第23章

The day arrived when Galton was to give his decision.Tembarom was going to hand in his page, and while he was naturally a trifle nervous, his nervousness would have been a hopeful and not unpleasant thing but that the Transatlantic sailed in two days, and in the Hutchinson's rooms Little Ann was packing her small trunk and her father's bigger one, which held more models and drawings than clothing.Hutchinson was redder in the face than usual, and indignant condemnation of America and American millionaires possessed his soul.

Everybody was rather depressed.One boarder after another had wakened to a realization that, with the passing of Little Ann, Mrs.Bowse's establishment, even with the parlor, the cozy-corner, and the second-hand pianola to support it, would be a deserted-seeming thing.Mrs.

Bowse felt the tone of low spirits about the table, and even had a horrible secret fear that certain of her best boarders might decide to go elsewhere, merely to change surroundings from which they missed something.Her eyes were a little red, and she made great efforts to keep things going.

"I can only keep the place up when I've no empty rooms, "she had said to Mrs.Peck, "but I'd have boarded her free if her father would have let her stay.But he wouldn't, and, anyway, she'd no more let him go off alone than she'd jump off Brooklyn Bridge."It had been arranged that partly as a farewell banquet and partly to celebrate Galton's decision about the page, there was to be an oyster stew that night in Mr.Hutchinson's room, which was distinguished as a bed-sitting-room.Tembarom had diplomatically suggested it to Mr.

Hutchinson.It was to be Tembarom's oyster supper, and somehow he managed to convey that it was only a proper and modest tribute to Mr.

Hutchinson himself.First-class oyster stew and pale ale were not so bad when properly suggested, therefore Mr.Hutchinson consented.Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger were to come in to share the feast, and Mrs.Bowse had promised to prepare.

It was not an inspiring day for Little Ann.New York had seemed a bewildering and far too noisy place for her when she had come to it directly from her grandmother's cottage in the English village, where she had spent her last three months before leaving England.The dark rooms of the five-storied boarding-house had seemed gloomy enough to her, and she had found it much more difficult to adjust herself to her surroundings than she could have been induced to admit to her father.

At first his temper and the open contempt for American habits and institutions which he called "speaking his mind" had given her a great deal of careful steering through shoals to do.At the outset the boarders had resented him, and sometimes had snapped back their own views of England and courts.Violent and disparaging argument had occasionally been imminent, and Mrs.Bowse had worn an ominous look.

Their rooms had in fact been "wanted" before their first week had come to an end, and Little Ann herself scarcely knew how she had tided over that situation.But tide it over she did, and by supernatural effort and watchfulness she contrived to soothe Mrs.Bowse until she had been in the house long enough to make friends with people and aid her father to realize that, if they went elsewhere, they might find only the same class of boarders, and there would be the cost of moving to consider.She had beguiled an armchair from Mrs.Bowse, and had re-covered it herself with a remnant of crimson stuff secured from a miscellaneous heap at a marked-down sale at a department store.She had arranged his books and papers adroitly and had kept them in their places so that he never felt himself obliged to search for any one of them.With many little contrivances she had given his bed-sitting-room a look of comfort and established homeliness, and he had even begun to like it.

"Tha't just like tha mother, Ann," he had said."She'd make a railway station look as if it had been lived in."Then Tembarom had appeared, heralded by Mrs.Bowse and the G.

Destroyer, and the first time their eyes had met across the table she had liked him.The liking had increased.There was that in his boyish cheer and his not-too-well-fed-looking face which called forth maternal interest.As she gradually learned what his life had been, she felt a thrilled anxiety to hear day by day how he was getting on.

She listened for details, and felt it necessary to gather herself together in the face of a slight depression when hopes of Galton were less high than usual.His mending was mysteriously done, and in time he knew with amazed gratitude that he was being "looked after." His first thanks were so awkward, but so full of appreciation of unaccustomed luxury, that they almost brought tears to her eyes, since they so clearly illuminated the entire novelty of any attention whatever.

"I just don't know what to say," he said, shuffling from one foot to another, though his nice grin was at its best."I've never had a woman do anything for me since I was ten.I guess women do lots of things for most fellows; but, then, they're mothers and sisters and aunts.Iappreciate it like--like thunder.I feel as if I was Rockefeller, Miss Ann."In a short time she had become "Little Ann" to him, as to the rest, and they began to know each other very well.Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger had not been able to restrain themselves at first from making slangy, yearning love to her, but Tembarom had been different.