Instead of the Thorn. Clara Louise Burnham

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СКАЧАТЬ you saying about pigs, Cyrus?" asked Mrs. Radcliffe smartly. "You know it's a tabooed subject in our best families."

      Mr. Radcliffe paid no attention to her in his disturbance. "You know my nephew, Bertram King? He came straight out of college into that bank, and has been there nearly ten years. Barry likes him, and he's had good luck, and I think another year'll see him in the firm. Everybody believes that Barry doesn't go into any big deal unless King approves. I see Bertram quite often. He's over there in that dinner party now: sitting on Harriet's right. You've met my daughter-in-law?"

      "Oh, yes, and King, too. He dined with us last night. Seemed to be a brainy chap."

      "Oh, he's sedate as they make 'em. I often think he's the one that ought to have married Harriet. See Henry sitting between those pink and blue girls, and keeping 'em in a roar? He gets his frivolity from his mother."

      Mrs. Radcliffe drew down the corners of her lips. "Frivolity that captured Harriet Barry, you'll notice. There they go," she added, as the gay young people at the round table pushed back their chairs; "there they go to their dance. Happy young things!" Mrs. Radcliffe sighed. "With all their troubles before them," she added, and the perfunctoriness of the addition made Mr. Lindsay smile.

      "I hope they all weather it as well as you have, Mrs. Radcliffe," he said.

      The host smiled too as they rose from the table.

      "So say we all of us," he remarked. "Let's go and have a game. Do you play nullos, Mrs. Lindsay?"

      "I play everything I can get my hands on," she returned promptly.

      CHAPTER II

      HOT TEA

      Linda Barry was looking in the glass. She liked her own reflection, and no wonder. She was coolly critical of her own appearance, however, and granted it her approval only when her costume and coiffure reached the standard of her own prescription. Whether any one else criticized her was a matter of profound indifference. She had been known in her class in the University as a good fellow, a good sport, carelessly generous, and confident of her own powers, physical and mental.

      Emerson says, if you would have friends you must know how to do without them. Linda Barry was a born leader and took her friends for granted. She never went out of her way to make one. That sort of girl always has some enemies, impotently resenting all that she arrogates to herself and that her admirers grant to her. But such clashes as had taken place left no mark on Linda. Triumphant and careless of triumph, she emerged from college life and asked of an obliging world, "What next?"

      She was looking in the glass now, this Sunday afternoon, because she had been romping with her nephew, aged five, and he had pulled her hat awry.

      She had dropped in for tea at her sister's apartment by the lake. It was two days after the dinner dance, and she was still feeling high approval of Harriet for the way in which she had managed the whole affair.

      Bertram King was sitting opposite her now, holding the panting small boy, whose cheeks were red with exertion, and who chuckled with joy at having won a sudden and tempestuous battle by the simple move of jerking his aunt's hat over her eyes.

      "I beated Aunt Linda. I beated her," he shrieked gayly.

      "Hush, hush, Harry dear," said his mother from the tea-table. "Aunt Linda lets you get too excited."

      Aunt Linda, whose very presence was suggestive of intoxicating rough and tumble to her nephew, winked and nodded at him from the glass.

      "I'll catch you alone some day," she said, with a significance which filled him with ecstatic terror.

      He jumped up and down in the encircling arms.

      "No, you won't, no, you won't!" he shouted. "Uncle Bertram won't let you." The child's active arms caught the ribbon that held his protector's eyeglasses, and jerked them from his nose.

      "Now, Linda, Linda," protested the mother, looking proudly at the lusty youngster, whose rumpled hair and floating tie-ends told of the bout just finished. "Listen, Harry, there's father coming. If I let you take him his tea, will you be very careful?"

      Linda, rehabilitated, turned from the mirror and seated herself near the window.

      "Let him bring me my tea," she said, gazing at the child with eyes that set him again to effervescing with delicious apprehension.

      "No, no, she'll grab me!" yelled the boy, on a yet higher pitch of joy.

      "Linda dear, it's Sunday. Let's have a little quiet," pleaded her sister.

      At this moment, the head of the house entered, and his hopeful broke his bonds and, rushing to meet him, was lifted to a safe perch from which he looked down in rosy triumph on his dearest foe.

      "Hello, everybody," said Henry Radcliffe. "If there isn't the girl that knows everything – including how to dance! You're a bird, Linda. How are you, Bertram?" The men shook hands, then the host approached the tea-table and kissed his wife.

      "Put Harry right down here, dear. He's going to be a little gentleman and pass the tea."

      "But not to Aunt Linda," shouted the child.

      "No, no," agreed his mother pacifically. "You can take her tea to Uncle Bertram, and he'll pass it."

      "Look out, Uncle Bertram, she'll tickle you," advised the boy out of long experience.

      Linda, leaning lazily back in her armchair, met King's gray eyes and gave a low laugh.

      "Just imagine such lèse majesté," she said, and the provoking arch of her lips made Bertram feel, as he always did, that she was laughing at him, not with him. He was too used to it to be disconcerted. He had a serious, even-featured, smooth-shaven face, light hair which would have liked to wave had its owner been willing, and short-sighted eyes, which, nevertheless, saw far enough to understand Linda Barry and deplore her.

      "She'll catch your heels, too, if you go upstairs in front of her," continued the small boy, chuckling breathlessly as he watched his lazily reclining adored one, the sparks in whose eyes gave every hope that she was as ready as ever to spring.

      "That sort of thing isn't good for a child. It overexcites him," remarked Bertram, unsmiling, dangling his eyeglasses by the ribbon.

      "Dear, dear," said Linda. "Excuse me! I meant, Hear, hear!"

      "Now, Harry darling," said Mrs. Radcliffe, "can you be careful? Father will sit between you and Aunt Linda, and don't go the other side of him at all. Do you understand?" Then to her sister, "You know how I value these cups, Linda. Please be good."

      Linda stifled a yawn behind her white-gloved hand and looked very good indeed.

      "Henry and I," went on the hostess complacently, "think we can't begin any too soon to make Harry at home in the drawing-room. Why, already he can stand and drink his cambric tea, and manage his cup as well as any of you, can't you, dear?"

      Harry, finding himself under discussion, ceased smiling and scuffed violently across the rug.

      "That isn't pretty, darling. Now, this is for Uncle Bertram to take to Aunt Linda. Come here. Now, be careful."

      Henry Radcliffe took a seat near his wife's table, and the little boy seized a lettuce sandwich and took a bite of it before he attempted the cup.

      "Oh, СКАЧАТЬ