CHAPTER XXVII

That was in September. It was the first of December when Howard Maitland came leaping up-stairs, two steps at a time, and burst into the nursery, so chock-full of news that he could hardly wait to see the way Betty's toes would grip your finger if you put it on the sole of her pink foot.

"Who do you suppose is engaged?"

"Jack McKnight," Laura said; "Howard, kiss her little neck, right under her ear."

He kissed it, and said, "No! Not McKnight. You wouldn't guess in a hundred years!"

"Well, then, you'd better tell me. See, Father, she's smiling! Howard, I think she's really a very distinguished-looking baby; don't you?"

"She looks like her ma, so of course she is!"

"Nonsense! She's the image of you. What do you think? When I went down to luncheon, Sarah says she turned her head right around to watch me go out of the room."

"Gosh! She'll be reading Browning next! Laura—why don't you rise about the engagement? You'll scream when I tell you."

"Well, tell me."

[Pg 288]

"Fred Payton and—"

"What!"

"Hold on. I've not begun to holler yet. And—old Weston."

"What!"

"I thought you'd sit up."

"Howard! I don't believe it."

"It's true. I met Mrs. Payton, and she told me. She kept me standing on the corner for a quarter of an hour while she explained that she was going to do up her Christmas presents now, so she could get the house in order for the wedding. It's to be in January. The engagement comes out to-morrow. It's been cooking since September, but they didn't really tie up until last week. I'm pledged to secrecy, but your Aunt Nelly said I could tell you."

"I never was so astonished in my life!" Laura gasped.

"I was—surprised, myself," Howard said.

"Well," said Laura, "I'm glad poor old Fred is going to be married—but how can she! Of course I know he's been gone on her for ages; but I don't see how he dared to propose to her—he's old enough to be her father! Maybe she took pity on him and proposed to him," Laura declared, giggling.

"The baby has a double chin," her husband said, hurriedly.

"Fred converted him to suffrage last summer," Laura said; "that showed which way the wind was blowing."

Howard stopped tickling his daughter's neck, and frowned, as if trying to remember something. "Weston[Pg 289] a suffragist? That's interesting! Leighton—you remember?—the man who went to the Philippines with me?"

Laura nodded abstractedly.

"Well, he said that if a man was a suffragist it was because he was either in the cradle or the grave. He said the man of affairs was bored to extinction by the whole hullabaloo business. He considered me in the cradle; so I suppose he'd say that Weston—"

"Mr. Weston may be in the grave, but you're not in the cradle," Laura interrupted, affronted; "you are the father of a family!"

"Well, to be candid, I'm not crazy about suffrage," Howard confessed, and was pummeled by his baby's fists, carefully directed by the maternal hand.

"I'm ashamed of you! Betty and I are going to walk in the parade, and you shall carry a banner."

"Thanks so much; I fear business will call me to Philadelphia that day. Too bad!"

"Freddy and Mr. Weston!" Laura repeated; "well, I don't understand it!"

"Neither do I," said her husband. He walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out into the rain; behind him he heard the nursery door open, and Laura's contented voice:

"No, Sarah, I don't need you. I'm going to put her to bed myself. You go down and have your supper. Just put her little nightie on the fender before you go, so it will be nice and warm." Then the door closed again, and he could hear Laura mumbling in the baby's neck:

"Sweety! Mother loves! Put little hanny into the[Pg 290] sleeve.... Oh, Howard, look at her! Did you ever see anything so killing? Howard, just think! Fred told me once that she was going to have a trained nurse for her children. Well, she'll know better when she has 'em! Ooo-oo—sweety!—don't pull mother's hair!" The firelit warmth, the little night-gown scorching on the fender, Laura in the low chair, his child's head on her breast—the young man, staring out into the rain and darkness, felt something tighten in his throat. Life was so perfect! There, behind him, by the hearth, in warm security, were his two Treasures—to be cared for, and guarded, and made happy. He lived only to stand between them and Fate. His very flesh and blood were theirs! "I wouldn't let the wind blow on them!" he thought, fiercely. But Fred Payton wouldn't let anybody stand between her and the gales of life. He couldn't imagine Arthur Weston protecting Fred. Imagine any man trying to take care of Fred! "She'd be taking care of him, the first thing he'd know! Still, I take off my hat to her, every time. She's big."

