Play the Game! Part 3

"They're peaches, both of 'em," said Jimsy without envy.

"And of course he has time to be a wonder at school, if he wants to be."

"Yep. Looks as if he might be a shark at it." He grinned. "Slow on his feet but fast in the head."

"Muzzie's going to call on his mother, and then we'd better ask him to supper, hadn't we? He must be horribly lonesome."

"I'll float over and see him," the last King suggested, "and sort of size him up. Give him the once-over. We don't want to start anything unless he's O. K. Might as well go now, I guess."

"All right. Come in afterward and tell me what you think of him."

He nodded and swung off across the street. It was an hour before he came back, glowing. "Gee, Skipper, I'm strong for that kid! Name's Van Meter, Carter Van Meter. He's got a head on him, that boy! He's been everywhere and seen everything--three times abroad--Canada, Mexico! You ought to hear him talk--not a bit up-stagy, no side at all, but interesting! I asked him for supper, Sunday night. You'll be crazy about him--all the bunch will!" Thus Jimsy King on the day Carter Van Meter limped into his life; thus Jimsy King through the years which followed, wors.h.i.+ping humbly the things he did not have in himself, belittling his own gifts, enlarging his own lacks, glorifying his friend. He had never had a deeply intimate boy friend before; the team was his friend, the squad; Honor had sufficed for a nearer tie. It was to be different, now; a sharing. She was to resent a little in the beginning, before she, too, came under the spell of the boy from the East.

Mrs. Lorimer came smiling back from her call. "_Very_ nice," she told her husband and her daughter, "really charming. And her things are quite wonderful ... rare rugs ... portraits of ancestors. A widow. Here for her health, and the boy's health; he's never been strong. All she has in the world ... wrapped up in him. _Very_ Eastern!"--she laughed at the memory. "She said, 'And from what part of the East do you come, Mrs.

Lorimer?' When I said I was born here in Los Angeles she almost _gasped_, and then she flushed and said, 'Oh, really? Is it possible?

But I met some people on s.h.i.+pboard, once--the time before last when I was crossing--who were natives, and they were _quite_ delightful.'"

"The word 'native' intrigues them," said Stephen, drawing off her long, limp suede gloves and smoothing them. "I daresay she'll be looking for war whoops and tomahawks. And if it comes to that, we can furnish the former, especially Sunday night."

"Muzzie, did you meet the boy?" Honor wanted to know.

"Yes. He came in for tea with us. A beautifully mannered boy. Very much at ease. We must have him here, Honor."

"Yes, Jimsy's already asked him for Sunday night, Muzzie. Jimsy likes him."

"Well, he may. He has a something ... I don't know what it is, exactly, but he will be good for all of you."

"We'll be good for him, too," said her daughter, calmly. "It must be fearfully dull for him, not knowing any one, and being lame."

He came to supper, a trim young gla.s.s of fas.h.i.+on, and it was he, the stranger, who was entirely at his ease, and the "bunch," the gay, accustomed bunch, which was a little shy and constrained. Jimsy stood sponsor for him and Honor was an earnest hostess. He said he enjoyed himself; certainly he made himself gently agreeable to Mrs. Lorimer, to the girls. Honor's stepfather observed him with his undying curiosity.

He was a plain boy with a look of past pain in his colorless face, a shadowed bitterness in his eyes, a droop at the corners of his mouth when he was not speaking. For all his two motor cars and his rare old rugs and the portraits of ancestors and his idolized only sons.h.i.+p, life had clearly withheld from him the things he had wanted most. There was a baffled imperiousness about him, Stephen decided.

"A clever youngster," he told his wife, watching him from across the room. "Brains. But I don't like him."

"Stephen! Why not?"

He shook his head. "I don't know yet. But I know. I had a curious sense, as he came limping into the room to-night, of '_Enter the villain_.'"

"My dear,--that poor, frail boy, with his lovely, gentle manners!"

"I know. It does sound rather piffle. Daresay I'm wrong. The kids will size him up."

