Part 37 (2/2)

He took her in his arms. ”And, sweetheart--it's a better home than when we first came to it, for now I've got more sense. Now it is a home in which each of us has the right to think and be what we please.”

At just about this same hour just about this same scene was being enacted upon another front porch in Whitewater--there being the slight difference that this second porch was not softly illuminated by any frosted globule of incandescence. Up the three steps leading to this second porch Mr. Penfield Evans had that moment escorted Miss Elizabeth Sheridan.

”Good-night, Penny,” she said.

He caught her by her two shoulders.

”See here, Betty--the last twenty-four hours have been mighty busy hours--too busy even to talk about ourselves. But now--see here, you're not going to get away with any rough work like that. Come across, now.

Will you?”

”Will I what?”

”Say, how long do you think you're a paid-up subscriber to this little daily speech of mine?... Well, if I've got to hand you another copy, here goes. You promised me, on your word of honor, if George swung around for suffrage, you'd swing around for me. Well, George has come around. Not that I had much to do with it--but he surely did come around! Now, the point is, Miss Betty Sheridan, are you a woman of your promise--are you going to marry me?”

”Well, if you try to put it that way, demanding your pound of flesh----”

”One hundred and twenty pounds,” corrected Penny.

”I'll say that, of course, I don't love you, but I guess a promise is a promise--and--and--” And suddenly a pair of strong young arms were flung about the neck of Mr. Penfield Evans. ”Oh, I'm so happy, Penny dear!”

”Betty!”

After that there was a long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the G.o.ds... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers which were his invariable wear on dry and non-state occasions, b.u.mped into the invisible and unhearing couple.

”Say, there--” gasped the startled youth, backing away.

Betty gave an affrighted cry--it was a long swift journey down from where she had just been. Her right hand, reaching drowningly out, fell upon a familiar shoulder.

”It's Pudge!” she cried. ”Pudge”--shaking him--”snooping around, listening and trying to spy----”

”You stop that--it ain't so!” protested the outraged Pudge, his utterance throttled down somewhat by the chocolate cream in his mouth.

”Spying on people! And, besides, you've been stuffing yourself with candy again! You're ruining your stomach with that sticky sweet stuff--you're headed straight for a candy-fiend's grave. Now, you go upstairs and to bed!”

She jerked him toward the door, opened it, and as he was thrust through the door Pudge felt something, something warm, press impulsively against a cheek. Not until the door had closed upon him did he realize what Betty had done to him. He stood dazed for a moment--unbalanced between impulses. Then the st.u.r.dy maleness of fourteen rewon its dominance.

”Guess I know what they was doing, all right--aw, wouldn't it make you sick!” And, in disgust which another chocolate cream alleviated hardly at all, he mounted to his bed.

Outside there was again silence... faintly disturbed only by that softly sibilant, almost muted percussion which recalls inevitably the month of June....

THE END

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