While the general appearance of improvement and progress was becoming distinctly visible and encouragingly permanent on the leading business street of Ashwater, precisely the same thing was happening in its nearest neighbouring village, Bluffport. The old board side walks had given way to flagging. The muddy streets had become paved with cobblestone. The new brick bank and the hardware store and two dry-goods stores radiated affluence. A fine, big high school stood near the centre of the town and the spires of three churches lifted their white fingers toward the sky as if to write thereon in letters large and plain: “This is not a Godless community.”

Perhaps nothing new in all the village so became it as the proud brick structure that arose on the corner where Smithley’s junk shop had sprawled its disfiguring presence to the mortification of the city that was beginning to lift its head and to take pride in demolishing fences and spreading abroad smooth lawns brocaded with beds of gaudy flowers. And this new building which had risen like magic on one of Bluffport’s most prominent corners gave over its second story to Doctor Garvin, who really cured a large assortment of Bluffport’s ills, and Squire Boardman, who really settled a large proportion of Bluffport’s troubles. Their offices were across the dividing hall from each other. They were a pair of honest and respectable men, each of whom was trying, in his own way, to do his share for the improvement of Bluffport and to acquit his soul in a graceful manner of the obligation to love his neighbour as himself. Neither the doctor nor the lawyer felt that he was loving his neighbours in the degree in which he loved himself, but they did feel that they were making a sweeping gesture in that direction, which was infinitely better than apathy. Also, they regularly paid a reasonable rent, which contributed to the prosperity of the owners of the building.

The lower story was occupied by, and the entire building belonged to, Nancy Bodkin and Marcia Peters, and was so entered in the records of the office of the county clerk. The corner location gave them advantageous front-display windows and a large amount of side space. These windows proved that, to an exclusive and attractive line of millinery, there had been added fashionable neckwear for the ladies; scarfs of silk; breakfast shawls of Scotch plaid and flowered merino; fancy hosiery; pincushions and toilet articles, and a seemly collection of decorated china.

The window displays were attractively managed. Inside the millinery was kept in drawers and curtained cases. Several big mirrors and a number of chairs constituted the greater part of the furnishings. Any one stepping into this room had almost an impression of entering a well-ordered home.

The back part of the building was taken up with Nancy’s work room; the living arrangements, which had increased to a separate room for each of the friends, a most attractive sitting room, a small dining room, and a tiny kitchen. For four years these two women had lived and worked together. They had engaged in small financial enterprises and taken part in the civic life of the town. They could be depended upon to superintend attractive and unusual decorations when the principal street needed to become festive upon some great occasion. They could be depended upon to do their fair share for the churches, for the schools, for the Grand Army, for their political party. Under the guiding hand of Marcia, Nancy had bloomed like the proverbial rose lifted from the hard clay soil of lingering existence and set where its roots could run in congenial earth, watered with affection, nourished in the sunshine of love. The change in Nancy had been so convincing that Bluffport only dimly remembered a time when she had been an anÆmic, discouraged, overworked little woman. At the present minute, she was not overworked. She had her work so beautifully in hand that she could accomplish it and find time for rest and reasonable recreation. She had nourishing food, skilfully prepared, and these things wrought a great physical change. She was enjoying the companionship of a woman who was alert and eager, who felt that life owed her much and who was bent upon collecting the debt to the last degree, if it were a possible thing. When Marcia had finished exercising all the arts of the toilet she knew upon Nancy Bodkin, Nancy gradually developed into an extremely attractive woman. She evolved a healthy laugh and a contagious interest in the flowing of life around her.

As for Marcia herself, she was in truth blooming. Such a huge weight rolled from her shoulders when she began life in the daily living of which there was nothing secret, nothing questionable, nothing of which to be ashamed. She might look her world in the face and go on with her work in a healthful and prideful manner. Always an attractive woman, under the stimulus of self-assertion and prosperity she had become beautiful. Natural grace had developed until she had become gracious.

These two women were together every day and within speaking distance every night. They were making of life the level best thing that was possible for either of them through their united efforts. Nancy was born a designer. Marcia had been born with executive ability. The combination produced as a result the attractive store, exhaling prosperity, and a pair of women of whom Bluffport was distinctly proud. The whole town was proud of the Bodkin and Peters share of improvement on the business street, proud of the two good-looking, well-dressed women who managed their affairs so capably that they were able to meet their business obligations and were rapidly repaying the encumbrances they had shouldered in the erection of the building.

