Part 10 (1/2)

”Why not, I'd like to know?”

”My dear madam,” responded Mr. Magee, ”only echo answers, and it but vacuously repeats, 'Why not?'. That, however, is the situation. Mr.

Peters loathes the s.e.x. I imagine that, until to-day, he was not particularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he has even gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble of the world to woman.”

”The idiot!” cried Mrs. Norton.

”Delicious!” laughed the girl.

”I shall ask Peters to serve you,” said Magee. ”I shall appeal to his gallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as our cook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a new cook. I'll appeal to his better nature.”

”Don't do it,” cried the girl. ”Don't emphasize us to him in any way, or he may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We'll play at being our own bell-boys.”

”Ignore you,” cried Mr. Magee. ”What Herculean tasks you set. I'm not equal to that one.” He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way up-stairs. ”I'm something of a bell-boy myself, when roused,” he said.

The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor from Magee's apartments. ”It's the very one I used to have, years and years ago--at least two or three years ago,” she said. ”Isn't it stupid?

All the furniture in a heap.”

”And cold,” said Mrs. Norton. ”My land, I wish I was back by my own fire.”

”I'll make you regret your words, Mrs. Norton,” cried Magee. He threw up the windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furniture. The girl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Norton managed to get consistently in the way. When he had the furniture distributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then he stood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart very gay, before the girl of the station.

”I hope you don't expect a tip,” she said, laughing.

”I do,” he said, coming closer, and speaking in a voice that was not for the ear of the chaperon. ”I want a tip on this--do you really act?”

She looked at him steadily.

”Once,” she said, ”when I was sixteen, I appeared in an amateur play at school. It was my first and last appearance on the stage.”

”Thanks, lady,” remarked Mr. Magee in imitation of the bell-boy he was supposed to be. He sought number seven. There he made himself again presentable, after which he descended to the office.

Mr. Bland sat reading the New York paper before the fire. From the little card-room and the parlor, the two rooms to the right and left of the hotel's front door, Quimby had brought forth extra chairs. He stood now by the large chair that held Professor Bolton, engaged in conversation with that gentleman.

”Yes,” he was saying, ”I lived three years in Reuton and five years in New York. It took me eight years--eight years to realize the truth.”

”I heard about it from John Bentley,” the professor said gently.

”He's been pretty kind to me, Mr. Bentley has,” replied Quimby. ”When the money was all gone, he offered me this job. Once the Quimbys owned most of the land around Baldpate Mountain. It all went in those eight years. To think that it took all those years for me to find it out.”

”If I'm not impertinent, Quimby,” put in Magee, ”to find what out?”

”That what I wanted, the railroad men didn't want,” replied Quimby bitterly, ”and that was--the safety of the public. You see, I invented a new rail joint, one that was a great improvement on the old kind. I had sort of an idea, when I was doing it--an idea of service to the world--you know. G.o.d, what a joke! I sold all the Quimby lands, and went to Reuton, and then to New York, to place it. Not one of the railroad men but admitted that it was an improvement, and a big one--and not one but fought like mad to keep me from getting it down where the public would see it. They didn't want the expense of a change.”

Mr. Quimby looked out at the sunlit stretch of snow.

”Eight years,” he repeated, ”I fought and pleaded. No, I begged--that was the word--I begged. You'd be surprised to know the names of some of the men who kept me waiting in their private offices, and sneered at me over their polished desks. They turned me down--every one. Some of them played me--as though I'd been a fish. They referred me to other ends of the same big game, laughing in their sleeves, I guess, at the knowledge of how hopeless it was. Oh, they made a fine fool of me.”

”You might have put down some of your joints at your own expense,”

suggested the professor.