When Carter Van Meter came to tell his hostess good-by, he smiled winningly. "This has been very jolly, Mrs. Lorimer. It was good of you to let me come. Mother asked me to say how much she appreciated it.

But"--he hesitated--"May I come in some afternoon when--just you and Miss Honor are here?" He looked wistful, and frailer at the end of the evening than he had at the beginning.

"Of course you may, my dear boy!" Mrs. Lorimer gave him the glory of her special smile. "Come soon!"

He came the next day but one, and as her mother was at a bridge afternoon it was Honor who entertained him. She had just come home from High School and she wore a middy blouse and a short skirt and looked less than her years. "Let's sit in the garden, shan't we?--I hate being indoors a minute more than I can help!" She led the way across the green, springy lawn to the little rustic building over which the vivid Bougainvillaea climbed and swarmed, and he followed at his halted pace.

"Besides, we can see Jimsy from here when he comes by from football practice, and call him in. I just didn't happen to go to watch practice to-day, and now"--she smiled at him,--"I'm glad I didn't." There was something intensely pitiful about this lad to her mothering young heart, for all his poise and pride.

He waited gravely until she had established herself on a bench before he sat. "Tell me about this fellow King. Every one seems very keen about him."

Honor leaned back and took a serge-clad knee between two tanned hands.

"Well, I don't know how to begin! He's--well, he's just Jimsy King, that's all! But it's more than any other boy in the world."

"You're great friends, aren't you?"

"Jimsy and I? I should say we are! We've known each other ever since--well, before we could walk or talk! Our nurses used to take us out together in our buggies. We were born next door--in these two houses, on the same day. Jimsy's just about an hour older than I am!"

"I have never had many friends," said Carter Van Meter. "I've been moving about so much, traveling ... other things have interfered." He never referred, directly or indirectly, to his ill health or his limp.

"Well, you can have all you want now," said Honor, generously. "And Jimsy likes you!" She bestowed that like a decoration. "Honestly, I never knew him to take such a fancy to any one before in all his life.

He likes every one, you know,--I mean, he never dislikes anybody, but he never gets crushes. So, it means something to have him keen about you.

If _he's_ for you, _everybody_ will be for you."

"Why do people like him so?"

"Can't help it," said Honor, briefly. "Even _teachers_. He's not terribly clever at school, and of course he doesn't have as much time to study as some do, but the teachers are all keen about him. They know what he is. I expect that's what counts, don't you? Not what people have, or do, or know; what they _are_. Why, one time I happened to be in the Vice-Princ.i.p.al's office about something, and it was a noontime, and there was a wild rough-house down in the yard. Honestly, you couldn't hear yourself _think_! The Princ.i.p.al--he was a new man, just come--kept looking out of the window, and getting more and more nervous, and finally he said, 'Shouldn't we stop that, Mrs. Dalton?' And she looked out and laughed and said, 'Jimsy King's in it, and he'll stop it before we need to notice it!' _That's_ what teachers think of him, and the boys--I believe they'd cut up into inch pieces for him."

"I suppose it's a good deal on account of his football. He's on the team, isn't he?" His eyes disdained teams.

"On the team? He _is_ the team! Captain last year and this,--and next!

Wait till you see him play. He's the fastest full back we've ever had, since anybody can remember. There'll be a game Sat.u.r.day. We play Redlands. Will you come, and sit with Stepper and me?"

"Thanks. I don't care very much for----" he stopped, held up by the growing amaze in her face. "Yes, I'd like very much to go with you and Mr. Lorimer. I don't care much about watching games where I don't know the people"--he retrieved and amended his earlier sentence--"but you'll explain everything to me."