In this close contact, and in what the town supposed to be intimacy, these two women, rapidly approaching middle age, lived and worked together. The town would have been dumbfounded had it known that Nancy Bodkin never had asked her new partner one word concerning her life previous to her advent into the partnership. Conversely, Marcia had respected the little milliner. They had simply begun life with the hour of their meeting and gone forward to the best of their combined ability. Neither of them had seemed inclined to be communicative concerning herself, and each of them had too much inherent refinement to engage in a business that a popular poet of their day graphically described as the “picking open of old sores.” If either of them had an old sore, she was depending wholeheartedly upon the other to help her in concealing it. In breaking away from the years of her life with Martin Moreland, Marcia had followed an impulse. In her heart she had always known that this thing would happen some day. She had steeled herself from the very beginning against Jason. She did not want to love him; she did not want him to love her. When the day of separation came, as she always had felt that it would, she figured upon reducing the pain of it to the minimum. Exactly what she felt concerning the boy was a secret locked in her heart. Freed of his presence and his influence, she found that the greatest feeling possessing her concerning Martin Moreland was a feeling of fear. Twice she had witnessed his brutality toward Jason when to her it was without sufficient reason. She realized that any day the same storm of wrath might break upon her head for as small cause.

When the sudden resolve had come to her, after the injustice of being picked up bodily and forcibly without her consent or approval and set down among strangers in a strange town, there had developed suddenly in her heart a storm of rebellion that had ended in her seeking refuge and independence with Nancy Bodkin. She had no idea what Martin Moreland would do when he went to the house to which he had sent her, with the expectation in his heart that he would find at least one room of it to his liking and warm with the reception to which he was accustomed. She had thought that he would come to the store, and in the daze of the early weeks of her transplantation, she had lifted a set face and a combative eye every time a hand was laid upon the latch.

One day she had seen Martin Moreland upon the opposite side of the street, and sick at heart, she had fled to her room and thrown herself upon her bed, complaining of a headache. For several hours she lay there in torment, expecting each minute that the door would open and Nancy Bodkin would level the finger of scorn at her, that the clear light of her gray eyes would pierce her covering and see burning upon her breast the loathsome scarlet brand. But night had come and Nancy Bodkin had brought her a cup of tea, had brushed her hair and unlaced her shoes.

In the days that followed, Marcia found herself still watching the street and the front door, but each day of her emancipation so fortified her that she began to develop a confidence and an assurance. She did not know Martin Moreland as well as she thought she did, when in the third year, she had definitely made up her mind that he would not come. She did not realize that he was the kind of a man who figured in his heart that every step higher she climbed in the community that was so graciously receiving her, would make harder the fall when the day came upon which he decided to turn the tongue of gossip and slander against her. Whenever he was passing through Bluffport on business, he made a point of stopping on the opposite side of the street and taking a detailed survey of the millinery store. He watched from the small beginnings of soaped glass and painted casings, through the four years to the new brick building with its attractive windows. The first time he passed the new building, obtrusive in its newness, glowing with the dainty colours of its excuse for being, the smile on his face was a fearful thing to see. It was a thing shaded by such a degree of malevolence that his consciousness realized that no one must see it. It would be an outward manifestation of such an inward state as would shock a casual observer. Even as that smile gathered and broke, with the same instinct which prompted it, Martin Moreland clapped the palm of his deeply scarred right hand over his face and an instant later applied a handkerchief. As the smile died away, in its stead there came a look that was very like the expression on the face of a hungry panther ready to leap with certainty upon an unsuspecting victim.

Martin Moreland knew that, early in their separation, Marcia would expect him and be on the defensive. He figured that by waiting until the passage of time had given her assurance, his descent would be all the more crushing and spectacular.

So it happened that Marcia occasionally saw him passing upon the street and grew firm in her confidence that she was to go free. With the passing of the years, she succeeded in a large measure in forgetting her ugly past and allaying tremors for the future. It appealed to her that Martin Moreland could do nothing to hurt or humiliate her without humiliating himself; and that, she figured, he would not do. She became all the more certain of this because occasionally she saw Junior on the streets of Bluffport, and from the security of the store, she watched him as he walked the streets or stood talking with other men.

