Fathers are Fathers

by Holworthy Hall

FATHERS ARE FATHERS

By HOLWORTHY HALL

HE waked me out of a sound sleep at midnight, but I had to forgive him, because our friendship was sturdy and his news was great. He made me get up and put on a dressing-gown, and furnish him with tobacco and light a pipe myself, and then he told me feverishly and in due detail how lucky he was (which I promptly conceded), and how a certain girl named Dorothea Gardner was beyond all praise (which I had always known), and exactly what had happened to them, and who was to be the best man. Incidentally, I had been expecting that appointment for the last six months.

"I just had to tell somebody—now—to-night!" said Perry, springing to his feet and tramping the floor excitedly. He was a little flushed, and handsomer than ever; his bigness and his boyishness, added to his exultation, made him quite irresistible even to me, so newly dragged from sleep. "I knew you'd be glad. It's incredible, isn't it? And, besides, I want to talk to you about business."

"Business?" I said.

"Yes, about that house they're building on the Sherbrooke estate," said Perry, smoking furiously. "You've got it on your books for sale, haven't you? I've always admired that spot. The trees are wonderful—nothing like 'em anywhere. And the house—it's going to be perfect, absolutely perfect! We've been up there nearly every evening. Dorothea's dotty about it, and so am I. It was up there to-night we found this out—we must have that house to live in! She wants it. I have only a couple of hundred pounds of my own, but I think I can borrow the money to buy it. What's the price?"

"Sherbrooke went abroad a month ago, and he fixed a minimum price of two thousand two hundred."

"He won't let it, I suppose?"

"No. He means to sell."

"Righto. See you to-morrow."

But on the morrow he came to me sadly crestfallen. His hope of raising the odd two thousand had crashed.

"Try again," I said reassuringly. "Why, Perry, that house has a dining-room, a drawing-room——"

"I know all that. But——"

"And, apart from the mere rooms, one and a quarter acres with a commanding view and fine old trees——"

"But—I'm two thousand pounds short," said Perry. "I could just about afford the cellar, and part of the attic, and the kitchen sink! We used to go up to that place to sit and watch sunsets, long before they ever started building. And then we've seen that house go up bit by bit. We saw them dig the foundations, and crawled round the floor beams—we know every nail that's gone in it. And the arrangement's ideal, and it's just large enough and not an inch too large. There isn't a flaw in it anywhere. And Dorothea's felt the same way about it. And to-night—well, I—you see, that house is a part of the whole scheme." He broke off sharply, and from his attitude I could easily surmise the extent of the depression that had come upon him.

"Is Dorothea as enthusiastic as you are?"

Perry whirled and scorched me with his emphasis.

"As enthusiastic as—— Why, I want it, of course, but she's idiotic about it!"

"Pity the poor agent!" I said. "With two people going barmy in the crumpet about a house that lacks a tenant, and then complaining about the price. Perry "

"You don't understand," he said gloomily. "It's the combination of the land and the house—it can't be duplicated. That's the last scrap of land there is on the hill, and the house fits it."

"Two prospective buyers have already looked it over," I told him.

"Well"—Perry picked up his hat and moved towards the door—"I can't say much, but I don't mind telling you its an awful blow. I'd make every sacrifice to get that house for her. Maybe I can scheme it out in some way vet—anyway, I'll see you later."

It was on the following morning that Dorothea Gardner came for the first time to my office. I had known her since the age at which we were passionately devoted to peppermint lozenges, but she had never distinguished my business quarters by her presence, because she didn't believe in confusing commerce and society.

I could never regard her as a "pretty" girl, for she was free from the superficiality which the adjective invariably suggests to me. She was small, but not little; she was a woman on a small scale, and not a school-girl who had neglected to grow up. She was a very lovable girl; she was an unusually fascinating girl also, with deep, dark eyes which had plenty of intelligence in them, not devoid of humour. Moreover, she had a marvellous complexion, which owed far more to her habits than to the apothecary's counter, and, above everything, she had a manner that was so gay and serious, and playful and dignified, and so bewitchingly mature and at the same time so undeniably spontaneous, that she baffled all men with her quick-changing spirits.

