Angela's Business Part 23

At first, Angela simply could not take in this offer as a solid reality.

It sprang upon her like some wild, exciting joke. She read, with her breath coming faster and faster, and her soft eyes as big as saucers:--

Now, Sis, I know a car may strike you offhand as a good deal of an undertaking for a poor family, but you'd find it wouldn't prove so at all. The car I have in mind for you is a little simple one, that you could easily run and manage yourself. A man from the nearest garage will teach you how to drive it in an hour. There'd be no upkeep at all, with the easy city use you'd give it--practically no expense of any kind but gasoline.

The little car is old, of course, but still sound as a trivet, and it'll run till you wouldn't believe it on a gallon or so of juice....

For a s.p.a.ce the letter faded from the young girl's vision. Before her mind's eye flashed a series of entrancing pictures: pictures of herself, no longer the lone, slow pedestrian in a too large city....

And don't think you would be depriving us [Tommy went on]. Nina _will_ have a new car every year, and we've really had no use for this one for some time. By the by, didn't you tell me there was an old barn in your back-yard, or an alley? Why wouldn't that do for your garage? Then you would have your car ready at hand, without storage cost, and could take it out at a moment's notice and go for a spin with your friends.

Now think it over, Sis, and let me know if you want it. I can s.h.i.+p it at once, by prepaid express. Nina has a frank....

"Oh, _mother_!" cried Angela excitedly. "Tommy wants to give me an automobile!"

The heads of the Flowers lifted from their breakfasts as if jerked by a common string.

When the breath-taking letter had been read again, aloud this time, there followed a family symposium, the question being whether or not Angela could have the automobile. To her surprise and delight, it appeared that there was really no question; all the family wanted her to take the automobile; all agreed with Tommy that it would not be a prohibitive undertaking. Mrs. Flower, an habitual conservative, pointed out that there would be nothing to lose in any case: if having the automobile proved impracticable, Angela could simply sell it. Wallie said that, if the automobile came before he left for college, he would teach Angela how to run it himself, thus eliminating the expense of a man from the garage. And, finally, her father astonished her by saying that he would find the necessary funds--estimated at ten dollars--for repairing the abandoned shed, which now leaked dangerously, into a serviceable little garage.

At nine-thirty o'clock that morning Angela rushed out of the house to the nearest telegraph office, to dispatch her happy reply. Excited though she was, however, she did not forget to count the words:--

Crazy about it Tommy. Arrangements made. What kind is car?

A. F.

Tommy's response came at bedtime:--

Car started to you this afternoon. It is a Fordette. Happy New Year.

TOMMY.

The night before Wallie started North for college Angela went to him in his little bed-and-workroom and asked the temporary loan of seventy-five dollars. In the interval, she had learned that her father had a patient; it seemed, indeed, that he had had her for some time, only she was not an office patient, so n.o.body had known about her. Also, Angela antic.i.p.ated that the housekeeping allowance would prove rather more squeezable now, with Wallie gone. Still, one cannot pa.s.s into the motor-car cla.s.ses on a shoestring, of course; and Wallie, with his prodigal allowance and his handsome store in the bank, now literally rolled in wealth.

Brilliant prosperity, however, did not seem to have improved her little brother's character; he proved to be as reluctant as ever to "part."

After a good deal of unworthy haggling, he agreed to lend Angela but fifty dollars, and actually entered the amount in a ridiculous little black book he kept for such things.

The joke of it was that fifty dollars was really more than Angela had expected. She went out from the interview well pleased. Her resolve was to spend thirty dollars of Wallie's loan on a new suit, and keep all the rest for gasoline.

XIII

They had all cautioned her, her father, her brother, the nice man who sold the gasoline, to pick the quietest streets, and to go very slowly.

So, from the alley-mouth, her safe progress had been by Gresham Street straight to peaceful Mason, where the traffic was so rea.s.suringly light; and now, as she rolled securely out Mason Street, there began to dawn within her a first shy confidence. She went as slowly as her well-wishers had meant, at least; prudently close to the known haven of the sidewalk she kept at all times; now and then she stopped short, just to see if she could, and always she could. Through all, was the indescribable thrill of really doing it for herself now; lingering incredulity but gave a sharper savor to delight. And she was continually excited with the consciousness of large new possibilities here, of personal power in quite a new dimension.

It was possible to go on indefinitely out Mason Street, but at Olive (always a quiet thoroughfare) she was seized with a sudden adventurousness. She decided to turn up Olive, in short; not meaning to stop at the Wings', of course, but just thinking that if the Wings were looking out the window as she went by, it would be quite a pleasant thing. The enterprise, once conceived, was carried out with perfect technical success; but at the moment of pa.s.sing the Wings', unluckily, an enormous ice-wagon came lumbering close by, riveting her attention, leaving her not so much as an eyelid to wink toward people's windows.

Hence, she never knew whether the Wings were looking out or not. But her confidence waxed. At Center Street the rumble of a street-car warned her to stop a moment--just in time, too, for the car was hardly two blocks away--and when the car had pa.s.sed, what must she do but roll boldly across the tracks and into the altogether unexplored regions beyond!

What prompted her to do this? Of course, the natural thing was to turn down Center Street a block and get straight back to quiet Mason, which had been duly tried and not found wanting. Afterward, she remembered distinctly that she had been on the point of doing just that. Was it the new adventurousness that beckoned her on, instead? Was it something yet subtler and more mysterious? At any rate, here she was pus.h.i.+ng into a quarter of the city where she had never set foot in her life, where, in all human probability, her foot alone would never have brought her. And lo, she had not gone a block into the undiscovered country when a wonder befell, and with a little jump, all but a little cry, she saw the lost member of her coterie rise suddenly before her.

