ON THE WAY

The buckboard seat was not wide enough to accommodate the three, so Tom sat in back with his legs dangling over, and occasionally, by way of stretching himself, stood up behind the seat, holding on to the back and chatting with the other two.

It was a slow, hard pull up the mountain, over a woods road which was hardly more than a trail. Again and again they stopped to rest the struggling horses, and Tom placed stones under the rear wheels.

“How many have you got working up there?” he asked.

“Oh ’bout a dozen just now,” said Ferris. “But only four of them are steadies. They come and go. We’ve got a chauffeur who lost his license and can’t drive; he’s not so bad. We’ve got an inventor who invented a substitute for gasoline; he’s waiting for a law suit to be decided in his favor—fifty thousand bucks I think he expects. He’s good for the summer. We’ve got an ex-soldier; he’s a good worker, but a queer duck.”

“Don’t forget the legitt,” said his sister.

“And we’ve got a legitimate actor,” said Ferris; “he’s a good worker too. Dances, sings and expects to play Hamlet next season.”

“He chops down a tree more artistically than any one I ever knew,” said Miss Audry Ferris. “He bows when he’s finished.”

“All he wants is a little applause,” said Ferris. “You’ll like them, the steadies. The rest are sort of transients. A couple of them aren’t half bad.”

“They won’t like you though,” said Audry.

“Thanks. Why not?” Tom asked.

“They’ll think you’re uppish.”

“That’s news to me,” said Tom. “I was never called uppish before. I don’t see how you can think that.”

“I didn’t say I thought so,” she said. “But your staying in the cottage with us will make them think so. That’s what they’ll say, that you’re uppish. That’s just what Ned Whalen will think; I can just hear him asking, ‘Well, how’s things in the Executive Mansion?’”

“Oh now—” her brother laughed deprecatingly.

“Oh yes, he will,” she said. “That’s exactly what he asked Will Daggett; Will told me so himself. He has that abominable sarcastic way about him. I know just exactly the kind of things he’ll say. Things that make you mad, but that don’t give you a chance to denounce him. I can just hear him now.”

“Nobody wants to denounce him,” soothed her brother.

“I want to denounce him,” the girl said.

“He’s a very good worker,” Nielson urged; “Will said so himself. Good outdoor man too. Get along,” he concluded, addressing the struggling horses. “I can hear you flying off the handle some fine day or other and telling him how you hate him and then I’ll lose the best worker I’ve got.”

“I’m not an idiot,” said the girl. “You seem to know just exactly what I’ll do and say. Have I ever done or said anything?”

“You seem to know just exactly what he’ll do and say,” her brother laughed.

“Who was Will Daggett?” Tom asked by way of generalizing the conversation.

“He was a young gentleman,” said Audry. “And he kept the accounts and stayed in the cottage with us. He went home to prepare for college.”

“He failed to pass last year—g’long, Flossie,” said her brother disinterestedly.

“You’ll see,” said the girl mysteriously, and evidently addressing Tom who was standing behind them holding the back of the seat. “You’ll see for yourself. You’ll be a martyr for living in the cottage.”

“Well I don’t think I’d like that,” Tom said. “Maybe it would be better if I bunked in with the gang; maybe we’d all work better together that way. Especially as I guess most of them are older than I am. Gee, I don’t want them to think I’m a boss.”

“You may be right about that,” said Ferris.

“Then why don’t we all eat with them?” Audry asked.

“Because we’re not in such close touch with them as Mr. Slade will be. He expects to work too.”

“You bet,” said Tom. “Of course I never really bossed a job; at camp I’m a sort of a boss over the kids, I suppose you might say, and I mix up with them, eat with them and all that.”

“That’s entirely different,” the girl said.

“Y—yes, I suppose it is,” Tom conceded. “But I don’t know, up in lumber camps and places like that they all eat and bunk together, foremen and all—so I’ve heard.”

“You see,” said Ferris, “we have to watch our step up here. Our outfit is a sort of a potpourri. They’re not regular laborers. We can’t get laborers to come up here. Some of them are pretty well educated and started out in good homes. We have to be careful.