And Dorothea, trusting that old acquaintanceship would outweigh the traditional avarice of house and estate agents, told me precisely what I had hardened myself to hear.

"It isn't like an ordinary house to us now," she said, with a very unbusinesslike little tremor in her voice. "It's as though it belonged to us—it's as though it's ours already. There's a sort of—of glamour about it. I can't explain. It just is! And Perry probably wouldn't like my coming to see about it this way, but—why, it was up on that hill we——" Her colour deepened, yet she had begun a statement, and intended to finish it somehow. "All this year," she said, with obvious repression, "we've been going there, and falling in love with it more all the time. What I want is to get the—the terms. Don't tell Perry, please, but I'm going to try to get father to buy it for us."

I could only give her the facts, and I didn't think it was advisable to bring in last night's conversation with Perry.

"It really isn't a high price," I said at the end, "On the contrary, "it's a rare bargain. I've thought pretty seriously of buying it myself, but if you want it, it's yours."

She looked at me doubtfully, and I was sorry for her.

"You're sure Mr. Sherbrooke wouldn't let the place?"

"I'm positive, dear," I said, and caught the typist's eye across a filing-cabinet. "Dear as it is," I tacked on instantly, "it's worth it."

She shook her head slowly, and there was no optimism in her gaze.

"It'll be terribly hard on Perry—he's set his heart on that house. I have, too, but Perry's dotty about it." She smiled bravely, but it seemed to me that her eyelids were quivering more than usual. "And when you sit under those trees and look off over the valley, and the other hills and the river——"

"I'll send a note to your father, if you think he'd——"

"No, please, don't," said Dorothea quickly. "I'm afraid it's useless, anyway, but I'll have to be diplomatic about it—oh, ever so diplomatic!" She was right. I knew her father; he was the only living man who could have dwelt in the same house with Dorothea and maintained such a Portland cement sort of disposition.

She drew a long breath and rose—I, too.

"If," she added, "we don't make sure of it now, we'll never have the opportunity again; no one who ever lived there would give it up! I'll talk to father, but——"

"The worst of it is," I said, "that two people are flirting with it now, I don't like to disturb you, but I've a duty to Mr. Sherbrooke. I must sell whenever I can, just as soon as somebody meets his price. So you mustn't put off speaking to your father too long."

She took a step towards me and gave me her hand.

"Promise me you won't let anyone else have it until I've talked to father. You can do that, can't you? Only a day or two; I'll know by Saturday at the latest. Is that too much to ask?"

"Ah!" said I. "An option! That's legal enough. And it's common enough, too. All right; I'll give you the refusal of it for forty-eight hours at that price. But an option, you know% isn't valid without a consideration."

"Isn't it?" said Dorothea, her eyes shining, "Is it awfully expensive?"

"The cost of this particular option," I said, "won't bother you a great deal—at least, I hope it won't. It isn't payable just now, either."

"Can't you give me some idea of what it is?"

"I should judge," I said cautiously, "that I'll try to collect it very shortly after the clergyman says 'Amen!'" Then I raised my voice circumspectly. "George," I said to the office-boy, "open the door for Miss Gardner."

It was tactful, but it was a species of privation, nevertheless; I should have preferred to open the door myself—and, if you must have it, to lie down peacefully on the threshold and be a doormat. That's how much I thought of Dorothea.

And then, all at once, Ryhill was stunned by a revelation which carried utter consternation with it—a revelation which sent Ryhill into a mood of blankest impotence, and took away the power of coherent speech from those of us who had grown up with Dorothea Gardner and Perry Maxwell. Dorothea's father, on being solicited for his consent, had refused it outright—had refused to receive Perry Maxwell as a son-in-law, had refused on grounds as trivial as they were irrelevant, and laid down an ultimatum, phrased in platitudes of finance, arbitrary and irrevocable. And simultaneously there came from Perry's father an objection no less grave; so that two lovers were abruptly dissociated, shocked, disillusioned, and all Ryhill shared in an epidemic of bewilderment.

