The Red Book Magazine/Volume 36/Number 6/Poor Dear Papa

by Meredith Nicholson

 

POOR
DEAR PAPA

By
MEREDITH NICHOLSON

Illustrated by
NANCY FAY

“You shouldn't mix your business with your social life,” Mrs. Busby admonished. “It's undignified and unbecoming.”

“I'VE taken the Corning house—rented it for a year,” remarked Mr. Busby without looking up from the afternoon paper he was reading.

Coming in from a tea at the house of the president of the near-by college, Mrs. Busby had found her husband established in his accustomed chair on the veranda. He usually didn't reach home until after six, and as it was only half-past five she thought he might be ill. His immunity from illnesses was one of Mark Busby's irritating peculiarities. He was not ill now; Mrs. Busby satisfied herself that he had never looked better.

“Mark!” she exclaimed in the tremulous tone of one who has heard something too good to be true. “I thought you said you'd never leave Rivington.”

“Said it frequently—changed my mind!”

“It's perfectly wonderful! You've no idea what it will mean to the children, to all of us! I've told you for the last ten years that we've outgrown Rivington. It's stifling, narrow and bigoted. And no suburb is quite the same as the city. The children have felt the discrimination, and right now is the most important time for them.

“Snobbery's based largely on geography,” muttered Mr. Busby, refolding the newspaper without looking up.

“What did you say, Mark?”

“Nothing, nothing of importance. I was just thinking how large a part geography plays in the life of the world. It's quite astonishing, when you come to think of it.”

Mr. Busby did not often venture into the realm of philosophy; and his wife—who held interesting if not important opinions on many subjects, and delivered addresses fluently and with ease before all manner of leagues and federations—was surprised at her spouse's departure from his usual terse statements, that were as lacking in literary graces as a cipher telegram. Her friends frequently remarked that Mrs. Busby should have married a politician, for she would have been of great assistance to a man of spirit and ambition, and with any kind of material to work on would have attained the White House. Mark Busby was far from being presidential timber. It was an enormous irony that one so shrinking, so depressed by the mere threat of any form of social entertainment, should possess or be possessed by a wife who found stimulus and delight in all manner of groupings and combinations of the human kind.

“Why are the Cornings giving up their home?” Mrs. Busby inquired. She was vastly excited by her husband's announcement, but afraid to let him know the degree of her delight and satisfaction. If he had told her he had purchased a white elephant on which to disport himself in the quiet village on Sunday afternoons, she would not have been more surprised than by his unexpected announcement that they were to transfer themselves to the Corning property.

“Couldn't afford it, I guess,” he answered dryly. “Excuse is, now that Mary's married, they don't need so much room; moving into the Shepard Apartments.”

“I thought they had no end of money. You can hardly realize, Mark, what prestige this will give us; and the girls just coming on and all. They have no chance here in Rivington. And some of the girls at Miss Trimble's school they knew best live right around the Cornings. Everybody that is anybody lives up there beyond the creek. It will be like stepping into a new world. They must want a big rental for the place,” she added, pleadingly.

“Yep,” remarked Busby calmly. “I'm paying five thousand dollars cash for twelve months' use of the house as it stands—furniture, garage, three automobiles, everything.”

He ended with a sweeping gesture of his right hand. It seemed incongruous, the gesture. He was little given to gesturing. A small, lean man, he was abstemious of physical exertion of every kind, except that he walked whenever it was possible, his method of locomotion being an absurd jerky impulsion of the body.

“And I hope, Mark, that you have taken an option to buy if we like it?” she asked timidly.

Usually she didn't address him timidly.

“Nope, nothing like that,” he replied, without abating his mystifying composure.

“You will sell this house, of course?” she inquired, resolved now that the goal of her ambition was in sight the place that had known her should know her no more.

“Already sold it,” he answered, and tossed aside the newspaper and yawned quite openly. Usually his yawns enraged her; they were a part of his ritual of rejection and denial. That he had, without consulting her, sold the big, comfortable house with its half-acre of lawn and the maples and elms he had himself planted, and the garden in which he enjoyed puttering, passed all belief.

“We've been very happy here,” she remarked wistfully. “Much as I feel that our duty to the children demands a change, it will be a wrench to give up the place.”

“Too late for the wrench now. You've been wanting to go for the last ten years, and you can begin to pack as soon as you like. The Cornings are moving now.”

“How much did you get for the house, Mark?”

“Thirty thousand, cash.”

The reply was given indifferently, carelessly, as though thirty thousand dollars was a negligible sum, and her wonder grew.

“Of course, you can invest it to advantage,” she ventured. It flashed through her mind that perhaps the interest on thirty thousand dollars would pay the rent of the Corning house, but a quick calculation disproved this. She was disturbed. Perhaps his mind was shattered; brooding, silent people did sometimes lose their minds; but he was more tranquil, more assured than she remembered to have seen him in years.

“Not going to invest it,” came the astounding answer. “Sold everything I had—not much, but we're going to spend it—blow it all in!”

“Why, Mark, do you think it wise?” exclaimed Mrs. Busby aghast.

“Going to find out whether it's wise or not,” he replied placidly. Something like an amused smile played about his thin lips, but it was too elusive and fleeting for analysis. “For years you've wanted to move, to bring the children in touch with the society swells in town. It's been your idea to marry the girls off where it will count for something. I suppose it will be better for Wendell too.”

