FullReads

His punishment was awaiting him. No sooner were we all settled in the Bonnie Lassie’s studio than the mother proceeded to regale us with a history and forecast of his career, beginning with his precocious infant lispings and terminating with his projected, though wholly indefinite, marriage into the Highest Social Circles. To do David justice, he squirmed.

“Have you got him a job as a general in the army yet, ma’am?” inquired the Little Red Doctor suavely.

It was quite lost upon Mrs. Berthelin. She informed us that a commission as Captain in the Quartermaster’s Department was arranged for, and she expected to have the young officer assigned to New York so that he could live at home in the comfort and luxury suitable to his wealth and condition. And what she wanted us to understand clearly was that no designing little gutter-snipe was to be allowed to compromise David’s future. She concluded with an imaginative and most unflattering estimate of Mayme McCartney’s character, manners, and morals, in the midst of which I heard a gasp.

It came from Mayme, standing, wide-eyed and white, in the doorway. The front door had been left ajar, and, seeing the Berthelins’ monogrammed car outside, she had come in. The oratress turned and stared.

“That’s a lie,” said Mayme McCartney steadily. “I’m as straight a girl as your own daughter. Ask him.”

She pointed to the stricken David. Pointing may not be ladylike, but it can be extremely effective. David’s head dropped into his hands.

“Oh, Ma!” he groaned.

“Don’t call me ‘Ma,'” snapped the goaded Mrs. Berthelin. “And this is the girl?” She looked Mayme up and down. Mayme did the same by her and did it better.

“I could give you a lorny-yette and beat you at the frozen-stare trick,” said the irrepressible Mayme at the conclusion of the duel which ended in her favor.

The Little Red Doctor gurgled. I saw the Bonnie Lassie’s eyelids quiver, but her face was cold and impassive as she turned to the visitor.

“Mrs. Berthelin,” said she, “you have made some very damaging statements, before witnesses, about Miss McCartney’s character. What proof have you?”

“Why, he wants to marry her!” almost yelled the mother. “She’s trapped him.”

“That’s another lie,” said Mayme.

“He told me himself that he was going to marry you.”

“Did he? Then he’s wrong. I wouldn’t marry him with a brass ring,” asserted Mayme.

“You wouldn’t mar–You wouldn’t what?” demanded the mother, outraged and incredulous.

“You heard me. He knows it, too. I don’t like the family–what I’ve seen of them,” observed Mayme judicially. “Besides, he’s yellow.”

David’s shamed face emerged into view. “I’m not,” he gulped. “She–she made me.”

“Captain!” said Mayme with a searing scorn in her voice. “Quartermaster’s Department! Safety first! When half the little fifteen-per tape-snippers in the Emporium are breakin’ their fourteen-inch necks volunteerin’ early and often to get where the fightin’ is.”

David Berthelin stood on his feet, and his pretty face wore an ugly expression.

“Let me out of here,” he growled.

“David!” said his mother. “Where are you going?”

“To enlist.”

“Davey!” It was a shriek. “You shan’t.”

“I will.”

“I won’t let you.”

“You can go to–“

“Buddy!” Mayme’s voice, magically softened, broke in. “Cut out the rough stuff. You better go home and think it over. Bein’ a private is no pink-silk picnic.”

“I’d rather see a son of mine dead than a common soldier!” cried Mrs. Berthelin.

The Bonnie Lassie, very white, rose. “You must leave this house,” she said. “At once. Think yourself fortunate that I cannot bring myself to betray a guest. Otherwise I should report you to the authorities.”

Young David addressed Mayme in the words and tone of a misunderstood and aggrieved pet. “You think I’m no good. I’ll show you, Mayme. Wait till I come back–if I ever do come back–and you’ll be sorry.”

“Hero stuff,” commented the Little Red Doctor. “It’ll all have oozed out of his fingertips this time to-morrow.”

“Will you show me a place to enlist?” challenged the boy. “And,” he added with a malicious grin, “will you enlist with me?”