Perry came to me and looked me squarely in the eyes, and pulled me down to a seat beside him, and began to talk, quietly but with a tenseness which showed that he was near the bursting-point.

"It's money," he said, with a curiously dry intonation. "Money! Cash! It's a cold business affair! I'm making seven pounds a week; I told him I thought that was plenty to begin on. He laughed at me—laughed at me! He had the nerve to preach at me, and Dorothea has told me he was married himself on half that! He says times have changed. Has to be sure she won't be deprived of—— Jer-usalem! What does he think I'm made of? He told me in plain English I'd have to show him at least six or eight hundred in the bank, or else at least six hundred salary. He's made it mercenary—that's all he cares about! Nothing about prospects, nothing about me personally—but cash! If I'd only had the grit to say what was on the tip of my tongue——"

"Perry," I said, "that isn't a death-sentence, is it? You have a few friends left. Can't you reason with your father?"

"My father!" he echoed. "Oh, Heavens! I should say I have! He's just as bad. I'm only a boy, he considers, a mere child yet. I've got to be advanced slowly in the business, or the old employés might kick and leave us in the lurch. If I'm good, and behave myself, I shall inherit the plant in a couple of centuries, maybe, but in the meantime he's got to treat me impartially. Will he lend me any money? No. Don't ask me why not. I'm only his son—I suppose that means my credit's no good. And he knows why I want it, too—to get that place for Dorothea. Will he tell me how soon I ought to be drawing six hundred a year! No. Says it depends on me, not on him. And if I marry before he thinks I'm financially responsible, he's finished with me!" He glanced at me and grinned savagely.

"Of course," I said, "you're of age, Perry——"

"Yes, but I've still got some sense left. I'm not going to antagonise two families, and throw up a comparatively big future, and go out hunting for a new billet, and try to be married on ninepence!" He brought his band down on his knee with a resounding slap. "Mr. Gardner's theory is all right: Dorothea ought to be safeguarded; where we split is on the estimates. So good-bye, house!"

"You're still interested, are you?" I was busily completing a calculation which looked very favourable for Perry.

"More every minute, and Dorothea's heart-broken, I had toyed with a notion that her father might buy it, and hold it until I could afford to take it over; but now—— Well, if we have to wait as long as two years——"

"Two years!" I repeated. "That Sherbrooke place will change hands within two weeks, or I'm an ignoramus. See here, Perry, you have two hundred pounds."

"Yes. Why?"

"Then buy the house yourself!"

He stared incredulously at me, and at length a smile began to flicker at the corners of his mouth.

"That's really funny."

"You'll change your mind in a minute or two," I said. "Now, there's an option of purchase on that house that expires in about an hour and a half. I'll guarantee it won't be taken up. And you're next, and the terms are easy."

"Who owns the option?" asked Perry, somewhat less indifferent.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you. But, if you care to, you can take the title to that house for two hundred pounds cash. Listen, I'd just as soon buy that house for myself as not. I'll finance the deal for you, if you like. As a matter of actual fact, the place will be mortgaged to me, by you, for two thousand."

He stared at me, incredulous.

"You—you mean that?" he breathed.

"Of course I do. For me it's a perfectly sound investment. You can let it at a whopping rent for a year or two till you're better off. Only you'll have to speak up; in decency to Sherbrooke I couldn't hold that offer open indefinitely."

He moved forward to the edge of his chair and gestured excitedly.

"Could you arrange it so that nobody would know? I wouldn't want to have it published; you can see that!"

