He long remembered the peculiar parting look she gave him, satiric, mischievous, yet charmingly provocative. She was keen of mind, she was brilliant of wit, but she was all woman--no doubt of that. He was suddenly sure that she had known well enough all day the effect that she had had upon him, and that it had amused her. His cheek reddened at the thought. He wondered why on earth he should care to pursue an attempt at acquaintance with one whose manner with him was frequently so disturbing to his self-conceit. Well, at least he must forget her now, and redeem himself with an hour's solid effort.

But, strange to say, although he had found it difficult to work in her presence, in her absence he found it impossible to work at all. He stuck doggedly to his desk for the appointed hour, then gave over the attempt and departed. The moral of all this, which he discovered he could not escape, was that though he had taken his university degree, and had supplemented the academic education with the broader one of travel and observation, he had not at his command that first requisite for efficient labour: the power of sustained application. In a way he had been dimly suspicious of this since the day he had begun this pretence of work for his grandfather's old friend. To-day, at sight of a girl's steady concentration upon a wearisome task in spite of his own supposably diverting presence, it had been brought home to him with force that he was unquestionably reaping that inevitable product of protracted idleness: the loss of the power to work.

As he drove away it suddenly occurred to him that on the morrow, instead of coming to the house in his car, he would leave it in the garage and walk. Between the discovery of his inefficiency and his resolution to dispense with a hitherto accustomed luxury there may have been a subtler connection than appears to the eye.

CHAPTER VII

A TRAITOROUS PROCEEDING

"We shall have to make our work count this week, Mr. Kendrick. Next week I antic.i.p.ate that there will be no chance whatever to do a stroke." So spoke Judge Gray to his a.s.sistant on one Monday morning as he shook hands with him in greeting.

"Very well, sir," replied the young man, with, however, a sense of its not being at all well. It was to him a regrettable fact that he seldom saw much of the various members of the household, and of one particular member so little that he was tempted to wonder if she ever took the trouble to evade him. But, of course, there was always the chance of an encounter, and he never opened the house door without the feeling that just inside might be a certain figure on its way out.

"Next week is Christmas week," explained Judge Gray. He stood upon the hearth-rug, his back to the open fire, warming his hands preparatory to taking up his pen. His fingers were apt to be a little stiff on these December mornings. "During Christmas week this house is always given over to such holiday doings as I don't imagine another house in town ever knows. Christmas house-parties are plenty, I believe, but not the sort of house-party we indulge in. I am inclined to think ours beats the world."

He chuckled, running his hand through the thick white locks above his brow with a gesture which Richard had come to know meant special satisfaction.

"You have so many and such delightful people?" suggested his a.s.sistant.

The white head nodded. "The house would hardly hold more, nor could they be more delightful. You see, there are five brothers of us. I am the eldest, Robert the youngest. Rufus, Henry, and Philip come between.

Henry and Philip live in small towns, Rufus in the country proper. Each has a good-sized family, with several married sons and daughters who have children of their own. It has been my brother Robert's custom for twenty years to ask them all here for Christmas week." He began to laugh. "If the family keeps on growing much larger I don't know that there will be room to accommodate them all, but so far my sister has always managed. Fortunately this is an even more roomy old homestead than it looks. But you may easily imagine, Mr. Kendrick, that there is very little chance for solitude and quiet work during that week."

"I can fully imagine," agreed Richard. "And yet I can't imagine," he amended. "I never saw such a gathering in my life."

"Never did, eh? You must come in some time during the week and get a glimpse of it. We have fine times, I can tell you. My old head sometimes whirls a bit," the Judge admitted, "before the week is over, but--it's worth it. Particularly on the night of the party. The children always have a party on Christmas Eve in the attic. It's a great affair. No dancing-parties nor b.a.l.l.s in other places can be mentioned in the same breath with it. You should see brother Rufus taking out my niece Roberta, and brother Henry dancing with Stephen's little wife. The girls accommodate themselves to the old-fashioned steps in great style."

"I certainly should like to see it," Richard said, wondering if there were any possible chance of his being invited.

But Judge Gray offered no suggestion of the sort, and Richard made up his mind that the Christmas Eve dance would be a strictly family affair.

"Probably the country relatives are a queer lot," he decided, "and the Grays don't care to show them off. Still--that's not like them, either.

It's certainly like them to do such an eccentric thing as to get their cousins all here and try to give them a good time. I should like to see it. I should!"

He found his thoughts wandering many times during the morning's work to the image of Roberta dancing with the old uncle from the country. He had never met her at any of the society dances which were now and then honoured by his presence. Unquestionably the Grays moved in a circle with which he was not familiar--a circle made up of people distinguished rather for their good birth and the things which they had done than for their wealth. n.o.body in the city stood upon a higher social level than the Grays, but they lived in a world in which the gay and fashionable set Richard knew were totally unknown and unhonoured.

The more he thought about it the more he wished that, if only for a week, he were at least a sixteenth cousin of the Gray family, that he might be present at that Christmas party. But during the week chance did not even throw him in the way of meeting the various members of the family proper, and when Sat.u.r.day night came he had discovered no prospect of attaining his wish. He knew that the guests were to arrive on the following Monday. Christmas Day was on Sat.u.r.day; the night of the party then would be Friday night. And the Judge, in taking leave of him, did not even mention again his wish that Richard might see the guests together.