“It will open a new world to all the children,” declared Mrs. Busby, “but more particularly I am interested in the effect of the change in Olivia. Olivia will be obliged to give up the absurd idea of devoting herself to business. It would be wholly inconsistent with our new life for her to keep on in your office. I hope you will be firm with her, Mark. I've never been able to mold her as I've molded the other girls, but now I shall count on your support. It would never do for her to continue as a clerk in your office when we're moving up there among people who wouldn't understand it”

“I haven't got any office; I've sold the business,” he interposed.

“You've sold out! You're retiring!”

“Certainly; tired—going to loaf awhile, join the rest of you in a life of leisure.”

Illustration: In the matter of remodeling a hat Olivia was almost uncannily expert.

He did not say it wearily, but rather with a mild jubilation. The news that he had retired from business was even more astounding than the announcement that they were to turn their backs upon Rivington. Mrs. Busby hungered for details. He had conducted, since before their marriage, a real estate and insurance agency on the second floor of an old business block. It had expanded from time to time, but to the outward eye it was far from flourishing. Before trust companies began absorbing such functions, Busby had frequently been appointed administrator of decedents' estates: and he was recognized as a man of probity who could be trusted to administer the affairs of widows and orphans for the best interest of the beneficiaries. In addition to these fiduciary employments, he lent money on mortgages for a number of nonresident clients and had never lost a cent of their money. His judgment on real-estate values was sought by men of his own generation who wanted conservative opinions. The younger element scoffed at him, holding that he was a back number, a dead one, who had watched the growth of the city from seventy-five to three hundred thousand without being infected with the spirit of progress. At forty, age had already set its seal upon him; and at fifty his habitual harassed, dispirited air caused him to be referred to generally as Old Mark Busby.

MRS. BUSBY shared a prevailing idea that he was very rich but that he had mastered the fine art of concealing his wealth in non-taxables. From the time the education of the children brought the first tilt between Mark and his wife Heloise,—he wanted them to attend the public schools, and she set her face sternly against this—he had fought the mounting family expenditures. The daughters of the horse-leech were not more insatiable in their cry of “Give, Give!” than Mrs. Busby, Constance, Portia and Wendell.

Olivia was different. “She's her father's child,” Mrs. Busby would remark with a despairing sigh; but there was no manner of resemblance between Olivia and her father except that she inherited his passion for industry, and like him, hated rows.

A born democrat, Olivia deliberately chose the manner and means of education paid for out of the public funds, graduating from the Manual Training School with special honors.

With her own hands she could produce an edible pie or a smart gown, and in the matter of remodeling a hat was almost uncannily expert. Her genius in such particulars made hard sledding for Mrs. Busby and the other girls when it came to monthly bills. It was manifestly unfair that a girl blessed with a busy, ambitious mother and two leisure-loving sisters should be endowed with talents so calculated to invite invidious comparisons in the paternal mind. Olivia was a touchy subject in all the Busby parental conferences. In his quite undemonstrative way Mark worshiped Olivia. Her imperfections, disclosed and pointed out from time to time, her differentiation from the rest of the children, only strengthened his adoration. Olivia whistled, hummed, sang, faced the world joyfully. Old people in Rivington hung about their gates at times when Olivia might be expected to pass; her smile was a tonic, an inspiration to the weary and oppressed.

“I hope,” ventured Mrs. Busby, a trifle tremulously, “that you've done what I've wanted you to do for years, incorporated your business; I've always hoped to see you the president of the Busby Trust Company. If you'd done this five years ago when I urged you to do it, and the Fielding Company wanted to take you in, you'd have shared all their prosperity. I hope, Mark, you haven't thrown the business away. Sometimes I think you've let more good chances go by than any other man in the world.”

He had heard this stimulating remark frequently through many years, but he did not sigh now as he usually had.

“Didn't give it away—traded it to Olivia for the farm her Aunt Sarah gave her. Always wanted a farm. Passed the papers yesterday—Olivia's twenty-first birthday; all strictly legal.”

“Mark!” gasped Mrs. Busby.

That Aunt Sarah had seen fit to devise and bequeath to Olivia a two-hundred-acre farm, ignoring the rest of the children and giving the balance of her property to an orphan asylum, had been a serious blow to Mrs. Busby. To be sure, it was Mrs. Busby's own aunt who had done this grievous thing. But to treat her with respect and occasionally make over one of her superannuated gowns, as Olivia had done, when no regular dress-maker would bother with it—this manifestly did not justify the bequest of two hundred acres of valuable land that grew wheat and corn of tangible value, and lay along the river where some new spurt of the city was bound to increase its value enormously.

“Then,” demanded Mrs. Busby faintly, “you mean Olivia is going to carry on the business! Now, Mark, you know I never like to complain, but you really should not have done this without consulting me! It will be a reflection on you and all of us if she hangs back when we're taking this important step.”

“She didn't have to make the trade. I was going to sell, anyhow. I always thought I'd like to have a farm. My books will show that she didn't get the best of the deal. Put one over on Olivia, I guess.”

The thought of putting something over on Olivia caused him to smile again, his odd, inscrutable smile.

PORTIA, Constance and Wendell arrived from a suburban tennis tournament and heard the glad tidings that they were to move. They expressed their delight guardedly, but the glance that passed between them was charged with satisfaction that at last their father had overcome his miserliness. They saw freedom ahead. It was in their minds that if their silent father, who had been a check on their ambitions for years, felt able to rent a house like the Corning establishment, he must be not merely well to do, as they had believed, but rich indeed.