"Certainly. I'd buy it myself, and make a private contract—a signed contract—with you. It would be your property, but temporarily in my name. I'd be simply your agent, holding it for you until you wish it transferred. And if you and Dorothea really want to live in that house—ever—you'd better say the word."

"If I had a couple of days to think it over——" he hesitated.

"A forty-eight-hour option," I said, "will cost you one of those cigarettes—thank you."

"I wouldn't even wish Dorothea to know," he said reflectively. "I'd want to surprise her with it. And Mr. Gardner shouldn't know, either; he's always hammering away about speculations. And my father mustn't know. He'd rant about my recklessness, and—oh, I don't know. Well, anyway, I'll let you hear from me to-morrow. It's frightfully good of you to do this. The only problem, of course, is the interest on the mortgage. I think I can manage that."

By the time that he telephoned to me I had a new goad for him.

"Remember, I told you two people were looking at it," I said. "Well, there are two more now. They came in to-day—only nibbles, but they have some significance. And your option is still good, Perry, but if you don't exercise it, that place will be sold by to-morrow morning."

"Who are they? These other people?"

"One's a solicitor, and one's a London agent. You won't make any mistake, Perry. Let me go ahead and finish the deal for you."

"It's a big responsibility," he said thoughtfully, "and it'll take all I've got, but Dorothea's so keen about it, and all that … I'll do it!"

"Fine!" I said. "That's the way to talk. It's sold."

He laughed excitedly.

"I—I'll see you to-night and bring you a cheque."

"Good!" I said. "We'll settle it all in no time."

"You're sure you can keep it secret? That'll have to be a condition. I couldn't risk——"

"Man, dear, I'm the buyer! It's your house whenever you want it, but until then it's in my name."

"All right," he said, in relief. "I'll come round to-night."

I had the contract ready when he came. Perry was jubilant when he signed his name, but naturally apprehensive.

"Now," he said, "we've just got to let it. Make it for two years."

"Leave it to me," I said. "Leave it to me."

I didn't see Dorothea for nearly a fortnight.

"I suppose our house went long ago," she then said.

"Unfortunately it did," I said, and, as unfathomable disappointment and chagrin leaped to her eyes, I rather wished that I could either have lied more artistically or told the truth. It didn't seem altogether kind of Perry to make her suffer, even for the sake of a subsequent dénouement and fireworks of ecstasy.

"Oh!" came from her softly. "Poor Perry!"

"I'm sorry I can't give you the buyer's name," I said. "The only consolation is that it went to somebody who loves it just as much as you do."

"I spoke to father about it," said Dorothea, "but it was so much breath wasted. Our fathers are both perfectly sincere. They're thinking about us, but it is hard to realise it sometimes. Perry's father is one of the most autocratic … I shouldn't have said that! It's horrid of me! "

"It may be for the best," I said, feeling guilty.

Quite unexpectedly that day Kent, the most prominent Kyhill lawyer, who once before had displayed a passing interest in the place, came to me again and demanded full particulars. He was a solicitor who had speculated in property with considerable success, and knew what he was talking about.

"Would you," he inquired, "be satisfied with a ten per cent. net profit? Instead of making you an offer, I'll do this: I'll give you more than you paid. Frankly, it'll cost a lot to make the changes I should want. The situation is splendid, but the house isn't large enough. Put your cards on the table, and I'll give you ten per cent. over and above cost. For a quick turnover that's fair enough, isn't it?"

I staved him off and sent for Perry.

"There!" I said. "How's that? A profit of ten per cent. and your capital intact, and you aren't far short of Mr. Gardner's limit. I call it speed. What about it?"

He looked quizzically at me, and a far-away expression dimmed his eyes. Then he stiffened and laughed helplessly.

"Has it occurred to you," he said, "that the only way I can make any money on that house in a hurry is by selling it?"

"Why, that's what I'm here for!"

"And if I sell it, I'll be fairly close to having enough money to satisfy Mr. Gardner, won't I?"

"Certainly."

"Then where," said Perry, "would Dorothea and I live?"

