The Cow Puncher Part 14

"Ice cleam? Toast? Tea--"

"No! Something to eat! Soup, flied chicken, hot vegetables, dessert, everything."

"You've had your dinner, surely?" asked Bert.

"Such a dinner as a man eats alone," he answered. "Now for something real. You stick to the paper like the ink, don't you, Bert?"

"Can't leave it. I hate it--and I love it. It's my poison and my medicine. Most of all I hate the society twaddle. And, of course, that's what I have to do."

"And you write it up so gloriously," said Dave. "Enthusiasm in every line of it."

"You read it, then? I thought all men looked on the society page with contempt."

"They do. But they look on it just the same--long enough to see whether their names appear among those present."

"Or whose husband is out of town?"

"You're growing more cynical all the time."

"How can I help it, when I see both sides of the game? If I printed half what I know I'd have every lawyer in this city busy to-morrow--except those who skipped out over-night."

"You know it," Dave agreed. "But here is dinner." The boy wheeled a table between them, and there was a savoury smell of hot food.

"A _recherche_ repast," screamed Bert, half through her soup, with a great burst of merriment. "Oh, I must tell you. You remember the Metfords? You used to shovel coal for them. I know you're no sn.o.b, or I wouldn't put it so brutally. Of course, they're rich. Sold the old stable-yard for a quarter of a million, or thereabouts, and are now living in style. Some style! When they have guests, as they nearly always have--there'll be parasites as long as there's easy money--old man Metford eats breakfast in evening dress. And she orders the chiffonier to take the guests down to the _depot_ in their Packer. But one thing has gone to her heart. She didn't realize in time that it wasn't good form to be prolific. Now that she knows three is the limit she has sent the other six to the country. But that isn't what I started on. She called up this morning and gave me h.e.l.l because I said yesterday that she had served a _recherche_ repast at some function they pulled off the other night. 'See here, young woman,' she says, 'I want you to understand there's none of that _recherche_ stuff on my table. Nothing short of champagne, every drop of it.' I just yelled."

"Why didn't you print a retraction?"

"I don't know."

"I do. It's because, Miss Roberta, beneath your cynicism and your a.s.sumption of masculinity, you are as sympathetic as a young mother.

It would be mean to put over anything like that, and you just can't do it."

"Nonsense. You see what I print at times--"

"Bert," he said suddenly, "why don't you get married?"

"Who, me?" Then she laughed. "I guess I'm too sympathetic. It would be mean to put over anything like that on a man, and a girl wouldn't have me."

"Well, then, why don't you buy some real estate?" he continued, jocularly. "Every man should have some dissipation--something to make him forget his other troubles."

"A little late in the meal for that word, isn't it?"

He stared a moment, and then sprang to his feet. "I beg your pardon.

What will you drink?"

"What you drink."

"But I drink coffee."

"So do I. . . I may be mannish, Dave, but I don't think I'm a fool. I can understand a man drinking, but not a woman. It's too dangerous. . . . But I'll smoke a cigarette.

"Now, as for real estate. The fact is, I _have_ invested."

A look came into his face which she did not understand. "With whom?"

he demanded, almost peremptorily.

"With Conward & Elden," she answered, and the roguishness of her voice suggested that her despised femininity lay not far from the surface.

"Were you about to be jealous?"

"Why didn't you come to me?" She realized that he was in deep earnest.

"I did," she answered, candidly. "At least, I asked for you, but you were out of town, so Conward took me in hand, and I followed his advice."

"Do you trust Conward?" he demanded almost fiercely.

"Well, he's good enough to be your partner, isn't he?"

The thrust hurt more than she knew. He had his poise again.

"Real estate is the only subject I would trust him on," she continued.

"I must say, Dave, that for a shrewd business man you are awfully dense about Conward."

He remained silent for a few moments. He decided not to follow her lead. He knew that if she had anything explicit to say about Conward she would say it when she felt the time to be opportune, and not until then. He returned to the matter of her speculation.

"How much did you invest?"

"Not much. Just what I had."

"You mean all your savings?"

"Why not? It's all right, isn't it?"

He had risen and was standing again by the window. The long line of lights stretched out until they became mere diamond points on the velvet bosom of the night. Motor cars sped noiselessly to and fro, save where, at the corner below, chauffeurs exercised their sirens.

But neither the lights, nor the night, nor the movement and noises of the street had any part in the young man's consciousness.

"It's all right, isn't it?" she repeated.

"I'm afraid it isn't," he said at length, in a restrained voice. "I'm afraid it isn't."

"What do you mean?" she demanded. There was an accusation in her eyes that was hard to face.

"Bert," he continued, "did it ever occur to you that this thing must have an end--that we can't go on forever lifting ourselves by our own bootstraps? We have built a city here, a great and beautiful city, almost as a wizard might build it by magic over night. There was room for it here; there was occasion; there was justification. But there was neither occasion nor justification for turning miles and miles of prairie land into city lots--lots which in the nature of things cannot possibly, in your time or mine, be required for city purposes. These lots should be producing; wheat, oats, potatoes, cows, b.u.t.ter--that is what we must build our city on. We have been considering the effect rather than the cause. The cause is the country, the neglected country, and until it overtakes the city we must stand still, if we do not go back. Our prosperity has been built on borrowed money, and we have forgotten that borrowed money must, sometime, be repaid.

Meanwhile, in the heart of the greatest agricultural country in the world, we bring our potatoes across the American continent and our b.u.t.ter across the Pacific ocean."

He had spoken with effort, as one who makes a bitter confession, yet tries to state the case fairly, without excuses and without violence.

"You mean that the boom is about to burst?" she said.

"Not exactly burst. It will not be so sudden as that. It will just ooze away, like a toy balloon p.r.i.c.ked with a pin."