A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 40

Gerald leisurely removed his gloves. "What does half an hour matter when I can spend it with you? I was just going to meet Mater at the jail where she has been pinning rosebuds on repentant bosoms. Come, tell me all about yourself!" He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, and hands clasped, dropping his voice to a confidential tone, and bringing the whole battery of his glances to play upon her.

"Why should I?" asked Connie archly. "You haven't been near me since I went to the country."

"What was the use? You couldn't expect me to compete with a hero, who is making such a grandstand play as Morley. Giving himself up for an act he says he didn't commit, refunding money when he doesn't have to, going to work as a scrub reporter when he has lived like a lord all his life!

I don't see how the theatrical managers have overlooked him! He is the stuff matinee idols are made of. He's turned the heads of half the girls in town!"

"He's turned mine all right," said Connie complacently. "I'm crazy about him. And he isn't doing all those things for effect either. He is not that kind. Is he, Mr. Wicker?"

Noah, thus suddenly appealed to, was compelled to answer truthfully that he was not. But he did so with a protesting jerk of the elbow, that sent an ink-bottle flying to the floor.

Gerald took advantage of the mishap to get Connie over to the window.

"It's beastly lonesome without you," he whispered. "When are you coming home?"

"Heaven knows!" said Connie, putting her hands behind her for safe-keeping. "Now that somebody else has rented the College Street house, and Miss Lady has sold Thornwood, I don't know what's to become of us."

"Don't you miss me a little bit?" asked Gerald, playing with the silver purse on her wrist.

"Of course I do, silly. Is my hat on straight? I wish I had a mirror."

Noah kneeling on the floor, mopping up the ink, reached toward the desk, and then paused.

"I'll be your mirror!" said Gerald, presenting his eyes in a way that only a very near-sighted person could have taken advantage of.

"City Hall clock's striking four," said Noah grimly.

But Noah's desire to have Connie to himself was not to be gratified. No sooner had Gerald gone, than Hattie arrived, very slim and angular, and carrying a prodigious stack of school-books.

"What was the sense of my meeting you here?" she demanded of Connie, wasting no time on amenities. "You've made me miss the four-two train, and come out of my way. What did you want with me?"

"I wanted to use your mileage book, dear," said Connie sweetly. "How long do you suppose it will be, Mr. Wicker, before Mr. Gooch comes in?"

"Any minute now," said Noah, smoothing down his hair with an inky finger. "I--I think the clock is a little fast." Then as Connie laughed, he jerked up the top of his desk and disappeared behind it.

"Stuffy old place!" said Connie, wandering about the room. "If Mr. Gooch wasn't so stingy he'd have it cleaned up."

"I wouldn't call a man stingy who had given a library to the law school," Hattie objected.

"Yes, and he's spent the rest of his life saving every penny to pay himself back for it. He has eaten fifty-two suppers a year at our house for ten years, that's five hundred and twenty suppers, and he's never even treated us to a chocolate sundae!"

"I don't think it's stingy to be economical," Hattie said with her most superior air.

Noah, who was facing the open door, suddenly began making strange gestures, and violent appeals for silence, but the girls were off on an old argument and did not see him.

"Besides," Connie was saying conclusively, "he cheats at cards; you know he does."

"Only at solitaire. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't cheat himself if he wants to. He's all right, even if he is queer, and I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk about him the way you do!"

"How do you do, Harriet?" said Mr. Gooch dryly, entering from the outer room and not glancing at Connie. "A message from your father?"

Connie slipped the note into Hattie's hand and took refuge with Noah behind the desk top.

"Did he hear?" she whispered hysterically. Then not waiting for a reply she pounced upon an object in the desk. "Is that a mirror?"

Noah shamefacedly produced it.

"Hold it for me," she commanded. "Not so far off. Like that!"

Standing there behind the desk holding his little mirror for her to powder her nose seemed to Noah the apotheosis of romance.

"Too much?" she asked, tilting her face for inspection. "And is my hat right? I want to look my best, because you know I _may_ meet Donald Morley on the steps."

She was evidently not disappointed, for Noah, standing at the window waiting to catch the last flutter of her feather as she pa.s.sed up the street, had to wait five agonizing minutes, at the end of which Don spoke to him from the door.

"h.e.l.lo, Wick. Is Mr. Gooch here?"

"He was a minute ago."

"Is he coming back?"

"I don't know, I'm sure."

Noah made the answers in a tone that discouraged further conversation, and Donald after a sharp glance at him, shrugged his shoulders and picked up a book. He had not long to wait before Mr. Gooch returned.

"I've been telephoning all over town for you," said the lawyer testily.

"Is this rumor true that you have bought back your bank stock?"

"It is. It was the only honest thing I could do."

"Not at all," complained Mr. Gooch, who became pa.s.sionately attached to the contrary opinion the moment he ascertained yours. "It was a most quixotic, a most reckless course to take. I suppose you know of the double liability?"

"Yes, I know," Donald flung out impatiently.

"You are singularly fortunate, Mr. Morley, to be able to indulge these magnanimous whims. Your resources I presume--"

"My resources consist in a piece of real estate and a couple of race horses. That's about all that's left."

"The real estate?" Mr. Gooch looked encouraged. "City property?"

"No, it's a farm."

"Where?"

"On the Cane Run Road."

Noah's head appeared above the desk for the first time during the conversation and he looked surprised, as if he had made a discovery.

"Adjoining your sister's property, I judge?" continued Mr. Gooch.