hopefully.

"Of course I shall," said Tembarom, with much courage. "But to start
right I've got to get over YOU."

"Me, sir?" Pearson breathed anxiously.

"Yes. That's what I want to get off my chest. Now, first off, you came
in here to try to explain to me that, owing to my New York valet having
left my New York wardrobe behind, I've not got anything to wear, and so
I shall have to buy some clothes."

"I failed to find any dress-shirts, sir," began Pearson, hesitatingly.

Mr. Temple Barholm grinned.

"I always failed to find them myself. I never had a dress-shirt. I never
owned a suit of glad rags in my life."

"Gl--glad rags, sir?" stammered Pearson, uncertainly.

"I knew you didn't catch on when I said that to you before dinner.
I mean claw-hammer and dress-suit things. Don't you be frightened,
Pearson. I never had six good shirts at once, or two pair of shoes, or
more than four ten-cent handkerchiefs at a time since I was born. And
when Mr. Palford yanked me away from New York, he didn't suspect a
fellow could be in such a state. And I didn't know I was in a state,
anyhow. I was too busy to hunt up people to tell me, because I was
rushing something important right through, and I couldn't stop. I just
bought the first things I set eyes on and crammed them into my trunk.
There, I guess you know the most of this, but you didn't know I knew you
knew it. Now you do, and you needn't be afraid to hurt my feelings by
telling me I haven't a darned thing I ought to have. You can go straight
ahead."

As he leaned back, puffing away at his pipe, he had thrown a leg over
the arm of his chair for greater comfort, and it really struck his valet
that he had never seen a gentleman more at his ease, even one who WAS
one. His casual candidness produced such a relief from the sense of
strain and uncertainty that Pearson felt the color returning to his
face. An opening had been given him, and it was possible for him to do
his duty.

"If you wish, sir, I will make a list," he ventured further, "and the
proper firms will send persons to bring things down from London on
appro."

"What's 'appro' the English for?"

"Approval, sir."

"Good business! Good old Pearson!"

"Thank you, sir. Shall I attend to it to-night, to be ready for the
morning post?"

"In five minutes you shall. But you threw me off the track a bit. The
thing I was really going to say was more important than the clothes
business."

There was something else, then, thought Pearson, some other unexpected
point of view.

"What have you to do for me, anyhow?"

"Valet you, sir."

"That's English for washing my face and combing my hair and putting my
socks on, ain't it?"

"Well, sir, it means doing all you require, and being always in
attendance when you change."

"How much do you get for it?"

"Thirty shillings a week, sir."

"Say, Pearson," said Tembarom, with honest feeling, "I'll give you sixty
shillings a week NOT to do it."

Calmed though he had felt a few moments ago, it cannot be denied that
Pearson was aghast. How could one be prepared for developments of such
an order?

"Not to do it, sir!" he faltered. "But what would the servants think if
you had no one to valet you?"

"That's so. What would they think?" But he evidently was not dismayed,
for he smiled widely. "I guess the plainclothes man would throw a fit."

But Pearson's view was more serious and involved a knowledge of not
improbable complications. He knew "the hall" and its points of view.

"I couldn't draw my wages, sir," he protested. "There'd be the greatest
dissatisfaction among the other servants, sir, if I didn't do my duties.
There's always a--a slight jealousy of valets and ladies'-maids. The
general idea is that they do very little to earn their salaries. I've
seen them fairly hated."

"Is that so? Well, I'll be darned!" remarked Mr. Temple Barholm. He
gave a moment to reflection, and then cheered up immensely.

"I'll tell you how we'll fix it. You come up into my room and bring your
tatting or read a newspaper while I dress." He openly chuckled. "Holy
smoke! I've GOT to put on my shirt and swear at my collar-buttons
myself. If I'm in for having a trained nurse do it for me, it'll give me
the Willies. When you danced around me before dinner--"

Pearson's horror forced him to commit the indiscretion of interrupting.

"I hope I didn't DANCE, sir," he implored. "I tried to be extremely
quiet."

"That was it," said Tembarom. "I shouldn't have said danced; I meant
crept. I kept thinking I should tread on you, and I got so nervous
toward the end I thought I should just break down and sob on your bosom
and beg to be taken back to home and mother."

"I'm extremely sorry, sir, I am, indeed," apologized Pearson, doing his
best not to give way to hysterical giggling. How was a man to keep a
decently straight face, and if one didn't, where would it end? One thing
after another.

"It was not your fault. It was mine. I haven't a thing against you.
You're a first-rate little chap."

"I will try to be more satisfactory to-morrow."

There must be no laughing aloud, even if one burst a blood-vessel. It
would not do. Pearson hastily confronted a vision of a young footman
or Mr. Burrill himself passing through the corridors on some errand
and hearing master and valet shouting together in unseemly and wholly
incomprehensible mirth. And the next remark was worse than ever.

"No, you won't, Pearson," Mr. Temple Barholm asserted. "There's where
you're wrong. I've got no more use for a valet than I have for a pair of
straight-front corsets."

This contained a sobering suggestion.

"But you said, sir, that--"

"Oh, I'm not going to fire you," said Tembarom, genially. "I'll 'keep
you on', but little Willie is going to put on his own socks. If the
servants have to be pacified, you come up to my room and do anything
you like. Lie on the bed if you want to; get a jew's-harp and play on
it--any old thing to pass the time. And I'll raise your wages. What do
you say? Is it fixed?"

"I'm here, sir, to do anything you require," Pearson answered
distressedly; "but I'm afraid--"

Tembarom's face changed. A sudden thought had struck him.

"I'll tell you one thing you can do," he said; "you can valet that
friend of mine."

"Mr. Strangeways, sir?"

"Yes. I've got a notion he wouldn't mind it." He was not joking now. He
was in fact rather suddenly thoughtful.

"Say, Pearson, what do you think of him?"

"Well, sir, I've not seen much of him, and he says very little, but I
should think he was a GENTLEMAN, sir."

Mr. Temple Barholm seemed to think it over.

"That's queer," he said as though to himself. "That's what Ann said."
Then aloud, "Would you say he was an American?"

In his unavoidable interest in a matter much talked over below stairs
and productive of great curiosity Pearson was betrayed. He could not
explain to himself, after he had spoken, how he could have been such a
fool as to forget; but forget himself and the birthplace of the new Mr.
Temple Barholm he did.

"Oh, no, sir," he exclaimed hastily; "he's QUITE the gentleman, sir,
even though he is queer in his mind." The next instant he caught himself
and turned cold. An American or a Frenchman or an Italian, in fact, a
native of any country on earth so slighted with an unconsciousness so
natural, if he had been a man of hot temper, might have thrown something
at him or kicked him out of the room; but Mr. Temple Barholm took his
pipe out of his mouth and looked at him with a slow, broadening smile.

"Would you call me a gentleman, Pearson?" he asked.

Of course there was no retrieving such a blunder, Pearson felt, but--

"Certainly, sir," he stammered. "Most--most CERTAINLY, sir."

"Pearson," said Tembarom, shaking his head slowly, with a grin so
good-natured that even the frankness of his words was friendly humor
itself--"Pearson, you're a liar. But that doesn't jolt me a bit. I dare
say I'm not one, anyhow. We might put an 'ad' in one of your papers and
find out."

"I--I beg your pardon, sir," murmured Pearson in actual anguish of mind.

Mr. Temple Barholm laughed outright.

"Oh, I've not got it in for you. How could you help it?" he said. Then
he stopped joking again. "If you want to please ME," he added with
deliberation, "you look after Mr. Strangeways, and don't let anything
disturb him. Don't bother him, but just find out what he wants. When he
gets restless, come and tell me. If I'm out, tell him I'm coming back.
Don't let him worry. You understand--don't let him worry."

"I'll do my best--my very best, sir," Pearson answered devoutly. "I've
been nervous and excited this first day because I am so anxious to
please--everything seems to depend on it just now," he added, daring
another confidential outburst. "But you'll see I do know how to keep my
wits about me in general, and I've got a good memory, and I have learned
my duties, sir. I'll attend to Mr. Strangeways most particular."

As Tembarom listened, and watched his neat, blond countenance, and
noted the undertone of quite desperate appeal in his low voice, he was
thinking of a number of things. Chiefly he was thinking of little Ann
Hutchinson and the Harlem flat which might have been "run" on fifteen
dollars a week.

"I want to know I have some one in this museum of a place who'll
UNDERSTAND," he said--"some one who'll do just exactly what I say and
ask no fool questions and keep his mouth shut. I believe you could do
it."

"I'll swear I could, sir. Trust me," was Pearson's astonishingly
emotional and hasty answer.

"I'm going to," returned Mr. Temple Barholm. "I've set my mind on
putting something through in my own way. It's a queer thing, and most
people would say I was a fool for trying it. Mr. Hutchinson does, but
Miss Hutchinson doesn't."

There was a note in his tone of saying "Miss Hutchinson doesn't" which
opened up vistas to Pearson--strange vistas when one thought of old Mrs.
Hutchinson's cottage and the estate of Temple Barholm.

"We're just about the same age," his employer continued, "and in a sort
of way we're in just about the same fix."

Their eyes looked into each other's a second; but it was not for Pearson
to presume to make any comment whatsoever upon the possible nature of
"the fix." Two or three more puffs, and Mr. Temple Barholm spoke again.

"Say, Pearson, I don't want to butt in, but what about that little bunch
of calico of yours--the one you're saving up for?"

"Calico, sir?" said Pearson, at sea, but hopeful. Whatsoever the new Mr.
Temple Barholm meant, one began to realize that it was not likely to be
unfriendly.

"That's American for HER, Pearson. 'Her' stands for the same thing both
in English and American, I guess. What's her name and where is she?
Don't you say a word if you don't want to."

Pearson drew a step nearer. There was an extraordinary human atmosphere
in the room which caused things to begin to go on in his breast. He had
had a harder life than Tembarom because he had been more timid and less
buoyant and less unselfconscious. He had been beaten by a drunken mother
and kicked by a drunken father. He had gone hungry and faint to the
board school and had been punished as a dull boy. After he had struggled
into a place as page, he had been bullied by footmen and had had his
ears boxed by cooks and butlers. Ladies'-maids and smart housemaids had
sneered at him, and made him feel himself a hopeless, vulgar little worm
who never would "get on." But he had got on, in a measure, because he
had worked like a slave and openly resented nothing. A place like this
had been his fevered hope and dream from his page days, though of course
his imagination had not encompassed attendance on a gentleman who had
never owned a dress-shirt in his life. Yet gentleman or no gentleman, he
was a Temple Barholm, and there was something about him, something human
in his young voice and grin and queer, unheard-of New York jokes, which
Pearson had never encountered, and which had the effect of making him
feel somehow more of a man than his timorous nature had ever allowed of
his feeling before. It suggested that they were both, valet and master,
merely masculine human creatures of like kind. The way he had said "Miss
Hutchinson" and the twinkle in his eye when he'd made that American
joke about the "little bunch of calico"! The curious fact was that thin,
neat, white-blooded-looking Pearson was passionately in love. So he took
the step nearer and grew hot and spoke low.

"Her name is Rose Merrick, sir, and she's in place in London. She's
lady's-maid to a lady of title, and it isn't an easy place. Her lady has
a high temper, and she's economical with her servants. Her maid has
to sew early and late, and turn out as much as if she was a whole
dressmaking establishment. She's clever with her needle, and it would
be easier if she felt it was appreciated. But she's treated haughty
and severe, though she tries her very best. She has to wait up half
the night after balls, and I'm afraid it's breaking her spirit and
her health. That's why,--I beg your pardon, sir," he added, his voice
shaking--"that's why I'd bear anything on earth if I could give her a
little home of her own."

"Gee whizz!" ejaculated Mr. Temple Barholm, with feeling. "I guess you
would!"

"And that's not all, sir," said Pearson. "She's a beautiful girl, sir,
with a figure, and service is sometimes not easy for a young woman
like that. His lordship--the master of the house, sir,--is much too
attentive. He's a man with bad habits; the last lady's-maid was sent
away in disgrace. Her ladyship wouldn't believe she hadn't been forward
when she saw things she didn't like, though every one in the hall knew
the girl hated his bold ways with her, and her mother nearly broke her
heart. He's begun with Rose, and it just drives me mad, sir, it does!"

He choked, and wiped his forehead with his clean handkerchief. It was
damp, and his young eyes had fire in them, as Mr. Temple Barholm did not
fail to observe.

"I'm taking a liberty talking to you like this, sir," he said. "I'm
behaving as if I didn't know my place, sir."

"Your place is behind that fellow, kicking him till he'll never sit down
again except on eider-down cushions three deep," remarked Mr. Temple
Barholm, with fire in his eyes also. "That's where your place is. It's
where mine would be if I was in the same house with him and caught him
making a goat of himself. I bet nine Englishmen out of ten would break
his darned neck for him if they got on to his little ways, even if they
were lordships themselves."

"The decent ones won't know," Pearson said. "That's not what happens,
sir. He can laugh and chaff it off with her ladyship and coax her round.
But a girl that's discharged like that, Rose says, that's the worst of
it: she says she's got a character fastened on to her for life that no
respectable man ought to marry her with."

Mr. Temple Barholm removed his leg from the arm of his chair and got up.
Long-legged, sinewy, but somewhat slouchy in his badly made tweed suit,
sharp New York face and awful American style notwithstanding, he still
looked rather nice as he laid his hand on his valet's shoulder and gave
him a friendly push.

