Part 45

“Forsaking all others, so long as we both shall live,” he said, unsteadily.

“So long as we both shall live,” she repeated.

However she had to take it off later, for Mrs. Wheeler, it developed, had very pronounced ideas of engagement rings. They were put on the day the notices were sent to the newspapers, and not before. So Elizabeth wore her ring around her neck on a white ribbon, inside her camisole, until such time as her father would consent to announce that he was about to lose her.

Thus Elizabeth found her engagement full of unexpected turns and twists, and nothing precisely as she had expected. But she accepted things as they came, being of the type around which the dramas of life are enacted, while remaining totally undramatic herself. She lived her quiet days, worried about Jim on occasion, hemmed table napkins for her linen chest, and slept at night with her ring on her finger and a sense of being wrapped in protecting love that was no longer limited to the white Wheeler house, but now extended two blocks away and around the corner to a shabby old brick building in a more or less shabby yard.

They were very gay in the old brick house that night before the departure, very noisy over the fish and David's broiled lamb chop. Dick demanded a bottle of Lucy's home-made wine, and even David got a little of it. They toasted the seashore, and the departed nurse, and David quoted Robert Burns at some length and in a horrible Scotch accent. Then Dick had a trick by which one read the date on one of three pennies while he was not looking, and he could tell without failing which one it was. It was most mysterious. And after dinner Dick took her into his laboratory, and while she squinted one eye and looked into the finder of his microscope he kissed the white nape of her neck.

When they left the laboratory there were patients in the waiting-room, but he held her in his arms in the office for a moment or two, very quietly, and because the door was thin they made a sort of game of it, and pretended she was a patient.

“How did you sleep last night?” he said, in a highly professional and very distinct voice. Then he kissed her.

“Very badly, doctor,” she said, also very clearly, and whispered, “I lay awake and thought about you, dear.”

“I'd better give you this sleeping powder.” Oh, frightfully professional, but the powder turned out to be another kiss. It was a wonderful game.

When she slipped out into the hall she had to stop and smooth her hair, before she went to Lucy's tidy sitting-room.

XXI

It was Jim Wheeler's turn to take up the shuttle. A girl met in some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the unconscious family indulgence of an only son--and Jim wove his bit and passed on.

There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the spring. Looking out from his quiet windows Walter Wheeler saw the young world going by a-wheel, and going fast. Much that legitimately belonged to it, and much that did not in the laxness of the new code, he laid to the automobile. And doggedly he refused to buy one.

“We can always get a taxicab,” was his imperturbable answer to Jim. “I pay pretty good-sized taxi bills without unpleasant discussion. I know you pretty well too, Jim. Better than you know yourself. And if you had a car, you'd try your best to break your neck in it.”

Now and then Jim got a car, however. Sometimes he rented one, sometimes he cajoled Nina into lending him hers.

“A fellow looks a fool without one,” he would say to her. “Girls expect to be taken out. It's part of the game.”

And Nina, always reached by that argument of how things looked, now and then reluctantly acquiesced. But a night or two after David and Lucy had started for the seashore Nina came in like a whirlwind, and routed the family peace immediately.

“Father,” she said, “you just must speak to Jim. He's taken our car twice at night without asking for it, and last night he broke a spring. Les is simply crazy.”

“Taken your car!” Mrs. Wheeler exclaimed.

“Yes. I hate telling on him, but I spoke to him after the first time, and he did it anyhow.”

Mrs. Wheeler glanced at her husband uneasily. She often felt he was too severe with Jim.

“Don't worry,” he said grimly. “He'll not do it again.”

“If we only had a car of our own--” Mrs. Wheeler protested.

“You know what I think about that, mother. I'm not going to have him joy-riding over the country, breaking his neck and getting into trouble. I've seen him driving Wallace Sayre's car, and he drives like a fool or a madman.”

It was an old dispute and a bitter one. Mr. Wheeler got up, whistled for the dog, and went out. His wife turned on Nina.

“I wish you wouldn't bring these things to your father, Nina,” she said. “He's been very nervous lately, and he isn't always fair to Jim.”

“Well, it's time Jim was fair to Leslie,” Nina said, with family frankness. “I'll tell you something, mother. Jim has a girl somewhere, in town probably. He takes her driving. I found a glove in the car. And he must be crazy about her, or he'd never do what he's done.”

“Do you know who it is?”