The alternatives simply had not struck me before; I was mentally limp at the problem.

"But—but the point is—which you really want——"

"I want to be married," said Perry. "But if I took Dorothea to any other place—why, it's one of those things you can't comprehend unless you're in it. It's sentimental, of course. It's——"

"Would you rather wait a few years, then?"

"I don't know," said Perry, greatly harassed. "I don't know! Besides, that profit wouldn't be enough. I'd intended to do what we agreed originally, and have the house to move into two years from now. But if somebody offered us, say, two thousand nine hundred for it, I'd have to think twice."

"But nobody has, Perry."

"No; I said if anyone did offer that—so I'd have all Mr. Gardner insists on, and all my father insists on—why, with the future I have in our business, I think I'd take it—I think so." He shook his head in perplexity. "What a mess!" he said. "It's the one house in Ryhill, and there's Dorothea, and there's the profit—you couldn't have a better example of wanting to eat your cake and have it too."

"Well, shall I give Kent any encouragement?"

"Ask him for two thousand nine hundred," said Perry brusquely. "And I don't know whether I'd take even that!"

I asked, and was scorned for too vaunting ambition; but there were other people who came to negotiate, and I didn't give up hope. Perry went away on business for his father, and twice I had to telegraph him—once when a man offered two thousand five hundred, and once when the solicitor grudgingly offered a trifle more. In each case Perry's response showed the degree of his uncertainty; he was eager to be married, and yet he dreaded to lose, in order to achieve that glory, the home he had bought so quixotically for Dorothea.

But in the course of his long absence from Ryhill he must have obtained a better perspective on the economic phases of the problem; at any rate, he eventually sent me a long letter, teeming with direct contradictions, and false analogies, and impossible conditions, and ended by leaving the matter entirely to my discretion, which wasn't by any means a happy circumstance for me. Nevertheless, in a final attempt to learn exactly how Dorothea felt about it, I went to call on her one evening.

I had received during the afternoon the best offer so far, and I longed to take it on Perry's behalf, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to accept the responsibility.

Dorothea, I was informed, would be downstairs directly. Mrs. Gardner was out, Mr. Gardner was at the telephone, and would also appear as soon as he conveniently could. So that I sat listening involuntarily to the one-sided conversation in the adjoining room, and reflecting upon the drama and the comedy of life; and by and by, when Mr. Gardner came in to welcome me, I was quite cheerful again, and ready to look at the optimistic side of everything.

"How's business?" he asked me casually.

"Not bad," I said. "You don't want to take that Sherbrooke place off my hands, do you?"

"Not exactly," said Mr. Gardner, eyeing me with unconcealed suspicion. He didn't know whether to condemn me for impertinence or not. "I heard you had bought it. But freak houses like that don't appeal to me, thank you."

"Freak!" I said. "How do you mean?"

"Too small," said Mr. Gardner. "It's not much more than a bandbox. That's no investment."

"I didn't know," I said, "but that you might want it to give away some time. I'll admit it isn't any palatial mansion, but it would certainly make a beautiful wedding gift."

He had a florid countenance, and snapping black eyes, and a fierce and bristling beard, so that when he glared at me he was trebly impressive.

"I dare say," said Mr. Gardner shortly; and for the next five minutes he hardly took his eyes off my face, and I gave him for his pains an imitation of youthful innocence which, if I do say it myself, was semi-professional.

He stayed only until Dorothea came down, and he went away so crustily that Dorothea was abashed; but after I had repeated our dialogue to her, she was woefully confused and indignant, and not at Mr. Gardner.

"You shouldn't have said that!" she declared vehemently.

"But, my dear girl," I said, "it's natural enough, when people are engaged, to——"

"That's just it!" she flashed. "He won't admit we're engaged!"

"O-ho!" I said. "That's different! That is different!"

"He—he won't let us even be engaged until Perry's succeeded—he won't allow it. I can't have a ring or—or anything."

