"Gee!" says I. "I've got a notion to stick around and watch how you come out."

"No, don't," says he. "I--I'll let you know. Yes, honest I will.

Goodnight and--good-by." He kept his word as well as he could, too. The postmark on the card was six A.M.; but I guess it must have been dropped in the box earlier than that. All it says is:

Twenty gallons in the tank, and I'm off at four o'clock. I shall go straight out to sea and then up, up. I've never been much good; but I mean to finish in style. T. T.

Now, what would you say to a batty proposition like that? I couldn't tell whether it was a bluff, or what. And I waits four days before I had the nerve to go and see.

Sister says she ain't seen him since last Monday. And there was no flyer in the shed. n.o.body around the place knew what had become of it, either.

Well, it's been two weeks since I got that postal. What do I think? Say, honest, I don't dare. But at night, when I'm tryin' to get to sleep, I can see Tink, sittin' in between all them wires and things, with the wheel in his hand, and them big eyes of his gazin' down calm and satisfied, down, down, down, and him ready to take that one last dip to the finish. And, say, about then I pull the sheets up over my eyes and shiver.

"Piddie," says I, "you got more sense than you look to have. Anyway, you know when to sidestep the nutty ones, don't you?"

CHAPTER XVIII

GETTING HERMES ON THE BOUNCE

Anybody might of thought, to see me sittin' there in the Ellins lib'ry, leanin' back luxurious in a big red leather chair lookin' over the latest magazines, that I'd been promoted from head office boy to heir apparent or something like that. I expect some kids would have stood on one leg in the front hall and held their breath; but why not make yourself to home when you get the chance? I knew the boss was takin' his time goin' through all them papers I'd brought up, and that when he finished he'd send down word if there was any instructions to go back.

That's how I come to get the benefit of all this mushy conversation that begins to drift out from the next room. First off I couldn't make out whether it was some one havin' a tooth plugged, or if it was a case of a mouse bein' loose at a tea party. Course, the squeals and giggles I could place as comin' from Miss Marjorie Ellins. Maybe you remember about Mr. Robert's heavyweight young sister that wanted to play Juliet once?

But who the other party was I didn't have an idea, except that from the "you-alls" she was usin' I knew she must hail from somewhere south of Baltimore.

Anyway, they seemed to be too much excited to sit down while they talked, and the first thing I knew they'd drifted into the lib'ry, their arms twined around each other in a reg'lar schoolgirl clinch, and the conversation just bubblin' out of 'em free.

Miss Marjorie was all got up cla.s.sy in pink and white, and she sure does look like a wide, corn fed Venus. The other is a slim, willowy young lady with a lot of home grown blond hair, a cute chin dimple, and a pair of big dark eyes with a natural rovin' disposition. And she's hobble skirted to the point where her feet was about as much use as if they'd been tied in a bag.

It was some kind of a long winded story she was tellin' very confidential, with Marjorie supplyin' the exclamation points.

"Really, now, was he, Mildred?" says Marjorie.

"'Deed and 'deedy, he was!" says Mildred. "Positively the handsomest man I ever saw! I thought I could forget him; but I couldn't, Madge, I couldn't! And only think, he is coming this very night, and not a soul knows but just us two!"

"Excuse me," says I; "but I'm Number Three."

"Oh, oh!" they both squeals at once.

"Who--who's that?" whispers Mildred.

"Why it's only Torchy, from Papa's office," says Marjorie. "And oh, Mildred! He is the very one to help us! You will now, won't you, Torchy?

Come, that's a dear!"

"Please do, Torchy!" says Mildred, snugglin' up on the other side and pattin' my red hair soothin'.

"Ah, say, reverse English on the tootsy business!" says I. "This ain't any heart-throb matinee. G'wan!"

"Why, Torchy!" says Marjorie, real coaxin' "I thought we were such good friends!"

"Well, I'm willin' to let it go that far," says I; "but don't try to ring in any folksy strangers. I'm here on business for the firm."

Just then too down comes the maid sayin' there wa'n't anything to go back; so I starts to beat it.

I didn't get far, though, with a hundred and ninety pound young lady blockin' the doorway.

"Torchy, you must help us!" says Marjorie. "There isn't anyone else we can ask. And you're always doing such clever things for Papa and Brother Bob!"

Say, it was a puffy lot of hot air she hands out; but I admit that after two or three more speeches like that, and with her promisin' to square anything Piddie might have to say about not comin' back, she had me goin'.

"Well, what's the proposition?" says I.

"Let's tell him all, so he will understand just what he's to do,"

suggests Marjorie.

And, say, you should have heard them two, with me pinned in between 'em on the couch, givin' me the tale in a sort of chorus, both talkin' to once and beginnin' at diff'rent ends.

"It's such a romance!" squeals Marjorie.

"You see, he's coming to-night," says Mildred, "and n.o.body knows."

"Yes, I got that all down," says I; "but what's the first part? Who is he and where's he from?"

Well, it's some yarn, all right! Seems that Mildred was a boardin'

school chum of Marjorie's who'd come up from Atlanta to spend the summer with friends in Newport. As a wind-up to the season they'd taken her on a yachtin' trip up the coast. Such a poky old trip, too! n.o.body aboard but old married folks that played bridge all the time, and one bald headed bachelor who couldn't sit out in the moonlight with her unless he was wrapped up in a steamer rug.

So what was a girl with eyes like Mildred's to do, anyway? She was bein'

bored to death, when, as luck would have it, something went wrong with the propeller shaft. The yacht was 'way up off the coast of Maine at the time, and the nearest place where it was safe to anchor was in the lee of a barren, d.i.n.ky little island. And they stays there three whole days, while the crew tinkers things up below and the folks yawn their heads off.

All but Millie. She got so desp'rate she rowed ash.o.r.e all by herself.

Accordin' to her description, that must have been a perfectly punk little island. It was all rock, except in a few spots where there was some scrub bushes and mangy gra.s.s. Plunk in the middle was an old shack of a house surrounded by lobster pots and racks of codfish spread out to dry, and she says it was the smelliest scenery she'd ever got real close to.

But Mildred was sore on the yacht and all the stupid folks on it; so she wanders out to windward of the worst smells, plants herself on the flattest rock she can find, and prepares to read. That's her pose when she looks up and discovers this male party with the sun kissed locks and the dreamy eyes standin' there gazin' at her curious.

"It wasn't Adonis that I called him," says Mildred. "Who was that stunning old Greek that we had the bust of in the school library, Madge?"

"Hermes?" says Marjorie.

"That's it!" says Mildred. "He was a perfect Hermes; only his curly hair was all sun bleached, and his face was tanned a lovely brown, and he had big, broad shoulders, and--and he was smoking a pipe."

"And about his eyes!" prompts Marjorie.

"Oh, they were perfectly stunning," says she, "real sea blue."

Well, anybody that ever read a midsummer fiction number could have supplied the next chapters. Here's the lovely city girl, the n.o.ble browed but unsuspectin' native, golden summer days, and no compet.i.tion.

Why, with a catchy t.i.tle and a few mushy pictures it would make a lovely contribution to one of the leadin' thirty-five-centers, just as it stood. And Mildred knew her cue, all right. She trains them front row eyes of hers on him, opens up with a few lines of lively chatter, and inside of half an hour she has him sittin' picturesque at her feet, callin' him Hermes of the Lobster Pots, and otherwise workin' the siren spell.