But Rue knew nothing about sport, and her ignorance as well as the suggested combination of Saratoga, automobile, and horse racing left her silent again.
Brandes sat down on the parapet of the bridge and held his straw hat on his fat knees.
“Then we’ll make it a family party,” he said, “your father and mother and you, shall we? And we’ll just go off for the day.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Will you go?”
“I – work in the mill.”
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
“How about Sunday?”
“We go to church… I don’t know… Perhaps we might go in the afternoon.”
“I’ll ask your father,” he said, watching the delicately flushed face with odd, almost sluggish persistency.
His grey-green eyes seemed hypnotised; he appeared unable to turn them elsewhere; and she, gradually becoming conscious of his scrutiny, kept her own eyes averted.
“What were you looking at in the water?” he asked.
“I was looking for our boat. It isn’t there. I’m afraid it has gone over the dam.”
“I’ll help you search for it,” he said, “when I come back from the village. I’m going to walk over and find somebody who’ll cart that runabout to the railroad station… You’re not going that way, are you?” he added, rising.
“No.”
“Then–” he lifted his hat high and put it on with care – “until a little later, Miss Carew… And I want to apologise for speaking so familiarly to you yesterday. I’m sorry. It’s a way we get into in New York. Broadway isn’t good for a man’s manners… Will you forgive me, Miss Carew?”
Embarrassment kept her silent; she nodded her head, and finally turned and looked at him. His smile was agreeable.
She smiled faintly, too, and rose.
“Until later, then,” he said. “This is the Gayfield road, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She turned and walked toward the house; and as though he could not help himself he walked beside her, his hat in his hand once more.
“I like this place,” he said. “I wonder if there is a hotel in Gayfield.”
“The Gayfield House.”
“Is it very bad?” he asked jocosely.
She seemed surprised. It was considered good, she thought.
With a slight, silent nod of dismissal she crossed the road and went into the house, leaving him standing beside his wrecked machine once more, looking after her out of sluggish eyes.
Presently, from the house, emerged Stull, his pasty face startling in its pallor under the cloudless sky, and walked slowly over to Brandes.
“Well, Ben,” said the latter pleasantly, “I’m going to Gayfield to telegraph for another car.”
“How soon can they get one up?” inquired Stull, inserting a large cigar into his slitted mouth and lighting it.
“Oh, in a couple of days, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t care much, either.”
“We can go on to Saratoga by train,” suggested Stull complacently.
“We can stay here, too.”
“What for?”
Brandes said in his tight-lipped, even voice:
“The fishing’s good. I guess I’ll try it.” He continued to contemplate the machine, but Stull’s black eyes were turned on him intently.
“How about the races?” he asked. “Do we go or not?”
“Certainly.”
“When?”
“When they send us a car to go in.”
“Isn’t the train good enough?”
“The fishing here is better.”
Stull’s pasty visage turned sourer:
“Do you mean we lose a couple of days in this God-forsaken dump because you’d rather go to Saratoga in a runabout than in a train?”
“I tell you I’m going to stick around for a while.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, I don’t know. When we get our car we can talk it over and–”
“Ah,” ejaculated Stull in disgust, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Is it that little skirt you was buzzing out here like you never seen one before?”
“How did you guess, Ben?” returned Brandes with the almost expressionless jocularity that characterised him at times.
“That little red-headed, spindling, freckled, milk-fed mill-hand–”
“Funny, ain’t it? But there’s no telling what will catch the tired business man, is there, Ben?”
“Well, what does catch him?” demanded Stull angrily. “What’s the answer?”
“I guess she’s the answer, Ben.”
“Ah, leave the kid alone–”
“I’m going to have the car sent up here. I’m going to take her out. Go on to Saratoga if you want to. I’ll meet you there–”
“When?”
“When I’m ready,” replied Brandes evenly. But he smiled.
Stull looked at him, and his white face, soured by dyspepsia, became sullen with wrath. At such times, too, his grammar suffered from indigestion.
“Say, Eddie,” he began, “can’t no one learn you nothin’ at all? How many times would you have been better off if you’d listened to me? Every time you throw me you hand yourself one. Now that you got a little money again and a little backing, don’t do anything like that–”
“Like what?”
“Like chasin’ dames! Don’t act foolish like you done in Chicago last summer! You wouldn’t listen to me then, would you? And that Denver business, too! Say, look at all the foolish things you done against all I could say to save you – like backing that cowboy plug against Battling Jensen! – Like taking that big hunk o’ beef, Walstein, to San Antonio, where Kid O’Rourke put him out in the first! And everybody’s laughing at you yet! Ah–” he exclaimed angrily, “somebody tell me why I don’t quit you, you big dill pickle! I wish someone would tell me why I stand for you, because I don’t know… And look what you’re doing now; you got some money of your own and plenty of syndicate money to put on the races and a big comish! You got a good theayter in town with Morris Stein to back you and everything – and look what you’re doing!” he ended bitterly.
Brandes tightened his dental grip on his cigar and squinted at him good-humouredly.
“Say, Ben,” he said, “would you believe it if I told you I’m stuck on her?”
“Ah, you’d fall for anything. I never seen a skirt you wouldn’t chase.”
“I don’t mean that kind.”
“What kind, then?”
“This is on the level, Ben.”
“What! Ah, go on! You on the level?”
“All the same, I am.”
“You can’t be on the level! You don’t know how.”
“Why?”
“You