He had come round the unknown corner just ahead, and was walking straight toward her. She became aware of the beating of her heart. All this, it must be understood, was the very first time that Angela had taken out her Fordette alone.

Mr. Garrott was just off the train. Two hours in a day coach might have cramped his long legs; there might have been cinders down the back of his neck. Nevertheless, he advanced with an unmistakably lively tread, continually slapping his leg with a folded periodical of a size and shape like "Willc.o.x's Weekly."

Nor was the coterie member's presence on the Wings' street mere blind chance, either. Those remarkable articles in the magazines about Cousin Mary, which had but popped as a rumor into one of Angela's ears and out the other, had naturally occupied a somewhat more prominent place in the thought of their creator. He remained, indeed, dazzled by the completeness of the write-ups' triumph.

Charles had stayed in the country four days longer than he had intended.

And in his extended absence his whole mine of publicity had gone off with a brilliant suddenness that had startled him. The successful sale of the third write-up before he left town had a.s.sured a decisive _coup_, but the quick action the weeklies had given him went beyond all reason.

He had not hoped that even the first of the write-ups could see print before the middle of the month, say; on the contrary, he had discovered the last and best of them--the one signed Charles King Garrott--on the train just now, in "Willc.o.x's," for January 10th. In short, in the s.p.a.ce of a Christmas holiday he, Charles, had spread the vindicating feats and features of his "demoted" friend to the four corners of the globe.

Literally that, for did not the combined circulation of "Willc.o.x's," the "Sat.u.r.day Review," and "Hervey's National" exceed two million copies weekly (this on the word of the circulation managers themselves, a cla.s.s of men whose consecration to the austerest veracity has pa.s.sed into proverb)? Surely there remained few literate persons in the world to-day who could plausibly pretend that they had never heard of Mary Wing.

And Mary (as Angela had noted) had appreciated these extraordinary services to the full. The letter she had written him in the country, after the appearance of the "Sat.u.r.day Review" article, was uniquely grateful. A beautiful letter Charles had thought it; he had it in his inside pocket now. And the interesting thought it had raised was this: If his usually independent friend could be as grateful as that for the write-ups, what would she say when his whole plan worked out, and his Public Opinion had overwhelmed the School Board for her? Thus, on the train, after reading "Willc.o.x's" piece three times, and now as he strode up the quiet back-street from the station, the author was intently plotting out the next, or practical, stage of his campaign, still unsuspected by her: the stage of the reprinting of the write-ups in the local papers, in fine, of repeated editorial endors.e.m.e.nt of the same, of the outburst of letters from "Indignant Taxpayers," "High School Graduates," and "Old Subscribers"--practically all, of course, written by Uncle George Blenso and himself.

His thoughts proved increasingly stimulating to the home-come Charles.

And when he came to Olive Street, he suddenly bethought him to turn up that way; not expecting to stop at the Wings', of course (for he had an engagement to call there this evening, much as if he hadn't been a modern at all), but merely thinking that if he should happen to meet Mary it would be quite a pleasant thing....

Having turned, the buoyant young man presently sent, as it were, a scouting eye on ahead. And it fell, not upon the friend he had made famous in a night, but upon an Object approaching.

The object was a conveyance, a little vehicle of the self-propelling type. It was an automobile, clearly; a runabout, you would have to term it, though certainly of a pattern adopted in no recent year. So steep and bobbed was this runabout's little body, so quaintly archaic its contour, that it stirred in the beholder dim recollections of the early days of the horseless age, of strange pictures seen in scientific magazines back in the nineties. Very slowly the little vehicle approached, but very loudly, too, with an increasing bias toward the sidewalk, with queer rumblings and groanings, with the oddest snorts.

Charles's puzzled eye lifted. And so it was that it encountered again the soft gaze that he had last seen misted in tears, upon a sofa. And so he heard the pretty voice, that had once referred to him as a brute, saying:--

"How do you do, Mr. Garrott!... I--I'm very glad to see you back!"

"Why--Miss _Flower_!"

Sheer surprise had halted him in his tracks, and the self-propelling runabout, which had been almost stationary all along, became entirely so, right at the curb.

"When did you get home?" Miss Flower was finis.h.i.+ng, laughing, a becoming color in her cheeks.

"I'm just in--this minute! How are you? I--ah--didn't realize at all that it was you." He had taken the small hand she offered, momentarily fl.u.s.tered, despite all effort, by the utterly sudden re-meeting. He was aware that the girl looked a little conscious, too. But something in her gaze seemed to be trying to tell him that bygones were bygones now; and she went on with rea.s.suring naturalness:--

"I hope you had a nice holiday? I've wanted very much to see you, and thank you myself. About Wallie, I mean--your offering to teach him--"

"Oh!--Why, _that_!"

"It was really the nicest thing. I--haven't seen you since, but you don't know how much I--we all appreciated--"

With recovered poise the young man easily brushed aside these thanks.

"But I'm awfully glad," he added, "that he didn't wait for me, after all."

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You _heard_, then?"

He mentioned his letter from Mary Wing, causing her to say, "Oh,"

again.--"Wasn't it _wonderful_! I knew you'd be interested...."