Part 9 (1/2)
”No, I don't care for any of these,” Princeman was saying. ”If you haven't maraschino chocolates I don't want any.”
Sam immediately stepped back to the telegraph desk and sent another wire to his brother:
”Express fresh box maraschino chocolates to Miss Josephine Stevens Hollis Creek Inn enclose my card personal cards in upper right-hand pigeonhole my desk.”
Then he went up-stairs to get ready for lunch. Immediately after luncheon he received the following wire from his brother:
”Stock subscription rotten everybody likes scheme but object to our control but no hurry why don't you rest maraschinos s.h.i.+pped congratulate you.”
CHAPTER VII
WHICH EXHIBITS THE IMPORTANCE OF REMEMBERING A DANCE NUMBER
And so the kid was finding the same trouble which he had met. They had been too frank in stating that they intended to obtain control of the company without any larger investments than their patents and their scheme. Sam wandered through the hall, revolving this matter in his mind, and out at the rear door, which framed an inviting vista of green. He strolled back past the barn toward the upper reaches of the brook path, and sitting amid the comfortably gnarled roots of a big tree he lit a cigar and began with violence to snap little pebbles into the brook. If he were promoting a crooked scheme, he reflected savagely, he would have no difficulty whatever in floating it upon almost any terms he wanted. Well, there was one thing certain; at the finish, control would be in his own hands! But how to secure it and still float the company promptly and advantageously? There was the problem. He liked this crowd. They were good, keen, vigorous, enterprising men, fine men with whom to do business, men who would s.n.a.t.c.h control away from him if they could, and throw him out in the cold in a minute if they deemed it necessary or expedient. Of course that was to be expected. It was a part of the game. He would rather deal with these progressive people, knowing their tendencies, than with a lot of sapheads.
How to get control? He lingered long and thoughtfully over that question, perhaps an hour, until presently he became aware that a slight young girl, with a fetching sun-hat and a basket, was walking pensively along the path on the opposite side of the brook, for the third time. Her pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing before his abstracted and unseeing vision had become slightly monotonous, and for the first time he focused his eyes back from their distant view of pulp marshes and stock certificates and inspected the girl directly. Why, he knew that girl! It was Miss Hastings.
As if in obedience to his steady gaze she looked across at him and waved her basket.
”Where are you going?” he asked with the heartiness of enforced courtesy.
”After ferns,” she responded, and laughed.
”By George, that's so!” he said, and ran up the stream to a narrow place where he made a magnificent jump and only got one shoe wet.
He was profuse, not in his apologies, but in his intention to make them.
”Jinks!” he said. ”I'm ashamed to say I forgot all about that. I found myself suddenly confronted with a business proposition that had to be worked out, and I thought of nothing else.”
”I hope you succeeded,” she said pleasantly.
There wasn't a particle of vengefulness about Miss Hastings. She was not one to hold this against him; he could see that at once! She understood men. She knew that grave problems frequently confronted them, and that such minor things as fern gathering expeditions would necessarily have to step aside and be forgotten. She was one of the bright, cheerful, always smiling kind; one who would make a suns.h.i.+ny helpmate for any man, and never object to anything he did--before marriage.
All this she conveyed in lively but appealing chatter; all, that is, except the last part of it, a deduction which Sam supplied for himself.
For the first time in his life he had paused to judge a girl as he would ”size up” a man, and he was a little bit sorry that he had done so, for while Miss Hastings was very agreeable, there was a certain acidulous sharpness about her nose and uncompromising thinness about her lips which no amount of laughing vivacity could quite conceal.
Dutifully, however, he gathered ferns for the rockery of her aunt in Albany, and Miss Hastings, in return, did her best to amuse and delight, and delicately to convey the thought of what an agreeable thing it would be for a man always to have this cheerful companions.h.i.+p.
She even, on the way back, went so far as inadvertently to call him Sam, and apologized immediately in the most charming confusion.
”Really,” she added in explanation, ”I have heard Mr. Westlake and the others call you Sam so often that the name just seems to slip out.”
”That's right,” he said cordially. ”Sam's my name. When people call me Mr. Turner I know they are strangers.”
”Then I think I shall call you Sam,” she said, laughing most engagingly. ”It's so much easier,” and sure enough she did as soon as they were well within the hearing of Miss Westlake, at the hotel.
”Oh, Sam,” she called, turning in the doorway, ”you have my gloves in your pocket.”