MR. BOMBS’ DISGUST WITH CHICAGO AND THE PYRO-KING’S PLANS.

Mr. Bombs came on from Chicago the evening after the first meeting of Ruth and Adelaide in the Library, greatly to the surprise of the Schwarmers, especially to Adelaide; but when she questioned him about it, he turned away without giving a reasonable excuse and went in search of her father.

“What! torn yourself away from Chicago so soon,” exclaimed Schwarmer—“the mighty central city—the huge centre of finance, rush and pluck!”

“Faugh!” replied Bombs, turning green. “The huge centre of soot, dirt and smoke! The mighty central inferno, with the Pang emissaries plotting to reburn it, and measuring it to see how much more smoke and flame it will contain.”

“Hold on, Fons,” laughed Schwarmer, “you are young yet and you are not in it. With the American millionaire in it and the foreign millionaire out of it, Chicago might have its attractions, even for you—that is, in a business way, most assuredly it might. You might have to wade through mud or dust ankle deep to get at the heart of Finance—that mighty man-made canon in La Salle St.; but hark, Fons, let me tell you that when you are really and truly up and dressed for business, that canon will seem almost as glorious to you as the very finest of the God-made ones. Most assuredly it will. It’s the brainy business man’s paradise. Enough of the ‘filthy lucre’ is handled there every day to run a kingdom.”

“More’s the pity,” retorted Bombs. “Why can’t they use a little of the stuff to abate the smoke and mud nuisance and fill up the ‘bad lands’ that girdle it like a slimy serpent?”

“Because the very size of the business stands in the way, Fons. From every street corner you noticed about a dozen chimneys spouting clouds of black smoke. At least I did when I was there; but I knew it meant business and a great deal of it, and that it would not be interfered with. Rest assured it wouldn’t. Then there are the Stock Yards. They are not beautiful but they are mighty. A thousand acres of slaughter-pens mean meat for the hungry millions. They are mighty interesting looked at in that way, most assuredly they are.”

“I didn’t give the whole thing but one look,” sniffed Bombs.“No, of course you didn’t,” laughed Schwarmer. “You were on the wrong scent, no doubt. After the beautiful, so to speak. Well, I reckon nobody ever accused Chicago of being beautiful, really and truly beautiful; but even the leopard has its spots, and there are some spots around and about the sides and tail end of the city that are just beautiful enough.”

“Yes, it is beautiful along the margin of the lake, where the city is not—or the great bulk of it—but they are making huge preparations to spoil that. When its Centennial comes they will turn its liquid beauty into a bed of hissing, fiery serpents a mile long!”

“Yes, and Pang’s bill is to be a mile long, rest assured it is,” laughed Schwarmer. “He’s sharp enough for them. He isn’t there for fun or in search of the beautiful. He’s there for business and he’s got it, Johnny Bull fashion, by the horns—on the lake front and on the house-tops, most assuredly he has. No, Fons, business isn’t a beauty of itself, you know, or will know when you get into the whirl of it; and Chicago is the wildest kind of a whirlpool for business.”

“But I’m not there by a long shot,” said Bombs, with a sigh of relief, “and Pang is not there, at least I couldn’t find him.”

“But you’ve found us and we are glad to see you, most assuredly we are; and really there isn’t much time to spare if you are going to get your new piece in tip-top order. It won’t do to have any failure this time, most assuredly it won’t.”

“I can’t do much until the Pyro-men come; but I’m glad to be here again and out of that infernal business hole,” said Bombs, frankly. “I found Pang’s pyro-men so immersed, so perfectly pickled in the big scheme of bombarding Fort Dearborn, reburning the city and burning Mr. Flamingdon (or whatever his name is) that I couldn’t find out about the new colors—the scientific things of the trade. It’s all trade and no science with them now. They intend to cover everything in their line. They are scheming to get hold of ‘The Chicago Amusement Association,’ I suspect.”

“What’s that, Fons?”

“Can’t describe it full length,” laughed Bombs, “but one section of it is directing attention to the small boys’ amusement on the Fourth of July. Conducted by himself they have discovered that it is not only dangerous but altogether insane, so they are seriously at work trying to construct a sane Fourth, which is to wind up with fireworks of such a splendid order as to indemnify the small boy for not being allowed to have a hand in letting them off. Of course this is where Pang will plot to come in with a ten or twenty thousand dollar piece.”

“Truly, this Fourth of July reform business is growing to be pretty wide, to reach as far as Chicago. They’ve got a new name tacked onto it though. ‘Sane Fourth!’ Pretty good. You know I told you the other day you hadn’t better go into Fourth of July trimmings too deep—most assuredly I did, Fons.”

“I don’t intend to, Mr. Schwarmer. Historical pieces are my ambition; but that reminds me, I want to ask you something.”

“Out with it, my lad, you can’t ask me anything I wouldn’t be happy to answer, most assuredly you can’t.”

“It’s about Adelaide,” said Bombs, in an assured tone. “I know you and father have talked of uniting your families. Of course she is young yet and I am not very aged; but I am old enough to entertain the idea; and what I want to ask of you is permission to talk to her about it. My father has written me that I am to go abroad for an extended trip—that is, after I have got through here and witnessed the reburning of Chicago. When I return I shall be quite a mature man and she will be a charming young lady, no doubt. You see what would be likely to happen; but I do not feel like going away without sounding the depths—getting a sort of a free-holder’s lease—lest another fellow should come along and secure the prize. I think it well to look out for such matters ahead of time.”

