Lightnin Part 30

"Oh!" Millie gasped. "Oh--then what--"

What Millie was going to say was lost in a general chorus of delighted exclamations.

"Oh, Lem," cried Mrs. Jones, "won't you let me do the cooking? I'm just dyin' to get back into that kitchen again!"

"Well, I know what your cooking is like, mother," replied Townsend, smiling; "and if you really want to go out there and cook that supper, I say it would be a crime to stop you!"

"Let's all help!" exclaimed little Mrs. Harper, who looked as if she would not have the faintest idea what to do in a kitchen.

"Fine!" echoed her amused husband. "Come on, folks!"

Mrs. Jones led the way, and they all went out through the dining-room and into the kitchen, bent on making a home of the place for the first time since the new regime went into effect.

CHAPTER XX

The dapper Peters was left alone at his desk, but not for long. In a few minutes the street door opened and Bill Jones, with a certain air about him--one might even say with a certain flourish in his manner--sauntered in. He ambled up to the desk.

"Who might you be?" he asked, casually, his half-shut eyes making an inventory of Peters.

"I'm the manager!" Peters snapped.

"No, you ain't," said Bill, grinning.

"What's the reason I ain't?" inquired Peters.

"Because you're fired," said Bill, calmly, turning his back and putting his hands in his pockets. He gazed slowly around from floor to ceiling, and then at the walls. Peters came from behind the desk and stood close to him.

"Say, Mrs. Jones pulled something like that on me," he said, "but I ain't taking no orders from you people! I take my orders from Mr.

Hammond!"

"Is that so?" asked Bill, nonchalantly. Drawing a letter from his pocket, he handed it to the clerk. "Well, here they are!" he said.

Peters opened the letter and read it.

"Well, if I'm fired," he sighed, "I suppose I can go back to my old job."

A stealthy foot on the floor made Bill turn around to greet Zeb, who had put his head in the door.

"Got a segar for me, Bill?" Zeb whispered.

Bill went over to the drawer in the California desk, where he knew there was a box of cigars. He took one, extending it to Zeb. But the latter, looking toward the dining-room, saw Millie coming, and in spite of the fact that he wanted that cigar as desperately as he had ever wanted anything, force of habit sent him scuttling out of the room as he warned Bill, hoa.r.s.ely, "Look out!"

Bill called him back. "What you 'fraid of? It's only Millie."

"Well," said Zeb, intrepid enough to grab the cigar, but not brave enough to stay, "I'll see you to-morrow, when the women-folks is working. It's safer then."

Millie rushed over and took Bill in her arms, kissing him again and again, while Bill, unused to such demonstration, tried to disengage himself.

"Did you just get here, daddy?" she asked, gazing fondly at him.

"Yes," was his reply, as he sat down in the chair in front of the table.

"Have you seen mother?" she asked, standing very close to him.

Bill, remembering the old days when his return home meant a searching examination as to soberness, grinned, and then he breathed deeply toward her. "I 'ain't had a drink in a month," he informed her.

She laughed and was silent for a moment. Looking down at the floor, she asked, "Did you come alone, daddy?"

"Yes," he answered, slowly scrutinizing her. "Why didn't you speak to John before you left the court to-day?" he asked, after a moment in which he gazed at her intently.

Tears came into her eyes and she leaned her head on his shoulder. "I just couldn't, daddy, that was all."

Bill placed a rea.s.suring hand on her hair.

"Well, it's all right. I fixed it for you," he said, slowly. Millie stepped back aghast, blus.h.i.+ng violently. "You did _what_?"

But Bill was unabashed. "I got him to promise he would come over here and see you." Bill had done no such thing, but the one flaw to a perfect happiness for him was the thought that John Marvin and Millie might not make up.

"You asked him to come over and see me?" Millie asked, in dismay.

"No," said Bill, with a quiet grin; "I just told him you were crazy to see him. You would have lost him if it hadn't been for me. Every girl in Reno is crazy about John, but I got him so he's willing to marry you."

"Oh, daddy, I don't know what I am going to do with you!" Millie was almost in tears and leaned dejectedly on a shoulder indifferent through habit and not will.

"You don't mean to say you asked John Marvin to marry me?" she pouted.

"Sure I did," said Bill, untouched by any thought of having done what was not right. "It was a tough job after the way you treated him," he admonished, dropping into the chair and tipping it back while he clasped his hands behind his head and whistled. "I told him," he went on, "that you had made a fool of yourself, but that most women did that now and then, and not to mind it. After he's been married awhile he'll get used to it. I asked him, if you would own up that you were wrong like mother did, would he give you another chance?" Bill looked up at her, adding, complacently, "'Ain't I done a good piece of business?"

Millie gave one shriek and ran up the stairs. Bill, unmoved by any sense of his own iniquity, followed her to the foot of the staircase, calling after her, "Now, if you beg his pardon when he comes--"

She stopped at the top step and looked back. "Beg his pardon!" she exclaimed, defiantly. "I don't even intend to _see_ him when he comes!"

Bill held out one hand toward her in a deprecating gesture.

"Oh, come along down-stairs again." Taking a little square box from his pocket, he opened it and held it up to view, saying, "If you don't see him, what is he going to do with this?"

"What is it?" she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her anger as she came slowly back down the stairs. Bill showed her his prize in its nest of bright purple velvet. "He got it for you. He sent me out to buy it while he was in court!"

Mildred looked at the thing, and with one long "Oh!" of disgust she turned and went through the door into the dining-room.

Alone once more, Bill walked slowly, going to the desk and looking at the register. Then he went back of the desk, examining familiar objects. Suddenly his eyes rested on the electric-light switchboard. He played with the lights for several seconds, turning them out finally.

With a start he grunted, "Now I broke 'em." Pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.ton again, the lights came on, revealing Mrs. Jones, who had tiptoed in from the dining-room when Millie told her Bill was there. When he saw her he came out from behind the desk and she hurried toward him with outstretched arms.

"Are you all right, Bill?" she asked, tenderly. And Bill, smiling, leaned over her and breathed so that she could see that he was all right. But she had been through so much lately and where Bill was concerned there was more tenderness than humor in her att.i.tude.