  IT WAS the Northern March—very cold, very snowy, very blustery, when Daphne woke from her last bad dream. Brisk, bleak, absolutely literal, the frosted roofs and gables of a pleasant suburban landscape gleamed sociably at her through every casement window. No squawking pelicans screeched like steam-whistles into her splitting eardrums. No interminable flights of sea gulls dragged their sharp-feathered wingpoints across her naked eyeballs. On the slime and stench of a dead shark's body her little foot had forever stopped slipping. "Why—why, how—perfectly extraordinary!" woke Daphne. It seemed to be a pretty room. A little too neat, perhaps, a little too impersonal, to be one's very own. But by no means as plushily impersonal as a hotel, and by no means as poison-neat as a hospital. "Wherever—in—the world—am I?" puzzled Daphne. Very cautiously, very experimentally, she began to investigate her most immediate surroundings. "I am at least in a very pretty—pale blue—wadded silk wrapper," she discovered with eminent satisfaction. "Also, on an astonishingly comfortable couch with at least a hundred pillows . . . . Oh—I hope the bow on my pigtail matches my pale blue wrapper!" she quickened expectantly. But there was no pigtail. Shockingly to her uplifted hands her short-cropped head loomed round and crisp and fluffy as a great worsted ball. "Oh, dear— oh, dear—oh, dear!" she gasped. "If I am dead and born again—I am a boy!" Wilting down discouragedly into her "hundred pillows" one slender hand dropped weakly to the floor. "Life is very empty," she said. "Everything in life is very empty—everything." Along her sluggish spine a curious little thrill passed suddenly. "There is a nose in my hand!" she gasped. "A lovin' nose! "Perfectly possible!" thudded Creep-Mouse's essentially practical tail. "Perfectly possible," swished and fawned the bashful little fur body. "This is certainly very extraordinary," struggled Daphne. "Instead of being anything that I thought it was, it is quite evidently some sort of a bewitchment. I am a boy! But Creep-Mouse is still Creep-Mouse! I who went to sleep real have waked up in a Fairy Story! But what Fairy Story?" she shivered. "And what page?" Quite inadvertently her eyes strayed to the little white table at the head of her couch. In the middle of the table shone a silver bell. "It would be interesting," mused Daphne, "to ring that bell and see who comes! If it's the 'Hunch-Backed Pony'—then I'll know, of course, that I'm in the Russian Fairy book. And if it's Snow White—" very cautiously she struggled up from her pillows and reached for the silver bell. "But I must ring you very—little-y," she faltered in her weakness. "So that whatever comes will surely be very little." Then with an impetuous wilfulness that In the corridor somewhere a door slammed and footsteps came running—running! Her doorhandle turned! A portiere wrenched aside! "It's the seven bears story—life size!" she screamed. And opened her eyes to Richard Wiltoner. Like a silver bomb the bell whizzed by his head. "Get out of my room!" she screamed. "Get out of my room before I'm expelled again!" "Silly!" laughed Richard Wiltoner. "I'm visiting in your house! They told me to answer your bell!" "My house?" collapsed Daphne. "Don't blame this house on me! I don't even know where I am!" "Why, you're in your own home!" laughed Richard Wiltoner. "Just wait a minute and I'll call your people. . . . Everybody rushed outdoors to help a horse that fell on the ice." "Fell on the ice? How nice," mused Daphne. "Why—why, I can rhyme again!" she exulted suddenly with softly clapping hands. "Why, your father, Mr. Bretton," said Richard, "and Mrs. Bretton." "'Mrs. Bretton?'" jumped Daphne. Very limply she sank back into her pillows again. "Oh, I knew it," she said. "I've waked in the wrong story!" Quite severely she seemed to hold Richard responsible for the mistake. "Oh—no, Richard," she corrected him. "In the story I belong in there's no Mrs. Bretton. Just Mr. Bretton!—Mr. Jaffrey Bretton!—a tall man," she endeavored to illustrate, "with snow-white hair!" "The very lad," laughed Richard, "and Mrs. Bretton. She's a brick! She's got red hair. Oh, I didn't mean to be funny!" he apologized hastily. "Funny?" flamed Daphne. Flushing, paling, flushing again—a dozen conflicting emotions seemed surging through her brain. "I've lost both my parents," said Richard, "and three sisters— and I don't remember any of them." "Haven't you anything left?" asked Daphne. "I've got one brother," said Richard. "The crippled brother, you know? And my horse, Brainstorm." "Do you love them?" questioned Daphne. "I love Brainstorm," said Richard. "I've had trouble, too," sighed Daphne. "I've lost my father and my hair." "Someone seems to have found your father," laughed Richard in spite of himself. "But whatever in the world have you done with your hair?" "That's just it, Richard," said Daphne. "Will you look in the top bureau drawer?" Flushing forty colors Richard opened the top bureau drawer. He was handsome enough when he wasn't