“All right, Fons. I would like nothing better than to unite our families—consolidate them, so to speak. I believe in consolidations of that kind, I assure you I do, with my whole heart; but you’ll have to do your own proposing. I’m a true Yankee on that head. I should never get Anglicised on that point if I should sail over to England every month. I assure you I shouldn’t. You will have to do the straight thing. You needn’t try to win her in a round-about way through me or her mamma. She’s always had her head pretty much, and perhaps that’s what makes her rather heady. She is honest, though, and has very strong notions of the right and the wrong of things. She often takes me to task for not squaring my business concerns by the ‘Golden Rule.’ Probably she would do the same with her husband. Eh! Fons?”

“I understand,” replied Fons. “She’s at the formative period now. She will have left off a great many of her notions in two or four years’ time. Besides, I am not afraid of them even as they are.”

“Proceed then, young man. Push ahead with the sounding. You have my hearty permission, most assuredly you have. You seem like an only son already; and you have my best wishes for your success with the plummet-line, so to speak. No use of wasting any great amount of lead on it, though, most assuredly not. You will be able to ascertain the exact degree of perpendicularity in Addie’s case without an enormous waste of time or money. She is straight up and down as a rule, most decidedly so. There’s nothing crooked about her or slantendicular, as there often is about the opposite sex—rest assured there is not. Unlike the vast majority of fathers I have kept up an intimate acquaintance with my daughter ever since she was born, and I can give you my hand or oath on that point, most assuredly I can. I’ve nothing more to say except that I shall keep an eye on the other fellows while you are away, and that she’s heart free to date. She’s only a grown up child, so to speak—all ready to bloom but not fully bloomed out, rest assured she is not.”

With such characteristic assurance, Mr. Bombs left his prospective father-in-law to seek Adelaide. He was anxious to make his first experiment with the plummet-line as Mr. Schwarmer had not altogether inaptly called it. It pleased him to fancy that he had already scored a success in the matrimonial line, but whether it was Mr. Schwarmer’s hearty permission to talk freely to his daughter, or the plummet-line illustration that tickled his fancy the most, he could hardly have told. He may have been pleased to think that his own expression as to “sounding the depths,” had been its inspiration, for he was at the age when he was beginning to use idiomatic language and large-sized words and would be apt to note their effectiveness. As to Schwarmer, he may have had a youthful experience with plummet-lines even though it may have gone no farther than the sounding of a goose-pond.

When he found her she was coming up the hill from Mrs. Langley’s. She appeared on its summit at the moment when the sun was plunging down behind it like a ball of fire. It was rather a remarkable coincidence and it struck him as such, that when she got to the place where Mrs. Langley had first appeared on the night of her accident, she stopped, threw her head upward and clasped her hands around her body just as the poor scared woman had done. He understood the pantomime perfectly and it pleased him, although it recalled one of his most signal failures—that is from a professional point of view. From the artistic point it had been considered quite a success—“quite madonna like,” Miss Drawling had said, and although he would not have given a “fip” for her opinion on any other subject, he thought she had said one very good thing. His regret for the accident had never been heart deep. He inclined to the brute belief that accidents as a rule added to the human interest in life—at least the kind of accidents that call forth the tenderest kind of sympathy.

“You, have been posing,” he said as he went forward to meet her. “Really you did it well. You see I was watching for you—to tell you something.”

“I have been down to see poor Mary. She hasn’t got well of her fright yet. What a dreadful thing it was!”

“Yes, but you blamed me for it at the time, roundly. I hope you are not going to blame me over again,” said Bombs lightly.“There’s no use. The blame will last.”

“You will forgive me before I go away.”

“How do you know, Mr. Bombs?”

“O Pythagoras in Petticoats! You are here again! I am undone!” laughed Bombs.

“Don’t call me that or I shall run away before you tell me your something.”

“That would be a dense calamity.”

“Why dense, Mr. Bombs?”

“Because I could never get through the tangle if you were not here to ask leading questions, Miss Adelaide.”

“I am here and I am listening. But if you don’t begin to tell me at once I am going.”

“Here it is, then, without exasperating prelude. I am going away immediately after the Fourth to be gone from one to four years—four probably. Only think of that immense stretch of time! Are you glad or sad to hear the astounding revelation?”

“Before I answer I want to ask where you are going and exactly why?”

“To Germany, Austria and China. To schools of Pyrotechny everywhere—to study up the art and find out the secrets of the craft.”

“In order to beat King Pang at his trade and become an American Pyrotechnic King?”

“Undoubtedly! my father is worth his million, he would not let me take a back seat in any profession.”“I am sorry then, Mr. Bombs.”

“For whom or what, Miss Adelaide.”

“For you, and that you are going on such a quest.”

“Are you not the least bit sorry on your own account. Will you not be a trifle lonesome without me to blame, Miss Adelaide?”

“Perhaps, Mr. Bombs, in a way.”

“In what way, Miss Adelaide?”

“Just as your sister or mother would be, I fancy.”

“Sisterly! Motherly!” laughed Bombs. “That’s infinitely correct, just now, but in two or four years from now wifely will be the proper word, and you will feel very different.”

“I’m sure four years or a thousand will not make any difference in my feelings about—”

“About what or who?” insisted Bombs.

“About you,” she added promptly.

He was looking at her with a brazen sort of fixedness that would have made almost any mature woman blush. He wanted to make her blush and he expected she would, but he was disappointed. She looked straight at him and was as placid as the traditional moonbeam.