At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 12

"You're afraid of him, aren't you?" asked d.i.c.k, with a hearty laugh.

"I always have been," admitted Dorothy. "He scared me the first time we came here--it was at night, and raining."

"I've known him to scare people in broad daylight, and they weren't always women either. He used to be a pleasant old codger, but he got over it, and after he learned to swear readily, he was a pretty tough party to buck up against. It took nerve to stay here when uncle was in a bad mood, but most people have more nerve than they think they have. You haven't told me your name yet."

"Mrs. Carr--Dorothy Carr."

"Pretty name," remarked d.i.c.k, with evident admiration. "If you don't mind, I'll call you 'Dorothy' till the train goes back. It will be something for me to remember in the desert waste of my empty years to come."

A friendly, hospitable impulse seized Mrs. Carr. "Why should you go?" she inquired, smiling. "If you've been in the habit of spending your Summers here, you needn't change on our account. We'd be glad to have you, I'm sure. A dear old friend of my husband's is already here."

"Fine or superfine?"

"Superfine," returned Dorothy, feeling very much as though the clock had been turned back twenty years or more and she was at a children's party again.

"You can bet your sweet life I'll stay," said d.i.c.k, "and if I bother you at any time, just say so and I'll skate out, with no hard feelings on either side. You may need me when the rest of the bunch gets here."

"The rest of--oh Harlan, come here a minute!"

She had caught him as he was going into the library with his work, thinking that a change of environment might possibly produce an acceptable change in the current of his thoughts.

"d.i.c.k," said Dorothy, when Harlan came to the door, "this is my husband.

Mr. Chester, Mr. Carr."

For days Harlan had not seen Dorothy with such rosy cheeks, such dancing eyes, nor half as many dimples. Bewildered, and not altogether pleased, he awkwardly extended his hand to Mr. Chester, with a conventional "how do you do?"

d.i.c.k wrung the offered hand in a mighty grip which made Harlan wince. "I congratulate you, Mr. Carr," he said gallantly, "upon possessing the fairest ornament of her s.e.x. Guess this letter is for you, isn't it? I found it in the post-office while the keeper was out, and just took it. If it doesn't belong here, I'll skip back with it."

"Thanks," murmured Harlan, rubbing the injured hand with the other.

"I--where did you come from?"

"The station," explained d.i.c.k, pleasantly. "I never trace myself back of where I was last seen."

"He's going to stay with us, Harlan," put in Dorothy, wickedly, "so you mustn't let us keep you away from your work. Come along, d.i.c.k, and I'll show you our cow."

They went out, followed by a long, low whistle of astonishment from Harlan which Dorothy's acute ears did not miss. Presently Mr. Carr retreated into the library, and locked the door, but he did not work. The book was at a deadlock, half a paragraph beyond "the flower-like hands of Elaine," of which, indeed, the author had confessed his inability to write.

"d.i.c.k," thought Harlan. "Mr. Chester. A young giant with a grip like an octopus. 'The fairest ornament of her s.e.x.' Never, never heard of him before. Some old flame of Dorothy's, who has discovered her whereabouts and brazenly followed her, even on her honeymoon."

And he, Harlan, was absolutely prevented from speaking of it by an unhappy chain of circ.u.mstances which put him in a false light! For the first time he fully perceived how a single thoughtless action may bind all one's future existence.

"Just because I stroked the hand of a distressed damsel," muttered Harlan, "and told her I was married, I've got to sit and see a procession of my wife's old lovers marking time here all Summer!" In his fevered fancy, he already saw the Jack-o'-Lantern surrounded by Mrs. Carr's former admirers, heard them call her "Dorothy," and realised that there was not a single thing he could do.

"Unless, of course," he added, mentally, "it gets too bad, and I have an excuse to order 'em out. And then, probably, Dorothy will tell Elaine to take her dolls and go home, and the poor thing's got nowhere to go--nowhere in the wide world.

"How would Dorothy like to be a lonely orphan, with no husband, no friends, and no job? She wouldn't like it much, but women never have any sympathy for each other, nor for their husbands, either. I'd give twenty dollars this minute not to have stroked Elaine's hand, and fifty not to have had Dorothy see it, but there's no use in crying over spilt milk nor in regretting hands that have already been stroked."

In search of diversion, he opened his letter, which was in answer to the one he had written some little time ago, inquiring minutely, of an acquaintance who was supposed to be successful, just what the prospects were for a beginner in the literary craft.