“You’re just up here to help out and tip them off about tree felling and one thing or another that scouts learn. I don’t want to use the word boss. It isn’t a case of boss and laborers. It’s more a case of scout and tenderfoots. Get me? I don’t want them walking off and leaving us flat, that’s the main thing. You’ll see,” he added cheerily. “It’s kind of different.”

“I understand,” Tom said.

“Lonely mountains are no places for hoity-toity distinctions,” said Ferris. “This is a camp up here. See?”

“I get you,” Tom said.

“You’ll use your own judgment,” said Ferris.

“Well,” Tom said, “I guess I wouldn’t know how to be a boss anyway. I’m just going to pile in and help. I have a hunch I’ll bunk right in with them—friends all ’round.”

There was a minute of silence, except for the steady trudging of the patient horses and occasionally the sound of a stone dislodged by their digging hoofs and rolling down the mountainside. It was not until Tom gave evidence of withdrawing to his seat on the rear edge of the buckboard that the girl observed:

“If you have to stay with them all the time in order to be one of them, if that’s the only way you can get results, it shows your own weakness; it shows that it’s your presence and not your personality that counts. If you were really big it wouldn’t make any difference where you stayed. They’d worship you.”

“I don’t believe Mr. Slade wants to be worshipped,” laughed Ferris.

“No, but he seems to think he has to choose between one thing or the other,” the girl said. “It didn’t make any difference where Napoleon was, his troops adored him.

“If you’re afraid of what they think, that’s just the very thing that will make them think the worst of you. You start by thinking what they would like best. It isn’t you they will like; it’s your decision. Tact isn’t as big as personality. If you have personality people will love you even if you sit on a throne. I’d rather be liked for what I am than for what I do.”

“Well then,” said her brother, brutally reducing her talk to its common denominator, “we’ll have Mr. Slade in the cottage if that’s what you want.”

“That isn’t it at all,” the girl flared up, blushing. “He as much as said that he couldn’t win the men unless he played a part.”

“Played a part?” her brother queried.

“Yes, played a part.”

“You’re thinking of our actor,” Ferris laughed.

And Tom laughed too, feeling very much beyond his depth.

“It’s just like a politician who goes around shaking hands with everybody to get votes,” the girl said.

“You said they’d dislike me,” Tom ventured to remind her.

“Yes, because you’re not big enough to be one of them and yet not actually live among them. There are very few big enough to surmount artificial arrangements.”

Poor Tom was quite staggered with such highbrow talk.

“How do you know how big Mr. Slade is?” Ferris burst out laughing. “You haven’t even taken a good look at him.”

This was not exactly true, for indeed she had taken a very good look at him. That was why she was arguing.

“Oh you don’t understand,” she sneered. “You admit he has to watch his step—you said so. If a person is born to be loved and trusted and looked up to, do you suppose he has to watch his step? I think myself that maybe it would be much better if Mr. Slade stays in the hotel where he can watch them.”

No doubt Brent Gaylong could have put this learned young lady out of the ring with one of his whimsical knock-out blows, but poor Tom was visibly impressed. There is a type of young fellow predestined to fall victim to the highbrow type of girl.

Tom, with all his prowess and wholesome intelligence, was simple and credulous. He felt that here was one who could see where he was blind. He realized how crude was his thinking in the light of Audry Ferris’ fine, discriminating vision. She was right, of course she was right. He was not big enough—whatever that meant....

“Well,” said he, “I’m going to live in the cottage if you’ll let me, that’s one thing sure.”

“Maybe you’d be more contented over in the hotel,” Audry said.

“It isn’t a question of where I’d be more contented,” he said. “You bet I’ll be more contented in the cottage with you—and Mr. Ferris. I think it would be best, too, just like you say.”

“Oh, I didn’t say so,” the girl expostulated.

“You’re right, anyway, that’s sure,” poor Tom vociferated.

“And you’ll meet Miranda,” said Ferris.

Tom was not curious. He felt that he did not care anything about meeting Miranda, whoever she was. He was quite satisfied with the girl who had made him see things as they really are....

And sure, thanks to her, his vision was now so clear, he scrutinized her rather more particularly as she stepped down from the buckboard when it stopped before a funny little cottage, under the shadow of the old hotel. She looked very winsome in her khaki knickers and high laced hiking boots.

“She’s one clever girl,” poor Tom said to himself.