"See here," he said. "What you've got to say to Rose is that she's just
got to cut that sort of thing out--cut it right out. Talking to a man
that's in love with her as if he was likely to throw her down because
lies were told. Tell her to forget it--forget it quick. Why, what does
she suppose a man's FOR, by jinks? What's he FOR?"

"I've told her that, sir, though of course not in American. I just swore
it on my knees in Hyde Park one night when she got out for an hour. But
she laid her poor head on the back of the bench and cried and wouldn't
listen. She says she cares for me too much to--"

Tembarom's hand clutched his shoulder. His face lighted and glowed
suddenly.

"Care for you too much," he asked. "Did she say that? God bless her!"

"That's what I said," broke in Pearson.

"I heard another girl say that--just before I left New York--a girl
that's just a wonder," said his master. "A girl can be a wonder, can't
she?"

"Rose is, sir," protested Pearson. "She is, indeed, sir. And her eyes
are that blue--"

"Blue, are they?" interrupted Tembarom. "I know the kind. I'm on to the
whole thing. And what's more, I'm going to fix it. You tell Rose--and
tell her from me--that she's going to leave that place, and you're going
to stay in this one, and--well, presently things'll begin to happen.
They're going to be all right--ALL RIGHT," he went on, with immensely
convincing emphasis. "She's going to have that little home of her own."
He paused a moment for reflection, and then a sudden thought presented
itself to him. "Why, darn it!" he exclaimed, "there must be a whole raft
of little homes that belong to me in one place or another. Why couldn't
I fix you both up in one of them?"

"Oh, sir!" Pearson broke forth in some slight alarm. He went so fast
and so far all in a moment. And Pearson really possessed a neat,
well-ordered conscience, and, moreover, "knew his place." "I hope I
didn't seem to be expecting you to trouble yourself about me, sir. I
mustn't presume on your kindness."

"It's not kindness; it's--well, it's just human. I'm going to think this
thing over. You just keep your hair on, and let me do my own valeting,
and you'll see I'll fix it for you somehow."

What he thought of doing, how he thought of doing it, and what Pearson
was to expect, the agitated young man did not know. The situation was of
course abnormal, judged by all respectable, long-established custom. A
man's valet and his valet's "young woman" were not usually of intimate
interest. Gentlemen were sometimes "kind" to you--gave you half a
sovereign or even a sovereign, and perhaps asked after your mother if
you were supporting one; but--

"I never dreamed of going so far, sir," he said. "I forgot myself, I'm
afraid."

"Good thing you did. It's made me feel as if we were brothers." He
laughed again, enjoying the thought of the little thing who cared for
Pearson "too much" and had eyes that were "that blue." "Say, I've just
thought of something else. Have you bought her an engagement-ring yet?"

"No, sir. In our class of life jewelry is beyond the means."

"I just wondered," Mr. Temple Barholm said. He seemed to be thinking of
something that pleased him as he fumbled for his pocket-book and took a
clean banknote out of it. "I'm not on to what the value of this thing is
in real money, but you go and buy her a ring with it, and I bet she'll
be so pleased you'll have the time of your life."

Pearson taking it; and recognizing its value in UNreal money, was
embarrassed by feeling the necessity of explanation.

"This is a five-pound note, sir. It's too much, sir, it is indeed. This
would FURNISH THE FRONT PARLOR." He said it almost solemnly.

Mr. Temple Barholm looked at the note interestedly.

"Would it? By jinks!" and his laugh had a certain softness of
recollection. "I guess that's just what Ann would say. She'd know what
it would furnish, you bet your life!"

"I'm most grateful, sir," protested Pearson, "but I oughtn't to take
it. Being an American gentleman and not accustomed to English money, you
don't realize that--"

"I'm not accustomed to any kind of money," said his master. "I'm scared
to be left alone in the room with it. That's what's the matter. If I
don't give some away, I shall never know I've got it. Cheer up, Pearson.
You take that and buy the ring, and when you start furnishing, I'll see
you don't get left."

"I don't know what to say, sir," Pearson faltered emotionally. "I don't,
indeed."

"Don't say a darned thing," replied Mr. Temple Barholm. And just here
his face changed as Mr. Palford had seen it change before, and as
Pearson often saw it change later. His New York jocular irreverence
dropped from him, and he looked mature and oddly serious.

"I've tried to sort of put you wise to the way I've lived and the things
I HAVEN'T had ever since I was born," he said, "but I guess you don't
really know a thing about it. I've got more money coming in every year
than a thousand of me would ever expect to see in their lives, according
to my calculation. And I don't know how to do any of the things a fellow
who is what you call `a gentleman' would know how to do. I mean in the
way of spending it. Now, I've got to get some fun out of it. I should
be a mutt if I didn't, so I'm going to spend it my own way. I may make
about seventy-five different kinds of a fool of myself, but I guess I
sha'n't do any particular harm."

"You'll do good, sir,--to every one."

"Shall I?"--said Tembarom, speculatively. "Well, I'm not exactly setting
out with that in my mind. I'm no Young Men's Christian Association, but
I'm not in for doing harm, anyway. You take your five-pound note--come
to think of it, Palford said it came to about twenty-five dollars, real
money. Hully gee! I never thought I'd have twenty-five dollars to GIVE
AWAY! It makes me feel like I was Morgan."

"Thank you, sir; thank you," said Pearson, putting the note into his
pocket with rapt gratitude in his neat face. "You--you do not wish me to
remain--to do anything for you?"

"Not a thing. But just go and find out if Mr. Strangeways is asleep. If
he isn't and seems restless, I'll come and have a talk with him."

"Yes, sir," said Pearson, and went at once.

CHAPTER XIII

In the course of two days Mr. Palford, having given his client the
benefit of his own exact professional knowledge of the estate of
Temple Barholm and its workings and privileges as far as he found them
transferable and likely to be understood, returned to London, breathing
perhaps something like a sigh of relief when the train steamed out
of the little station. Whatsoever happened in days to come, Palford &
Grimby had done their most trying and awkward duty by the latest Temple
Barholm. Bradford, who was the steward of the estate, would now take
him over, and could be trusted to furnish practical information of any
ordinary order.

It did not appear to Mr. Palford that the new inheritor was particularly
interested in his possessions or exhilarated by the extraordinary turn
in his fortunes. The enormity of Temple Barholm itself, regarded as a
house to live in in an everyday manner, seemed somewhat to depress him.
When he was taken over its hundred and fifty rooms, he wore a detached
air as he looked about him, and such remarks as he made were of an
extraordinary nature and expressed in terms peculiar to America. Neither
Mr. Palford nor Burrill understood them, but a young footman who was
said to have once paid a visit to New York, and who chanced to be in the
picture-gallery when his new master was looking at the portraits of
his ancestors, over-hearing one observation, was guilty of a convulsive
snort, and immediately made his way into the corridor, coughing
violently. From this Mr. Palford gathered that one of the transatlantic
jokes had been made. That was the New York idea--to be jocular. Yet he
had not looked jocular when he had made the remark which had upset the
equilibrium of the young footman. He had, in fact, looked reflective
before speaking as he stood and studied a portrait of one of his
ancestors. But, then, he had a trick of saying things incomprehensibly
ridiculous with an unmoved expression of gravity, which led Palford to
feel that he was ridiculous through utter ignorance and was not aware
that he was exposing the fact. Persons who thought that an air of
seriousness added to a humorous remark were especially annoying to the
solicitor, because they frequently betrayed one into the position
of seeming to be dull in the matter of seeing a point. That, he had
observed, was often part of the New York manner--to make a totally
absurdly exaggerated or seemingly ignorance-revealing observation, and
then leave one's hearer to decide for himself whether the speaker was an
absolute ignoramus and fool or a humorist.

More than once he had somewhat suspected his client of meaning to "get
a rise out of him," after the odious manner of the tourists described
in "The Innocents Abroad," though at the same time he felt rather
supportingly sure of the fact that generally, when he displayed
ignorance, he displayed it because he was a positive encyclopedia of
lack of knowledge.

He knew no more of social customs, literature, and art than any other
street lad. He had not belonged to the aspiring self-taught, who
meritoriously haunt the night schools and free libraries with a view
to improving their minds. If this had been his method, he might in one
sense have been more difficult to handle, as Palford had seen the
thing result in a bumptiousness most objectionable. He was markedly not
bumptious, at all events.

A certain degree of interest in or curiosity concerning his ancestors
as represented in the picture-gallery Mr. Palford had observed. He had
stared at them and had said queer things--sometimes things which perhaps
indicated a kind of uneducated thought. The fact that some of them
looked so thoroughly alive, and yet had lived centuries ago, seemed
to set him reflecting oddly. His curiosity, however, seemed to connect
itself with them more as human creatures than as historical figures.

"What did that one do?" he inquired more than once. "What did he start,
or didn't he start anything?"

When he disturbed the young footman he had stopped before a dark man in
armor.

"Who's this fellow in the tin overcoat?" he asked seriously, and
Palford felt it was quite possible that he had no actual intent of being
humorous.

"That is Miles Gaspard Nevil John, who fought in the Crusades with
Richard Coeur de Lion," he explained. "He is wearing a suit of armor."
By this time the footman was coughing in the corridor.

"That's English history, I guess," Tembarom replied. "I'll have to get a
history-book and read up about the Crusades."

He went on farther, and paused with a slightly puzzled expression before
a boy in a costume of the period of Charles II.

"Who's this Fauntleroy in the lace collar?" he inquired. "Queer!" he
added, as though to himself. "I can't ever have seen him in New York."
And he took a step backward to look again.

"That is Miles Hugo Charles James, who was a page at the court of
Charles II. He died at nineteen, and was succeeded by his brother Denzel
Maurice John."

"I feel as if I'd had a dream about him sometime or other," said
Tembarom, and he stood still a few seconds before he passed on. "Perhaps
I saw something like him getting out of a carriage to go into the Van
Twillers' fancy-dress ball. Seems as if I'd got the whole show shut up
in here. And you say they're all my own relations?" Then he laughed. "If
they were alive now!" he said. "By jinks!"

His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he
did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least
able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to
comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He
would not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with
repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have
been taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was
not a minor.

On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and
seemed to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to
his windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax
candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern
and vulgar methods of illumination.

"I guess this is what you call a London fog," he said to Pearson.

"No, not exactly the London sort, sir," Pearson answered. "A London fog
is yellow--when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and
face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less
trying, sir."

When Palford had departed and he was entirely alone, Tembarom found a
country fog trying enough for a man without a companion. A degree of
relief permeated his being with the knowledge that he need no
longer endeavor to make suitable reply to his solicitor's efforts at
conversation. He had made conversational efforts himself. You couldn't
let a man feel that you wouldn't talk to him if you could when he was
doing business for you, but what in thunder did you have to talk about
that a man like that wouldn't be bored stiff by? He didn't like New
York, he didn't know anything about it, and he didn't want to know, and
Tembarom knew nothing about anything else, and was homesick for the very
stones of the roaring city's streets. When he said anything, Palford
either didn't understand what he was getting at or he didn't like it.
And he always looked as if he was watching to see if you were trying to
get a joke on him. Tembarom was frequently not nearly so much inclined
to be humorous as Mr. Palford had irritably suspected him of being. His
modes of expression might on numerous occasions have roused to mirth
when his underlying idea was almost entirely serious. The mode of
expression was merely a result of habit.

Mr. Palford left by an extremely early train, and after he was gone,
Tembarom sat over his breakfast as long as possible, and then, going to
the library, smoked long. The library was certainly comfortable, though
the fire and the big wax candles were called upon to do their best to
defy the chill, mysterious dimness produced by the heavy, white wool
curtain folding itself more and more thickly outside the windows.

But one cannot smoke in solitary idleness for much more than an hour,
and when he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his last pipe,
Tembarom drew a long breath.

"There's a hundred and thirty-six hours in each of these days," he said.
"That's nine hundred and fifty-two in a week, and four thousand and
eighty in a month--when it's got only thirty days in it. I'm not going
to calculate how many there'd be in a year. I'll have a look at the
papers. There's Punch. That's their comic one."

He looked out the American news in the London papers, and sighed hugely.
He took up Punch and read every joke two or three times over. He did not
know that the number was a specially good one and that there were some
extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters,
about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors'
wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their
humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed
to Mr. Palford.

"I'm not laughing my head off much over these," he said. "I guess I'm
not on to the point."

He got up and walked about. The "L" in New York was roaring to and fro
loaded with men and women going to work or to do shopping. Some of them
were devouring morning papers bearing no resemblance to those of London,
some of them carried parcels, and all of them looked as though they were
intent on something or other and hadn't a moment to waste. They were all
going somewhere in a hurry and had to get back in time for something.
When the train whizzed and slackened at a station, some started up,
hastily caught their papers or bundles closer, and pushed or were pushed
out on the platform, which was crowded with other people who rushed to
get in, and if they found seats, dropped into them hastily with an air
of relief. The street-cars were loaded and rang their bells loudly,
trucks and carriages and motors filled the middle of the thoroughfares,
and people crowded the pavements. The store windows were dressed up for
Christmas, and most of the people crowded before them were calculating
as to what they could get for the inadequate sums they had on hand.