“It's not far from the Corning house to the Woodstock Club, and being so handy, we can use the Club a lot,” remarked Constance, whose expertness at tennis brought her frequently into the newspapers. “I've always wanted to belong to Woodstock.”

“You're going to,” remarked Busby calmly.

“Oh, Father!” they chorused jubilantly.

It occurred to Mrs. Busby that her husband's rebirth into an existence so marked by generosity called for a display of magnanimity on the part of his family; so she said impressively:

“Of course, now that we're going out where the Woodstock is so accessible, we wont need to go away at all this summer.”

Busby nodded his appreciation of this concession. The question of where his wife and children should go for the heated term had been a matter of fierce contention every spring.

“I hope,” exclaimed Mrs. Busby, “that you children appreciate what your dear papa is doing for you. If we'd searched the town, we couldn't have picked a place better suited to our needs than the Corning house. We shall have the Bartons on the south and the Erskines on the north. They are rather new, but they've been taken up by the nicest people.”

“I met Billy Erskine at the Ripleys' party; Billy's ever so nice, and a wonderful dancer,” remarked Portia dreamily.

“Billy's all right,” Wendell affirmed. “His father's got a big wad, all right. And the Bartons have scads of money. It's going to keep us humping to make the grade with that bunch.”

Mrs. Busby frowned at her son. Nothing could have been more unfortunate than his intimation that heavy appropriations would be necessary to sustain the Busbys on the high level of their prospective neighbors. And Wendell was hardly in a position to speak in large terms of family expenditures. Dropped from college in his sophomore year, his attempt to make himself useful in his father's office had been a gloomy failure. He had held a job as demonstrator for an automobile agent until he smashed a car belonging to his employer—a deplorable circumstance, as the calamity befell him while he was on his way to a ball-game with a young lady employed as cashier in a motion-picture theater, who could not possibly have been viewed in the light of a potential purchaser. Wendell's mother had believed him to be endowed with musical genius and he had been the victim of considerably expensive instruction on the violin, but his soul expressed itself much more felicitously through the medium of the banjo and trap-drum. Reduced to the simplest symbols, Wendell's worthlessness might be set down as A-1-plus.

Busby did not flinch at his son's remark, which ordinarily would have evoked from him a depressing warning against waste and extravagance.

“Soon as we get moved, I'm going to take up golf.” Busby's tone was almost jaunty. “Conny, I guess you and Wendell can give me a start.”

Mrs. Busby seized the moment to disclose the great secret that their father had retired from business.

“Poor dear Papa! he's worked so hard for you children all these years, but he's wise enough to stop now and enjoy the fruits of his labor.”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” said Busby, lifting his feet to the veranda rail. “That's what we're going to spend the coming year, not a cent more.”

Mrs. Busby's heart bounded. Eighteen thousand had been last year's budget, and this minimum had been attained only after a furious battles. It was now as plain as daylight that her husband had been preaching frugality for years, merely to conceal his affluence. Fifty thousand dollars would carry them far; and if he could provide so stupendous a sum for one year, an even larger amount might be forthcoming later on.

“You've all been naggin' me for money and more money" Busby continued, “and when I've talked economy, you've thought me hard and niggardly. It's all I've got—proceeds of sale of this house and some other odds and ends. I want you to sail as high as you can go on fifty thousand. I only caution you to make it last the year out. We don't want to be stranded in that fine house with nothing to eat and the sheriff sitting on the doorstep. It wouldn't look well.”

The children laughed immoderately. Mrs. Busby smiled in a superior way as though this were only a whim on their father's part.

“Expect all you children to marry into the nobility,” he said, almost gayly. “You're going up there where money comes and goes easy. Your ma has high ambitions for you. I don't want you to disappoint her.”

Olivia came running up the steps and interrupted the discussion.

“Isn't it wonderful that we're going to move!” cried Constance. “But of course, Papa told you.”

“Think it's fine,” Olivia assented, seating herself on the rail. She was aware of a guarded, hostile look from her mother.

“We must all show ourselves worthy of this great opportunity,” said Mrs. Busby, a remark of which Olivia knew herself to be the target.

“We ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we don't,” Olivia agreed. Supper was announced.

BUSBY yielded himself to the comforts and joys of the new home with the nearest approach to enthusiasm his children had ever seen him manifest. He set himself with dogged determination to master golf, and clad in the knickerbockers Wendell had counseled him to purchase, was on the Woodstock links every morning. The transition of the family from Rivington to the new fashionable quarter of the city made something of a splash. The society columns gazetted it, and people talked about it in a manner that afforded Mrs. Busby the keenest satisfaction. Gossip attributed to Busby a large fortune, heretofore concealed in the academic shades of Rivington. His banker, passing him on the golf-links, was puzzled that a customer whose transactions had never attained importance should suddenly drop his business and give wide advertisement to an undreamed of prosperity

“Billy Erskine seems greatly taken with Portia,” Mrs. Busby remarked to her husband when they had been established in the Corning house for a month. “And Wendell and Dorothy Erskine are together most of the time. The Erskines seem very nice.”

“Yep; no objections to the Erskines,” Busby agreed

“Mr. Erskine is very unassuming, considering his wealth.”

“Yep; doesn't put on any airs with me.”

“And of course, if Portia and Wendell both....”

“Both marry into the Erskine family, you'd be tickled to death. Don't think I'm going to object; it's all right with me.”