He was coming out of the library, on his way to the hall door, hope having died hard and his spirits being correspondingly depressed, when Fate at last intervened in his behalf. Fate took the form of young Mrs.

Stephen Gray, descending the stairs with a two-year-old child in her arms, such a rosy, brown-eyed cherub of a child that an older and more hardened bachelor than Richard Kendrick need not have been suspected of dissimulation if he had stopped short in his course as Richard did, to admire and wonder.

"Is that a real, live boy?" cried the young man softly. "Or have you stolen him out of a frame somewhere?"

Mrs. Stephen stood still, smiling, on the bottom stair, and Richard approached with eager interest. He came close and stood looking into the small face with eyes which took in every exquisite feature.

"Jove!" he said, under his breath, and looked up at the young mother. "I didn't know they made them like that."

She laughed softly, with a mother's happy pride. "His little sister really ought to have had his looks," she said. "But we're hoping she'll develop them, and he'll grow plain in time to save him from being spoiled."

"Do you really hope that?" he laughed incredulously. "Don't hope it too fast. See here, Boy, are you real? Come here and let me see." He held out his arms.

"He's very shy," began Mrs. Stephen in explanation of the situation she now expected to have develop. It did develop in so far that the child shyly buried his head in her shoulder. But in a moment he peeped out again. Richard continued to hold out his arms, smiling, and suddenly the little fellow leaned forward. Richard gently drew him away from his mother, and, though he looked back at her as if to make sure that she was there, he presently seemed to surrender himself with confidence into the stranger's care and gave him back smile for smile.

Richard sat down with little Gordon Gray on his knee, and then ensued such a conversation between the two, such a frolic of games and smiles, as his mother could only regard in wonder.

"He never makes friends easily," she said. "I can't understand it. You must have had plenty of experience with little children somehow, in spite of those statements about your never having seen a family like ours before."

"I never held a child like this one before in my life," said Richard Kendrick. He looked up at her as he spoke.

"If Roberta could see him now," thought Mrs. Stephen, "she wouldn't be so hard on him. No man who isn't worth knowing can win a baby's confidence like that. I think he has one of the nicest faces I ever saw--even though it isn't lined with care." Aloud she said: "It surprises me that you should care to begin now."

"It's one of those new experiences I'm getting from time to time under this roof; that's the only way I can account for it. I never even guessed at the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a small chap like this. But I've no right to keep you while I taste new experiences. Thank you for this one. I shan't forget it."

He surrendered the boy with evident reluctance. "I hear you are to have a houseful of guests next week," he ventured to add. "Do they include any first cousins of this little man?"

"Two--of his own age--and any number of older ones. I'll take you up to the playroom some afternoon next week and show you the babies together, if you're interested, and if Uncle Calvin will let me interrupt his work for a few minutes."

"Thank you; I'll gladly come to the house for that special purpose, if you'll let me know when. Judge Gray has decided not to try to work at all next week; he's giving me a holiday I really don't want."

"Are you so interested in your labours with him?"

Their eyes met. There was something very sweet and womanly in Mrs.

Stephen's face and in the eyes which scanned his, or he would never have dared to say what he said next.

"Not in the work itself," he confessed frankly, "though I don't find it as hard as I did at first. But--the a.s.sociation with Judge Gray, the--well, I suppose it's really having something definite to do with my time. Above all, just being in this house, though I don't belong to it, is getting to seem so interesting to me that I'm afraid I shall hardly know what to do with myself all next week."

She could not doubt the genuineness of his admission, strange as it sounded. So the young aristocrat was really dreading a week's vacation, he who had done nothing but idle away his time. She felt a touch of pity for him; yet how absurd it was!

"I wish you could meet some of the people who will be here next week,"

she said. "I wonder if you would care to?"

"If they're anything like those of the Gray family, I already know I should care immensely." He spoke with enthusiasm.

"I think some of them are the most interesting people I have ever met.

My husband's Uncle Rufus, Judge Gray's brother--why, you must meet Uncle Rufus. I'll speak to Mrs. Robert Gray about it. I'm sure if she thought you cared she'd be delighted to have you know him. Then there's the Christmas Eve dance. I wonder if you would enjoy that? We don't usually have many people outside of the family, but there are always some of Rob's and Louis's special friends asked for the dance, and I'm sure I can arrange it. I'll mention it to Roberta."

"Must it--er--rest with Miss Roberta? I'm afraid she won't ask me,"

declared Richard anxiously.

"Won't she? Why? She will probably say that she doesn't believe you will enjoy it, but if I a.s.sure her that you want to come I think she will trust me. She's very exacting as to the qualifications of the guests at this dance, and will have n.o.body who isn't ready for a good time in every unconventional way. I warn you, Mr. Kendrick, who are used to leading cotillions, you may have to dance the Virginia reel with one of the dear little country cousins. I wonder if you will have the discernment to see that some of them are better worth meeting than a good many of the girls you probably know."

She gave him a keen, a.n.a.lyzing look. Small and sweet as she was, clearly she belonged to this singular Gray family as if she had been born in it.

He met her look unflinchingly. Then his glance fell to little Gordon.

"You trusted me with the boy," said he. "I think you may trust me with the little country cousin--if she will do me the honour."