The breakfast at Mrs. Bowse's boarding-house was over, and the boarders
had gone on cars or elevated trains to their day's work. Mrs. Bowse
was getting ready to go out and do some marketing. Julius and Jim were
down-town deep in the work pertaining to their separate "jobs." They'd
go home at night, and perhaps, if they were in luck, would go to a
"show" somewhere, and afterward come and sit in their tilted chairs in
the hall bedroom and smoke and talk it over. And he wouldn't be there,
and the Hutchinsons' rooms would be empty, unless some new people were
in them. Galton would be sitting among his papers, working like mad. And
Bennett--well, Bennett would be either "getting out his page," or would
be rushing about in the hundredth streets to find items and follow up
weddings or receptions.

"Gee!" he said, "every one of them trying their best to put something
over, and with so much to think of they've not got time to breathe! It'd
be no trouble for THEM to put in a hundred and thirty-six hours. They'd
be darned glad of them. And, believe me, they'd put something over,
too, before they got through. And I'm here, with three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year round my neck and not a thing to spend it on,
unless I pay some one part of it to give me lessons in tatting. What is
tatting, anyhow?"

He didn't really know. It was vaguely supposed to imply some intensely
feminine fancy-work done by old ladies, and used as a figure of speech
in jokes.

"If you could ride or shoot, you could amuse yourself in the country,"
Palford had said.

"I can ride in a street-car when I've got five cents," Tembarom had
answered. "That's as far as I've gone in riding--and what in thunder
should I shoot?"

"Game," replied Mr. Palford, with chill inward disgust. "Pheasants,
partridges, woodcock, grouse--"

"I shouldn't shoot anything like that if I went at it," he responded
shamelessly. "I should shoot my own head off, or the fellow's that stood
next to me, unless he got the drop on me first."

He did not know that he was ignominious. Nobody could have made it clear
to him. He did not know that there were men who had gained distinction,
popularity, and fame by doing nothing in particular but hitting things
animate and inanimate with magnificent precision of aim.

He stood still now and listened to the silence.

"There's not a sound within a thousand miles of the place. What do
fellows with money DO to keep themselves alive?" he said piteously.
"They've got to do SOMETHING. Shall I have to go out and take a walk, as
Palford called it? Take a walk, by gee!"

He couldn't conceive it, a man "taking a walk" as though it were
medicine--a walk nowhere, to reach nothing, just to go and turn back
again.

"I'll begin and take in sewing," he said, "or I'll open a store in the
village--a department store. I could spend something on that. I'll ask
Pearson what he thinks of it--or Burrill. I'd like to see Burrill if I
said that to him."

He decided at last that he would practise his "short" awhile; that would
be doing something, at any rate. He sat down at the big writing-table
and began to dash off mystic signs at furious speed. But the speed did
not keep up. The silence of the great room, of the immense house, of all
the scores of rooms and galleries and corridors, closed in about him. He
had practised his "short" in the night school, with the "L" thundering
past at intervals of five minutes; in the newspaper office, with all the
babel of New York about him and the bang of steam-drills going on
below in the next lot, where the foundation of a new building was being
excavated; he had practised it in his hall bedroom at Mrs. Bowse's,
to the tumultuous accompaniment of street sounds and the whizz and
TING-A-LING of street-cars dashing past, and he had not been disturbed.
He had never practised it in any place which was silent, and it was the
silence which became more than he could stand. He actually jumped out
of his chair when he heard mysterious footsteps outside the door, and a
footman appeared and spoke in a low voice which startled him as though
it had been a thunderclap.

"A young person with her father wants to see you, sir," he announced. "I
don't think they are villagers, but of the working-class, I should say."

"Where are they?"

"I didn't know exactly what to do, sir, so I left them in the hall. The
young person has a sort of quiet, determined way--"

"Little Ann, by gee!" exclaimed Tembarom with mad joy, and shot out of
the room.

The footman--he had not seen Little Ann when she had brought
Strangeways--looked after him and rubbed his chin.

"Wouldn't you call that a rummy sort for Temple Barholm?" he said to one
of his fellows who had appeared in the hall near him.

"It's not my sort," was the answer. "I'm going to give notice to old
Butterworth."

Hutchinson and Little Ann were waiting in the hall. Hutchinson was
looking at the rich, shadowy spaces about him with a sort of proud
satisfaction. Fine, dark corners with armored figures lurking in
them, ancient portraits, carved oak settles, and massive chairs and
cabinets--these were English, and he was an Englishman, and somehow felt
them the outcome of certain sterling qualities of his own. He looked
robustly well, and wore a new rough tweed suit such as one of the gentry
might tramp about muddy roads and fields in. Little Ann was dressed
in something warm and rough also, a brown thing, with a little close,
cap-like, brown hat, from under which her red hair glowed. The walk in
the cold, white fog had made her bloom fresh, soft-red and white-daisy
color. She was smiling, and showing three distinct dimples, which
deepened when Tembarom dashed out of the library.

"Hully gee!" he cried out, "but I'm glad to see you!"

He shook hands with both of them furiously, and two footmen stood and
looked at the group with image-like calm of feature, but with curiously
interested eyes. Hutchinson was aware of them, and endeavored to present
to them a back which by its stolid composure should reveal that he knew
more about such things than this chap did and wasn't a bit upset by
grandeur.

"Hully gee!" cried Tembarom again, "how glad I am! Come on in and sit
down and let's talk it over."

Burrill made a stately step forward, properly intent on his duty, and
his master waved him back.

"Say," he said hastily, "don't bring in any tea. They don't want it.
They're Americans."

Hutchinson snorted. He could not stand being consigned to ignominy
before the footmen.

"Nowt o' th' sort," he broke forth. "We're noan American. Tha'rt losing
tha head, lad."

"He's forgetting because he met us first in New York," said Little Ann,
smiling still more.

"Shall I take your hat and cane, sir?" inquired Burrill, unmovedly, at
Hutchinson's side.

"He wasn't going to say anything about tea," explained Little Ann as
they went into the library. "They don't expect to serve tea in the
middle of the morning, Mr. Temple Barholm."

"Don't they?" said Tembarom, reckless with relieved delight. "I thought
they served it every time the clock struck. When we were in London it
seemed like Palford had it when he was hot and when he was cold and when
he was glad and when he was sorry and when he was going out and when he
was coming in. It's brought up to me, by jinks! as soon as I wake, to
brace me up to put on my clothes--and Pearson wants to put those on."

He stopped short when they reached the middle of the room and looked her
over.

"O Little Ann!" he breathed tumultuously. "O Little Ann!"

Mr. Hutchinson was looking about the library as he had looked about the
hall.

"Well, I never thought I'd get inside Temple Barlholm in my day," he
exclaimed. "Eh, lad, tha must feel like bull in a china shop."

"I feel like a whole herd of 'em," answered Tembarom. Hutchinson nodded.
He understood.

"Well, perhaps tha'll get over it in time," he conceded, "but it'll take
thee a good bit." Then he gave him a warmly friendly look. "I'll lay
you know what Ann came with me for to-day." The way Little Ann looked at
him--the way she looked at him!

"I came to thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said--"to thank you." And
there was an odd, tender sound in her voice.

"Don't you do it, Ann," Tembarom answered. "Don't you do it."

"I don't know much about business, but the way you must have worked, the
way you must have had to run after people, and find them, and make then
listen, and use all your New York cleverness--because you ARE clever.
The way you've forgotten all about yourself and thought of nothing but
father and the invention! I do know enough to understand that, and it
seems as if I can't think of enough to say. I just wish I could tell you
what it means to me." Two round pearls of tears brimmed over and fell
down her cheeks. "I promised mother FAITHFUL I'd take care of him and
see he never lost hope about it," she added, "and sometimes I didn't
know whatever I was going to do."

It was perilous when she looked at one like that, and she was so little
and light that one could have snatched her up in his arms and carried
her to the big arm-chair and sat down with her and rocked her backward
and forward and poured forth the whole thing that was making him feel as
though he might explode.

Hutchinson provided salvation.

"Tha pulled me out o' the water just when I was going under, lad. God
bless thee!" he broke out, and shook his hand with rough vigor. "I
signed with the North Electric yesterday."

"Good business!" said Tembarom. "Now I'm in on the ground floor with
what's going to be the biggest money-maker in sight."

"The way tha talked New York to them chaps took my fancy," chuckled
Hutchinson. "None o' them chaps wants to be the first to jump over the
hedge."

"We've got 'em started now," exulted Tembarom.

"Tha started 'em," said Hutchinson, "and it's thee I've got to thank."

"Say, Little Ann," said Tembarom, with sudden thought, "who's come into
money now? You'll have it to burn."

"We've not got it yet, Mr. Temple Barholm," she replied, shaking
her head. "Even when inventions get started, they don't go off like
sky-rockets."

"She knows everything, doesn't she?" Tembarom said to Hutchinson. "Here,
come and sit down. I've not seen you for 'steen years."

She took her seat in the big arm-chair and looked at him with softly
examining eyes, as though she wanted to understand him sufficiently to
be able to find out something she ought to do if he needed help.

He saw it and half laughed, not quite unwaveringly.

"You'll make me cry in a minute," he said. "You don't know what it's
like to have some one from home and mother come and be kind to you."

"How is Mr. Strangeways?" she inquired.

"He's well taken care of, at any rate. That's where he's got to thank
you. Those rooms you and the housekeeper chose were the very things for
him. They're big and comfortable, and 'way off in a place where no one's
likely to come near. The fellow that's been hired to valet me valets him
instead, and I believe he likes it. It seems to come quite natural to
him, any how. I go in and see him every now and then and try to get
him to talk. I sort of invent things to see if I can start him thinking
straight. He's quieted down some and he looks better. After a while I'm
going to look up some big doctors in London and find out which of
'em's got the most plain horse sense. If a real big one would just get
interested and come and see him on the quiet and not get him excited, he
might do him good. I'm dead stuck on this stunt I've set myself--getting
him right. It's something to work on."

"You'll have plenty to work on soon," said Little Ann. "There's a lot
of everyday things you've got to think about. They may seem of no
consequence to you, but they ARE, Mr. Temple Barholm."

"If you say they are, I guess they are," he answered. "I'll do anything
you say, Ann."

"I came partly to tell you about some of them to-day," she went on,
keeping the yearningly thoughtful eyes on him. It was rather hard for
her, too, to be firm enough when there was so much she wanted to say and
do. And he did not look half as twinkling and light-heartedly grinning
as he had looked in New York.

He couldn't help dropping his voice a little coaxingly, though Mr.
Hutchinson was quite sufficiently absorbed in examination of his
surroundings.

"Didn't you come to save my life by letting me have a look at you,
Little Ann--didn't you?" he pleaded.

She shook her wonderful, red head.

"No, I didn't, Mr. Temple Barholm," she answered with Manchester
downrightness. "When I said what I did in New York, I meant it. I
didn't intend to hang about here and let you--say things to me. You
mustn't say them. Father and me are going back to Manchester in a
few days, and very soon we have to go to America again because of the
business."

"America!" he said. "Oh, Lord!" he groaned. "Do you want me to drop down
dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann?"

"You're not going to drop down dead," she replied convincedly. "You're
going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come
into Temple Barholm."

"Am I?" he answered. "Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had
time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd
think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go
ahead, Little Ann."

She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of
sensible intentness.

"Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't," she began rather
concernedly. "It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted
to talk to you about your clothes."

"My clothes?" he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he
understood and grinned. "I haven't got any. My valet--think of T. T.
with a valet!--told me so last night."

"That's what I thought," she said maternally. "I got Mrs. Bowse to write
to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time
for anything."

"I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the
ready-made counter."

She looked him over with impersonal criticism.

"I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all."

Tembarom glanced at them.

"That's what Pearson says."

"They're not the right shape," she explained. "I know what a gentleman's
clothes mean in England, and--" her face flushed, and sudden, warm
spirit made her speak rather fast--"I couldn't ABIDE to think of you
coming here and--being made fun of--just because you hadn't the right
clothes."

She said it, the little thing, as though he were hers--her very own, and
defend him against disrespect she WOULD. Tembarom, being but young
flesh and blood, made an impetuous dart toward her, and checked himself,
catching his breath.

"Ann," he said, "has your grandmother got a dog?"

"Y-e-s," she said, faltering because she was puzzled.

"How big is he?"

"He's a big one. He's a brindled bulldog. Why?"

"Well," he said, half pathetic, half defiant, "if you're going to come
and talk to me like that, and look like that, you've got to bring that
bull along and set him on me when I make a break; for there's nothing
but a dog can keep me where you want me to stay--and a big one at that."

He sat down on an ottoman near her and dropped his head on his hands. It
was not half such a joke as it sounded.

Little Ann saw it wasn't and she watched him tenderly, catching her
breath once quickly. Men had ways of taking some things hard and feeling
them a good bit more than one would think. It made trouble many a time
if one couldn't help them to think reasonable.

"Father," she said to Hutchinson.

"Aye," he answered, turning round.

"Will you tell Mr. Temple Barholm that you think I'm right about giving
him his chance?"

"Of course I think she's right," Hutchinson blustered, "and it isn't the
first time either. I'm not going to have my lass married into any family
where she'd be looked down upon."

But that was not what Little Ann wanted; it was not, in fact, her
argument. She was not thinking of that side of the situation.

"It's not me that matters so much, Father," she said; "it's him."

"Oh, is it?" disagreed Hutchinson, dictatorially. "That's not th' road
I look at it. I'm looking after you, not him. Let him take care of
himself. No chap shall put you where you won't be looked up to, even if
I AM grateful to him. So there you have it."

