James King, greatly to the surprise of his physicians, did not die, but he hovered on the brink of it for many thin weeks and his son gave up his entire vacation to be with him. The letters he sent Honor were brief bulletins of his father's condition, explosive regrets at having to give up his summer with her, but Jimsy was not a letter writer. In order properly to fill up more than a page it was necessary for him to be able to say, "Had a bully practice to-day," or, "Saw old Duffy last night and he told me all about--" He was not good at producing epistolary bulk out of empty and idle days. Stephen Lorimer, often beside Honor when she opened and read these messages in English Cathedral towns or beside Scotch lakes, ached with sympathy for these young lovers under his benevolent wing because of their inability to set themselves down on paper. He knew that his stepdaughter was very nearly as limited as the boy.

"Ethel," he said to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much easier--and safer--for them if they belonged to his 'caste of the articulate.'"

She nodded. "Yes. It's rather frightful, really, to separate people who have no means of communication. Especially when--" she broke off, looking at Carter who was pointing out to Honor what he believed to be the Field of Bannockburn.

Stephen Lorimer shook his head. "No danger there," he said comfortably.

"Top Step is sorry for him--a creature of another, paler world ...

infinitely beneath her bright and beamish boy's. No, I feel a lot safer to have Carter with her than with Jimsy King."

The Englishwoman stared. "Really?"

"Yes. I daresay I exaggerate, but I've always seen something sinister about that youth."

Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at Carter Van Meter and observed the way in which he was looking at Honor. "He wants her frightfully, doesn't he, poor thing?"

"He wants her frightfully but he isn't a poor thing in the very least.

He is an almost uncannily clever and subtle young person for his years, with a very large income and a fanatically devoted mother behind him, and he's had everything he ever wanted all his life except physical perfection,--and my good Top Step."

"Ah, yes, but what can he do, after all?"

Honor's stepfather shrugged. "He knows that she would not be allowed to marry the lad if he went the way of the other 'Wild Kings,'--that she is too sound and sane to insist on it. And I think--I thought even in their High School days--that he deliberately steers Jimsy into danger."

"My word!" said the novelist, hotly. "What are you going to do about it, Stephen?"

"Watch. Wait. Stand ready. I shall make it my business to drop in at the fraternity house once or twice next season, when I go north to San Francisco,--and into other fraternity houses, and put my ear to the ground. And if I find what I fear to find I'll take it up with both the lads, face to face, and then I'll send for Honor."

"Right!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, her fine, fresh-colored face glowing.

"And I'll run down to Florence at the Christmas holidays and take her to Rome with me, shall I?"

"It will be corking of you, Ethel."

"I shall love doing it."

He looked at her appreciatively. She would love doing it; she loved life and people, Ethel Bruce-Drummond, and she was able therefore to put life and people, warm and living, on to her pages. She was as fit and hardy as a splendid boy, her cheeks round and ruddy, her eyes bright, her fine bare hands brown and strong, her st.u.r.dy ankles st.u.r.dier than ever in her heavy knitted woolen hose and her stout Scotch brogues. He had known and counted on her for almost twenty years--and he had married Mildred Carmody. "Ethel," he said, suddenly, "in that book of mine I mean to have----"

"Ah, yes, that book of yours, Stephen! Slothful creature! You know quite well you'll never do it."

"Never do it! Why,"--he was indignant--"I've got tons of it done already, in my head! It only wants writing down."

"Yes, yes," said his friend, penitently, "I make no doubt. It only wants writing down. Well?"

"I'm going to have a chapter on friendship, and insert a really novel idea. Friendship has never been properly praised,--begging pardon in pa.s.sing of Mr. Emerson and his ilk. I'm going to suggest that it be given dignity and weight by having licenses and ceremonies, just as marriage has. It has a better right, you know, really. It's a much saner and more probable vow--to remain friends all one's life, than in love.

In genuine friendship there is indeed no variableness, neither shadow or turning. You and I, now, might quite safely have taken out our friendship license and plighted our troth,--twenty years, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Miss Bruce-Drummond, gently, "it's twenty years, Stephen, and that's a quite beautiful idea. You must surely put it in your book, old dear." Her keen eyes, looking away across the ancient battlefields were a little less keen than usual, but Stephen Lorimer did not notice that because he was looking at his watch.

"Do you know it's nearly five, woman, and Mildred waiting tea for us at the Stirling Arms?" So he called to the boy and girl and fell into step beside his friend and swung down the hill to his tea and his wife, a little thrilled still, as he always would be to the day of his death, at being with her again after even the least considerable absence.

It seemed to Honor Carmody that three solid summers had been welded together for her soul's discipline that year; there were a.s.suredly ninety-three endless days in July. She was not quite sure whether having Carter with them made it harder for her or easier. He was an accomplished traveler; things moved more smoothly for his presence, and--as she wrote Jimsy--he knew everything about everywhere. On the whole, it was pleasanter, more like home, more like the good days on South Figueroa Street, to have him about; she could sometimes almost cajole herself into thinking Jimsy must be there, too, in the next room, hurrying up the street, a little late for dinner, but there, near them.

