Linda Condon | Page 9

away with the magazine and left Linda standing irresolutely. She wanted to ask if Mr. Welles were still at the Boscombe; if the latter didn't want the magazine she'd love to have it Linda couldn't tell why. But the clerk went into the treasurer's office and she was forced to move away.
Later, lingering inexplicably about the spot where she had heard so many bewildering words, a very different man spoke to her. He, Linda observed, was smoking a cigar, a good one, she was certain. He was smallish and had a short bristling mustache and head partly bald. His shoes were very shiny and altogether he had a look of prosperity. "Hello, cutie!" he cried, capturing her arm. She responded listlessly. The other produced a crisp dollar bill. "Do you see the chocolates in that case?" he said, indicating the cigar-stand. "Well, get the best. If they cost more, let me know. Our financial rating is number one." Linda answered that she didn't think she cared for any. "All right," the man agreed; "sink the note in the First National Ladies Bank, if you know where that is."
He engineered her unwillingly onto a knee. "How's papa?" he demanded. "I suppose he will be here Saturday to take his family through the stores?"
She replied with dignity, "There is only my mother and me."
At this information he exclaimed "Ah!" and touched his mustache with a diminutive gold-backed brush from a leather case. "That's more than I have," he confided to her; "there is only myself. Isn't that sad? You must be sorry for the lonely old boy."
She wasn't. Probably he, too, had a wife somewhere; men were beastly. "I guess your mother wants a little company at times herself?"
Linda, straining away from him, replied, "Oh, dear, no; there are just packs of gentlemen whenever she likes. But she is tired of them all." She escaped and he settled his waistcoat.
"You mustn't run away," he admonished her; "nice children don't. Your mother didn't bring you up like that, I'm sure. She wouldn't like it."
Linda hesitated, plainly conveying the fact that, if she were to wait, he would have to say something really important.
"Just you two," he deliberated; "Miss and Mrs. Jones."
"Not at all," Linda asserted shortly; "our name is Condon."
"I wonder if you'd tell her this," he went on: "a gentleman's here by himself named Bardwell, who has seen her and admires her a whole lot. Tell her he's no young sprig but he likes a good time all the better. Dependable, too. Remember that, cutie. And he wouldn't presume if he had a short pocket. He knows class when he sees it."
"It won't do any good," Linda assured him in her gravest manner. "She said only this morning she was sick of them."
"That was before dinner," he replied cheerfully. "Things look different later in the day. You do what I tell you."
All this Linda dutifully repeated. Her mother was at the dressing-table, rubbing cream into her cheeks, and she paused, surveying her reflection in the mirror. "He was smoking a big cigar," Linda added. The other laughed. "What a sharp little thing you are!" she exclaimed. "A body ought to be careful what they tell you." She wiped off the cream and rubbed a soft pinkish powder into her skin.
"He saw me, did he?" she apparently addressed the glass. "Admired me a whole lot. Was he nice, Linda?" she turned. "Were his clothes right? You must point him out to me to-night. But do it carefully, darling. No one should notice. Your mother isn't on the shelf yet; she can hold her own, even in the Boscombe, against the whole barnyard."
Linda, at the entrance to the dining-room, whispered, "There he is." But immediately Mr. Bardwell was smiling and speaking to them.
"I had a delightful conversation with your little girl to-day," he told Mrs. Condon; "such a pretty child and well brought up."
"And good, too," her mother replied; "not a minute's trouble. The common sense of the grown; you'd never believe it."
"Why shouldn't I?" he protested gallantly. "Every reason to." Mrs. Condon blushed becomingly.
"She had to make up for a lot," she sighed.
An hour or more after dinner Mrs. Randall stopped Linda in the hall beyond the music. "Mama out?" she inquired brightly. "I thought Mr. Jasper left this morning?"
Linda told her that Mr. Jasper had gone; she added nothing else.
"I must look at the register," Mrs. Randall continued; "I really must."
Obeying an uncontrollable impulse Linda half cried, "I'd like to see you riding on a leopard!" A flood of misery enveloped her, and she hurried up to the silence of her mother's deserted room.

V
It was on her fourteenth birthday that Linda noticed a decided change in her mother; a change, unfortunately, that most of all affected the celebrated good humors. In the