The Sturdy Oak Part 37

Not till this blessed moment of relaxation did he become aware of the discomforts of this suite--nor did Genevieve fully appreciate the flamboyantly flowered maroon wall-paper and the jig-saw furniture.

"George,"' she sighed, "now that you're not needed down here, can't we go home?"

"Home!" The word came out half snort, half growl--hardly the tone becoming one whose triumph was so exultingly fresh. With a jar he had come back to a present which he fully understood. "d.a.m.n home! I haven't any home!"

Genevieve stared. Uncle Martin snickered, for Uncle Martin had the gift of understanding.

"You mean those flowers of womanhood whom chivalrous man----"

"Shut up," commanded George. He thought for a brief s.p.a.ce; then his jaw set. "Excuse me a moment."

Drawing hotel stationery toward him, he scribbled rapidly and then sealed and addressed what he had written.

"Uncle Martin, your car's outside doing nothing; would you mind going on ahead and giving this little note to Cousin Alys Brewster-Smith, and then staying around and having a little supper with Genevieve and me?

We'll be out soon, but there are a few things I want to talk over with Genevieve alone before we come."

Uncle Martin would oblige. But when he had gone, there seemed to be nothing of pressing importance that George had to communicate to Genevieve. Nor half an hour later, when he led his bride of four months up to their home, had he delivered himself of anything which seemed to require privacy.

As they stepped up on the porch, softly lighted by a frosted bulb in its ceiling, Cousin Emelene, her cat under her arm, came out of the front door and hurried past them, without speech.

"Why, Cousin Emelene!" George called after her.

She paused and half turned.

"You--you--" she half choked upon expletives that would not come forth. "The man will come for my trunks in the morning." Thrusting a handkerchief to her face, she hurried away.

"George, what can have happened to her?" cried the amazed Genevieve.

But George was saved answering her just then. Another figure had emerged from the front door--a rather largish figure, all in black--her left hand clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly, five. And this figure did not cower and hurry away. This figure halted, and glowered.

"George Remington," exclaimed Cousin Alys, "after your invitation--you--you apostate to chivalry! That outrageous letter! But if I am leaving your home, thank G.o.d I'm leaving it for a home of my own! Come on, Martin!"

With that she stalked away, dragging the sleepy Eleanor.

Not till then did George and Genevieve become aware that Uncle Martin was before them, having until now been obscured by Mrs. Brewster-Smith's outraged amplitude. His arms were loaded with coats, obviously feminine.

"Uncle Martin!" exclaimed George.

"George," gulped his uncle--"George--" And then he gained control of a dazed sort of speech. "When I gave her that letter I didn't know it was a letter of eviction. And the way she broke down before me--a woman, you know--I--I--well, George, it's my home she's going to."

"You don't mean----"

"Yes, George, that's just what I mean. Though, of course, I'm taking her back now to Mrs. Gallup's boarding-house until--until--good-night, George; good-night, Genevieve." The little man went staggering down the walk with his burden of wraps; and after a minute there came the sound of his six-cylinder roadster buzzing away into the darkness.

"I didn't tell 'em they had to go tonight," said George doggedly. "But I did remark that even if every woman had a right to a home, every woman didn't have the right to make my home her home. Anyhow," his tone becoming softer, "I've at last got a home of my own. Our own," he corrected.

He took her in his arms. "And, sweetheart--it's a better home than when we first came to it, for now I've got more sense. Now it is a home in which each of us has the right to think and be what we please."

At just about this same hour just about this same scene was being enacted upon another front porch in Whitewater--there being the slight difference that this second porch was not softly illuminated by any frosted globule of incandescence. Up the three steps leading to this second porch Mr. Penfield Evans had that moment escorted Miss Elizabeth Sheridan.

"Good-night, Penny," she said.

He caught her by her two shoulders.

"See here, Betty--the last twenty-four hours have been mighty busy hours--too busy even to talk about ourselves. But now--see here, you're not going to get away with any rough work like that. Come across, now.

Will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Say, how long do you think you're a paid-up subscriber to this little daily speech of mine?... Well, if I've got to hand you another copy, here goes. You promised me, on your word of honor, if George swung around for suffrage, you'd swing around for me. Well, George has come around. Not that I had much to do with it--but he surely did come around! Now, the point is, Miss Betty Sheridan, are you a woman of your promise--are you going to marry me?"

"Well, if you try to put it that way, demanding your pound of flesh----"

"One hundred and twenty pounds," corrected Penny.

"I'll say that, of course, I don't love you, but I guess a promise is a promise--and--and--" And suddenly a pair of strong young arms were flung about the neck of Mr. Penfield Evans. "Oh, I'm so happy, Penny dear!"

"Betty!"

After that there was a long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the G.o.ds... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers which were his invariable wear on dry and non-state occasions, b.u.mped into the invisible and unhearing couple.

"Say, there--" gasped the startled youth, backing away.

Betty gave an affrighted cry--it was a long swift journey down from where she had just been. Her right hand, reaching drowningly out, fell upon a familiar shoulder.

"It's Pudge!" she cried. "Pudge"--shaking him--"snooping around, listening and trying to spy----"

"You stop that--it ain't so!" protested the outraged Pudge, his utterance throttled down somewhat by the chocolate cream in his mouth.

"Spying on people! And, besides, you've been stuffing yourself with candy again! You're ruining your stomach with that sticky sweet stuff--you're headed straight for a candy-fiend's grave. Now, you go upstairs and to bed!"

She jerked him toward the door, opened it, and as he was thrust through the door Pudge felt something, something warm, press impulsively against a cheek. Not until the door had closed upon him did he realize what Betty had done to him. He stood dazed for a moment--unbalanced between impulses. Then the st.u.r.dy maleness of fourteen rewon its dominance.

"Guess I know what they was doing, all right--aw, wouldn't it make you sick!" And, in disgust which another chocolate cream alleviated hardly at all, he mounted to his bed.

Outside there was again silence... faintly disturbed only by that softly sibilant, almost muted percussion which recalls inevitably the month of June....

THE END