Part 38

"What do you hear of that man Huntington?" he asked, as indifferently as a man is ever able to ask a question which means much to him.

"Huntington? Why, the last was that he was improving a little, I believe. Arizona is a great place for that sort of thing."

"Good deal of a sacrifice for her people to go with her way out there."

"She couldn't leave them behind. Father half-blind--mother a cripple. I understand that Arizona air is bracing them, too."

"The fellow's own mother was one of the party, wasn't she?"

"I believe so. He's all she has."

"I don't see, with all those people to chaperon her, why she couldn't have gone along with him without marrying him," observed Lockwood in a gruff tone.

Anthony smiled. "That would have been a Tantalus draught indeed," he remarked. "I imagine poor Huntington will need all the concessions he can get if he keeps on breathing even Arizona air."

"Anthony," said Lockwood, after a silence of some minutes, during which he had puffed away with his eyes intent on the fire, "do you fancy Rachel Redding cared enough for that man to immolate herself like that?"

"Looks very much like it."

"I know it looks like it; but if I read that girl right she was the sort to stick to anything she'd said she'd do, if it took the breath out of her body. How long had she known him--any idea?"

"A good while, I believe."

"I thought so. Early engagement, you see--ought never to have stood."

"If you'd been Huntington you'd probably have had the unreasonable notion that it should."

"She's a magnificent girl," said Lockwood, blowing a great volume of smoke into the air with head elevated and half-shut eyes. "She made those two who were here with her last summer seem like thirty cents beside her. Nice girls, too--fine girls--elegant dressers; I don't know what the matter was. Neither did they." He chuckled a little. "They couldn't believe their own eyes when they saw three of us going daft over a girl they wouldn't have staked a copper on in a free-for-all with themselves. They took it gamely, I'll say that for them. Marie won't have me back."

"I don't blame her."

"Neither do I. Haven't got to the want-to-be-taken-back stage--sometimes think I never shall. One experience like that spoils a man for the average girl. The truth is, Tony, the most of them--er--overdo the meet-you-half-way act. I want a girl to keep me guessing till the last minute."

"Tell that to the girl," advised Anthony.

"I wish I could. Yet there were a good many times when I thought if Rachel Redding would just look my way I shouldn't take it ill of her. I wonder if she'd have been like that if she hadn't been engaged to another fellow."

"Probably." Anthony got up and stretched himself. He was growing weary of other men's confidences.

"You're right she would. She's built that way. Yet when you get to fancying what she'd be if she just let herself go and show she cared----"

"Look here, my young friend," said Anthony, "I advise you to go home and go to bed. Sitting here dreaming over Mrs. Alexander Huntington isn't good for you. What you want to be doing is to forget her. Huntington's going to get well, and they're going to live happily ever after, and you fellows out here can look up other girls. Plenty of 'em. Only, for the love of heaven, see if you can avoid all setting your affections on the same girl next time. It's too rough on your friends!"

XXII.--ROGER BARNES PROVES INVALUABLE

Time went swinging on, and by and by it came to be Tony Robeson, Junior's, second Christmas day. He rode down to breakfast on his father's shoulder, crowing loudly on a gorgeous brown and scarlet rooster, which he had found on his Christmas tree the evening before. He had been put to bed immediately thereafter and had gone to sleep with the rooster in his arms. The fowl had a charmingly realistic crow, operated by a pneumatic device upon which the baby had promptly learned to blow. He performed upon it uninterruptedly throughout breakfast.

"See here, my son," said Anthony, hurriedly finishing his coffee, "let's see if you can't appreciate some of your less voiceful toys. Here's a rabbit with fine soft ears for you to pull. There's a train of cars. Let me wind it for you. Your Grandfather Marcy must have expended several good dollars on that--you want to show up an interest in it when he comes out to see you to-day. And here's Auntie Dingley's pickaninny boy-doll--well, I don't blame you for failing to embrace that. Auntie Dingley was born in Massachusetts."

The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr. Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster's shrill salute.

"Remember, Tony," Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, "you are not to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half so much as for making the home complete. If--if--you cared to give me something toward the bathroom fund----"

"All right," said Anthony promptly, for he had learned by this time to know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished, had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and there was a growing fund therefor.