To the observer, Junior was an extremely handsome man. He had his father’s height, his mother’s dark hair and eyes. There was a dull flush of red in his cheeks and on his lips. He could not have helped knowing that he was a handsome and an attractive figure. He could scarcely have helped being unmoral through his father’s training from his early childhood. Always he had been supplied with a liberal amount of money to use as he chose in the gambling rooms of Ashwater with the other men and boys. Occasionally he lost, but frequently he came into the bank with surprisingly large sums of money which he gave to his father to deposit on his account. A few times, lounging in the bank, even during his school days, he had listened to discussions between his father and other men concerning matters of business and he had made suggestions so ingenious, so simple in their outward manifestations, so astute, so deep in their inward import, that the Senior Moreland had been in transports. He always had been proud of his son. When to his fine figure and handsome face he added indications of shrewd business ability, he fulfilled his father’s highest dream for him.

Whenever occurrences of this kind took place, Moreland Senior immediately supplied Moreland Junior with an unusually liberal allowance with which to cut a wide swath in the social life of the town. During the junior and senior years of high school, Junior made a practice of arming himself with large boxes of sweets and huge bouquets of expensive flowers and going to call upon Mahala.

Mahala always greeted him cordially, always accepted what he brought casually as a matter of course, but never with any particular show of pleasure. Having been accustomed to the admiring glances of women and the exaggeratedly lavish praise of an element of the town greedy for his father’s money, Junior could not believe that this attitude on the part of Mahala was genuine. She must think him as handsome as his mirror proved to him that he was. She must see that he was tall and straight and shapely. Knowing the value of dry goods as she did, she could not fail to know that always he was expensively clothed in the very latest fashions sent out from the large cities of the East.

A few days before Commencement, armed with a particularly ornate box of candy and a bunch of long-stemmed roses by way of an ice box from Chicago, he made an evening call upon Mahala. The box of candy she set upon the piano, unopened. The roses she arranged in a large vase. She commented on their wonderful shape and velvet petals, the splendid stems and leaves faintly touched with the bloom of rankly growing things. She said that they were so perfect that it almost seemed that they were not real roses that would yellow and wither in a few days.

They talked of the coming Commencement and Junior jestingly asked Mahala if she were going to allow Edith Williams to be more handsomely gowned than she. Mahala was amused that he should think of such a thing. She looked at him with eyes so frank that to the boy they seemed almost friendly. She laughed the contagious laugh of happy youth.

“Now, Junior, you know without asking,” she said, “that if anything like that happens, it won’t be in the least little bit my fault. It will be because I haven’t sized up the situation properly.”

“And how,” asked Junior, “have you sized up the situation?”

“I’ve depended,” said Mahala, “upon Edith running true to form. In a given circumstance, she always has done a given thing. I can’t imagine her changing. If she has, there’s nothing to do but accept it gracefully.”

Junior laughed.

“For a level head commend me to you, young woman,” he said. “Now, here is a state secret. My mother and Mrs. Williams are great friends, and”—Junior lowered his voice and spoke through a trumpet made of his hollowed hands, giving himself an excuse to draw very near to Mahala—“my mother has seen the gown and she says it’s a perfect humdinger.”

Mahala’s laugh was young and spontaneous and thoroughly genuine.

“Naturally,” she said, “it would be. I figured on that.”

“And I fancy you figured,” said Junior, “on a dress that in some way will go just a little bit ahead of Edith’s.”

“‘Naturally,’” mimicked Mahala, “being Edith’s best friend and closest companion, I have figured on a dress that I hope and confidently believe will be the prettiest thing on the stage, Commencement night.”

“And I haven’t a doubt,” said Junior, “but you’ve figured as correctly as you ever did in algebra or geometry. But just suppose for once in your fair young life that you’ve figured wrong.”

“Well, now, just suppose,” said Mahala. “Of course you have figured on being better dressed by far than any of the other boys. And at the last minute, if John Reynolds or Frederick Hilton should turn up with a later-cut and finer goods than you were wearing, what do you think you could do about it?”

“But the cases are not analogous,” said Junior. “In the back of my head I am pretty well convinced that the clothing that Edith Williams always has worn has cost more money than has been spent on you. That has not been the case with any boy of Ashwater. Father always has seen to it that I had the best. Where you have consistently gotten away with Edith has been through being so much handsomer, through being lovely to every one, and through the exercise of a degree of taste and ingenuity on the part of your mother and yourself, that no other women of this flourishing burg can equal. I haven’t a doubt but you’ll be the loveliest thing in the building the night of Commencement, but I just thought I’d come around and give you a hint of what you’re up against.”