embarrassed. But under embarrassment he glowed like stained glass with a light behind "Oh, isn't it—awful?" shivered Daphne. "Well, is there a hair brush? I would so like to look all right when my—my stepmother comes." "Just as though she hadn't seen you looking all kinds of wrong for weeks and weeks!" scoffed Richard. But very obediently he brought the hair brush. "Just where do you think you'd better begin?" worried Daphne. "I?" stammered Richard. "I?" With a wild little lunge he commenced the attack. "My! But you're bumpy!" winced Daphne. "Don't you think that maybe it would be better to use the bristly side of the brush?" "Oh, I say!" apologized Richard, "I am rattled!" With reconstructed acumen he resumed the task. "Oh, that's nice," purred Daphne. "In a book I was reading there was the funniest thing—the husband in it was always brushing his wife's hair." "How funny!" acquiesced Richard. "Oh—awfully funny," purred Daphne. "I guess there's a good deal "Very likely," admitted Richard. "Less nonsense, I mean," reflected Daphne. "But more hair- brushing—and putting away winter clothes, and——" "Oh, I wish I had a wife," hooted Richard, "to put away my winter clothes!" "I wish you had!" laughed Daphne. For the first time her mind went back to her little college tragedy with purely historical interest instead of pain. "Oh, I wish you had! That dress suit you bumped my nose against smelled so strong of camphor—I couldn't get it out of my nostrils all winter! Why, we're both laughing!" she exclaimed with sudden astonishment. "Why shouldn't we?" argued Richard Wiltoner. In the midst of the reflection a most curious expression flashed across his eyes. "Wouldn't it have been funny," he said, "if you had married me—that time I asked you?" "We'd have fought like cats and dogs, I suppose," said Daphne. "But at least," laughed Richard, "you would have been putting away my winter clothes—just about now." "And you—" retaliated Daphne. "I'm already—brushing your hair!" laughed the boy. "Let's never marry anybody," suggested Daphne. "Not for years!" "I can't!" said Richard. "Not for years and years and years!— not to make a girl comfortable, I mean! There won't be any money. . . . There's my brother, you know; and I've got so many animals. . . . It's queer about animals," he stammered, "you— you can't fail the old ones when they're old, and you can't fail the young ones when they're young. It's like any other kind of family, I suppose," he smiled. "All fun and all responsibility! But never any time! And never any money!" Quite furiously he resumed the hair-brushing. "Oh, after all," he remarked, "this isn't so awfully different from getting the snarls out of Brainstorm's mane. Only Brainstorm's mane is brown. And yours?" With a cry of sheer joy he stood off and surveyed his handiwork. "Oh, how—awful!" cried Daphne. "No, it's cunning," flushed Richard. A little bit teased by the laugh, Daphne met her own embarrassment with a fresh command. "Oh, please—run quick now," she begged, "and tell my people as you call them—that a Lady-Who-Has-Been-Long-Away—sends her love and is home again!" "You're too slow with your invitation," called her father's voice from the doorway. "We've already arrived!" With a most curious merge of excitement and serenity Jaffrey Bretton and the Intruding Lady walked into the room. "How do you do?" said Daphne, with the faintest possible tinge of formality. "Why, very well indeed," said her father, a bit casually. "How's yourself?" His more immediate attention at the moment seemed fixed on Richard and the waving hair brush. "Oh, I'm all right," drawled Daphne very evenly. Then, with all the sudden tempestuous intensity of a child, she threw her arms in the air. "Only, I don't see—even yet," she cried, "just what With a quite unexplainable laugh her father dropped down on the edge of her couch. "Why it's—it's about potatoes!" he laughed. "Richard is getting to be some farmer! He's written a magazine article about some new potato scheme of his. It's very interesting! I like experiments! I'm going to finance it. Not much, you know, but just a little. Just enough to take the strain off—and leave the push on. We'll go over in the spring when it's planting time," he began to laugh all over again, "and see that the experiment is started properly." Quite severely Daphne drew back into her pillows. "I don't think it's very nice of you, Old-Dad," she said, "to laugh so at Richard's farming. Farming is a very—very noble profession, I think." "It certainly is," conceded her father. "And have you rabbits, Richard, as well as potatoes?" she "There's liable to be 'most everything by that time," admitted Richard. "Oh, all right then," brightened Daphne. "I think I'll come, too! I've thought a good deal about potatoes, myself!" With a little sigh, half fatigue, half contentment, she glanced up at her father just in time to intercept the glance of "white magic" that passed between him and the Intruding Lady. In an instant her little spine stiffened again. "Only—Richard," she smiled up bravely, "we