And as I watched her and listened to her, it seemed to me that Perry ought not to wait. It wasn't because I doubted Dorothea's constancy, but because she was so ineffably sweet and ingenuous and young, and the time for a man to marry a girl like that is when he can, while he lives, before catastrophe overwhelms him. Wait two years? Not for all the parents and paternal businesses and houses in Christendom. They could live in a tent, and make those two years worth twenty; they would forget overnight the fantasy which had bound them to the Sherbrooke place. And, furthermore, my judgment had instinct behind it.

"Dorothea," I said, "Perry's badly worried about one thing; it's the same one we've gone over so often. He's spoken to me about it. I wish you'd make it clear, the next time you write to him, that you can be contented with him even if he isn't able to give you the house he thinks you want. He's obsessed with the notion that you won't be happy with him unless he can give you that. I'm simply whispering in your ear that if you care to take the trouble, you can relieve him immensely. Will you?"

She was perturbed, as I had intended her to be, and anxiety for Perry's welfare made her lovelier than before.

"He isn't really worried, is he?"

"I had word from him to-day. Yes, he is."

"Why, if I could," said Dorothea, "I'd marry him and live in a barn——"

"And if you say so to him," I interrupted hastily, "you'll take a ton of lead off his heart."

And she must have written him pretty specifically, for some days later I had a letter from Perry, stating that he had finally seen the light, and that if I could effect the sale at any respectable profit I ought to do it.

The letter came as a humorous coincidence. It was put on my desk just after the door closed on the Ryhill solicitor, and it was put down squarely on top of a carbon copy of an agreement—an agreement to sell the Sherbrooke place to the solicitor for two thousand eight hundred pounds. On the authority previously given me, I had acted of my own accord, and at what I thought was a very equitable figure.

And it meant that in less than four months from the date of the ultimatum Perry had attained his necessary cash in hand, and Mr. Gardner hadn't a leg to stand on.

In reporting his accomplishment to Ryhill, Perry stated merely that he had made a very fortunate investment, and his attitude was so independent that nobody questioned him too minutely, not even his own father. He was too stricken with remorse, too sensitive of Dorothea's unwitting sacrifice, to be willing to talk about it.

"All the same," he said to me disconsolately, "I feel stranded; I can't help it. The wedding's only six weeks away, and we're still house-hunting. We shall have to go into rooms if we can't find a house. I hadn't any idea I'd take it like this. Of course, in one sense it was the right thing to do, but——"

"Why 'but'?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "But every time I go past that house it upsets me. Every time Dorothea mentions it I feel like a crook. We both lie to each other like troopers about it, and say we'll find something else that'll do as well, but it's sour grapes. The one thing I have to be thankful about is that I kept it a secret."

"You'll get over that," I assured him; but I felt culpable, as though the whole tangle were to some extent my fault.

The Gardners were acutely formal people, and on a certain night that same week there was a formal dinner-party, embellished by distant relatives who popped up from nowhere, to celebrate the formal announcement of an engagement which everyone in Ryhill already knew. There were the customary toasts and the customary responses. And when, towards nine o'clock, Mr. Gardner got to his feet, he had an air about him which gave promise of a climax, and won him flattering attention.

I had never seen him surrounded by such an atmosphere of affability. As he glanced down the long table, he was actually stirred by genuine emotion. It strengthened my belief that fathers are fathers sometimes. They can't help themselves. There was a curiously mellow quality in Mr. Gardner's voice: he coughed once or twice before he began.

It was a delightfully banal speech, but it had sincerity behind it. He gave Perry a sort of official greeting to the family; he spoke of Perry in a chain of compliments which astonished all of us, and Perry most of all, and he referred in no disparaging terms to Perry's brilliance and Perry's sure success.

