CHAPTER XIII

HE CRUSHES AND HUMILIATES A RIVAL

Sid, with new skates glistening at his side, was bound for the park lagoon when John ran across the street and stopped him.

"Come along?" asked Sid amicably. John shook his head.

"I want to talk to you," said he. "Bill says you're trying to cut me out with Louise. It's got to stop."

"What's he know about it?" asked the culprit defiantly.

"And Louise told me you'd taken her up to the drug store."

Sid shrugged his shoulders. "Guess I've a right to. What have you got to say about it?"

"Well," said John slowly, "She's my girl--"

Sid sneered.

"And we're going to get married on the money from the paper route when I grow up and--"

"Pooh!" Sid laughed unpleasantly. "Go ahead and save your money. I don't care. I'm spending mine--on her--and you can't stop me either."

Money, money, money! All he was hearing these days was about spending, not saving it, and Sid's words, as had his lady's, riled him not a little.

"I'm going to take her out, too," he shot back. "Won't be a cheap thing like sodas, either. We're going to the theater, we are, and then she'll promise not to speak to you any more. If she won't, I'll punch your face in, first time I catch you."

"Theater!" said Sid, so impressed that the concluding threat pa.s.sed unheeded.

"Going to buy the tickets, this afternoon," John boasted. "Main floor seats at the 'Home'--_seventy-five cents each!_ Don't you wish you were going?"

Sid's skates slipped from his shoulder into the snow. He picked them up and looked at John uncertainly.

"That'll cost a lot of money, won't it?" he asked.

"Most two dollars," magnificently.

"Let's take her together, then. I'll pay half the carfare and the seats."

John thought a moment. The plan possessed certain advantages. He would be able to observe how Louise acted with Sid, for one; and if he didn't consent, that persistent rival would take her later, anyway, which would be a thousand times worse. Besides, the prospect of two hard-earned dollars being frittered away for an evening's entertainment had been far from pleasing.

"The tickets are for a week from Sat.u.r.day," he said slowly. "Want me to get you one?"

Sid nodded and dug into his pocket for a handful of Christmas change. He pa.s.sed over a dollar and twelve cents to John, and left for the lagoon.

Half a dozen times as the street car bounced westward over the uneven track, John decided to tell Sid that, after all, the entertainment was for but two. He would probably spoil all the fun, anyway, and then the evening would be a total failure. He was still undecided when he stepped up to the tawdry box office with its photographs of local theatrical stars.

"How many?" asked the man at the little window.

John drew out a coin from his pocket. Heads, Sid joined them; tails, he should be Louise's sole escort. Heads it was. The fates had willed it; let the outcome be for good or ill.

When he told of the arrangement at the family supper table, that evening, his parents choked.

"I suppose," said Mr. Fletcher, his voice still shaking with laughter, "that you'll sit, one on each side of the lady, and glare because she took the last piece of candy from the other fellow's box."

Candy? Why, of course. The heroine of each of the novels he had read, was always receiving toothsome dainties and showers of roses from her many admirers. But he couldn't afford both methods of expressing his devotion, and candy alone would have to do. This taking your best girl to a show promised to be far more expensive than he had thought.

Need it be said that his shoes were veritable ebony mirrors, that eventful evening? Or that his ears were clean, even to the very recesses under the lobes? And when such a thing occurs, you may be sure that Solomon in all his glory was arrayed no more immaculately than that small boy.

He presented himself promptly at the door of the Martin flat at half-past seven. Louise was in her room while Mrs. Martin added the finishing touches to the party dress which she was wearing in honor of the occasion, so he shoved the two-pound box of dipped caramels, ordered in spite of paternal objections, into his overcoat pocket and sat down in the big parlor rocker to wait.

Shortly thereafter, Sid appeared with a tissue-wrapped bouquet of roses in his hand. "For Louise," he told Mrs. Martin.

John glared at him stolidly, and regretted his choice of candy. It would have taken a little of that confident smile away, if his rival had found himself antedated by a gift of a similar nature.

A quarter of an hour later found them bouncing along over the same car line which John had used on the ticket quest. The conveyance was poorly heated, but the children were too excited to notice the cold. Louise was wearing two of the roses on her frock, and Sid was in high spirits accordingly.

"Ever been out West, Louise?" he asked with a side glance at John. The lady shook her head.

"I was, all last vacation--real ranch, real cowboys. Used to take pony rides every day."

John sketched a caricature on the frosty window pane and sulked in silence. Why didn't his folks make enough money to take him on such summer jaunts? Then he wouldn't have to sit like a dummy and listen to his rival out-talk him with the one girl he cared anything about.

"And walk?" continued Sid, secure in his romancing, now that he knew that neither of his auditors had been beyond the Mississippi. "Why, the air's so fine that you can walk ever so far without feeling tired.

Breakfast at the ranch was at seven, and once, I walked twenty miles just to get up an appet.i.te for it."

"That's nothing," John snapped moodily. "I walked thirty miles before breakfast, once, too. It was right here in the city."

"What?" gasped Sid, scarcely believing his ears.

"Yes," a.s.sented John cheerfully. "It was in the afternoon before, but that didn't make any difference. It was before breakfast, wastn't it?"

Louise giggled. Sid kicked against the wicker seat cushion in front of him and was silent. John rubbed a clear spot on the frost-etched car window and peered into the outer darkness.

"Next block's ours," he grinned, still elated at the success of his thrust. "Come on, Louise."

They scrambled wildly for the door. Sid was the first in the street and helped the lady down from the high car-step, while John drew the tickets from his coat pocket and led the way to the brilliantly lighted theater lobby. Louise's eyes glistened with excitement as the trio stopped to look at the posters beside the doorway.

"Martha, the Milliner's Girl," Sid read slowly from the huge letters at the top of the bulletin board.

"Peach of a show," John commented, as they walked past the line of people waiting their turn at the box office. "Six folks killed, and shooting and everything. I asked the man when I bought the seats."

A uniformed usher led them impressively to their places and presented them with programs. John stooped over his fiancee and helped her off with her coat as he leered at Sid. That gentleman leaned easily back in the upholstered theater chair.

"Nice seats," he remarked with a touch of condescension. "A little near the stage [the words had been Mrs. DuPree's, once upon a time], but they'll do."

"I like 'em," John snapped angrily. Louise acquiesced. Sid scowled and fell back upon the wild and woolly West as a means of maintaining the conversational upper hand.