It was only when Carter talked to her of Jimsy that she grew anxious, even acutely unhappy. It wasn't, she would decide, thinking it over later, lying awake in the dark, so much what Carter had said--it was what he hadn't said in words. It was the thing that sounded in his voice, that was far back in his eyes.

"Yes," he would say, smiling in reminiscence, "that was a party! Nothing ever like it at Stanford before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, they say. And old Jimsy--I wish you could have seen him! No, I don't really, for you wouldn't have approved and the poor old scout would have been in for a lecture, but it was----"

"Carter," Honor would interrupt, "do you mean, can you possibly mean that Jimsy--that he's--" She found she couldn't say it after all; she couldn't put it into the ugly definite words.

"Oh, nothing serious, Honor! Nothing for you to worry about! He has to do more or less as others do, a man of his prominence in college. It's unavoidable. Of course, it might be better if he could steer clear of that sort of thing altogether--" he would stop at a point like that and frown into s.p.a.ce for a moment, as if remembering, weighing, considering, and Honor's heart would sink coldly. Then he would brighten again and lay a rea.s.suring hand on her sleeve. "But you mustn't worry. Jimsy's got a level head on his shoulders, and he has too much at stake to go too far. He'll be all right in the end, Honor, I'm sure of that. And you know I'll always keep an eye on him!".

And Honor twisting on her finger the ring with the clasped hands and the hidden blue stone of constancy which she always wore except when her mother was with her, would manage a smile and say, "I know how devoted you are to him, Carter. You couldn't help it, could you?--Every one is.

And you mean to help him; I know that. I _am_ grateful. It's next best to being with him myself." Then, because she couldn't trust herself to talk very much about Jimsy, she would resolutely change the subject and Carter would write home to his hoping mother that Honor really seemed to be having a happy summer and to enjoy everything, and that she was not very keen to talk much about Jimsy.

He did not hear the talk she had with her stepfather the night before they were to sail for home. It came after her hour of fruitless pleading with her mother to be allowed to go back with them. Mildred Lorimer had stood firm, and Stephen had been silent and Carter had sided with Honor's mother.

"It really would be rather a shame, Honor,--much as we'd love having you with us on the trip home. You're coming on so wonderfully with your work, the _Signorina_ says. She intends to have you in concert this winter, and coming home would spoil that, wouldn't it?" He was very sensible about it.

Honor had managed to ask Stephen to see her alone, after the rest had gone to their rooms. They were sailing from Genoa because they had wanted to bring Honor back to Italy and the _Signorina_ had joined them at the port and would take the girl back to Florence with her. Honor went upstairs and came down again in fifteen minutes and found him waiting for her in the lounge.

He got up and came to meet her and took her hands into his solid and rea.s.suring clasp. "This is pretty rough, Top Step. You don't have to tell me."

She did not, indeed. Her young face was drained of all its color that night and her eyes looked strained. It was mildly warm and the windows were open, but she was shivering a little. "Stepper, dear, I don't want to be a goose----"

"You're not, Top Step."

"But I'm anxious. When Jimsy gave me this ring, and told me what he had told his father--that he was not going to be another 'Wild King' and asked me if I believed him, I told him I'd never stop believing him, and I won't, Skipper. I won't!"

"Right, T. S."

"But--things Carter says,--things he doesn't say--Stepper, I think Jimsy needs me _now_."

The man was silent for a long moment. He could, of course, a.s.sert his authority or at least his power, since the girl was Mildred's child and not his, break with his good friend, the _Signorina_, and take Honor home. But, after all, what would that accomplish, unless she went to Stanford? He began to think aloud. "Even if you came home with us, Top Step, you wouldn't be near him, would you, unless you went to college?

And you'd hardly care to do that now--to enter your Freshman year two years behind the boys."

"No."

"And if you stayed in Los Angeles--you might almost as well be here.

The number of miles doesn't matter."

"But--perhaps Jimsy wouldn't stay at Stanford then. Oh, Stepper, dear, haven't we waited long enough?"

"He's only twenty, T. S."

She sighed. "Being young is the cruelest thing in the world!"

"You are blaspheming!" said her stepfather, sternly. "T. S., that's the only stupid and wicked thing you've ever said in the years I've known you! Don't ever dare to say it--or think it--again! Being young is the most golden and glorious thing in the world! Being young--" he ran a worried hand over his thinning hair and sighed. "Ah, well, you'll know, some day. Meanwhile, girl, it looks as if you'd have to stick. That's your part in 'playing the game!' But I promise you this. I shall keep an eye on things for you; keep in touch with the boy, see him, hear from him, hear _of_ him, and if the time comes when I believe that his need of you is instant and vital, I'll write--no, I'll cable you to come."

"Stepper!" The comfort in her eyes warmed him.

"It's a promise, Top Step"--he grinned,--"as you used to say when I first knew you--'cross-my-heart, hope-never-to-see-the-back-of-my-neck!' Now, hop along to bed,--and trust me!"