Jewel | Page 5

"Somebody else sews on the
buttons now, perhaps."

" 'Zekiel Forbes, we must have an understanding right off. You've got
to joke and tease, I s'pose, but it can't be about Mr. Evringham. This is
like a law of the Medes and Persians, and I want you should understand
it. The more you see of him the less you'll dare to joke about him."
"I told you he scared me stiff," acknowledged Zeke, running the
harness through his hands to discover another dingy spot.
"Well, he'd /better/. Now I wouldn't gossip to you of my employer's
affairs--I hope we're better than two common servants--but I want you
to be as loyal to him as I am, and to understand a few of the reasons
why he can't go giggling around like some folks."
"Great Scott!" interpolated the young coachman. "Mr. Evringham go
giggling around! So would Bunker Hill monument!"
"Listen to me, Zeke. Mr. Evringham has had two sons. His wife died
when the oldest, Lawrence, was fifteen. Well, both those boys
disappointed him. Lawrence when he was twenty-one married secretly
a widow older than himself, who had a little girl named Eloise. Mr.
Evringham made the best of it, and helped him along in business.
Lawrence became a broker and had made and lost a fortune when he
died at the age of thirty-five."
"Broke himself, did he?" remarked the irrepressible 'Zekiel.
"Yes, he did. Here we were, living in peace and comfort,--my employer
at sixty a man of settled habits and naturally very set in his ways and
satisfied with his home and the way I had run it for him for fifteen
years,--when three blows fell on him at once. Firstly his son Lawrence
failed and was ruined; secondly he died; and thirdly his widow and her
daughter nineteen years old came here a couple of months ago and
settled on Mr. Evringham, and here they've stayed ever since! I don't
think they have an idea of going away." Mrs. Forbes's eyes snapped.
"Such an upset as it was! I couldn't show how I felt, of course, for it
was so much worse for him than it was for me. He had never cared for
Mrs. Evringham, and scarcely knew the girl who called him
'grandfather' without an atom of right."

"Hard lines," observed 'Zekiel. "Does the girl call herself Evringham?"
"Does she?" with scorn. "Well I guess she does. Of course she was only
four when her mother married Lawrence, and I guess she was fond of
her stepfather and he of her, because he never had any children; but
sometimes I ask myself, is it going on forever? I only hope Eloise'll get
married soon."
'Zekiel dropped the harness to arrange imaginary curls on his temples
and pat the tie on his muscular neck. "If she's pretty I'm willing," he
responded.
His mother shook her head absently. "Then there was Mr. Evringham's
younger son, a regular roving ne'er-do-well. He didn't like Wall Street
and he went West to Chicago. He was a rolling stone, first in one
position and then in another; then he got married, and after a few years
he rolled away altogether. All Mr. Evringham knows about him and his
family is that he had one child. Harry wrote a few letters about his wife
Julia and the baby, at the time it was born, and Mr. Evringham sent a
present of money; then the letters ceased until one day the wife wrote
him frantically that her husband had disappeared and begged to know
where he was. Mr. Evringham knew nothing about him and wrote her
so, and that is the last he's heard. So you see if he looks cold and hard,
he's had enough to make him so."
"H'm!" ejaculated 'Zekiel. "He don't give the impression of lyin' awake
nights wondering how his deserted daughter-in-law and the kid make
out."
"Why should he?" retorted Mrs. Forbes sharply. "His two boys acted as
selfish to him as boys could. He's a disappointed, humiliated man in
that proud heart of his. He's been hunted out and harrowed up in this
peaceful retreat, when all he asked was to be let alone with his horses
and his golf clubs, and I think one daughter-in-law's enough under the
circumstances. I have some respect for Mrs. Harry, whoever she is,
because she lets him alone. In all the long years we've spent here, when
he often had no one to talk to but me, he's let me have a glimpse of
these things, and I've told you so's you'd think right about him and

serve him all the better."
"He's got a look in his eyes like cold steel," remarked Ezekiel, "and
lines under 'em like they'd been drawn with steel; and his back's as flat
and straight