“You've met young Tom Gaylord, I think, Mark. He's coming to the house a good deal, and of course it's Constance that he's interested in. I don't know that he's wholly desirable, but of course, the family is one of the oldest in the city.”

“Makes a heap o' difference,” Busby mumbled. “Bob Gaylord, that boy's father, has lived on his grandfather's reputation for the last thirty years.”

“I suppose they're really not rich, as such things go—”

“Hardly say so. Bob sold off most of the property he inherited—lived it up; boy seems nice chap; nothing against the boy except he's a loafer; never did a day's work in his life.”

“He's the State tennis champion, you know; that makes a strong tie between him and Constance.”

Illustration: “There's Jimmy Raymond,” Olivia said. “I'd be ashamed not to ask Jimmy when we're giving such a big party.”

“If the boy's a tennis champion, he shows a lot more energy than his father ever did.'

“It's been a dream of mine for years,” Mrs. Busby went on speciously, “that one of our children should marry into one of the pioneer families. It's remarkable how much stress is laid on ancestry in the West these days. It's too bad our forebears didn't settle in Indiana earlier.”

“Fooled away a couple of generations in Ohio. Big mistake, but we can't do anything about it now.”

“I have a sentiment about such things, Mark. If Constance and Tom....”

“No objection to the sentiment, no objection to the boy.”

“If one of the girls should choose a poor man for a husband where there are compensations....”

“Let 'em live on the compensations,” Busby replied musingly.

“I suppose Olivia's bound to marry to suit herself. I'm not troubling myself about her.”

“I wouldn't—strong nature; if Olivia ever starts to make a fool marriage, there wont be any heading her off.”

Busby was a changed man, and in nothing was the change so marked as in his refusal to trouble his head with matters of domestic finance. Every month, without the slightest ado, he deposited to the credit of his wife Heloise the sum of four thousand one hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents. The ease with which this sum was forthcoming caused Mrs. Busby, Portia, Constance and Wendell to raise their estimate of the family wealth. They decided that it was likely that their father had amassed a fortune of at least two millions.

The children's allowances were apportioned by Mrs. Busby, not without fierce contests, which were kept carefully from the paternal ear. The mother stoutly refused to heed the demand of Portia, Constance and Wendell that Olivia, having an income of her own, should receive less from the family purse than her brother and sisters. To discriminate against Olivia would be sure to arouse their father's ire, she pointed out. Olivia and her father were too close, too deeply in each other's confidence, for the rest of the household to risk his displeasure. So Olivia' received her mother's monthly check for one hundred and fifty dollars, the amount granted to the other girls and Wendell.

Anyone might have thought that Mark Busby hated money, from his manifestations of annoyance whenever the word or any of its synonyms were used in his presence.

“Mark, dear, I don't like to bother you about these trifles when you're enjoying your rest, but about our contributions to charities and things like that....”

“Do as you please about 'em. You're the boss. Anything you give away comes out of your fifty thousand; remember that.”

“Certainly, Mark, I only thought that I'd like you to know what we're giving to good causes. Mrs. Redding came to see me yesterday about the endowment for the Colored Orphans' Refuge. They want to start their campaign with fifty one-thousand-dollar subscriptions. You know the position the Reddings hold here, and I thought it quite nice of her to give us the opportunity to show our interest in the city's philanthropies. Of course, I'll make the subscription in your name.”

“No, you don't! Giving your own money—put down your own name. You don't need to ask me what to give away.”

DEEPLY tanned by his daily round of golf, Busby, to all appearances, was enjoying himself hugely. After a few weeks of devotion, Portia, Constance and Wendell became too busy to trouble themselves about him; and Mrs. Busby, deeply engaged with the management of the big house and the firm planting of her social foundations, had no time for him. Nevertheless, he found himself the object of considerable flattering attention. People who had known him for years modified their opinion of him. Those who had seen in him only a shabby, uninteresting figure now found him delightfully quaint. People he had never known before sought him on the veranda of the Woodstock to solicit his advice about their investments. He made himself agreeable to all his new acquaintances, and among these was his neighbor Erskine.

Erskine had moved to the city from an up-State town where he had successfully operated a canning factory. Erskine, like Busby, was a tyro at golf, and it was at his suggestion that they played frequently together.

“How do you like loafing?” Erskine asked one day. “You and I have worked hard all our lives.”

“Enjoying it—got to a place where I thought I'd rest a little,” Busby answered.

“Well, sir, that's just my case. My family teased me into getting away from Fairport so they could see how things are done in large cities, and I thought I'd humor 'em.”

“Got to please our families. That's what we're here for.”

“You know the run of things here in the city. What do you think of Sedgwick Motor bonds?”

“Don't think anything about 'em at all; never had any money in industrials.”

“You don't say!” Erskine exclaimed. “Somebody told me you held a big block of bonds.”

“Guess you can hear I own most anything,” Busby remarked absently, concentrating on the negotiation of a difficult putt.

“Just between ourselves,” said Erskine, “I'm a little bit short of ready cash right now. I know you used to have money to lend. I put a mortgage on my house when I bought it, and I've got a payment coming due next week that's going to crowd me a little. I can put up some life-insurance policies as collateral.”

“Haven't any money to lend. Out of business,” Busby answered in a manner that closed the discussion.

When Barton, his other neighbor, called to give him a chance to invest in the stock of an oil company he was organizing, more for the value of his name than anything else, he said, Busby was so amused that he was obliged to take a long walk that he might indulge in quiet laughter.