"He can't take care of himself when he feels like this," she answered.
"That's WHY I'm taking care of him. He'll think steadier when he's
himself again." She put out her hand and softly touched his shoulder.

"Don't do that," she said. "You make me want to be silly." There was a
quiver in her voice, but she tried to change it. "If you don't lift
your head," she added with a great effort at disciplinarian firmness, "I
shall have to go away without telling you the other things."

He lifted his head, but his attempt at a smile was not hilarious.

"Well, Ann," he submitted, "I've warned you. Bring along your dog."

She took a sheet of paper out of one of the neat pockets in her rough,
brown coat.

"I just wrote down some of the very best tailors' addresses--the very
best," she explained. "Don't you go to any but the very best, and be
a bit sharp with them if they're not attentive. They'll think all the
better of you. If your valet's a smart one, take him with you."

"Yes, Ann," he said rather weakly. "He's going to make a list of things
himself, anyhow."

"That sounds as if he'd got some sense." She handed him the list of
addresses. "You give him this, and tell him he must go to the very best
ones."

"What do I want to put on style for?" he asked desperately. "I don't
know a soul on this side of the Atlantic Ocean."

"You soon will," she replied, with calm perspicacity. "You've got too
much money not to."

A gruff chuckle made itself heard from Hutchinson's side of the room.

"Aye, seventy thousand a year'll bring th' vultures about thee, lad."

"We needn't call them vultures exactly," was Little Ann's tolerant
comment; "but a lot of people will come here to see you. That was one of
the things I thought I might tell you about."

"Say, you're a wonder!"

"I'm nothing of the sort. I'm just a girl with a bit of common
sense--and grandmother's one that's looked on a long time, and she sees
things. The country gentlemen will begin to call on you soon, and then
you'll be invited to their houses to meet their wives and daughters, and
then you'll be kept pretty busy."

Hutchinson's bluff chuckle broke out again.

"You will that, my lad, when th' match-making mothers get after you.
There's plenty on 'em."

"Father's joking," she said. Her tone was judicially unprejudiced.
"There are young ladies that--that'd be very suitable. Pretty ones and
clever ones. You'll see them all."

"I don't want to see them."

"You can't help it," she said, with mild decision. "When there
are daughters and a new gentleman comes into a big property in the
neighborhood, it's nothing but natural that the mothers should be a bit
anxious."

"Aye, they'll be anxious enough. Mak' sure o' that," laughed Hutchinson.

"Is that what you want me to put on style for, Little Ann?" Tembarom
asked reproachfully.

"I want you to put it on for yourself. I don't want you to look
different from other men. Everybody's curious about you. They're ready
to LAUGH because you came from America and once sold newspapers."

"It's the men he'll have to look out for," Hutchinson put in, with an
experienced air. "There's them that'll want to borrow money, and them
that'll want to drink and play cards and bet high. A green American
lad'll be a fine pigeon for them to pluck. You may as well tell him,
Ann; you know you came here to do it."

"Yes, I did," she admitted. "I don't want you to seem not to know what
people are up to and what they expect."

That little note of involuntary defense was a dangerous thing for
Tembarom. He drew nearer.

"You don't want them to take me for a fool, Little Ann. You're standing
up for me; that's it."

"You can stand up for yourself, Mr. Temple Barholm, if you're not taken
by surprise," she said confidently. "If you understand things a bit, you
won't be."

His feelings almost overpowered him.

"God bless your dear little soul!" he broke out. "Say, if this goes on,
that dog of your grandmother's wouldn't have a show, Ann. I should bite
him before he could bite me."

"I won't go on if you can't be sensible, Mr. Temple Barholm. I shall
just go away and not come back again. That's what I shall do." Her tone
was that of a young mother.

He gave in incontinently.

"Good Lord! no!" he exclaimed. "I'll do anything if you'll stay. I'll
lie down on the mat and not open my mouth. Just sit here and tell me
things. I know you won't let me hold your hand, but just let me hold a
bit of your dress and look at you while you talk." He took a bit of her
brown frock between his fingers and held it, gazing at her with all his
crude young soul in his eyes. "Now tell me," he added.

"There's only one or two things about the people who'll come to Temple
Barholm. Grandmother's talked it over with me. She knew all about those
that came in the late Mr. Temple Barholm's time. He used to hate most of
them."

"Then why in thunder did he ask them to come?"

"He didn't. They've got clever, polite ways of asking themselves
sometimes. He couldn't bear the Countess of Mallowe. She'll come.
Grandmother says you may be sure of that."

"What'll she come for?"

Little Ann's pause and contemplation of him were fraught with
thoughtfulness.

"She'll come for you," at last she said.

"She's got a daughter she thinks ought to have been married eight years
ago," announced Hutchinson.

Tembarom pulled at the bit of brown tweed he held as though it were a
drowning man's straw.

"Don't you drive me to drink, Ann," he said. "I'm frightened. Your
grandmother will have to lend ME the dog."

This was a flightiness which Little Ann did not encourage.

"Lady Joan--that's her daughter--is very grand and haughty. She's a
great beauty. You'll look at her, but perhaps she won't look at you. But
it's not her I'm troubled about. I'm thinking of Captain Palliser and
men like him."

"Who's he?"

"He's one of those smooth, clever ones that's always getting up some
company or other and selling the stock. He'll want you to know his
friends and he'll try to lead you his way."

As Tembarom held to his bit of her dress, his eyes were adoring ones,
which was really not to be wondered at. She WAS adorable as her soft,
kind, wonderfully maternal girl face tried to control itself so that it
should express only just enough to help and nothing to disturb.

"I don't want him to spoil you. I don't want anything to make
you--different. I couldn't bear it."

He pulled the bit of dress pleadingly.

"Why, Little Ann?" he implored quite low.

"Because," she said, feeling that perhaps she was rash--"because if
you were different, you wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
that--that was T. Tembarom," she finished hastily.

He bent his head down to the bit of tweed and kissed it.

"You just keep looking after me like that," he said, "and there's not
one of them can get away with me."

She got up, and he rose with her. There was a touch of fire in the
forget-me-not blue of her eyes.

"Just you let them see--just you let them see that you're not one they
can hold light and make use of." But there she stopped short, looking
up at him. He was looking down at her with a kind of matureness in
his expression. "I needn't be afraid," she said. "You can take care of
yourself; I ought to have known that."

"You did," he said, smiling; "but you wanted to sort of help me. And
you've done it, by gee! just by saying that thing about T. Tembarom. You
set me right on my feet. That's YOU."

Before they went away they paid a visit to Strangeways in his remote,
undisturbed, and beautiful rooms. They were in a wing of the house
untouched by any ordinary passing to and fro, and the deep windows
looked out upon gardens which spring and summer would crowd with
loveliness from which clouds of perfume would float up to him on days
when the sun warmed and the soft airs stirred the flowers, shaking
the fragrance from their full incense-cups. But the white fog shut out
to-day even their winter bareness. There were light and warmth inside,
and every added charm of rich harmony of deep color and comfort made
beautiful. There were books and papers waiting to be looked over, but
they lay untouched on the writing-table, and Strangeways was sitting
close to the biggest window, staring into the fog. His eyes looked
hungry and hollow and dark. Ann knew he was "trying to remember"
something.

When the sound of footsteps reached his ear, he turned to look at them,
and rose mechanically at sight of Ann. But his expression was that of a
man aroused from a dream of far-off places.

"I remember you," he said, but hesitated as though making an effort to
recall something.

"Of course you do," said Little Ann. "You know me quite well. I brought
you here. Think a bit. Little--Little--"

"Yes," he broke forth. "Of course, Little Ann! Thank God I've not
forgotten." He took her hand in both his and held it tenderly. "You have
a sweet little face. It's such a wise little face!" His voice sounded
dreamy.

Ann drew him to his chair with a coaxing laugh and sat down by him.

"You're flattering me. You make me feel quite shy," she said. "You know
HIM, too," nodding toward Tembarom.

"Oh, yes," he replied, and he looked up with a smile. "He is the one who
remembers. You said you did." He had turned to Tembarom.

"You bet your life I do," Tembarom answered. "And you will, too, before
long."

"If I did not try so hard," said Strangeways, thoughtfully. "It seems
as if I were shut up in a room, and so many things were knocking at the
doors--hundreds of them--knocking because they want to be let in. I am
damnably unhappy--damnably." He hung his head and stared at the floor.
Tembarom put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a friendly shake.

"Don't you worry a bit," he said. "You take my word for it. It'll all
come back. I'm working at it myself." Strangeways lifted his head.

"You are the one I know best. I trust you." But there was the beginning
of a slight drag in his voice. "I don't always--quite recollect--your
name. Not quite. Good heavens! I mustn't forget that."

Little Ann was quite ready.

"You won't," she said, "because it's different from other names. It
begins with a letter--just a letter, and then there is the name. Think."

"Yes, yes," he said anxiously.

Little Ann bent forward and fixed her eyes on his with concentrated
suggestion. They had never risked confusing him by any mention of
the new name. She began to repeat letters of the alphabet slowly and
distinctly until she reached the letter T.

"T," she ended with much emphasis--"R. S. _T_."

His expression cleared itself.

"T," he repeated. "T--Tembarom. R, S, T. How clever you are!"

Little Ann's gaze concentrated itself still more intently.

"Now you'll never forget it again," she said, "because of the T. You'll
say the other letters until you come to it. R, S, T."

"T. Tembarom," he ended relievedly. "How you help me!" He took her hand
and kissed it very gently.

"We are all going to help you," Ann soothed him, "T. Tembarom most of
all."

"Say," Tembarom broke out in an aside to her, "I'm going to come here
and try things on him every day. When it seems like he gets on to
something, however little a thing it is, I'm going to follow it up and
see if it won't get somewhere."

Ann nodded.

"There'll be something some day," she said. "Are you quite comfortable
here?" she asked aloud to Strangeways.

"Very comfortable, thank you," he answered courteously. "They are
beautiful rooms. They are furnished with such fine old things. This is
entirely Jacobean. It's quite perfect." He glanced about him. "And so
quiet. No one comes in here but my man, and he is a very nice chap. I
never had a man who knew his duties better."

Little Ann and Tembarom looked at each other.

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised," she said after they had left the room,
"if it wouldn't be a good thing to get Pearson to try to talk to him now
and then. He's been used to a man-servant."

"Yes," answered Tembarom. "Pearson didn't rattle HIM, you bet your
life."

CHAPTER XIV

He could not persuade them to remain to take lunch with him. The
firmness of Hutchinson's declination was not unconnected with a private
feeling that "them footmen chaps 'u'd be on the lookout to see the way
you handled every bite you put in your mouth." He couldn't have stood
it, dang their impudence! Little Ann, on her part, frankly and calmly
said, "It wouldn't DO." That was all, and evidently covered everything.

After they had gone, the fog lifted somewhat, but though it withdrew
from the windows, it remained floating about in masses, like huge
ghosts, among the trees of the park. When Tembarom sat down alone
to prolong his lunch with the aid of Burrill and the footmen, he was
confronted by these unearthly shapes every time he lifted his eyes to
the window he faced from his place at the table. It was an outlook which
did not inspire to cheerfulness, and the fact that Ann and her father
were going back to Manchester and later to America left him without even
the simple consolation of a healthy appetite. Things were bound to get
better after a while; they were BOUND to. A fellow would be a fool if
he couldn't fix it somehow so that he could enjoy himself, with money to
burn. If you made up your mind you couldn't stand the way things were,
you didn't have to lie down under them, with a thousand or so "per"
coming in. You could fix it so that it would be different. By jinks!
there wasn't any law against your giving it all to the church but just
enough to buy a flat in Harlem out-right, if you wanted to. But you
weren't going to run crazy and do a lot of fool things in a minute, and
be sorry the rest of your life. Money was money. And first and foremost
there was Ann, with her round cheeks flushed and her voice all sweet
and queer, saying, "You wouldn't be T. Tembarom; and it was T. Tembarom
that--that was T. Tembarom."

He couldn't help knowing what she had begun to say, and his own face
flushed as he thought of it. He was at that time of life when there
generally happens to be one center about which the world revolves. The
creature who passes through this period of existence without watching it
revolve about such a center has missed an extraordinary and singularly
developing experience. It is sometimes happy, often disastrous, but
always more or less developing. Speaking calmly, detachedly, but not
cynically, it is a phase. During its existence it is the blood in the
veins, the sight of the eyes, the beat of the pulse, the throb of the
heart. It is also the day and the night, the sun, the moon, and the
stars, heaven and hell, the entire universe. And it doesn't matter in
the least to any one but the creatures living through it. T. Tembarom
was in the midst of it. There was Ann. There was this new crazy thing
which had happened to him--"this fool thing," as he called it. There was
this monstrous, magnificent house,--he knew it was magnificent, though
it wasn't his kind,--there was old Palford and his solemn talk about
ancestors and the name of Temple Barholm. It always reminded him of how
ashamed he had been in Brooklyn of the "Temple Temple" and how he had
told lies to prevent the fellows finding out about it. And there was
seventy thousand pounds a year, and there was Ann, who looked as soft as
a baby,--Good Lord! how soft she'd feel if you got her in your arms and
squeezed her!--and yet was somehow strong enough to keep him just where
she wanted him to stay and believed he ought to stay until "he had
found out." That was it. She wasn't doing it for any fool little idea of
making herself seem more important: she just believed it. She was doing
it because she wanted to let him "have his chance," just as if she were
his mother instead of the girl he was clean crazy about. His chance!
He laughed outright--a short, confident laugh which startled Burrill
exceedingly.

