A Man and His Money | Page 7

quite sufficient. If the occupations you have told me about are so disreputable--what were those you have kept so carefully concealed? For example, where were you and what were you doing four--five--six--years ago? You have already refused to answer. You relate only a few inconsequential and outré trifles. To cover up--What? What?" she repeated.
Then she transfixed him with her eye; the dogs transfixed him with their eyes. Accusingly? Not all of them. Naughty's glance expressed approval; his tail underwent a friendly agitation.
"Naughty!" said the lady sharply. Naughty gamboled around Horatio.
"How odd!" murmured the mistress, more to herself than the other. "How very extraordinary!"
"What, Madam?" he ventured.
"That Naughty, who so seldom takes to strangers, should--" she found herself saying.
"Perhaps it's the scent of the gasolene," he suggested.
"It's in spite of the gasolene," she retorted sharply.
And for some moments ruminated. It was not until afterward Mr. Heatherbloom learned that her confidence in Naughty's instinct amounted to a hobby. Only once had she thought him at fault in his likes or dislikes of people; when he had showed a predilection for the assistant rector's shapely calves. But after that gentleman's elopement with a lady of the choir and his desertion of wife and children, Naughty's erstwhile disrespect for the cloth, which Miss Van Rolsen had grieved over, became illumined with force and significance. Thereafter she had never doubted him; he had barked at all twelve of Mr. Heatherbloom's predecessors--the dozen other answers to the advertisement; but here he was sedulous for fondlings from Horatio. Extraordinary truly! The lady hesitated.
"I suppose we shall all be murdered in our beds," she said half to herself, "but," with sudden decision, "I've concluded to engage you."
"And my duties?" ventured Mr. Heatherbloom. "The advertisement did not say."
"You are to exercise the darlings every day in the park."
"Ah!" Horatio's exclamation was noncommittal. What he might have added was interrupted by a light footstep in the hall and the voice of some one who stopped in passing before the door.
"I am going now, Aunt," said a voice.
Mr. Heatherbloom started; his hand tightened on the back of a chair; from where he stood he could see but the rim of a wonderful hat. He gazed at a few waving roses, fitting notes of color as it were, for the lovely face behind, concealed from him by the curtain.
The elderly lady answered; Mr. Heatherbloom heard a Prince Someone's name mentioned; then the roses were whisked back; the voice--musical as silver bells--receded, and the front door closed. Mr. Heatherbloom gazed around him--at the furnishings in the room--she who stood before him. He seemed bewildered.
"And now as to your wages," said a voice--not silver bells!--sharply.
"I hardly think I should prove suitable--" he began in somewhat panic-stricken tones, when--
"Nonsense!" The word, or the energy imparted to it, appeared to crush for the moment further opposition on his part; his faculties became concentrated on a sound without, of a big car gathering headway in front of the door. Mr. Heatherbloom listened; perhaps he would have liked to retreat then and there from that house; but it was too late! Fate had precipitated him here. A mad tragic jest! He did not catch the amount of his proposed stipend that was mentioned; he even forgot for the moment he was hungry. He could no longer hear the car. It had gone; but, it would return. Return! And then--? His head whirled at the thought.
CHAPTER III
AN ENCOUNTER
Mr. Heatherbloom, a few days later, sat one morning in Central Park. His canine charges were tied to the bench and while they chafed at restraint and tried vainly to get away and chase squirrels, he scrutinized one of the pages of a newspaper some person had left there. What the young man read seemed to give him no great pleasure. He put down the paper; then picked it up again and regarded a snap-shot illustration occupying a conspicuous position on the society page.
"Prince Boris Strogareff, riding in the park," the picture was labeled. The newspaper photographer had caught for his sensational sheet an excellent likeness of a foreign visitor in whom New York was at the time greatly interested. A picturesque personality--the prince--half distinguished gentleman, half bold brigand in appearance, was depicted on a superb bay, and looked every inch a horseman. Mr. Heatherbloom continued to stare at the likeness; the features, dark, rather wild-looking, as if a trace of his ancient Tartar ancestry had survived the cultivating touch of time. Then the young man on the bench once more turned his attention to the text accompanying the cut.
"Reported engagement of Miss Elizabeth Dalrymple to Prince Boris Strogareff ... the prince has vast estates in Russia and Russia-Asia ... his forbears were prominent in the days when Crakow was building and the Cossacks and the Poles were engaged in constant strife