"And now," said Mr. Gardner, thrusting his hand in his inside pocket, "one last word, and I shall have finished. There is an old custom which I regret to say has largely fallen into disuse. On many grounds I approve of it, therefore, as evidence of my belief in Perry, and in place of the dowry which, as I have said, is an institution in many lands, I take pleasure in presenting him, before you all, with this deed"—and Mr. Gardner produced it, held it aloft, gestured with it—"this deed to the property erected by Mr. Sherbrooke, as a home for the family my daughter and he will in time——"

He got no further, for the table was in an uproar. Dorothea was clinging to Perry; Perry was staring at me with his mouth open and his pupils bursting; the relatives were applauding vociferously, and beaming at Perry, and calling upon him in turn for a speech; and across from me a thin, sardonic man, who was Perry's father, was deliberately pushing back his chair.

"One moment!" said Perry's father, looking from me to Mr. Gardner and back again. "It was my intention, once upon a time, to make a gift of that house to Dorothea." He looked at me and back to Mr. Gardner. "In fact, I made an offer for it—two offers—three offers——"

"Great Scot!" exploded Mr. Gardner, thunderstruck. "Were you the man who kept bidding against me?" His jaw dropped. A ripple of laughter ran round the table and grew in volume. Perry's eyes were burning through me, and I couldn't turn aside.

"I dealt through a London man. I didn't want Perry here to think I was——"

"Well, I used Henry Kent."

"Great Scot!" Perry's father motioned towards me and laughed not unkindly. "Young man," he said, "I congratulate you. You must have been born under a lucky star. If either of us had come out into the open, Gardner—if we'd talked this over together——"

"H-hold on there!" said Perry, and he stood, too. "I—this is—it's the funniest thing!" He pointed his finger at his father. "Did you try to buy that place through a dummy?"

"That's what he turned out to be, Perry. He was a London agent."

"And—and you?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Gardner, still palpitant. "Through a solicitor—Kent. I didn't want it to come out too soon—it was a surprise."

"Then you can't blame me very much, can you? You might have talked it over with me, too, without doing any damage. Naturally, I couldn't know. You see, that house was my investment—the one I told you about. I didn't want it to be known, either. I got it for Dorothea and me, and then I thought I ought to make a profit. I thought Kent bought it for himself——"

There was a moment of terrific silence, and a sudden shout of laughter. Dorothea, utterly overcome by the successive disclosures, was fleeing incontinently, Perry in pursuit. On the threshold he paused to beckon to me, and I was very glad of the excuse to escape. On the lawn the three of us gathered, and talked all at the same time, gesticulating, explaining, until there was a full understanding between us, and nothing more to be said. I even told them how I had once overheard Mr. Gardner telephoning mysterious instructions, and interpreted them aright.

"But after that," said Dorothea, trembling with delight, "was it fair? Was it? When you knew——"

"Fair!" I said. "I should say it was! More than fair! Why, I let him have it for two thousand eight hundred, didn't I? That was what Kent had offered me in the afternoon, and that was what I was considering. And I heard Mr. Gardner tell Kent to bid up to three thousand if he had to—as the place was worth it! Wasn't that fair enough? It was the first I knew of this three-barrelled affair!"

There was a little gasp from Dorothea, and I turned away. I dislike to see any man—even Perry—kiss a nice girl—especially Dorothea—while I'm still a bachelor. From the dining-room came fitful gusts of laughter, and I distinctly caught both Mr. Gardner's bass and Mr. Maxwell's infectious tenor. Fathers are fathers sometimes.

And then Dorothea came over to me and touched my arm, while Perry watched us, unprotesting. This was one of the instants when I recognised how incalculably lucky Perry really was.

"I don't know a lot about business," she said breathlessly, "and you arranged the—the option yourself; but aren't there always commissions—or something?"—and paid me royally, twice over, so that I didn't have to rehearse for the wedding ceremony.

And then we all went in, radiantly cheerful, to make our peace with two stern parents who couldn't possibly keep their faces straight when they looked at any of us. I think that might to be a very happy marriage.