“You play poker?” he inquired, for young Carrington’s laugh had been deliciously prompt.
The boy nodded.
“Enough to appreciate a good poker story, anyway,” he said. “That’s a corker.”
Mr. Kipley wiped his mouth with his handkerchief to hide a pleased smile.
“D’you know,” he said, “Mis’ Kipley can’t see a thing in that story?” His tone suggested a puzzled commiseration.
“Oh, well,” the boy said, gayly, “it’s hardly a woman’s story, you know.” And he showed his white teeth in so gleeful a smile that it warmed Mr. Kipley’s heart.
It resulted in his making some inquiries on a subject that had roused his interest earlier in the day.
“Paris is gettin’ kind of run down, ain’t it?” he asked, cautiously.
“Why, no,” said the boy; “it’s getting built up. What made you think so?”
“They’s a picture in the encyclopedia,” said Mr. Kipley, “that I come acrost to-day. What a lot a person would know who’d read ’em all through!” he commented. “It was a cathedral – Catholic, I s’pose, ’n’ they’re usually willin’ to give liberal to keep up their buildin’s, too. It was pretty well timbered up the back, ’s though they was expecting a cave-out.”
Young Carrington recognized the description with an inward joy.
“That’s one of the most famous churches of Paris,” he said, soberly. “Notre Dame. And it was built that way on purpose.”
“Do they believe that?” Mr. Kipley inquired.
“Yes,” said young Carrington.
“Who give it its name?” Kipley demanded.
“I really couldn’t say,” the boy laughed.
“It would be interestin’ to know,” reflected Mr. Kipley. “Of course he wa’n’t no kind of an architect, or he wouldn’t have had to brace his walls like that; but whether he had the gall to name it because he didn’t care a damn, or they named it because it wasn’t worth a damn – ”
“Your pa’s waked up and wanted to know where you was,” said Mrs. Kipley, appearing in the door, just as young Carrington was trying to decide whether to enlighten an ignorance which was such bliss to the listener.
“Thank you,” he said, and sped into the house at once.
Mr. Kipley turned a philosopher’s eye upon the wife of his bosom.
“He’s got good principles, M’r’,” he said, with conviction; “’n’ a very entertainin’ way of puttin’ things. He’s good company.”
“What was he talkin’ about?” asked Mrs. Kipley, interestedly.
Mr. Kipley’s cough was extremely apologetic.
“Come to think of it, I guess I did most of the talkin’,” he said, with some embarrassment.
“I should say ’t was likely,” said Mrs. Kipley, dryly; and she disappeared in the house. She reappeared for a parting shot. “I s’pose his principles was good because he agreed with you,” she observed, sarcastically. Mr. Kipley gazed at the evening star confidentially.
“Beats all about women!” he mused. “They act’s if all the principles was theirs, ’n’ kind of exasperated if you’ve got any. ’N’ more if you ain’t,” he murmured.
He had refilled his pipe, and was looking placidly across the lights of the town to the hills beyond.
Hemmy came up the walk with the light of a new and lovely romantic suggestion in her eyes.
She sat down beside her father and slipped a warm, plump hand in his.
“Pa,” she said, sweetly, “am I really your child and ma’s?”
Mr. Kipley recoiled sharply.
“Well, of all things!” he ejaculated.
Miss Hematite Kipley experienced a pang of disappointment.
She had just been reading a “perfectly lovely romance,” where an adopted child turned out to be the daughter of a duke. While she did not insist on a dukedom, she had had an ecstatic feeling that she might be a millionairess.
“You never brought me home in your arms and told ma that a beautiful young gypsy girl – ” she began, falteringly.
“No,” said Mr. Kipley, with precision; “I never did, and that’s the reason I’m alive to-day. If I’d come home with a baby, talking about beautiful young gypsies, there’d have been a funeral, and no mourners. An ’t would have served me right, too.”
Then he softened parentally toward this young woman of his own flesh and blood.
“It don’t seem so very long ago, Hemmy, since you was born. Born in the regular, genu-wine way. Why, we named you Hematite because they struck the big find of ore in the mine that same morning. It was my idea, too, for your aunt, who lived in the copper country, had just named her little girl Amygdoloid – Amy, for short – and she was plum offensive about having the most elegant name out. ‘What’s the matter with Hematite?’ says I!”
Miss Hematite kissed her undoubted parent forgivingly, and rose from the ashes of her air castle like an undiscouraged young phœnix.
Already she had another in process of construction, and she pillowed her cheek against the battered volume containing the encounter between Cophetua and the beggar maid, though he was not a king, and she was not pauperized. “I think, perhaps, it’s even sweeter,” she whispered, as she fell asleep.
Down in the village of Yellow Dog, the club which the Star had built for its miners was ablaze not only with lights, but with excitement.
There was a circle of miners around the room.
In the center of the floor lay a man who had been shaken into a little heap of clothes; a heap that stirred with caution even in catching breath, lest more punishment should follow.
Over it towered Dick Trevanion’s sturdy figure, made brawnier still by rage.
“Any more remarks about Mr. Ned and his clothes?” he demanded, sweeping that quiet group with furious eyes.
There was not a breath from them. Trevanion’s reputation as an athlete and a boxer was a matter of local pride.
He walked across the room to the door and flung it open.
Then he turned his flushed face to them.
“You can all have as much and more, if you like,” he said. “I stand for him.”
He struck the side of the door a blow with his closed fist, a blow that seemed to shake the entire side of the room. “Remember that when your tongues start,” he emphasized, and was gone in the darkness.
There was no danger that they would forget.
In a quiet bedroom, the lad whom he had championed had fallen asleep in a big chair beside his father’s bed.
He had sat there till John Carrington had slept, and then, too drowsy to move, had slept himself – that youthful sleep of healthy exhaustion.
John Carrington, waking in the night, looked at the boy as he rested his head in the corner of the high-backed chair. The long, dark lashes lay lightly on cheeks rounded daintily enough for a girl, but the lines of the firm young chin had a quiet decision even now.
Far