In the excitement of their new existence, the other Busby children gave little heed to Olivia. She had chosen for herself a room on the third floor of the new home. and came and went from the office with the regularity of the old Rivington days.

With a despairing sigh, Mrs. Busby spoke of Olivia to their new acquaintances as a child who simply would have her own way. It was ridiculous, of course, that she should insist on a business career, but no doubt she would soon get tired of it. Busby made a point of keeping away from his former office, which, within three months after he had turned it over to Olivia, was so completely transformed that it was hardly recognized by old patrons. Writing fire insurance did not interest Olivia particularly, and leaving this to her assistants, she was developing the real-estate end of the business and had added to the sign on the windows: Investment Securities.

“I hope you understand, Olivia,“ her mother said in the privacy of Olivia's room, “that I have no wish to influence you or your sisters in your choice of husbands.”

“Yes, Mamma,” replied Olivia, who understood nothing of the kind.

“But it has seemed to me that with your strong practical side, you would be better appreciated by some man older than yourself, some one who would find in you a sympathetic and helpful counselor.”

“Is that why you're inviting Mr. Billingsly to the house so much?” laughed Olivia. “I serve notice right now that I'm against all widowers.”

Illustration: Busby was so amused that he was obliged to take a long walk that he might indulge in quiet laughter.

“He's deeply interested in you, and realizes your worth as no younger man can, and he's of an old family—a founder of the Pioneer Club; and it's not against him that he's one of the richest men in the city.”

“Nothing doing!” said Olivia cheerfully. “I'm much obliged to you though, Mamma, for giving me a chance to get acquainted with him. We've just made a sale for him at our office that brought in a five-hundred-dollar commission.”

“You shouldn't mix your business with your social life,” Mrs. Busby admonished. “It's undignified and unbecoming.”

“I don't see why it isn't perfectly proper,” said Olivia good-naturedly, “if you can pick up a little money between dates, so to speak. It adds a lot to the joy of a party.”

Olivia was not without attentions from young men. She was slender, dark, with the blackest of hair brushed straight across from her forehead, her charm lay in her alertness, the impression that she gave of being thoroughly alive. Her smile was a social and business asset; it was one of those smiles that gains value from its way of flashing at you unexpectedly. It was notable that she spoke to more people at a large function than any other girl. In her own fashion Olivia was getting as much [out of] the change as her sisters and Wendell, though with a difference. Meeting the mayor on the broad veranda of the Woodstock, she wheedled him into promising the immediate repair of (illegible text) streets where property she managed for absentee owners was difficult to rent.

“When a girl smiles at you like that, you've got to do the thing,” said the mayor to his street commissioner, and the necessary repairs were made.

So many more people were staying in town than was usual, Mrs. Busby decided to give a party. To provide the (illegible text) setting for this function, she announced that it would be at the the Woodstock. It was in preparing the invitation list she encountered the first serious obstacle in the readjustment of the family in their new state of affluence.

“This will be an event of great importance to all of us,” she declared impressively, “and we want to be very careful not to include any undesirables. It would be my idea not to ask any of the old Rivington circle, even our dearest friends there, for we can entertain them in some other way.”

“Right!” ejaculated Busby. “Wait and ask 'em to a funeral.”

Wendell nearly choked to death over this manifestation of his father's wit.

“I shall expect you all to coöperate with me,” Mrs. Busby continued, “to the end that this may be a brilliant affair; and of course, a party at this season will attract more attention than it would in the middle of the winter, when there is so much going on.”

In spite of her mother's warning Olivia submitted a list of names which was immediately challenged.

“I thought you understood, dear, that were not going to try to mix social elements. Some of the people you suggest I don't know at all. Our purpose in moving up here was to know the nice people. You don't seem to grasp the idea.”

“Some of those people are customers of mine and perfectly respectable people,” said Olivia. “And there's Jimmy Raymond. I'd be ashamed not to ask Jimmy when we're giving such a big party; he'd feel I had deliberately left him out. Jimmy's poor, of course, but he's very nice and awfully amusing.”

“The poor idiot works, doesn't he?” demanded Busby. “You want to be careful about inviting anybody that works. It isn't respectable to work.”

“You will remember, Mark, that I predicted just this sort of thing when you insisted on letting Olivia go to the Manual Training High School.”

“Oh, I didn't see so much of Jimmy there, because he finished the year I entered,” Olivia protested.

“Boilermaker, or something like that, isn't he?” asked Wendell.

“No doubt he has made boilers,” Olivia replied, “and you may be sure they were good ones; but he's a real genius. I think we're going to hear from Jimmy.”

A few days later the discussion of Jimmy's availability was resumed in the presence of all the Busbys. Contrary to her usual custom, it was Olivia who took the initiative.

“About a card for Jimmy Raymond, Mamma. You're sending him one, I hope.”

“I'm sorry, Olivia, that you've referred to that again. I had assumed that you would defer to my wishes about that young man. We are asking all the other people you suggested.”

“I appreciate that, but either Jimmy gets a card or you may count me out. I'm not going to treat a nice fellow like Jimmy as though he were an outlaw when I'm meeting him every few days and he looks on me as a friend.”

“You see him every few days? How and where do you see him?”

“I see him at the office about a business matter he has on hand and is good enough to ask my advice about.”

“Loan, I suppose,” suggested Wendell ironically.