Down in the bottom of his heart was a queer uneasiness: he was not "big," himself; "I am satisfied just to be happy; Fred wants something more than that. She's more worth-while than I am," he thought, humbly. He turned and looked at the two by the fire, then came over, and, kneeling down, took his World into his arms.

"Oh, Laura!" he said; he rested his head on his wife's shoulder, and felt the baby's silky hair against his lips. "Laura, how perfect life is! I'm so happy, I'm frightened!—and I don't deserve it. Fred Payton is worth six of me."

[Pg 291]

Laura gave a little squeal. "As if any girl was as good as you! Besides, poor, dear Freddy—nobody appreciates her more than I do, but Howard, you know perfectly well that she is—I mean she isn't—I mean, well, you know? Poor Fred, she's perfectly fine, but nobody except somebody like Mr. Weston would want to marry her, because she is awfully bossy. And a man doesn't like a bossy woman, now does he?"

"You bet he doesn't!" Howard said. "But I take my hat off to Fred."

"Oh, of course," said Laura.

"Thank God, she's got a man to keep her in order!" said Mr. William Childs.

"What shall we give her for a wedding-present?" Mrs. Childs ruminated.

"Give Weston a switch!" said Billy-boy.

"I shall miss her terribly," said Mrs. Payton; "I don't know how I'm going to get along without her." Her lip trembled and she looked at her mother, who was running a furtive, white-gloved finger across Mr. Andrew Payton's marble toga. "Oh, yes; it isn't dusted," Mrs. Payton sighed; "you can't get servants to dust anything nowadays."

"Fred will make 'em dust!" Mrs. Holmes said, with satisfaction. "All Fred needs is to be married. Miss Eliza Graham told me that she had gumption. I said he had gumption, to get her!"

[Pg 292]

"I wonder if he knows about her affair with Laura's husband," Miss Spencer ruminated. "Some one ought to tell him, just out of kindness." (And the very next day an anonymous letter did tell him, for which he was duly grateful.)

"I hope she will make you happy," Miss Mary Graham told her cousin, sighing.

"Well, Arthur will make her happy," Miss Eliza said, decidedly; "and that's what he cares about! As for her making him happy, it will be his own fault if she doesn't. She'll interest you, Arthur—that's what a man like you wants."

"I'm to be 'amused,' am I?" Arthur Weston said, grimly. "But suppose I don't 'amuse' her?" And as the older sister went out to the door with him to say good-by, he added: "Am I a thief? Of course, I've got the best of the bargain."

She did not contradict him. "I think," she said, her face full of pain and pity, "that Fred has got the very best bargain that, being Fred, she could possibly get."

"No!" he said, "you're wrong! But pray God she never finds it out."

He did not mean to let her find it out!

But that afternoon when he went into No. 15 for his tea and for a chance to look at Frederica, and tease her, and feel her frank arm over his shoulder, he was very silent.

They were in the sitting-room, Mrs. Payton having tactfully withdrawn to the entry outside of Morty's room. "When I was a young lady," she told Miss Carter, "I[Pg 293] used to receive Mr. Payton in the back parlor, and Mama always sat in the front parlor. But Mama was very old-fashioned—I believe in the new ideas! And then, after all, Mr. Weston is so much older than Freddy—oh, dear me! What a blessing it was to have him fall in love with her!"

"Mother is going round," Fred told her lover, as she handed him his tea, "saying, 'Now lettest thou thy servant ...!' She's so ecstatic over our engagement."

"I'm rather ecstatic myself," he said; "Fred—I am a highway robber."

"Be still!" she said; and gave him another lump of sugar.

"I love you," he said. "But you—no, it isn't fair; it isn't fair."

She took his teacup from him and snuggled down beside him; "I'm satisfied," she said.

The sense of her content stabbed him. She ought to have so much more than content. He had told her so often enough, in those two months of standing out against his own heart; he told her so when, at last, he yielded. But when he said it now, she would not listen. "I tell you, I'm satisfied!" She dropped her head on his shoulder, and hummed a little to herself.

How was a man to break through such content!

"But I will!" he told himself.

The End