts and--and things, are you, Guilford?"

My betrothed sat down and lifted from the bridge of his nose that badge of civilization--a pair of rimless gla.s.ses. He polished them with a dazzling handkerchief, then replaced the handkerchief into the pocket of the most faultless coat ever seen. He smoothed his already well-disciplined hair, and brushed away a speck of dust from the toe of his shoe. From head to foot he fairly bristled with signs of civic improvement.

"I am shocked at your reception of your mother's kind thoughtfulness,"

he said.

He waited a little while before saying it, for hesitation was his way of showing disapproval. Yet you must not get the impression from this that Guilford was a bad sort! Why, no woman could ride in an elevator with him for half a minute without realizing that he was the flower-of-chivalry sort of man! He always had a little way of standing back from a woman, as if she were too sacred to be approached, and in her presence he had a habit of holding his hat clasped firmly against the b.u.t.tons of his coat. You can forgive a good deal in a man if he keeps his hat off all the time he's talking to you!

"'Shocked?'" I repeated.

"Your mother always plans for your happiness, Grace."

"Of course! Don't you suppose I know that?" I immediately asked in an injured tone. It is always safe to a.s.sume an injured air when you're arguing with a man, for it gives him quite as much pleasure to comfort you as it does to hurt you.

"I didn't--mean anything!" he hastened to a.s.sure me.

"Guilford merely jumped at the chance of your freeing yourself of this newspaper slavery," mother interceded. "You know what a humiliation it is to him--just as it is to me and to every member of the--Christie family."

My betrothed nodded so violently in acquiescence that his gla.s.ses flew off in s.p.a.ce.

"You know that I am a Kentuckian in my way of regarding women, Grace,"

he plead. "I can't bear to see them step down from the pedestal that nature ordained for them!"

I turned and looked him over--from the crown of his intensely aristocratic fair head to the tip of his aristocratic slim foot.

"A Kentuckian?"

"Certainly!"

"A Kentuckian?" I repeated reminiscently. "Why, Guilford Blake, you ought to be olive-skinned--and black-eyed--and your shoes ought to turn up at the toes--and your head ought to be covered by a red fez--and you ought to sit smoking through a water-bottle of an evening, in front of your--your--"

"Grace!" stormed mother, rising suddenly to her feet. "I will not have you say such things!"

"What things?" I asked, drawing back in hurt surprise.

"H-harems!" she uttered in a blus.h.i.+ng whisper, but Guilford caught the word and squared his shoulders importantly.

"But, I say, Grace," he interrupted, his face showing that mixture of anger and pleased vanity which a man always shows when you tell him that he's a dangerous tyrant, or a bold Don Juan--or both. "You don't think I'm a Turk--do you?"

"I do."

He sighed wistfully.

"If I were," he said, shaking his head, "I'd have caught you--and _veiled_ you--long before this."

I looked at him intently.

"You mean--"

"That I shouldn't have let you delay our marriage this way! Why should you, pray, when my financial affairs have changed so in the last year?"

I rose from my place beside the new piano, breaking gently into his plea.

"It isn't that!" I attempted to explain, but my voice failed drearily.

"You ought to know that--finances hadn't anything to do with it. I haven't kept from marrying you all these years because we were both so poor--then, last year when you inherited your money--I didn't keep from marrying you because you were so rich!"

"Then, what is it?" he asked gravely, and mother looked on as eagerly for my answer as he did. This is one advantage about a life-long betrothal. It gets to be a family inst.i.tution. Or is that a disadvantage?

"I--don't know," I confessed, settling back weakly.

"I don't think you do!" mother observed with considerable dryness.

"Well, this business of your getting to be a famous compiler of literature may help you get your bearings," Guilford kept on, after an awkward little pause. "You have always said that you wished to exercise your own wings a little before we married, and I have given in to you--although I don't know that it's right to humor a woman in these days and times. Really, I don't know that it is."

"Oh, you don't?"

"No--I don't. But we're not discussing that now, Grace! What I'm trying to get at is that this offer means a good deal to you. Of course, it is only the beginning of your career--for these fellows will think up other things for you to do--and it will give you a way of earning money that won't take you up a flight of dirty office stairs every day. Understand, I mean for just a short while--as long as you insist upon earning your own living."

"And the honor!" mother added. "You could have your pictures in good magazines!"

I stifled a yawn, for, to tell the truth, the conflict had made me nervous and weary.