“If he wants to borrow, his credit is good. Any time you want to hand me the hundred I lent you last Christmas, I'll be glad to have it.”

“Fore!” piped Busby.

Mr. James Raymond not only received a card, but he attended the party. In white trousers and a blue-serge coat he was not distinguishable from the other young gentlemen who favored Mr. and Mrs. Mark Busby with their presence. He was a big blond whose erect carriage bore testimony to his participation with the A. E. F. in the little affair overseas.

Jimmy's very diffidence was attractive. Several times Olivia caught him in the act of escaping to the veranda, and she chose for him dancing partners that she knew would make a point of being nice to him. When the Governor arrived—Mrs. Busby had asked the Governor, to give an official stamp to the party—and Olivia had presented Jimmy, the young man's stock rose immediately.

“You're the Jimmy Raymond my boy Tom talks about? You were mighty fine to him when he was sick over there. I'm glad to have this chance to thank you. You must meet Mrs. Ranger as soon as I can find her. We want to see you in our own house.”

The special attention bestowed upon Jimmy by the Rangers was a great relief to Mrs. Busby, but she was thoroughly mystified when Burgess, the president of the White River National, greeted Jimmy as though he were an old and intimate friend. He not only seemed enormously pleased to see the young man, but later, after refreshments had been served, Jimmy and Burgess were to be observed in earnest conversation in the quietest corner of the club veranda. They were joined by Thornton, the president of Sedgwick Motors, and two other citizens of highest financial rating; and Mrs. Busby, her curiosity aroused, noted that these influential citizens appeared to be showing Jimmy the greatest deference.

“Young Raymond shouldn't be monopolizing Mr. Burgess and those other gentlemen,” she remarked to Olivia. “I suppose he's telling them war stories.”

“You don't know Jimmy,” laughed Olivia.

IT was on a sultry August morning that Busby, placidly taking his way over the links alone, found himself suddenly confronted by Erskine, carrying in his hand the morning paper so folded and gripped as to suggest that he meant to use it as a weapon.

“Why didn't you tell me what was coming in Sedgwick Motors?” he demanded furiously. “When I asked your opinion of the preferred stock, you pretended not to know anything about it.”

“I didn't. Never had a cent in it. Hope you held on to your stock. Looks like it would go big.”

“Do you mean to tell me you didn't know I sold my stock to your daughter two weeks ago?”

“Yep. Suppose she paid you the me regular market price. You couldn't have done better anywhere else two weeks ago; legitimate transaction—no ground for kick.”

“I can't believe you're telling me the truth!” stormed Erskine. “That girl knew all about young Raymond's improvement that makes the Sedgwick engine the best on the market. Raymond made a deal with Burgess and the rest of the crowd that reorganized the company right here at the clubhouse the night of your party!”

“Maybe they did. Didn't let me on it. Never talk business with Olivia. Smart girl, Olivia. Better get your clubs and walk around with me—good for nerves.”

AT Christmas the engagements of Constance Busby and Tom Gaylord, and of Dorothy Erskine and Wendell Busby were announced.

“I hope you're satisfied, Mark, with both these arrangements,” Mrs. Busby said. “The trouble you had with Mr. Erskine was most unfortunate, but he seems willing to overlook it, and Dorothy is a lovely girl—just the steady character Wendell needs. Of course, you wouldn't want to broach the matter just yet, but no doubt Mr. Erskine, with his large interests, can find a place for Wendell somewhere. You and Wendell have never understood each other.”

“Place for Wendell! Erskine hasn't any business that I know of—sold out the canning business when he moved to town.”

“Don't be absurd, Mark. They couldn't live in the way they do unless they had a large income.”

“Might be doing what we're doing—blowing everything in on a good time.

This remark had been dulled by constant reiteration; it was only a whimsicality, pardonable in a man who gave his wife a monthly check for four thousand one hundred and sixty-six dollars sixty-six cents for the family expenses.

Busby continued to bear himself tranquilly as one immune from all perplexities that trouble human kind. He went to the State agricultural school for the short midwinter course, that he might equip himself the better to manage his farm. Mrs. Busby watched for any sign that he was counseling Olivia as to the conduct of his old office, but he rarely went downtown, and she was unable to find that they conspired at home. Gossip had it in the business world, Wendell confided to his mother, that Olivia had rejuvenated the old agency and was making money. She had bought a lot of Sedgwick Motor bonds at their lowest price just before the reorganization, and was believed to have assisted Burgess, the banker, in picking up odd lots.

Portia and Billy Erskine had been slow to reach the conclusion that they were predestined to spend their lives together, due largely to Portia's disposition to carry on a great number of love-affairs at once. However, the discreet engineering of Mrs. Busby, assisted by Mrs. Erskine, brought about the announcement of the third engagement in March.

An exchange of courtesies between the Gaylords and the Busbys had followed the announcement that the two houses were to be united. Mrs. Busby gave a dinner as a means of bringing the matter to public attention. To this function Mark Busby assented with the amiability that characterized his ready acceptance of all the social duties his forth-stepping family urged upon him. As he watched the senior Gaylord smoke one of the excellent cigars with which Wendell kept the humidor supplied, Gaylord in due course touched upon his son's engagement.

“You understand, Busby, that the old family name is about all I have to give my boy. I wish I could establish him in business, but I'm sorry to say that is out of the question.”

“No feeling; suppose the young people love each other; love's supposed to carry 'em through all their troubles.”