When he went back to the library and lighted his pipe he began to stride
up and down as he continued to think it over.

"I wish she was as sure as I am," he said. "I wish she was as sure of me
as I am of myself--and as I am of her." He laughed the short, confident
laugh again. "I wish she was as sure as I am of us both. We're all
right. I've got to get through this, and find out what it's best to do,
and I've got to show her. When I've had my chance good and plenty,
us two for little old New York! Gee! won't it be fine!" he exclaimed
imaginatively. "Her going over her bills, looking like a peach of a baby
that's trying to knit its brows, and adding up, and thinking she ought
to economize. She'd do it if we had ten million." He laughed outright
joyfully. "Good Lord! I should kiss her to death!"

The simplest process of ratiocination would lead to a realization of
the fact that though he was lonely and uncomfortable, he was not in
the least pathetic or sorry for himself. His normal mental and
physical structure kept him steady on his feet, and his practical and
unsentimental training, combining itself with a touch of iron which
centuries ago had expressed itself through some fighting Temple Barholm
and a medium of battle-axes, crossbows, and spears, did the rest.

"It'd take more than this to get me where I'd be down and out. I'm
feeling fine," he said. "I believe I'll go and 'take a walk,' as Palford
says."

The fog-wreaths in the park were floating away, and he went out grinning
and whistling, giving Burrill and the footman a nod as he passed them
with a springing young stride. He got the door open so quickly that he
left them behind him frustrated and staring at each other.

"It wasn't our fault," said Burrill, gloomily. "He's never had a door
opened for him in his life. This won't do for me."

He was away for about an hour, and came back in the best of spirits. He
had found out that there was something in "taking a walk" if a fellow
had nothing else to do. The park was "fine," and he had never seen
anything like it. When there were leaves on the trees and the grass
and things were green, it would be better than Central Park itself.
You could have base-ball matches in it. What a cinch it would be if you
charged gate-money! But he supposed you couldn't if it belonged to you
and you had three hundred and fifty thousand a year. You had to get used
to that. But it did seem a fool business to have all that land and not
make a cent out of it. If it was just outside New York and you cut it
up into lots, you'd just pile it up. He was quite innocent--calamitously
innocent and commercial and awful in his views. Thoughts such as these
had been crammed into his brain by life ever since he had gone down the
staircase of the Brooklyn tenement with his twenty-five cents in his
ten-year-old hand.

The stillness of the house seemed to have accentuated itself when he
returned to it. His sense of it let him down a little as he entered. The
library was like a tomb--a comfortable luxurious tomb with a bright fire
in it. A new Punch and the morning papers had been laid upon a table
earlier in the day, and he sat down to look at them.

"I guess about fifty-seven or eight of the hundred and thirty-six hours
have gone by," he said. "But, gee! ain't it lonesome!"

He sat so still trying to interest himself in "London Day by Day" in the
morning paper that the combination of his exercise in the fresh air and
the warmth of the fire made him drowsy. He leaned back in his chair and
closed his eyes without being aware that he did so. He was on the verge
of a doze.

He remained upon the verge for a few minutes, and then a soft, rustling
sound made him open his eyes.

An elderly little lady had timidly entered the room. She was neatly
dressed in an old-fashioned and far-from-new black silk dress, with a
darned lace collar and miniature brooch at her neck. She had also thin,
gray side-ringlets dangling against her cheeks from beneath a small,
black lace cap with pale-purple ribbons on it. She had most evidently
not expected to find any one in the room, and, having seen Tembarom,
gave a half-frightened cough.

"I--I beg your pardon," she faltered. "I really did not mean to
intrude--really."

Tembarom jumped up, awkward, but good-natured. Was she a kind of servant
who was a lady?

"Oh, that's all right," he said.

But she evidently did not feel that it was all right. She looked as
though she felt that she had been caught doing something wrong, and must
properly propitiate by apology.

"I'm so sorry. I thought you had gone out--Mr. Temple Barholm."

"I did go out--to take a walk; but I came in."

Having been discovered in her overt act, she evidently felt that
duty demanded some further ceremony from her. She approached him very
timidly, but with an exquisite, little elderly early-Victorian manner.
She was of the most astonishingly perfect type, though Tembarom was not
aware of the fact. The manner, a century earlier, would have expressed
itself in a curtsy.

"It is Mr. Temple Barholm, isn't it?" she inquired.

"Yes; it has been for the last few weeks," he answered, wondering why
she seemed so in awe of him and wishing she didn't.

"I ought to apologize for being here," she began.

"Say, don't, please!" he interrupted. "What I feel is, that it ought to
be up to me to apologize for being here."

She was really quite flurried and distressed.

"Oh, please, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she fluttered, proceeding to explain
hurriedly, as though he without doubt understood the situation. "I
should of course have gone away at once after the late Mr. Temple
Barholm died, but--but I really had nowhere to go--and was kindly
allowed to remain until about two months ago, when I went to make
a visit. I fully intended to remove my little belongings before you
arrived, but I was detained by illness and could not return until this
morning to pack up. I understood you were in the park, and I remembered
I had left my knitting-bag here." She glanced nervously about the room,
and seemed to catch sight of something on a remote corner table. "Oh,
there it is. May I take it?" she said, looking at him appealingly. "It
was a kind present from a dear lost friend, and--and--" She paused,
seeing his puzzled and totally non-comprehending air. It was plainly the
first moment it had dawned upon her that he did not know what she was
talking about. She took a small, alarmed step toward him.

"Oh, I BEG your pardon," she exclaimed in delicate anguish. "I'm afraid
you don't know who I am. Perhaps Mr. Palford forgot to mention me.
Indeed, why should he mention me? There were so many more important
things. I am a sort of distant--VERY distant relation of yours. My name
is Alicia Temple Barholm."

Tembarom was relieved. But she actually hadn't made a move toward the
knitting-bag. She seemed afraid to do it until he gave her permission.
He walked over to the corner table and brought it to her, smiling
broadly.

"Here it is," he said. "I'm glad you left it. I'm very happy to be
acquainted with you, Miss Alicia."

He was glad just to see her looking up at him with her timid, refined,
intensely feminine appeal. Why she vaguely brought back something that
reminded him of Ann he could not have told. He knew nothing whatever of
types early-Victorian or late.

He took her hand, evidently to her greatest possible amazement, and
shook it heartily. She knew nothing whatever of the New York street
type, and it made her gasp for breath, but naturally with an allayed
terror.

"Gee!" he exclaimed whole-heartedly, "I'm glad to find out I've got a
relation. I thought I hadn't one in the world. Won't you sit down?" He
was drawing her toward his own easy-chair. But he really didn't know,
she was agitatedly thinking. She really must tell him. He seemed so good
tempered and--and DIFFERENT. She herself was not aware of the enormous
significance which lay in that word "different." There must be no risk
of her seeming to presume upon his lack of knowledge.

"It is MOST kind of you," she said with grateful emphasis, "but I
mustn't sit down and detain you. I can explain in a few words--if I
may."

He positively still held her hand in the oddest, natural, boyish
way, and before she knew what she was doing he had made her take the
chair--quite MADE her.

"Well, just sit down and explain," he said. "I wish to thunder you
would detain me. Take all the time you like. I want to hear all about
it--honest Injun."

There was a cushion in the chair, and as he talked, he pulled it out
and began to arrange it behind her, still in the most natural and
matter-of-fact way--so natural and matter-of-fact, indeed, that its very
natural matter-of-factedness took her breath away.

"Is that fixed all right?" he asked.

Being a little lady, she could only accept his extraordinary
friendliness with grateful appreciation, though she could not help
fluttering a little in her bewilderment.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she said.

He sat down on the square ottoman facing her, and leaned forward with an
air of making a frank confession.

"Guess what I was thinking to myself two minutes before you came in?
I was thinking, `Lord, I'm lonesome--just sick lonesome!' And then I
opened my eyes and looked--and there was a relation! Hully gee! I call
that luck!"

"Dear me!" she said, shyly delighted. "DO you, Mr. Temple
Barholm--REALLY?"

Her formal little way of saying his name was like Ann's.

"Do I? I'm tickled to death. My mother died when I was ten, and I've
never had any women kin-folks."

"Poor bo--" She had nearly said "Poor boy!" and only checked the
familiarity just in time--"Poor Mr. Temple Barholm!"

"Say, what are we two to each other, anyhow?" He put it to her with
great interest.

"It is a very distant relationship, if it is one at all," she answered.
"You see, I was only a second cousin to the late Mr. Temple Barholm,
and I had not really the SLIGHTEST claim upon him." She placed pathetic
emphasis on the fact. "It was most generous of him to be so kind to me.
When my poor father died and I was left quite penniless, he gave me a--a
sort of home here."

"A sort of home?" Tembarom repeated.

"My father was a clergyman in VERY straitened circumstances. We had
barely enough to live upon--barely. He could leave me nothing. It
actually seemed as if I should have to starve--it did, indeed." There
was a delicate quiver in her voice. "And though the late Mr. Temple
Barholm had a great antipathy to ladies, he was so--so noble as to send
word to me that there were a hundred and fifty rooms in his house, and
that if I would keep out of his way I might live in one of them."

"That was noble," commented her distant relative.

"Oh, yes, indeed, especially when one considers how he disliked the
opposite sex and what a recluse he was. He could not endure ladies. I
scarcely ever saw him. My room was in quite a remote wing of the house,
and I never went out if I knew he was in the park. I was most careful.
And when he died of course I knew I must go away."

Tembarom was watching her almost tenderly.

"Where did you go?"

"To a kind clergyman in Shropshire who thought he might help me."

"How was he going to do it?"

She answered with an effort to steady a somewhat lowered and hesitating
voice.

"There was near his parish a very nice--charity,"--her breath caught
itself pathetically,--"some most comfortable almshouses for decayed
gentlewomen. He thought he might be able to use his influence to get
me into one." She paused and smiled, but her small, wrinkled hands held
each other closely.

Tembarom looked away. He spoke as though to himself, and without knowing
that he was thinking aloud.

"Almshouses!" he said. "Wouldn't that jolt you!" He turned on her again
with a change to cheerful concern. "Say, that cushion of yours ain't
comfortable. I 'm going to get you another one." He jumped up and,
taking one from a sofa, began to arrange it behind her dexterously.

"But I mustn't trouble you any longer. I must go, really," she said,
half rising nervously. He put a hand on her shoulder and made her sit
again.

"Go where?" he said. "Just lean back on that cushion, Miss Alicia. For
the next few minutes this is going to be MY funeral."

She was at once startled and uncomprehending. What an extraordinary
expression! What COULD it mean?

"F--funeral?" she stammered.

Suddenly he seemed somehow to have changed. He looked as serious as
though he was beginning to think out something all at once. What was he
going to say?

"That's New York slang," he answered. "It means that I want to explain
myself to you and ask a few questions."

"Certainly, certainly, Mr. Temple Barholm."

He leaned his back against the mantel, and went into the matter
practically.

"First off, haven't you ANY folks?" Then, answering her puzzled look,
added, "I mean relations."

Miss Alicia gently shook her head.

"No sisters or brothers or uncles or aunts or cousins?"

She shook her head again.

He hesitated a moment, putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
out again awkwardly as he looked down at her.

"Now here's where I'm up against it," he went on. "I don't want to be
too fresh or to butt in, but--didn't old Temple Barholm leave you ANY
money?"

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "Dear me! no! I couldn't possibly EXPECT such a
thing."

He gazed at her as though considering the situation. "Couldn't you?" he
said.

There was an odd reflection in his eyes, and he seemed to consider her
and the situation again.

"Well," he began after his pause, "what I want to know is what you
expect ME to do."

There was no unkindness in his manner, in fact, quite the contrary,
even when he uttered what seemed to Miss Alicia these awful, unwarranted
words. As though she had forced herself into his presence to make
demands upon his charity! They made her tremble and turn pale as she got
up quickly, shocked and alarmed.

"Oh, nothing! nothing! nothing WHATEVER, Mr. Temple Barholm!" she
exclaimed, her agitation doing its best to hide itself behind a fine
little dignity. He saw in an instant that his style of putting it had
been "'way off," that his ignorance had betrayed him, that she had
misunderstood him altogether. He almost jumped at her.

"Oh, say, I didn't mean THAT!" he cried out. "For the Lord's sake! don't
think I'm such a Tenderloin tough as to make a break like that! Not on
your life!"

Never since her birth had a male creature looked at Miss Alicia with the
appeal which showed itself in his eyes as he actually put his arm half
around her shoulders, like a boy begging a favor from his mother or his
aunt.

"What I meant was--" He broke off and began again quite anxiously, "say,
just as a favor, will you sit down again and let me tell you what I did
mean?"

It was that natural, warm, boyish way which overcame her utterly. It
reminded her of the only boy she had ever really known, the one male
creature who had allowed her to be fond of him. There was moisture in
her eyes as she let him put her back into her chair. When he had done
it, he sat down on the ottoman again and poured himself forth.

"You know what kind of a chap I am. No, you don't, either. You mayn't
know a thing about me; and I want to tell you. I'm so different from
everything you've ever known that I scare you. And no wonder. It's the
way I've lived. If you knew, you'd understand what I was thinking of
when I spoke just now. I've been cold, I've been hungry, I've walked
the wet streets on my uppers. I know all about GOING WITHOUT. And do you
expect that I am going to let a--a little thing like you--go away from
here without friends and without money on the chance of getting into an
almshouse that isn't vacant? Do you expect that of me? Not on your life!
That was what I meant."