unmarried people must surely stand by each other! Even after you go away maybe you'll write me about the rabbits and things? It's just a little bit lonely sometimes," quivered the smile, "to be the only unmarried person in the house." With a perceptible quiver of her own smile the Intruding Lady came forward and dropped down on the couch just in front of Old- Dad. "Oh, Little Girl," she said, "don't you think you're ever—ever going to like me any?" "Why, I like you now," whispered Daphne. "And I'd like to like you—lots—only——" A bit worriedly the fluffy head turned and re-turned on its pillows. "Only—I don't understand," fretted Daphne, "about your having so many honeymoons." "So many 'honeymoons?'" smiled the Intruding Lady. "Why, I'm thirty-two years old! And this is the very first honeymoon I've ever had in my life!" "Why—why, you said you were on a honeymoon—down South!" frowned Daphne. "So I did!" laughed the Intruding Lady. "And so I was! But I never said it was my honeymoon!" "Old-Dad—thought it was your honeymoon!" accused Daphne. "Yes—I meant him to!" laughed the Intruding Lady. "Just for a little while I meant him to! . . . We'd had such a quarrel—ever since the winter before! Love at first sight it seemed to be!— and quarrel at first sight too!" "Oh, dear me—dear me," worried Daphne. "The more I hear about "Oh, a great deal more study to it than going to college!" attested the Intruding Lady. "But whose honeymoon—was it?" persisted Daphne. "Why, it was the honeymoon," mused the Intruding Lady, "of a very silly little chorus girl and an unduly wise New York magnate. He was very much pleased with everything about her, it seemed, except her Grammar—so I was brought along to mend the Grammar. Now wasn't that a perfectly idiotic thing to do?" she turned quite unblushingly to ask Old-Dad. "Where there are so many perfectly beautiful things to learn on a honeymoon to waste any time learning Grammar? Oh, of course, I know perfectly well"—she returned a bit quickly to Daphne—"that it was very wrong indeed of me to run away from them—that it caused the old magnate, at least, a considerable amount of anxiety. Only, of course, I never dreamed for a moment," she acknowledged, "that the yacht would go off without me! I merely thought," she "And you found him with me!" giggled Daphne, "all cuddled up in the sand." "Yes," blushed the Intruding Lady. With the cloud still on her brow Daphne studied the Intruding Lady's face with an entirely brand-new interest. "But, how ever in the world," she demanded, "could anybody quarrel with my father?" As though wanting to give full consideration to the question, the Intruding Lady glanced back at her husband before she essayed to face Daphne again. "Why, really," she answered, "don't you suppose—that perhaps— it's because he's so tall?" "Hardly," said Daphne. "Well, then—maybe," mused the Intruding Lady, "it's because he's so—so funny?" "Not at all," said Daphne. "Well—just possibly—of course," smiled the Intruding Lady, "it's because I have red hair!" "Now you're talking!" said Jaffrey Bretton. But no smile ruffled Daphne's gravity. "Were you a—a sort of a teacher?" she questioned. "Yes, a sort of a teacher," admitted the Intruding Lady. "Where?" asked Daphne. "Oh, on houseboats and yachts and things," smiled the Intruding Lady. "Just a sort of traveling teacher. That's why I didn't quite understand your father at first—I suppose," she acknowledged. "Our lives were so far apart." "Do you think you understand me?" whispered Daphne. "Oh, I understand you perfectly," smiled the Intruding Lady. "Then what are you going to teach me?" quivered Daphne. "There are so many things I want to know! Who Lost Man was! Why people like the Outlaw are! Did—did Sheridan Kaire—break his word on purpose to free me?" From the Intruding Lady's merry eyes a most astonishing tear rolled suddenly. "First of all, Little Girl," she said, "I'm going to try very— "I'm—I'm enjoying my first lesson very much thank you," smiled Daphne faintly. "Heaven bless my soul!" cried her father quite abruptly, "I'd forgotten all about smoking!" Adroitly with match and cigarette he proceeded to remedy the omission, brooding thoughtfully all the while on his daughter's wistful young face the positive, generous womanliness of his own chosen mate the splendid clean- limbed, clean-souled promise of the young lad before him. With more emotion than he cared to show he bent down suddenly and gathered Creep-Mouse into his arms. "There—there isn't a man in the world," he affirmed, "who has as good a—as good a dog as I have!" "'Dog?'" deprecated Richard Wiltoner quite unexpectedly. "'Family I guess is what you mean!'" "But even yet," questioned Daphne worriedly of the Intruding Lady, "everything's been so sudden and queer—even yet I don't quite seem to realize just how you figure in my story?" "Why, I don't suppose I figure at all," smiled the Intruding "'Happy Ending?'" quickened Jaffrey Bretton. "Why this—is just the Happy Beginning!" THE END. |
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