"No," Mrs. Baxter said, quietly, "you're not going back to count any more shingles, Willie. How much have you earned?"

He swallowed, but spoke bravely. "Thirty-six cents. But I've been getting lots faster the last two hours and there's a good deal of time before six o'clock. Mother--"

"No," she said. "You're going over to that horrible place where you've left your clothes and your watch and all those other things in the two baskets, and you're going to bring them home at once."

"Mother!" he cried, aghast. "Who told you?"

"It doesn't matter. You don't want your father to find out, do you? Then get those things back here as quickly as you can. They'll have to be fumigated after being in that den."

"They've never been out of the baskets," he protested, hotly, "except just to be looked at. They're MY things, mother, and I had a right to do what I needed to with 'em, didn't I?" His utterance became difficult.

"You and father just CAN'T understand--and you won't do anything to help me--"

"Willie, you can go to the party," she said, gently. "You didn't need those frightful clothes at all."

"I do!" he cried. "I GOT to have 'em! I CAN'T go in my day clo'es!

There's a reason you wouldn't understand why I can't. I just CAN'T!"

"Yes," she said, "you can go to the party."

"I can't, either! Not unless you give me three dollars and twenty-four cents, or unless I can get back to the lumber-yard and earn the rest before--"

"No!" And the warm color that had rushed over Mrs. Baxter during Jane's sensational recital returned with a vengeance. Her eyes flashed. "If you'd rather I sent a policeman for those baskets, I'll send one. I should prefer to do it--much! And to have that rascal arrested. If you don't want me to send a policeman you can go for them yourself, but you must start within ten minutes, because if you don't I'll telephone headquarters. Ten minutes, Willie, and I mean it!"

He cried out, protesting. She would make him a thing of scorn forever and soil his honor, if she sent a policeman. Mr. Beljus was a fair and honest tradesman, he explained, pa.s.sionately, and had not made the approaches in this matter. Also, the garments in question, though not entirely new, nor of the highest mode, were of good material and in splendid condition. Unmistakably they were evening clothes, and such a bargain at fourteen dollars that William would guarantee to sell them for twenty after he had worn them this one evening. Mr. Beljus himself had said that he would not even think of letting them go at fourteen to anybody else, and as for the two poor baskets of worn and useless articles offered in exchange, and a bent scarfpin and a worn-out old silver watch that had belonged to great-uncle Ben--why, the ten dollars and forty cents allowed upon them was beyond all ordinary liberality; it was almost charity. There was only one place in town where evening clothes were rented, and the suspicious persons in charge had insisted that William obtain from his father a guarantee to insure the return of the garments in perfect condition. So that was hopeless. And wasn't it better, also, to wear clothes which had known only one previous occupant (as was the case with Mr. Beljus's offering) than to hire what chance hundreds had hired? Finally, there was only one thing to be considered and this was the fact that William HAD to have those clothes!

"Six minutes," said Mrs. Baxter, glancing implacably at her watch. "When it's ten I'll telephone."

And the end of it was, of course, victory for the woman--victory both moral and physical. Three-quarters of an hour later she was unburdening the contents of the two baskets and putting the things back in place, illuminating these actions with an expression of strong distaste--in spite of broken a.s.surances that Mr. Beljus had not more than touched any of the articles offered to him for valuation.

... At dinner, which was unusually early that evening, Mrs. Baxter did not often glance toward her son; she kept her eyes from that white face and spent most of her time in urging upon Mr. Baxter that he should be prompt in dressing for a card-club meeting which he and she were to attend that evening. These admonitions of hers were continued so pressingly that Mr. Baxter, after protesting that there was no use in being a whole hour too early, groaningly went to dress without even reading his paper.

William had retired to his own room, where he lay upon his bed in the darkness. He heard the evening noises of the house faintly through the closed door: voices and the clatter of metal and china from the far-away kitchen, Jane's laugh in the hall, the opening and closing of the doors.

Then his father seemed to be in distress about something. William heard him complaining to Mrs. Baxter, and though the words were indistinct, the tone was vigorously plaintive. Mrs. Baxter laughed and appeared to make light of his troubles, whatever they were--and presently their footsteps were audible from the stairway; the front door closed emphatically, and they were gone.

Everything was quiet now. The open window showed as a greenish oblong set in black, and William knew that in a little while there would come through the stillness of that window the distant sound of violins. That was a moment he dreaded with a dread that ached. And as he lay on his dreary bed he thought of brightly lighted rooms where other boys were dressing eagerly faces and hair shining, hearts beating high--boys who would possess this last evening and the "last waltz together," the last smile and the last sigh.

It did not once enter his mind that he could go to the dance in his "best suit," or that possibly the other young people at the party would be too busy with their own affairs to notice particularly what he wore.

It was the unquestionable and granite fact, to his mind, that the whole derisive World would know the truth about his earlier appearances in his father's clothes. And that was a form of ruin not to be faced. In the protective darkness and seclusion of William's bedroom, it is possible that smarting eyes relieved themselves by blinking rather energetically; it is even possible that there was a minute damp spot upon the pillow.

Seventeen cannot always manage the little boy yet alive under all the coverings.

Now arrived that moment he had most painfully antic.i.p.ated, and dance-music drifted on the night;--but there came a tapping upon his door and a soft voice spoke.

"Will-ee?"