Miss Alicia quivered; the pale-purple ribbons on her little lace cap
quivered.

"I haven't," she said, and the fine little dignity was piteous, "a
SHADOW of a claim upon you." It was necessary for her to produce a
pocket-handkerchief. He took it from her, and touched her eyes as softly
as though she were a baby.

"Claim nothing!" he said. "I've got a claim on YOU. I'm going to stake
one out right now." He got up and gesticulated, taking in the big
room and its big furniture. "Look at all this! It fell on me like a
thunderbolt. It's nearly knocked the life out of me. I'm like a lost cat
on Broadway. You can't go away and leave me, Miss Alicia; it's your duty
to stay. You've just GOT to stay to take care of me." He came over to
her with a wheedling smile. "I never was taken care of in my life. Just
be as noble to me as old Temple Barholm was to you: give me a sort of
home."

If a little gentlewoman could stare, it might be said that Miss Alicia
stared at him. She trembled with amazed emotion.

"Do you mean--" Despite all he had said, she scarcely dared to utter the
words lest, after all, she might be taking for granted more than it was
credible could be true. "Can you mean that if I stayed here with you it
would make Temple Barholm seem more like HOME? Is it possible you--you
mean THAT?"

"I mean just that very thing."

It was too much for her. Finely restrained little elderly gentlewoman as
she was, she openly broke down under it.

"It can't be true!" she ejaculated shakily. "It isn't possible. It is
too--too beautiful and kind. Do forgive me! I c-a-n't help it." She
burst into tears.

She knew it was most stupidly wrong. She knew gentlemen did not like
tears. Her father had told her that men never really forgave women who
cried at them. And here, when her fate hung in the balance, she was not
able to behave herself with feminine decorum.

Yet the new Mr. Temple Barholm took it in as matter-of-fact a manner as
he seemed to take everything. He stood by her chair and soothed her in
his dear New York voice.

"That's all right, Miss Alicia," he commented. "You cry as much as you
want to, just so that you don't say no. You've been worried and you're
tired. I'll tell you there's been two or three times lately when I
should like to have cried myself if I'd known how. Say," he added with a
sudden outburst of imagination, "I bet anything it's about time you had
tea."

The suggestion was so entirely within the normal order of things that it
made her feel steadier, and she was able to glance at the clock.

"A cup of tea would be refreshing," she said. "They will bring it in
very soon, but before the servants come I must try to express--"

But before she could express anything further the tea appeared. Burrill
and a footman brought it on splendid salvers, in massive urn and
tea-pot, with chaste, sacrificial flame flickering, and wonderful, hot
buttered and toasted things and wafers of bread and butter attendant.
As they crossed the threshold, the sight of Miss Alicia's small form
enthroned in their employer's chair was one so obviously unanticipated
that Burrill made a step backward and the footman almost lost the
firmness of his hold on the smaller tray. Each recovered himself in
time, however, and not until the tea was arranged upon the table near
the fire was any outward recognition of Miss Alicia's presence made.
Then Burrill, pausing, made an announcement entirely without prejudice:

"I beg pardon, sir, but Higgins's cart has come for Miss Temple
Barholm's box; he is asking when she wants the trap."

"She doesn't want it at all," answered Tembarom. "Carry her trunk
up-stairs again. She's not going away."

The lack of proper knowledge contained in the suggestion that Burrill
should carry trunks upstairs caused Miss Alicia to quail in secret, but
she spoke with outward calm.

"No, Burrill," she said. "I am not going away."

"Very good, Miss," Burrill replied, and with impressive civility he
prepared to leave the room. Tembarom glanced at the tea-things.

"There's only one cup here," he said. "Bring one for me."

Burrill's expression might perhaps have been said to start slightly.

"Very good, sir," he said, and made his exit. Miss Alicia was fluttering
again.

"That cup was really for you, Mr. Temple Barholm," she ventured.

"Well, now it's for you, and I've let him know it," replied Tembarom.

"Oh, PLEASE," she said in an outburst of feeling--"PLEASE let me tell
you how GRATEFUL--how grateful I am!"

But he would not let her.

"If you do," he said, "I'll tell you how grateful _I_ am, and that'll
be worse. No, that's all fixed up between us. It goes. We won't say any
more about it."

He took the whole situation in that way, as though he was assuming no
responsibility which was not the simple, inevitable result of their
drifting across each other--as though it was only what any man would
have done, even as though she was a sort of delightful, unexpected
happening. He turned to the tray.

"Say, that looks all right, doesn't it?" he said. "Now you are here, I
like the way it looks. I didn't yesterday."

Burrill himself brought the extra cup and saucer and plate. He wished
to make sure that his senses had not deceived him. But there she sat who
through years had existed discreetly in the most unconsidered rooms
in an uninhabited wing, knowing better than to presume upon her
privileges--there she sat with an awed and rapt face gazing up at this
new outbreak into Temple Barholm's and "him joking and grinning as
though he was as pleased as Punch."

CHAPTER XV

To employ the figure of Burrill, Tembarom was indeed "as pleased as
Punch." He was one of the large number of men who, apart from all
sentimental relations, are made particularly happy by the kindly society
of women; who expand with quite unconscious rejoicing when a woman
begins to take care of them in one way or another. The unconsciousness
is a touching part of the condition. The feminine nearness supplies a
primeval human need. The most complete of men, as well as the weaklings,
feel it. It is a survival of days when warm arms held and protected,
warm hands served, and affectionate voices soothed. An accomplished male
servant may perform every domestic service perfectly, but the fact that
he cannot be a woman leaves a sense of lack. An accustomed feminine
warmth in the surrounding daily atmosphere has caused many a man to
marry his housekeeper or even his cook, as circumstances prompted.

Tembarom had known no woman well until he had met Little Ann. His
feeling for Mrs. Bowse herself had verged on affection, because he would
have been fond of any woman of decent temper and kindliness, especially
if she gave him opportunities to do friendly service. Little Ann had
seemed the apotheosis of the feminine, the warmly helpful, the subtly
supporting, the kind. She had been to him an amazement and a revelation.
She had continually surprised him by revealing new characteristics which
seemed to him nicer things than he had ever known before, but which, if
he had been aware of it, were not really surprising at all. They were
only the characteristics of a very nice young feminine creature.

The presence of Miss Alicia, with the long-belated fashion of her
ringlets and her little cap, was delightful to him. He felt as though
he would like to take her in his arms and hug her. He thought perhaps
it was partly because she was a little like Ann, and kept repeating his
name in Ann's formal little way. Her delicate terror of presuming
or intruding he felt in its every shade. Mentally she touched him
enormously. He wanted to make her feel that she need not be afraid of
him in the least, that he liked her, that in his opinion she had more
right in the house than he had. He was a little frightened lest through
ignorance he should say things the wrong way, as he had said that thing
about wanting to know what she expected him to do. What he ought to have
said was, "You're not expecting me to let that sort of thing go on."
It had made him sick when he saw what a break he'd made and that she
thought he was sort of insulting her. The room seemed all right now that
she was in it. Small and unassuming as she was, she seemed to make it
less over-sized. He didn't so much mind the loftiness of the ceiling,
the depth and size of the windows, and the walls covered with thousands
of books he knew nothing whatever about. The innumerable books had been
an oppressing feature. If he had been one of those "college guys" who
never could get enough of books, what a "cinch" the place would have
been for him--good as the Astor Library! He hadn't a word to say against
books,--good Lord! no;--but even if he'd had the education and the time
to read, he didn't believe he was naturally that kind, anyhow. You had
to be "that kind" to know about books. He didn't suppose she--meaning
Miss Alicia--was learned enough to make you throw a fit. She didn't look
that way, and he was mighty glad of it, because perhaps she wouldn't
like him much if she was. It would worry her when she tried to talk to
him and found out he didn't know a darned thing he ought to.

They'd get on together easier if they could just chin about common sort
of every-day things. But though she didn't look like the Vassar sort,
he guessed that she was not like himself: she had lived in libraries
before, and books didn't frighten her. She'd been born among people
who read lots of them and maybe could talk about them. That was why she
somehow seemed to fit into the room. He was aware that, timid as she was
and shabby as her neat dress looked, she fitted into the whole place, as
he did not. She'd been a poor relative and had been afraid to death of
old Temple Barholm, but she'd not been afraid of him because she wasn't
his sort. She was a lady; that was what was the matter with her. It was
what made things harder for her, too. It was what made her voice tremble
when she'd tried to seem so contented and polite when she'd talked about
going into one of those "decayed alms-houses." As if the old ladies were
vegetables that had gone wrong, by gee! he thought.

He liked her little, modest, delicate old face and her curls and her
little cap with the ribbons so much that he smiled with a twinkling eye
every time he looked at her. He wanted to suggest something he thought
would be mighty comfortable, but he was half afraid he might be asking
her to do something which wasn't "her job," and it might hurt her
feelings. But he ventured to hint at it.

"Has Burrill got to come back and pour that out?" he asked, with an
awkward gesture toward the tea-tray. "Has he just GOT to?"

"Oh, no, unless you wish it," she answered. "Shall--may I give it to
you?"

"Will you?" he exclaimed delightedly. "That would be fine. I shall feel
like a regular Clarence."

She was going to sit at the table in a straight-backed chair, but he
sprang at her.

"This big one is more comfortable," he said, and he dragged it forward
and made her sit in it. "You ought to have a footstool," he added, and
he got one and put it under her feet. "There, that's all right."

A footstool, as though she were a royal personage and he were a
gentleman in waiting, only probably gentlemen in waiting did not jump
about and look so pleased. The cheerful content of his boyish face when
he himself sat down near the table was delightful.

"Now," he said, "we can ring up for the first act."

She filled the tea-pot and held it for a moment, and then set it down as
though her feelings were too much for her.

"I feel as if I were in a dream," she quavered happily. "I do indeed."

"But it's a nice one, ain't it?" he answered. "I feel as if I was in
two. Sitting here in this big room with all these fine things about me,
and having afternoon tea with a relation! It just about suits me. It
didn't feel like this yesterday, you bet your life!"

"Does it seem--nicer than yesterday?" she ventured. "Really, Mr. Temple
Barholm?"

"Nicer!" he ejaculated. "It's got yesterday beaten to a frazzle."

It was beyond all belief. He was speaking as though the advantage, the
relief, the happiness, were all on his side. She longed to enlighten
him.

"But you can't realize what it is to me," she said gratefully, "to sit
here, not terrified and homeless and--a beggar any more, with your kind
face before me. Do forgive me for saying it. You have such a kind young
face, Mr. Temple Barholm. And to have an easy-chair and cushions,
and actually a buffet brought for my feet!" She suddenly recollected
herself. "Oh, I mustn't let your tea get cold," she added, taking up the
tea-pot apologetically. "Do you take cream and sugar, and is it to be
one lump or two?"

"I take everything in sight," he replied joyously, "and two lumps,
please."

She prepared the cup of tea with as delicate a care as though it had
been a sacramental chalice, and when she handed it to him she smiled
wistfully.

"No one but you ever thought of such a thing as bringing a buffet for
my feet--no one except poor little Jem," she said, and her voice was
wistful as well as her smile.

She was obviously unaware that she was introducing an entirely new
acquaintance to him. Poor little Jem was supposed to be some one whose
whole history he knew.

"Jem?" he repeated, carefully transferring a piece of hot buttered
crumpet to his plate.

"Jem Temple Barholm," she answered. "I say little Jem because I remember
him only as a child. I never saw him after he was eleven years old."

"Who was he?" he asked. The tone of her voice, and her manner of
speaking made him feel that he wanted to hear something more.

She looked rather startled by his ignorance. "Have you--have you never
heard of him?" she inquired.

"No. Is he another distant relation?"

Her hesitation caused him to neglect his crumpet, to look up at her.
He saw at once that she wore the air of a sensitive and beautifully
mannered elderly lady who was afraid she had made a mistake and said
something awkward.

"I am so sorry," she apologized. "Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned
him."

"Why shouldn't he be mentioned?"

She was embarrassed. She evidently wished she had not spoken, but
breeding demanded that she should ignore the awkwardness of the
situation, if awkwardness existed.

"Of course--I hope your tea is quite as you like it--of course there is
no real reason. But--shall I give you some more cream? No? You see, if
he hadn't died, he--he would have inherited Temple Barholm."

Now he was interested. This was the other chap.

"Instead of me?" he asked, to make sure. She endeavored not to show
embarrassment and told herself it didn't really matter--to a thoroughly
nice person. But--

"He was the next of kin--before you. I'm so sorry I didn't know you
hadn't heard of him. It seemed natural that Mr. Palford should have
mentioned him."

"He did say that there was a young fellow who had died, but he didn't
tell me about him. I guess I didn't ask. There were such a lot of other
things. I'd like to hear about him. You say you knew him?"

"Only when he was a little fellow. Never after he grew up. Something
happened which displeased my father. I'm afraid papa was very easily
displeased. Mr. Temple Barholm disliked him, too. He would not have him
at Temple Barholm."

"He hadn't much luck with his folks, had he?" remarked Tembarom.

"He had no luck with any one. I seemed to be the only person who was
fond of him, and of course I didn't count."

"I bet you counted with him," said Tembarom.