"Dear Carr," the letter read. "Sorry not to have answered before, but I've been away and things got mixed up. Wouldn't advise anybody but an enemy to take up writing as a steady job, but if you feel the call, go in and win.

You can make all the way from eight dollars a year, which was what I made when I first struck out, up to five thousand, which was what I averaged last year. I've always envied you fellows who could turn in your stuff and get paid for it the following Tuesday. In my line, you work like the devil this year for what you're going to get next, and live on the year after.

"However, if you're bitten with it, there's no cure. You'll see magazine articles in stones and books in running brooks all the rest of your life.

When you get your book done, I'll trot you around to my publisher, who enjoys the proud distinction of being an honest one, and if he likes your stuff, he'll take it, and if he doesn't, he'll turn you down so pleasantly that you'll feel as though he'd made you a present of something. If you think you've got genius, forget it, and remember that nothing takes the place of hard work. And, besides, it's a pretty blamed poor book that can't get itself printed these days.

"Yours as usual, "C. J."

The communication was probably intended as encouragement, but the effect was depressing, and at the end of an hour, Harlan had written only two lines more in his book, neither of which pleased him.

Meanwhile, d.i.c.k was renewing his old acquaintance with Mrs. Smithers, much to that lady's pleasure, though she characteristically endeavoured to conceal it. She belonged to a pious sect which held all mirth to be unG.o.dly.

"Sally," d.i.c.k was saying, "I've dreamed of your biscuits night and day since I ate the last one. Are we going to have 'em for lunch?"

"No biscuits in this house to-day," grumbled the deity of the kitchen, in an attempt to be properly stern, "and as I've told you more than once, my name ain't 'Sally.' It's Mis' Smithers, that's wot it is, and I'll thank you to call me by it."

"Between those who love," continued d.i.c.k, with a sidelong glance at Dorothy, who stood near by, appalled at his daring, "the best is none too good for common use. If my heart breaks the bonds of conventional restraint, and I call you by the name under which you always appear to me in my longing dreams, why should you not be gracious, and forgive me? Be kind to me, Sally, be just a little kind, and throw together a pan of those biscuits in your own inimitable style!"

"Run along with you, you limb of Satan," cried Mrs. Smithers, brandis.h.i.+ng a floury spoon.

"Come along, Dorothy," said d.i.c.k, laying a huge but friendly paw upon Mrs.

Carr's shoulder; "we're chased out." He put his head back into the kitchen, however, to file a parting pet.i.tion for biscuits, which was unnecessary, for Mrs. Smithers had already found her rolling-pin and had begun to sift her flour.

Outside, he duly admired Maud, who was chewing the cud of reflection under a tree, created a panic in the chicken yard by lifting Abdul Hamid ignominiously by the legs, to see how heavy he was, and chased Claudius Tiberius under the barn.

"If that cat turns up missing some day," he said, "don't blame me. He looks so much like Uncle Ebeneezer that I can't stand for him."

"There's something queer about Claudius, anyway," ventured Dorothy. "Mrs.

Smithers says that uncle killed him the week before he died, and----"

"Before who died?"

"Claudius--no, before uncle died, and she buried him, and he's come to life again."

"Uncle, or Claudius?"

"Claudius, you goose," laughed Dorothy.

"If I knew just how nearly related we were," remarked d.i.c.k, irrelevantly enough, "I believe I'd kiss you. You look so pretty with all your dimples hung out and your hair blowing in the wind."

Dorothy glanced up, startled, and inclined to be angry, but it was impossible to take offence at such a mischievous youth as d.i.c.k was at that moment. "We're not related," she said, coolly, "except by marriage."

"Well, that's near enough," returned d.i.c.k, who was never disposed to be unduly critical. "Your husband is only related to you by marriage. Don't be such a prude. Come to the waiting arms of your uncle, or cousin, or brother-in-law, or whatever it is that I happen to be."

"Go and kiss your friend Sally in the kitchen," laughed Dorothy. "You have my permission." d.i.c.k made a wry face. "I don't hanker to do it," he said, "but if you want me to, I will. I suppose she isn't pleased with her place and you want to make it more homelike for her."

"What relation were you to Uncle Ebeneezer?" queried Dorothy, curiously.

"Uncle and I," sighed d.i.c.k, "were connected by the closest ties of blood and marriage. n.o.body could be more related than we were. I was the only child of Aunt Rebecca's sister's husband's sister's husband's sister. Say, on the dead, if I ever bother you will you tell me so and invite me to skip?"