She grinned. "I'm afraid I won't be very nice about talking to you. I get simply wild, at games. I'm right down there, in it. I've never gotten over not being a boy! But Jimsy's wonderful about letting me have as much share in it as I can. You'll hear all sorts of tales about him, when you come to know people,--plays he's made and games he's won, and how he never, _never_ loses his head or his temper, no matter what the other team does. If we should ever have another war, I expect he'd be a great general." Her face broke into mirth again at a memory. "Once, we were playing Pomona--imagine a high school playing a college and _beating_ them!--and somebody was out for a minute, and Jimsy was standing waiting, with his arms folded across his chest, and he had on a head guard, and it was very still, and suddenly a girl's voice piped up--'_Oh, doesn't he look just like Napoleon?_' He's never heard the last of it; it fusses him awfully. I never knew anybody so modest. I suppose it's because he's always been the leader, the head of things, ever since he started kindergarten. He's _used_ to it; it seems just natural to him."

The new boy s.h.i.+fted his position uneasily.

Honor thought perhaps he was suffering; his face looked pinched. "Shall we go in the house? Would you be more comf"--she caught herself up--"perhaps you're not used to being out of doors all the time? Eastern people find this glaring sun tiresome sometimes."

"It's very nice here. You go to Los Angeles High School, too?" He didn't care about changing his position but he wanted intensely to change the subject, even if he had started it by his query. "Odd, isn't it, that you don't go to a girls' school?"

Honor laughed. "That's what Muzzie thinks. She did want me to go, but I didn't want to, and Stepper--my stepfather, you know,--stood up for me.

I never liked girls very much when I was little. I do now, of course.

I've two or three girl friends who are _wonders_. I adore them. But I still like boys best. I suppose"--he saw that her mind came back like a needle to the pole--"it's on account of Jimsy. Wait till you really know him! You will be just the same. Honestly, he's the bravest, gamest person in the world. Once, a couple of years ago, Stepper noticed that he was limping, and he made him go to see the doctor. The doctor told us about it afterwards--he's the doctor who took care of our mothers when we were born. Jimsy came in and said, 'Doc, I've got a kind of a sore leg.' And the doctor looked at it and said, 'You've got a broken leg, that's what you've got! Go straight home and I'll come out and put it in a plaster cast.' You see"--she ill.u.s.trated by putting the tips of her two forefingers together--"it was really broken, cracked through, but it hadn't slipped by. Well, the doctor had to stay and finish his office hours, and about an hour later he looked up and there was Jimsy, and he said, 'Say, Doc, would you just as soon set this leg to-morrow? You see, I've got a date to take Skipper--he always calls me Skipper--to a dance to-night. I won't dance, but I'll just----' and the doctor just roared at him and told him to go home that instant, and Jimsy went out, but when the doctor got to his house he wasn't there, and he had to wait about half an hour for him, and he was _furious_--he's got a terrible temper but he's the dearest old thing, really. Pretty soon Jimsy came wandering in with his arms full of books and games and puzzles and things he'd got to amuse himself while he was laid up! Of course the doctor expected him to keep perfectly still in bed, but he found he could make a sort of a raft of two table extension boards and slide downstairs to his meals. He had an awful time getting up again, but he didn't care. The first day he was laid up he had exactly nineteen people to see him, and he took the bandages off the leg and all the boys and teachers wrote their autographs and sentiments on the cast. He called it his Social Register and his Guest Book!" Honor was too happily deep in her reminiscences to see that her new friend was a little bored.

He got suddenly to his feet. "Yes. He must be an unusual fellow. But I'd like to hear you sing. Won't you come into the house and sing something for me?"

"All right," said Honor. "I love to sing, but I haven't studied very much yet, and I haven't any decent songs. Why doesn't somebody write some?--Songs _about_ something? Not just maudling along about 'heart'

and 'part' and that kind of stuff! Come on! There's Stepper at the piano now. He'll play for me."

It was mellow in the long living-room after the brazen afternoon sun outside, a livable, lovable room. Stephen Lorimer had an open book on the music rack and he was thumping some rather stirring chords.

"Stepper," said Honor, "here's Carter Van Meter, and he wants me to sing for him, and I was just saying how I hated all these mushy old songs.

Can't you find me something different?"