"I do think I did. Both his parents died quite soon after he was born,
and people who ought to have cared for him were rather jealous because
he stood so near to Temple Barholm. If Mr. Temple Barholm had not been
so eccentric and bitter, everything would have been done for him; but as
it was, he seemed to belong to no one. When he came to the vicarage it
used to make me so happy. He used to call me Aunt Alicia, and he had
such pretty ways." She hesitated and looked quite tenderly at the
tea-pot, a sort of shyness in her face. "I am sure," she burst forth, "I
feel quite sure that you will understand and won't think it indelicate;
but I had thought so often that I should like to have a little boy--if I
had married," she added in hasty tribute to propriety.

Tembarom's eyes rested on her in a thoughtfulness openly touched with
affection. He put out his hand and patted hers two or three times in
encouraging sympathy.

"Say," he said frankly, "I just believe every woman that's the real
thing'd like to have a little boy--or a little girl--or a little
something or other. That's why pet cats and dogs have such a cinch of
it. And there's men that's the same way. It's sort of nature."

"He had such a high spirit and such pretty ways," she said again. "One
of his pretty ways was remembering to do little things to make one
comfortable, like thinking of giving one a cushion or a buffet for one's
feet. I noticed it so much because I had never seen boys or men
wait upon women. My own dear papa was used to having women wait upon
him--bring his slippers, you know, and give him the best chair. He
didn't like Jem's ways. He said he liked a boy who was a boy and not
an affected nincompoop. He wasn't really quite just." She paused
regretfully and sighed as she looked back into a past doubtlessly
enriched with many similar memories of "dear papa." "Poor Jem! Poor
Jem!" she breathed softly.

Tembarom thought that she must have felt the boy's loss very much,
almost as much as though she had really been his mother; perhaps more
pathetically because she had not been his mother or anybody's mother. He
could see what a good little mother she would have made, looking after
her children and doing everything on earth to make them happy and
comfortable, just the kind of mother Ann would make, though she had not
Ann's steady wonder of a little head or her shrewd farsightedness. Jem
would have been in luck if he had been her son. It was a darned pity he
hadn't been. If he had, perhaps he would not have died young.

"Yes," he answered sympathetically, "it's hard for a young fellow to
die. How old was he, anyhow? I don't know."

"Not much older than you are now. It was seven years ago. And if he had
only died, poor dear! There are things so much worse than death."

"Worse!"

"Awful disgrace is worse," she faltered. She was plainly trying to keep
moisture out of her eyes.

"Did he get into some bad mix-up, poor fellow?" If there had been
anything like that, no wonder it broke her up to think of him.

It surely did break her up. She flushed emotionally.

"The cruel thing was that he didn't really do what he was accused of,"
she said.

"He didn't?"

"No; but he was a ruined man, and he went away to the Klondike because
he could not stay in England. And he was killed--killed, poor boy! And
afterward it was found out that he was innocent--too late."

"Gee!" Tembarom gasped, feeling hot and cold. "Could you beat that for
rotten luck! What was he accused of?"

Miss Alicia leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. It was too dreadful
to speak of aloud.

"Cheating at cards--a gentleman playing with gentlemen. You know what
that means."

Tembarom grew hotter and colder. No wonder she looked that way, poor
little thing!

"But,"--he hesitated before he spoke,--"but he wasn't that kind, was he?
Of course he wasn't."

"No, no. But, you see,"--she hesitated herself here,--"everything looked
so much against him. He had been rather wild." She dropped her voice
even lower in making the admission.

Tembarom wondered how much she meant by that.

"He was so much in debt. He knew he was to be rich in the future, and he
was poor just in those reckless young days when it seemed unfair. And
he had played a great deal and had been very lucky. He was so lucky
that sometimes his luck seemed uncanny. Men who had played with him were
horrible about it afterward."

"They would be," put in Tembarom. "They'd be sore about it, and bring
it up."

They both forgot their tea. Miss Alicia forgot everything as she poured
forth her story in the manner of a woman who had been forced to keep
silent and was glad to put her case into words. It was her case. To tell
the truth of this forgotten wrong was again to offer justification of
poor handsome Jem whom everybody seemed to have dropped talk of, and
even preferred not to hear mentioned.

"There were such piteously cruel things about it," she went on. "He had
fallen very much in love, and he meant to marry and settle down. Though
we had not seen each other for years, he actually wrote to me and told
me about it. His letter made me cry. He said I would understand and care
about the thing which seemed to have changed everything and made him a
new man. He was so sorry that he had not been better and more careful.
He was going to try all over again. He was not going to play at all
after this one evening when he was obliged to keep an engagement he had
made months before to give his revenge to a man he had won a great deal
of money from. The very night the awful thing happened he had told Lady
Joan, before he went into the card-room, that this was to be his last
game."

Tembarom had looked deeply interested from the first, but at her last
words a new alertness added itself.

"Did you say Lady Joan?" he asked. "Who was Lady Joan?"

"She was the girl he was so much in love with. Her name was Lady Joan
Fayre."

"Was she the daughter of the Countess of Mallowe?"

"Yes. Have you heard of her?"

He recalled Ann's reflective consideration of him before she had said,
"She'll come after you." He replied now: "Some one spoke of her to me
this morning. They say she's a beauty and as proud as Lucifer."

"She was, and she is yet, I believe. Poor Lady Joan--as well as poor
Jem!"

"She didn't believe it, did she?" he put in hastily. "She didn't throw
him down?"

"No one knew what happened between them afterward. She was in the
card-room, looking on, when the awful thing took place."

She stopped, as though to go on was almost unbearable. She had been so
overwhelmed by the past shame of it that even after the passing of years
the anguish was a living thing. Her small hands clung hard together
as they rested on the edge of the table. Tembarom waited in thrilled
suspense. She spoke in a whisper again:

"He won a great deal of money--a great deal. He had that uncanny luck
again, and of course people in the other rooms heard what was going on,
and a number drifted in to look on. The man he had promised to give his
revenge to almost showed signs of having to make an effort to conceal
his irritation and disappointment. Of course, as he was a gentleman,
he was as cool as possible; but just at the most exciting moment, the
height of the game, Jem made a quick movement, and--and something fell
out of his sleeve."

"Something," gasped Tembarom, "fell out of his sleeve!"

Miss Alicia's eyes overflowed as she nodded her beribboned little cap.

"It"--her voice was a sob of woe--"it was a marked card. The man he was
playing against snatched it and held it up. And he laughed out loud."

"Holy cats!" burst from Tembarom; but the remarkable exclamation was
one of genuine horror, and he turned pale, got up from his seat, and
took two or three strides across the room, as though he could not sit
still.

"Yes, he laughed--quite loudly," repeated Miss Alicia, "as if he had
guessed it all the time. Papa heard the whole story from some one who
was present."

Tembarom came back to her rather breathless.

"What in thunder did he do--Jem?" he asked.

She actually wrung her poor little hands.

"What could he do? There was a dead silence. People moved just a little
nearer to the table and stood and stared, merely waiting. They say it
was awful to see his face--awful. He sprang up and stood still, and
slowly became as white as if he were dying before their eyes. Some one
thought Lady Joan Fayre took a step toward him, but no one was quite
sure. He never uttered one word, but walked out of the room and down the
stairs and out of the house."

"But didn't he speak to the girl?"

"He didn't even look at her. He passed her by as if she were stone."

"What happened next?"

"He disappeared. No one knew where at first, and then there was a rumor
that he had gone to the Klondike and had been killed there. And a year
later--only a year! Oh, if he had only waited in England!--a worthless
villain of a valet he had discharged for stealing met with an accident,
and because he thought he was going to die, got horribly frightened,
and confessed to the clergyman that he had tucked the card in poor Jem's
sleeve himself just to pay him off. He said he did it on the chance
that it would drop out where some one would see it, and a marked card
dropping out of a man's sleeve anywhere would look black enough, whether
he was playing or not. But poor Jem was in his grave, and no one seemed
to care, though every one had been interested enough in the scandal.
People talked about that for weeks."

Tembarom pulled at his collar excitedly.

"It makes me sort of strangle," he said. "You've got to stand your own
bad luck, but to hear of a chap that's had to lie down and take the
worst that could come to him and know it wasn't his--just KNOW it! And
die before he's cleared! That knocks me out."

Almost every sentence he uttered had a mystical sound to Miss Alicia,
but she knew how he was taking it, with what hot, young human sympathy
and indignation. She loved the way he took it, and she loved the feeling
in his next words,

"And the girl--good Lord!--the girl?"

"I never met her, and I know very little of her; but she has never
married."

"I'm glad of that," he said. "I'm darned glad of it. How could she?" Ann
wouldn't, he knew. Ann would have gone to her grave unmarried. But she
would have done things first to clear her man's name. Somehow she would
have cleared him, if she'd had to fight tooth and nail till she was
eighty.

"They say she has grown very bitter and haughty in her manner. I'm
afraid Lady Mallowe is a very worldly woman. One hears they don't get on
together, and that she is bitterly disappointed because her daughter has
not made a good match. It appears that she might have made several,
but she is so hard and cynical that men are afraid of her. I wish I had
known her a little--if she really loved Jem."

Tembarom had thrust his hands into his pockets, and was standing deep in
thought, looking at the huge bank of red coals in the fire-grate. Miss
Alicia hastily wiped her eyes.

"Do excuse me," she said.

"I'll excuse you all right," he replied, still looking into the coals.
"I guess I shouldn't excuse you as much if you didn't" He let her cry in
her gentle way while he stared, lost in reflection.

"And if he hadn't fired that valet chap, he would be here with you
now--instead of me. Instead of me," he repeated.

And Miss Alicia did not know what to say in reply. There seemed to be
nothing which, with propriety and natural feeling, one could say.

"It makes me feel just fine to know I'm not going to have my dinner all
by myself," he said to her before she left the library.

She had a way of blushing about things he noticed, when she was shy
or moved or didn't know exactly what to say. Though she must have been
sixty, she did it as though she were sixteen. And she did it when
he said this, and looked as though suddenly she was in some sort of
trouble.

"You are going to have dinner with me," he said, seeing that she
hesitated--"dinner and breakfast and lunch and tea and supper and every
old thing that goes. You can't turn me down after me staking out that
claim."

"I'm afraid--" she said. "You see, I have lived such a secluded life.
I scarcely ever left my rooms except to take a walk. I'm sure you
understand. It would not have been necessary even if I could have
afforded it, which I really couldn't--I'm afraid I have nothing--quite
suitable--for evening wear."

"You haven't!" he exclaimed gleefully. "I don't know what is suitable
for evening wear, but I haven't got it either. Pearson told me so with
tears in his eyes. It never was necessary for me either. I've got to
get some things to quiet Pearson down, but until I do I've got to eat
my dinner in a tweed cutaway; and what I've caught on to is that it's
unsuitable enough to throw a man into jail. That little black dress
you've got on and that little cap are just 'way out of sight, they're so
becoming. Come down just like you are."

She felt a little as Pearson had felt when confronting his new
employer's entire cheerfulness in face of a situation as exotically
hopeless as the tweed cutaway, and nothing else by way of resource. But
there was something so nice about him, something which was almost as
though he was actually a gentleman, something which absolutely, if one
could go so far, stood in the place of his being a gentleman. It was
impossible to help liking him more and more at every queer speech he
made. Still, there were of course things he did not realize, and perhaps
one ought in kindness to give him a delicate hint.

"I'm afraid," she began quite apologetically. "I'm afraid that the
servants, Burrill and the footmen, you know, will be--will think--"

"Say," he took her up, "let's give Burrill and the footmen the Willies
out and out. If they can't stand it, they can write home to their
mothers and tell 'em they've got to take 'em away. Burrill and the
footmen needn't worry. They're suitable enough, and it's none of their
funeral, anyhow."

He wasn't upset in the least. Miss Alicia, who, as a timid dependent
either upon "poor dear papa" or Mr. Temple Barholm, had been secretly,
in her sensitive, ladylike little way, afraid of superior servants
all her life, knowing that they realized her utterly insignificant
helplessness, and resented giving her attention because she was not able
to show her appreciation of their services in the proper manner--Miss
Alicia saw that it had not occurred to him to endeavor to propitiate
them in the least, because somehow it all seemed a joke to him, and he
didn't care. After the first moment of being startled, she regarded him
with a novel feeling, almost a kind of admiration. Tentatively she dared
to wonder if there was not something even rather--rather ARISTOCRATIC in
his utter indifference.

If he had been a duke, he would not have regarded the servants' point of
view; it wouldn't have mattered what they thought. Perhaps, she
hastily decided, he was like this because, though he was not a duke,
boot-blacking in New York notwithstanding he was a Temple Barholm. There
were few dukes as old of blood as a Temple Barholm. That must be it. She
was relieved.

Whatsoever lay at the root of his being what he was and as he was, he
somehow changed the aspect of things for her, and without doing anything
but be himself, cleared the atmosphere of her dread of the surprise and
mental reservations of the footmen and Burrill when she came down to
dinner in her high-necked, much-cleaned, and much-repaired black silk,
and with no more distinguishing change in her toilet than a white lace
cap instead of a black one, and with "poor dear mamma's" hair bracelet
with the gold clasp on her wrist, and a weeping-willow made of "poor
dear papa's" hair in a brooch at her collar.

It was so curious, though still "nice," but he did not offer her his arm
when they were going into the dining-room, and he took hold of hers with
his hand and affectionately half led, half pushed, her along with him as
they went. And he himself drew back her chair for her at the end of the
table opposite his own. He did not let a footman do it, and he stood
behind it, talking in his cheerful way all the time, and he moved it to
exactly the right place, and then actually bent down and looked under
the table.