“Now that’s nice of you,” laughed Mahala, “but you haven’t told me a thing that I didn’t know and for which I was not prepared. Probably your mother didn’t say, but I’d be willing to wager that Edith’s gown will be either of velvet or heavy satin, and a crowded room in Ashwater grows distressingly warm in June.”

Junior threw back his head and laughed heartily.

“Bully for you!” he said admiringly. “I’ll back you for a winner in any undertaking in which you want to engage. It would be downright mean of me to go any further with what Mother told me after she had seen Edith’s dress, but I’ll say you are a winner in drawing nice deductions.”

And then Junior realized that he had not had such an enjoyable and friendly talk with Mahala, that she had not been so cordial with him, in he could not remember when. So he ventured further.

“What can we plan for this summer that will be a lot of fun?” he said. “We ought to celebrate this getting through with school by picnics and parties and excursions. It’s our time to have fun, and who’s to object to our going ahead and having it?”

“Aren’t you going to college, Junior?” asked Mahala.

“Going to college?” repeated Junior scornfully. “Why would I go to college? Which college does my father hold in the hollow of his hand? Where could he pull the strings and make the professors dance like a pack of marionettes?”

Mahala stared at him wide eyed, and at the same time she was amazed to find herself commending his candour.

“Well, you certainly have nerve,” she said. “Of course everybody knows the influence your father always has had with the School Board, and from the time we’ve been little children we’ve had demonstrated to us what your combined efforts could do, but I didn’t think you’d sit up and boast about it—openly admit it!”

“Why not?” said Junior. “What’s calculus and radicals and Greek and Latin got to do with figuring on exactly how big a mortgage it would be safe to place on Timothy Hollenstein’s farm? I’ve gone through the motions of this school thing. I’ve got the scum of it. Did you ever see me make a mistake in addition? I’m not interested in subtraction, and I’m not very particular about division, but have you ever noticed that I’m greased lightning on multiplication?”

And again Mahala laughed when she knew in her heart that she should do nothing of the kind. Coupled with Junior’s physical attractions there was this daring, this carelessness of what any one might say or think, this disarming honesty concerning transactions that had been the width of the world from honesty or fairness.

“All right,” she said, “don’t go to college. You’d get nothing out of it but the fun of spoiling other boys who were really trying to make men of themselves. But I’m going. I think I shall go to Vassar, and as for picnics and parties, I must put in the greater share of my time this summer in making my own clothes. I figure that the new store has cut into Father pretty deeply and I think I ought to help all I can by doing my sewing.”

Then Junior, reinforced by the most agreeable evening he had ever spent with Mahala, reached over and covered one of her hands with his. He grasped it lightly, giving it a little shake as he said to her: “I have to inform you, young lady, that it’s written in the stars that you’re not going to college.”

Obliquely Junior watched the girl, and he was wondering what she would think if he told her reasons that he could have told her, as to why she would not go to college.

Mahala withdrew her hand under the pretext of rearranging her hair, and laughingly remarked: “That’s very unkind of the stars to write things first to you concerning me. But, while we’re on the subject, in the epistle did the stars tell you what it is that I’m going to do?”

“Certainly,” said Junior. “I hope you noticed that I always came the nearest to making a decent grade in astronomy. I have to inform you that the swan went swimming down the Milky Way and he told a star lily floating there that you were going to preside over the finest house in Ashwater, furnished far more exquisitely than this place, that there was going to be a devoted lover at your feet and your door plate is going to read, ‘Martin Moreland, Junior’.”

For one minute Mahala stared at Junior with questioning eyes. Then she decided that to laugh was the thing, so she laughed as heartily as she possibly could. She laughed so heartily that it became an exaggeration and then she shook her head and said: “Put no belief in astronomical communications. They’re too far-fetched. I think Vassar will suit me best and in about a week after Commencement I’m going to begin a trunk full of the nicest school clothing that has gone East in many a long day. And that reminds me that I’ve quite a bit of sewing to finish before Commencement, and I must be at it. So take yourself away, but for pity’s sake, don’t tell Edith that her aunt showed her dress. It’s against the law and she’d be furious.”

“She’d be so furious,” interrupted Junior, “that she’d turn a darker green than the Lord made her.”

“If you want to keep up your credit for a customary degree of observation,” said Mahala, “you’ll have to admit that Edith is rapidly shedding her greenness, that she is rounding out. She still insists that she’s half an invalid, but if she’d take some exercise and forget herself as I try and try to make her, she’d soon be the prettiest girl you ever saw.”

