"Oh!" he said.
Steve was damped, but resumed gamely:
"Say, boss, this is the greatest kid on earth. I'm not stringing you,
honest. He's a wonder. On the level, did you ever see a kid that age
with a pair of shoulders on him like what this kid's got? Say, squire,
what's the matter with calling the fight off and starting fair? Miss
Ruth would be tickled to death if you would. Can the rough stuff,
colonel. I know you think you've been given a raw deal, Kirk chipping
in like that and copping off Miss Ruth, but for the love of Mike, what
does it matter? You seen for yourself what a dandy kid this is. Well,
then, check your grouch with your hat. Do the square thing. Have out
the auto and come right round to the studio and make it up. What's
wrong with that, colonel? Honest, they'd be tickled clean through."
At this point Keggs entered, followed by a footman carrying wooden
bricks.
"Keggs," said Mr. Bannister, "telephone for the automobile at once!"
"That's the talk, colonel," cried Steve joyfully. "I know you were a
sport."
"......to take me down to Wall Street."
Keggs bowed.
"Oh Keggs," said Mr. Bannister, as he turned to leave.
"Sir?"
"Another thing. See that Dingle does not enter the house again."
And Mr. Bannister resumed his writing, while Steve, gathering up the
wheelbarrow, the box of bricks, and the dying pig, took William by the
hand and retreated.
* * * * *
That terminated Ruth's attempts to conciliate her father.
There remained Bailey. From Bailey she was prepared to stand no
nonsense. Meeting him on the street, she fairly kidnapped him, driving
him into a taxicab and pushing him into the studio, where he was
confronted by his nephew.
Bailey came poorly through the ordeal. William Bannister, a stern
critic, weighed him up in one long stare, found him wanting, and
announced his decision with all the strength of powerful lungs. In the
end he had to be removed, hiccupping, and Bailey, after lingering a few
uneasy moments making conversation to Kirk, departed, with such a look
about the back of him as he sprang into his cab that Ruth felt that the
visit was one which would not be repeated.
She went back into the studio with a rather heavy heart. She was fond
of Bailey.
The sight of Kirk restored her. After all, what had happened was only
what she had expected. She had chosen her path, and she did not regret
it.
Chapter X An Interlude of Peace
Two events of importance in the small world which centred round William
B. Winfield occurred at about this time. The first was the entrance of
Mamie, the second the exit of Mrs. Porter.
Mamie was the last of a series of nurses who came and went in somewhat
rapid succession during the early years of the White Hope's life. She
was introduced by Steve, who, it seemed, had known her since she was a
child. She was the nineteen-year-old daughter of a compositor on one of
the morning papers, a little, mouselike thing, with tiny hands and
feet, a soft voice, and eyes that took up far more than their fair
share of her face.
She had had no professional experience as a nursery-maid; but, as Steve
pointed out, the fact that, in the absence of her mother, who had died
some years previously, she had had sole charge of three small brothers
at the age when small brothers are least easily handled, and had
steered them through to the office-boy age without mishap, put her
extremely high in the class of gifted amateurs. Mamie was accordingly
given a trial, and survived it triumphantly. William Bannister, that
discerning youth, took to her at once. Kirk liked the neat way she
moved about the studio, his heart being still sore at the performance
of one of her predecessors, who had upset and put a substantial foot
through his masterpiece, that same "Ariadne in Naxos" which Lora Delane
Porter had criticised on the occasion of her first visit to the studio.
Ruth, for her part, was delighted with Mamie.
As for Steve, though as an outside member of the firm he cannot be
considered to count, he had long ago made up his mind about her. Some
time before, when he had found it impossible for him to be in her
presence, still less to converse with her, without experiencing a warm,
clammy, shooting sensation and a feeling of general weakness similar to
that which follows a well-directed blow at the solar plexus, he had
come to the conclusion that he must be in love. The furious jealousy
which assailed him on seeing her embraced by and embracing a stout
person old enough to be her father convinced him of this.
The discovery that the stout man actually was her father's brother
relieved his mind to a certain extent, but the episode left him shaken.
He made up his mind to propose at once and get it over. When Mamie
joined the garrison of No. 90 a year later the dashing feat was still
unperformed. There was that about Mamie which unmanned Steve. She was
so small and dainty that the ruggedness which had once been his pride
seemed to him, when he thought of her, an insuperable defect. The
conviction that he was a roughneck deepened in him and tied his tongue.
The defection of Mrs. Porter was a gradual affair. From a very early
period in the new regime she had been dissatisfied. Accustomed to rule,
she found herself in an unexpectedly minor position. She had definite
views on the hygienic upbringing of children, and these she imparted to
Ruth, who listened pleasantly, smiled, and ignored them.
Mrs. Porter was not used to such treatment. She found Ruth considerably
less malleable than she had been before marriage, and she resented the
change.
Kirk, coming in one afternoon, found Ruth laughing.
"It's only Aunt Lora," she said. "She will come in and lecture me on
how to raise babies. She's crazy about microbes. It's the new idea.
Sterilization, and all that. She thinks that everything a child touches
ought to be sterilized first to kill the germs. Bill's running awful
risks being allowed to play about the studio like this."
Kirk looked at his son and heir, who was submitting at that moment to
be bathed. He was standing up. It was a peculiarity of his that he
refused to sit down in a bath, being apparently under the impression,
when asked to do so, that there was a conspiracy afoot to drown him.
"I don't see how the kid could be much fitter."
"It's not so much what he is now. She is worrying about what might
happen to him. She can talk about bacilli till your flesh creeps.
Honestly, if Bill ever did get really ill, I believe Aunt Lora could
talk me round to her views about them in a minute. It's only the fact
that he is so splendidly well that makes it seem so absurd."
Kirk laughed.
"It's all very well to laugh. You haven't heard her. I've caught myself
wavering a dozen times. Do you know, she says a child ought not to be
kissed?"
"It has struck me," said Kirk meditatively, "that your Aunt Lora, if I
may make the suggestion, is the least bit of what Steve would call a
shy-dome. Is there anything else she had mentioned?'
"Hundreds of things. Bill ought to be kept in a properly sterilized
nursery, with sterilized toys and sterilized everything, and the
temperature ought to be just so high and no higher, and just so low and
no lower. Get her to talk about it to you. She makes you wonder why
everybody is not dead."
"This is a new development, surely? Has she ever broken out in this