"Here," he said to the nearest man-servant, "where's there a footstool?
Get one, please," in that odd, simple, almost aristocratic way. It was
not a rude dictatorial way, but a casual way, as though he knew the man
was there to do things, and he didn't expect any time to be wasted.

And it was he himself who arranged the footstool, making it comfortable
for her, and then he went to his own chair at the head of the table
and sat down, smiling at her joyfully across the glass and silver and
flowers.

"Push that thing in the middle on one side, Burrill," he said. "It's too
high. I can't see Miss Alicia."

Burrill found it difficult to believe the evidence of his hearing.

"The epergne, sir?" he inquired.

"Is that what it's called, an apern? That's a new one on me. Yes, that's
what I mean. Push the apern over."

"Shall I remove it from the table, sir?" Burrill steeled himself to
exact civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained
the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what
the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination
to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a
celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was
almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, "Shove it on
one side," but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being
required to "shove."

"Yes, suppose you do. It's a fine enough thing when it isn't in the
way, but I've got to see you while I talk, Miss Alicia," said Mr. Temple
Barholm. The episode of the epergne--Burrill's expression, and the
rigidly restrained mouths of Henry and James as the decoration was
removed, leaving a painfully blank space of table-cloth until Burrill
silently filled it with flowers in a low bowl--these things temporarily
flurried Miss Alicia somewhat, but the pleased smile at the head of the
table calmed even that trying moment.

Then what a delightful meal it was, to be sure! How entertaining and
cheerful and full of interesting conversation! Miss Alicia had always
admired what she reverently termed "conversation." She had read of the
houses of brilliant people where they had it at table, at dinner and
supper parties, and in drawing-rooms. The French, especially the French
ladies, were brilliant conversationalists. They held "salons" in which
the conversation was wonderful--Mme. de Stael and Mme. Roland, for
instance; and in England, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Sydney Smith, and
Horace Walpole, and surely Miss Fanny Burney, and no doubt L. E. L.,
whose real name was Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon--what conversation
they must have delighted their friends with and how instructive it must
have been even to sit in the most obscure corner and listen!

Such gifted persons seemed to have been chosen by Providence to delight
and inspire every one privileged to hear them. Such privileges had been
omitted from the scheme of Miss Alicia's existence. She did not know,
she would have felt it sacrilegious to admit it even if the fact had
dawned upon her, that "dear papa" had been a heartlessly arrogant,
utterly selfish, and tyrannical old blackguard of the most pronounced
type. He had been of an absolute morality as far as social laws were
concerned. He had written and delivered a denunciatory sermon a week,
and had made unbearable by his ministrations the suffering hours and the
last moments of his parishioners during the long years of his pastorate.
When Miss Alicia, in reading records of the helpful relationship of the
male progenitors of the Brontes, Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, and Mrs.
Browning, was frequently reminded of him, she revealed a perception of
which she was not aware. He had combined the virile qualities of all of
them. Consequently, brilliancy of conversation at table had not been the
attractive habit of the household; "poor dear papa" had confined himself
to scathing criticism of the incompetence of females who could not teach
their menials to "cook a dinner which was not a disgrace to any decent
household." When not virulently aspersing the mutton, he was expressing
his opinion of muddle-headed weakness which would permit household bills
to mount in a manner which could only bring ruin and disaster upon a
minister of the gospel who throughout a protracted career of usefulness
had sapped his intellectual manhood in the useless effort to support in
silly idleness a family of brainless and maddening fools. Miss Alicia
had heard her character, her unsuccessful physical appearance, her mind,
and her pitiful efforts at table-talk, described in detail with a choice
of adjective and adverb which had broken into terrified fragments every
atom of courage and will with which she had been sparsely dowered.

So, not having herself been gifted with conversational powers to begin
with, and never having enjoyed the exhibition of such powers in others,
her ideals had been high. She was not sure that Mr. Temple Barholm's
fluent and cheerful talk could be with exactness termed "conversation."
It was perhaps not sufficiently lofty and intellectual, and did not
confine itself rigorously to one exalted subject. But how it did raise
one's spirits and open up curious vistas! And how good tempered
and humorous it was, even though sometimes the humor was a little
bewildering! During the whole dinner there never occurred even one of
those dreadful pauses in which dead silence fell, and one tried, like a
frightened hen flying from side to side of a coop, to think of something
to say which would not sound silly, but perhaps might divert attention
from dangerous topics. She had often thought it would be so interesting
to hear a Spaniard or a native Hindu talk about himself and his own
country in English. Tembarom talked about New York and its people and
atmosphere, and he did not know how foreign it all was. He described the
streets--Fifth Avenue and Broadway and Sixth Avenue--and the street-cars
and the elevated railroad, and the way "fellows" had to "hustle" "to put
it over." He spoke of a boarding-house kept by a certain Mrs. Bowse, and
a presidential campaign, and the election of a mayor, and a quick-lunch
counter, and when President Garfield had been assassinated, and a
department store; and the electric lights, and the way he had of making
a sort of picture of everything was really instructive and, well,
fascinating. She felt as though she had been taken about the city in
one of the vehicles the conductor of which described things through a
megaphone.

Not that Mr. Temple Barholm suggested a megaphone, whatsoever that might
be, but he merely made you feel as if you had seen things. Never had she
been so entertained and enlightened. If she had been a beautiful girl,
he could not have seemed more as though in amusing her he was also
really pleasing himself. He was so very funny sometimes that she could
not help laughing in a way which was almost unladylike, because she
could not stop, and was obliged to put her handkerchief up to her face
and wipe away actual tears of mirth.

Fancy laughing until you cried, and the servants looking on!

Once Burrill himself was obliged to turn hastily away, and twice she
heard him severely reprove an overpowered young footman in a rapid
undertone.

Tembarom at least felt that the unlifting heaviness of atmosphere which
had surrounded him while enjoying the companionship of Mr. Palford was a
thing of the past.

The thrilled interest, the surprise and delight of Miss Alicia would
have stimulated a man in a comatose condition, it seemed to him. The
little thing just loved every bit of it--she just "eat it up." She asked
question after question, sometimes questions which would have made him
shout with laughter if he had not been afraid of hurting her feelings.
She knew as little of New York as he knew of Temple Barholm, and was, it
made him grin to see, allured by it as by some illicit fascination. She
did not know what to make of it, and sometimes she was obliged hastily
to conceal a fear that it was a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah; but she
wanted to hear more about it, and still more.

And she brightened up until she actually did not look frightened, and
ate her dinner with an excellent appetite.

"I really never enjoyed a dinner so much in my life," she said when
they went into the drawing-room to have their coffee. "It was the
conversation which made it so delightful. Conversation is such a
stimulating thing!"

She had almost decided that it was "conversation," or at least a
wonderful substitute.

When she said good night to him and went beaming to bed, looking forward
immensely to breakfast next morning, he watched her go up the staircase,
feeling wonderfully normal and happy.

"Some of these nights, when she's used to me," he said as he stuffed
tobacco into his last pipe in the library--"some of these nights I'm
darned if I sha'n't catch hold of the sweet, little old thing and hug
her in spite of myself. I sha'n't be able to help it." He lit his pipe,
and puffed it even excitedly. "Lord!" he said, "there's some blame' fool
going about the world right now that might have married her. And he'll
never know what a break he made when he didn't."

CHAPTER XVI

A fugitive fine day which had strayed into the month from the
approaching spring appeared the next morning, and Miss Alicia was
uplifted by the enrapturing suggestion that she should join her new
relative in taking a walk, in fact that it should be she who took him
to walk and showed him some of his possessions. This, it had revealed
itself to him, she could do in a special way of her own, because during
her life at Temple Barholm she had felt it her duty to "try to do a
little good" among the villagers. She and her long-dead mother and
sister had of course been working adjuncts of the vicarage, and had
numerous somewhat trying tasks to perform in the way of improving upon
"dear papa's" harrying them into attending church, chivying the mothers
into sending their children to Sunday-school, and being unsparing in
severity of any conduct which might be construed into implying lack of
appreciation of the vicar or respect for his eloquence.

It had been necessary for them as members of the vicar's family--always,
of course, without adding a sixpence to the household bills--to supply
bowls of nourishing broth and arrowroot to invalids and to bestow the
aid and encouragement which result in a man of God's being regarded with
affection and gratitude by his parishioners. Many a man's career in the
church, "dear papa" had frequently observed, had been ruined by lack of
intelligence and effort on the part of the female members of his family.

"No man could achieve proper results," he had said, "if he was hampered
by the selfish influence and foolishness of his womenkind. Success in
the church depends in one sense very much upon the conduct of a man's
female relatives."

After the deaths of her mother and sister, Miss Alicia had toiled on
patiently, fading day by day from a slim, plain, sweet-faced girl to
a slim, even plainer and sweeter-faced middle-aged and at last elderly
woman. She had by that time read aloud by bedsides a great many chapters
in the Bible, had given a good many tracts, and bestowed as much
arrowroot, barley-water, and beef-tea as she could possibly
encompass without domestic disaster. She had given a large amount of
conscientious, if not too intelligent, advice, and had never failed to
preside over her Sunday-school class or at mothers' meetings. But
her timid unimpressiveness had not aroused enthusiasm or awakened
comprehension. "Miss Alicia," the cottage women said, "she's well
meanin', but she's not one with a head." "She reminds me," one of them
had summed her up, "of a hen that lays a' egg every day, but it's too
small for a meal, and 'u'd never hatch into anythin'."

During her stay at Temple Barholm she had tentatively tried to do a
little "parish work," but she had had nothing to give, and she was
always afraid that if Mr. Temple Barholm found her out, he would be
angry, because he would think she was presuming. She was aware that the
villagers knew that she was an object of charity herself, and a person
who was "a lady" and yet an object of charity was, so to speak, poaching
upon their own legitimate preserves. The rector and his wife were rather
grand people, and condescended to her greatly on the few occasions of
their accidental meetings. She was neither smart nor influential enough
to be considered as an asset.

It was she who "conversed" during their walk, and while she trotted
by Tembarom's side looking more early-Victorian than ever in a neat,
fringed mantle and a small black bonnet of a fashion long decently
interred by a changing world, Tembarom had never seen anything
resembling it in New York; but he liked it and her increasingly at every
moment.

It was he who made her converse. He led her on by asking her questions
and being greatly interested in every response she made. In fact, though
he was quite unaware of the situation, she was creating for him such an
atmosphere as he might have found in a book, if he had had the habit of
books. Everything she told him was new and quaint and very often rather
touching. She related anecdotes about herself and her poor little past
without knowing she was doing it. Before they had talked an hour he had
an astonishing clear idea of "poor dear papa" and "dearest Emily" and
"poor darling mama" and existence at Rowcroft Vicarage. He "caught
on to" the fact that though she was very much given to the word
"dear,"--people were "dear," and so were things and places,--she never
even by chance slipped into saying "dear Rowcroft," which she would
certainly have done if she had ever spent a happy moment in it.

As she talked to him he realized that her simple accustomedness to
English village life and all its accompaniments of county surroundings
would teach him anything and everything he might want to know. Her
obscurity had been surrounded by stately magnificence, with which
she had become familiar without touching the merest outskirts of its
privileges. She knew names and customs and families and things to be
cultivated or avoided, and though she would be a little startled and
much mystified by his total ignorance of all she had breathed in since
her birth, he felt sure that she would not regard him either with
private contempt or with a lessened liking because he was a vandal pure
and simple.

And she had such a nice, little, old polite way of saying things. When,
in passing a group of children, he failed to understand that their hasty
bobbing up and down meant that they were doing obeisance to him as lord
of the manor, she spoke with the prettiest apologetic courtesy.

"I'm sure you won't mind touching your hat when they make their little
curtsies, or when a villager touches his forehead," she said.

"Good Lord! no," he said, starting. "Ought I? I didn't know they were
doing it at me." And he turned round and made a handsome bow and grinned
almost affectionately at the small, amazed party, first puzzling, and
then delighting, them, because he looked so extraordinarily friendly.
A gentleman who laughed at you like that ought to be equal to a
miscellaneous distribution of pennies in the future, if not on the spot.
They themselves grinned and chuckled and nudged one another, with stares
and giggles.

"I am sorry to say that in a great many places the villagers are not
nearly so respectful as they used to be," Miss Alicia explained. "In
Rowcroft the children were very remiss about curtseying. It's quite sad.
But Mr. Temple Barholm was very strict indeed in the matter of demanding
proper respectfulness. He has turned men off their farms for incivility.
The villagers of Temple Barholm have much better manners than some even
a few miles away."

"Must I tip my hat to all of them?" he asked.

"If you please. It really seems kinder. You--you needn't quite lift it,
as you did to the children just now. If you just touch the brim lightly
with your hand in a sort of military salute--that is what they are
accustomed to."

After they had passed through the village street she paused at the end
of a short lane and looked up at him doubtfully.

"Would you--I wonder if you would like to go into a cottage," she said.

"Go into a cottage?" he asked. "What cottage? What for?"

He had not the remotest idea of any reason why he should go into a
cottage inhabited by people who were entire strangers to him, and Miss
Alicia felt a trifle awkward at having to explain anything so wholly
natural.

"You see, they are your cottages, and the people are your tenants,
and--"

"But perhaps they mightn't like it. It might make 'em mad," he argued.