Which proves that Mahala was strictly feminine, not that Junior was not eager and willing to pick up the challenge.

“Yes, like hob she would!” he said instantly. “That sour green kicker would come within a long shot of being the prettiest girl that I ever saw while you’re in Ashwater!”

“Well, I’m not going to be in Ashwater long,” said Mahala, “and then you can watch Edith and see how fast she grows handsome. You can go and take a look for yourself right now, if you want to, because I really must get to work.”

Junior arose and because he was accustomed always to think of himself and his own considerations, he forgot to veil the glance that he cast toward the big vase of rare flowers and the big box of unopened candy. A cursory glance, but Mahala caught it and she knew that he left with the idea that he had thrown away his money, and the merriest smile of the evening curved her lips behind his back, because that was precisely what she wanted him to think, and she hoped in her heart that he would follow down the street and spend the remainder of the evening with Edith Williams. Since they had been little girls, in the days of charm strings and rolling hoops, Mahala had known that the one boy whom Edith Williams preferred above all the other boys of the village was Junior Moreland. She could not recall that she ever in her life had seen Junior extend to Edith even decent courtesies. He made a point of being rough with her and saying annoying, irritating things to her, of flatly repulsing even the most timid advances that she might make in school or upon social occasions for his preferment. And Mahala pondered as she climbed the stairs with a bit of lettuce in her hand for the little gold bird, just how it happened that Edith should care so much for Junior Moreland and Junior Moreland should take malicious pleasure in hurting her feelings.

At the window of her room, she glanced down the street. If Junior turned the corner, there was a possibility that he might delight Edith by spending an hour with her. But Junior went straight on to Hill Street. He made his way for quite a distance along it, and then turned into a showy restaurant on a side street.

At his entrance two or three flashily dressed serving girls gathered around him. He led the way to a booth in the corner. Here he swung one of them to a table, took another on his lap, and kissing a third, he ordered her to go and get everything good to eat that the shop contained for a feast. Smilingly the owner of the restaurant encouraged the party. If Junior was pleased, his bill would be larger, and this was a thing that happened frequently.

When the food was brought, Junior unhesitatingly helped himself to the parts for which he cared, leaving the remainder for the girls to divide among themselves. He was familiar with them as a boy might be with his sisters, but he was not vulgar. He treated them lavishly, taking only a little of his first choice for himself.

When his bill was brought to him, he went over the figures carefully, and then he forced the manager to make several changes. He proved conclusively that while he was willing to spend money as he chose, he was possessed of a close streak, and did not intend to waste it.

His appetite appeased, he kissed all of the girls, assured them that he would be around again shortly, asked them how they would like to go to Bluffport for a ride some night in the near future, and going out, he rounded a corner, slipped up an alley, climbed a back stairway, and in answer to a certain number of measured rappings on a darkened door, was admitted to a room where a number of prominent men and boys of the village were playing games for money.

Junior sat down carelessly, and leaning back, watched the games casually until he decided that he would play poker. By midnight he had swept up most of the stakes, and when the other men insisted that he should give them a chance to retrieve their money, he laughingly explained: “I’ve got to get home early to-night. To-morrow’s a final examination.”

“What difference does that make to you?” exclaimed Anthony Jones, a schoolmate of Junior’s. “You know perfectly well you can’t pass in two or three branches unless you cheat.”

Junior stood under a swinging lamp, lighting a cigar. He glanced at the boy, a smile on his handsome face.

“My father has given old Dobson his job for the past four years,” he said, “and so far as I know, Dob wants it for four more. Why should I have to do anything but go through the motions? I ought to get something out of it, oughtn’t I?”

“You ought to have to dig in and work for your grades like the rest of us do!” retorted Anthony.

Junior expertly ringed his first puff of smoke toward the ceiling.

“Oh, I’ll work all right when the time comes. I do a whole lot of thinking and scheming and planning right now that nobody knows anything about. I’ll work, all right. But the trouble with you will be that you won’t know when I’m working and when I’m not, because when I work it does not always show on the surface.”

“Well, there’s one thing certain,” said Anthony, “you’ll work the Superintendent for a diploma; you’ll work your father for all the money you want.”

Junior stuck his hands in his well-filled pockets and sauntered to the door. Just as he passed through it, he leaned back so that the full light fell upon his face and figure, and he laughingly inquired: “How about working you fellows once in a while?”