With a sharp exclamation William swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. Of all things he desired not, he desired no conversation with, or on the part of, Jane. But he had forgotten to lock his door--the handle turned, and a dim little figure marched in.

"Willie, Adelia's goin' to put me to bed."

"You g'way from here," he said, huskily. "I haven't got time to talk to you. I'm busy."

"Well, you can wait a minute, can't you?" she asked, reasonably. "I haf to tell you a joke on mamma."

"I don't want to hear any jokes!"

"Well, I HAF to tell you this one 'cause she told me to! Oh!" Jane clapped her hand over her mouth and jumped up and down, offering a fantastic silhouette against the light of the Open door. "Oh, oh, OH!"

"What's matter?"

"She said I mustn't, MUSTN'T tell that she told me to tell! My goodness!

I forgot that! Mamma took me off alone right after dinner, an' she told me to tell you this joke on her a little after she an' papa had left the house, but she said, 'Above all THINGS,' she said, 'DON'T let Willie know _I_ said to tell him.' That's just what she said, an' here that's the very first thing I had to go an' do!"

"Well, what of it?"

Jane quieted down. The pangs of her remorse were lost in her love of sensationalism, and her voice sank to the thrilling whisper which it was one of her greatest pleasures to use. "Did you hear what a fuss papa was makin' when he was dressin' for the card-party?"

"_I_ don't care if--"

"He had to go in his reg'lar clo'es!" whispered Jane, triumphantly.

"An' this is the joke on mamma: you know that tailor that let papa's dress-suit 'way, 'way out; well, Mamma thinks that tailor must think she's crazy, or somep'm 'cause she took papa's dress-suit to him last Monday to get it pressed for this card-party, an she guesses he must of understood her to tell him to do lots besides just pressin' it. Anyway, he went an' altered it, an' he took it 'way, 'way IN again; an' this afternoon when it came back it was even tighter 'n what it was in the first place, an' papa couldn't BEGIN to get into it! Well, an' so it's all pressed an' ev'ything, an' she stopped on the way out, an' whispered to me that she'd got so upset over the joke on her that she couldn't remember where she put it when she took it out o' papa's room after he gave up tryin' to get inside of it. An' that," cried Jane--"that's the funniest thing of all! Why, it's layin' right on her bed this very minute!"

In one bound William leaped through the open door. Two seconds sufficed for his pa.s.sage through the hall to his mother's bedroom--and there, neatly spread upon the lace coverlet and brighter than coronation robes, fairer than Joseph's holy coat, It lay!

XXV

YOUTH AND MR. PARCHER

As a hurried worldling, in almost perfectly fitting evening clothes, pa.s.sed out of his father's gateway and hurried toward the place whence faintly came the sound of dance-music, a child's voice called sweetly from an unidentified window of the darkened house behind him:

"Well, ANYWAY, you try and have a good time, Willie!"

William made no reply; he paused not in his stride. Jane's farewell injunction, though obviously not ill-intended, seemed in poor taste, and a reply might have encouraged her to believe that, in some measure at least, he condescended to discuss his inner life with her. He departed rapidly, but with hauteur. The moon was up, but shade-trees were thick along the sidewalk, and the hauteur was invisible to any human eye; nevertheless, William considered it necessary.

Jane's friendly but ill-chosen "ANYWAY" had touched doubts already annoying him. He was certain to be late to the party--so late, indeed, that it might prove difficult to obtain a proper number of dances with the sacred girl in whose honor the celebration was being held. Too many were steeped in a sense of her sacredness, well he wot! and he was unable to find room in his apprehensive mind for any doubt that these others would be accursedly diligent.

But as he hastened onward his spirits rose, and he did reply to Jane, after all, though he had placed a hundred yards between them.

"Yes, and you can bet your bottom dollar I will, too!" he muttered, between his determined teeth.

The very utterance of the words increased the firmness of his decision, and at the same time cheered him. His apprehensions fell away, and a glamorous excitement took their place, as he turned a corner and the music burst more loudly upon his tingling ear. For there, not half-way to the next street, the fairy scene lay spread before him.

Spellbound groups of uninvited persons, most of them colored, rested their forearms upon the upper rail of the Parchers' picket fence, offering to William's view a silhouette like that of a crowd at a fire.

Beyond the fence, bright forms went skimming, shimmering, wavering over a white platform, while high overhead the young moon sprayed a thinner light down through the maple leaves, to where processions of rosy globes hung floating in the blue night. The mild breeze trembled to the silver patterings of a harp, to the sweet, barbaric chirping of plucked strings of violin and 'cello--and swooned among the maple leaves to the rhythmic crooning of a flute. And, all the while, from the platform came the sounds of little cries in girlish voices, and the cadenced shuffling of young feet, where the witching dancemusic had its way, as ever and forever, with big and little slippers.

The heart of William had behaved tumultuously the summer long, whenever his eyes beheld those pickets of the Parchers' fence, but now it outdid all its previous riotings. He was forced to open his mouth and gasp for breath, so deep was his draught of that young wine, romance.

Yonder--somewhere in the breath-taking radiance--danced his Queen with all her Court about her. Queen and Court, thought William, and nothing less exorbitant could have expressed his feeling. For seventeen needs only some paper lanterns, a fiddle, and a pretty girl--and Versailles is all there!