“I want Tom to settle down,” continued Gaylord. “I suppose the fact that he plays tennis better than anybody else around here is against him when it comes to finding a job. Some of my best friends have been a little prejudiced against him on that account when I've tried to get them to try him out. I hope, Busby, you wont feel that I'm trying to dump the job on you, but if you can make a suggestion, I'll appreciate it.”

“Yep—been thinkin' about it. See what the boy has to say for himself first; always give 'em a chance.”

CONSTANCE and Tom Gaylord were the high contracting parties in the first of the series of weddings. The ceremony was pronounced at St. Paul's church, of which Tom's grandfather had been a warden, a fact celebrated by a brass tablet on the wall, close to the Gaylord pew. The society reporters chronicled the event as a brilliant affair and laid due stress upon the union of two families of highest social importance.

It may have been that Wendell and Dorothy Erskine were discouraged by the splendor of the affair, for a few days later they eloped and were married by a justice of the peace in an adjacent county. They set forth on a honeymoon in one of the Corning machines, which Busby had rented with the house. Mrs. Busby was greatly grieved by the frustration of her plans, seeing in the elopement nothing but a vulgar escapade unworthy of the family dignity. Busby, however, accepted the matter with his usual taciturnity and turned over to Mrs. Busby without comment Wendell's wire from Chicago asking for money.

The home wedding of Portia and Billy Erskine, celebrated in the middle of May, left Mrs. Busby weary but triumphant.

“I'm sure you feel as I do, Mark, a deep satisfaction in seeing the two girls and Wendell settled. There are so many chances of unhappy marriages these days, and we can only hope that we've done the best we can for our children. They will all be home next Sunday. We'll have just a quiet family dinner to talk over the future.”

“Bad idea—future always disagreeable to discuss.”

“You haven't confided to me your plans for Wendell and Tom, and I assume that you will have something to propose for Billy too.”

His silence, his meek acceptance and acquiescence in everything she did in the year now drawing to a close, had encouraged in her the expectation that he had a happy surprise in store for his son and the two sons-in-law. Mrs. Busby's hints had hitherto failed to elicit the slightest intimation of what he meant to do for the three young men for whom, as Mrs. Busby viewed the matter, he was under mortal obligations to find employment.

“How long will it take you to pack up?” he asked with a discouraging change of the subject. “Turn over house promptly on thirty-first.”

“Mark Busby, would you mind telling me what you propose doing?” she exclaimed with an asperity she had rarely employed since they left Rivington.

“Wont have long to wait; tell you all Sunday.”

THE Sunday midday feast opened gayly. The three newly married couples were in high spirits, and with much merriment compared notes as to their honeymooning adventures. Busby, from the head of the table, exerted himself to make the first family reunion in all ways a happy occasion. Olivia alone seemed pre-occupied, but when accused of envy by Constance, she entered spiritedly into the table talk.

“Let's move into the living-room—want a little conference before callers come,” said Busby as he rose from the table.

The air at once became tense with expectancy. Busby planted himself before the mantel and looked about him with a patriarchal air. Mrs. Busby plied a fan somewhat nervously.

“Got to be serious sometimes in this world—not all play. For twenty years I kept running with my tongue out, trying to give you all you wanted. Got tired of it, cashed in everything I had, told you it was all I had, and to go ahead and kick as high as you pleased.”

Constance tittered. Her father's joke was a year old, but it seemed best to continue the pretension that it was funny.

“You young men, as near as I can make it out,” Busby continued, “haven't got a ghost of a chance of supporting your wives unless you go to work.”

A gloomy silence, a numbing, oppressive silence, held them.

“Not surprised. Guessed all along you were leaving all that to me.”

“I want you to know, Mr. Busby, that I'm not a loafer,” protested Gaylord with dignity. “I'm going to start in right away to find some employment where I can work my way up.”

“Good!” exclaimed Busby cheerfully. “But while you're waiting for the kind of a chance you want, you don't need to be idle. Idleness is bad for young men. Now, Erskine and Gaylord, don't think I'm harder on you than I am on Wendell; all in the same boat; got to bend your backs to the oars to keep from going over dam.”

“I know anything you want me to do will be all right, Father,” said Wendell with a confidence he did not feel.

“JUST finished three bungalows out on my farm,” Busby resumed, “—one for each of you; pick 'em out to suit yourselves. Farm labor hard to get; you three boys young and strong enough to make things hum; two hundred acres; best land in State; got a man out there to show you the ropes; bungalows fixed up for housekeeping; give you girls a chance to show your mettle.”

“But Mark,” cried Mrs. Busby tremulously, “have you considered what people will say?”

“Yep; don't care; I've let you spend everything I had except the farm, to buy your way in the city. Boys don't have to stay on farm if they can find a better job.”

“And may I ask, Mark, what you and I are going to do? Here we are close to old age, and you suddenly tell me we're paupers.”

“No more paupers than we've been for twenty years. I've rested up during my year off, and now I'm going to work again.”

“At your time of life, Mark, what can you do?” moaned Mrs. Busby. “You let Olivia wheedle you out of the old business. “That was a serious mistake.”

“No kick on Olivia; she's tripled the business, put on some fancy touches I never had the nerve to tackle, and makin' 'em go. Olivia, you got something on your mind?”

“Just that I'm engaged: Jimmy and I are going to be married next month,” Olivia announced quietly.

“I suppose that was inevitable,” sighed Mrs. Busby. “Fine boy, Jimmy!” Busby ejaculated. “Guess you all know they've made him vice-president of Sedgwick Motors.”

“And I suppose Olivia will turn over the business to him,” said Mrs. Busby spitefully. “This is almost too much, Mark!”

“Wrong again; Olivia's going to incorporate the business and put me in to manage it. Jimmy's got enough to take care of Olivia; with the start he's got, ought to be a rich man in ten years.”

“It's wonderful!” cried Constance. “I've always liked Jimmy.”

Whereupon they all praised Jimmy. Even Mrs. Busby praised him, linking him with Bell, Edison and other great benefactors of mankind.

“I suppose you've got a bungalow somewhere for you and me to hide in?” Mrs. Busby inquired dolefully when they were through congratulating Olivia. “Or do you propose taking me back to Rivington?”

“No more Rivington, burned all bridges,” Busby replied crisply. “Olivia's giving us a house, putting it in your name—new Burgess addition farther out on the boulevard. She's selling lots out there for Burgess, and needs some fashionable folks like us to give tone to the place.”

“Some very nice people are going out there,” Mrs. Busby murmured.

“This is a big jar, all right,” said Constance, rising and walking to the middle of the room. “But we've all had a bully time, and I for one wouldn't change anything. I want Papa to know that I can see his side of it. We nagged him for money until he was nearly crazy, and I don't blame him for playing this trick on us.”

“Your poor dear Papa—” began Mrs. Busby; but Wendell stopped her.

“Let's cut out the poor dear Papa stuff,” he exclaimed impatiently. “Dorothy and I are not going to show the white feather; and you, Tom, and Billy, are good sports. We'll buckle down to the farm. Am I right?”

Tom and Billy asseverated with something bordering upon enthusiasm that Wendell was right; and their wives, bravely, though not without tears, announced that they would stand by their husbands through all the rigors and perils of farm life.

“You're all talking sensibly,” said Busby, smiling upon them benignly. “One of these days you'll stop thinking of me as a stingy old curmudgeon and decide I wasn't so big a fool after all. Got to remember we can't eat our cake and have it. Best for everybody to work. Practice what I preach; I'll be at the office early in the morning, Olivia.”

MESSRS. WENDELL BUSBY, William Erskine and Thomas Gaylord sat on a fence and watched the summer twilight deepen over a broad stretch of corn. Bronzed, hardened by a long summer of toil, freshened by a dip in the river, they listened to the whispering among the serried battalions with the tranquil satisfaction of men who have contributed their honest part in adding to the wealth of the world. On the veranda of the nearest bungalow, which happened to be Wendell's, their wives were chatting over their sewing.

“Queerest thing about the whole business,” chuckled Gaylord, “is that nobody—the people in town, I mean—know that we fellows didn't just exactly choose hopping the clods for our portion. Your pop's a mighty good scout, Wendell; he never bragged about what he handed us, and nobody knows outside the family that we were shanghaied into becoming honest husbandmen. Everybody thinks we're all as rich as fat cream, and that we fellows are doing this just to set a good example to the scions of other families of wealth and lofty position. I'd like to get out in the middle of that corn and laugh real loud whenever I think of it.”

“The girls have been perfectly bully,” said Erskine. “They're buzzing up there on the porch right now about the poultry outlook and how they can boost the price of eggs.”

A car whizzed in from the highway, and they identified it as Jimmy's before they heard their wives cheerily greeting Olivia. Raymond came stalking toward them, and they shook hands all round.

“The frost is almost ready for the punk,” remarked the big fellow, “and experts are bragging about your crops. Incidentally, Mr. Busby is tickled to death with you; had lunch with him to-day and he wouldn't talk about anything but your success out here. He's on the way, but I wanted to give you a tip as to what's coming.”

“Going to fire us?” suggested Erskine, knocking the ashes from his pipe.

“Not exactly. He's going to cut up the farm next spring and make something new and exclusive in the way of an addition. The papers are all ready for incorporating the White River Land Company, and the stocks to be divided among his children, all except Olivia; she's out of it. It's been his idea to have you plan the whole thing, thin out the timber and get the road making started and you'll have enough to do to keep you busy for a year before the lots are put on the market.”

“Pretty fine,” said Gaylord; “but I hate to see the farm go.”

“You don't have to do it if you don't want to,” Raymond continued. “He'd be glad to have you, Wendell, go into his office right now; that's coming sooner or later anyhow. And don't think me cheeky, but Sedgwick Motors would be tickled to have one or all of you in jobs you can make as big as you like—”

BUSBY'S arrival terminated the discussion. Mrs. Busby joined the group on the veranda, and the little may intercepted his son and sons-in-law as they went to meet him.

“What are you doing here, Jimmy? Bet you're trying to get my hands away from me. No sooner get a good man than somebody sneaks in and offers more wages. No loyalty—restless age.”

“I'll tell you this, Mr. Busby,” Erskine replied slowly, “that speaking for all of us, you're the best friend any young man ever had. We're all strong for you, and I'd like to see Jimmy or anybody else persuade us to leave you. That's the way we feel about it.”

“You've said it,” Gaylord affirmed, “We've had a grand good time out here, and we'll stick it out for the rest of our lives if you say the word.”

“Nope; world needs young fellows like you boys; can't hide you on farm. Learned to carry your own weight—big things—appreciate it—proud of you. Come up on the porch and we'll talk things over with the girls.'

And as they walked toward the house, his arm rested with unmistakable pride and affection on Wendell's shoulder.