Piccadilly Jim | Page 4

swiftly responsive to kindness; and because Mr. Pett besides being kind was also pathetic she pitied as well as loved him. There was a lingering boyishness in the financier, the boyishness of the boy who muddles along in an unsympathetic world and can never do anything right: and this quality called aloud to the youth in her. She was at the valiant age when we burn to right wrongs and succour the oppressed, and wild rebel schemes for the reformation of her small world came readily to her. From the first she had been a smouldering spectator of the trials of her uncle's married life, and if Mr. Pett had ever asked her advice and bound himself to act on it he would have solved his domestic troubles in explosive fashion. For Ann in her moments of maiden meditation had frequently devised schemes to that end which would have made his grey hair stand erect with horror.
"I've seen a good many boys," she said, "but Ogden is in a class by himself. He ought to be sent to a strict boarding-school, of course."
"He ought to be sent to Sing-Sing," amended Mr. Pett.
"Why don't you send him to school?"
"Your aunt wouldn't hear of it. She's afraid of his being kidnapped. It happened last time he went to school. You can't blame her for wanting to keep her eye on him after that."
Ann ran her fingers meditatively over the keys.
"I've sometimes thought . . ."
"Yes?"
"Oh, nothing. I must get on with this thing for aunt Nesta."
Mr. Pett placed the bulk of the Sunday paper on the floor beside him, and began to run an appreciative eye over the comic supplement. That lingering boyishness in him which endeared him to Ann always led him to open his Sabbath reading in this fashion. Grey-headed though he was, he still retained both in art and in real life a taste for the slapstick. No one had ever known the pure pleasure it had given him when Raymond Green, his wife's novelist protege, had tripped over a loose stair-rod one morning and fallen an entire flight.
From some point farther down the corridor came a muffled thudding. Ann stopped her work to listen.
"There's Jerry Mitchell punching the bag."
"Eh?" said Mr. Pett.
"I only said I could hear Jerry Mitchell in the gymnasium."
"Yes, he's there."
Ann looked out of the window thoughtfully for a moment. Then she swung round in her swivel-chair.
"Uncle Peter."
Mr. Pett emerged slowly from the comic supplement.
"Eh?"
"Did Jerry Mitchell ever tell you about that friend of his who keeps a dogs' hospital down on Long Island somewhere? I forget his name. Smithers or Smethurst or something. People--old ladies, you know, and people--bring him their dogs to be cured when they get sick. He has an infallible remedy, Jerry tells me. He makes a lot of money at it."
"Money?" Pett, the student, became Pett, the financier, at the magic word. "There might be something in that if one got behind it. Dogs are fashionable. There would be a market for a really good medicine."
"I'm afraid you couldn't put Mr. Smethurst's remedy on the market. It only works when the dog has been overeating himself and not taking any exercise."
"Well, that's all these fancy dogs ever have the matter with them. It looks to me as if I might do business with this man. I'll get his address from Mitchell."
"It's no use thinking of it, uncle Peter. You couldn't do business with him--in that way. All Mr. Smethurst does when any one brings him a fat, unhealthy dog is to feed it next to nothing--just the simplest kind of food, you know--and make it run about a lot. And in about a week the dog's as well and happy and nice as he can possibly be."
"Oh," said Mr. Pett, disappointed.
Ann touched the keys of her machine softly.
"Why I mentioned Mr. Smethurst," she said, "it was because we had been talking of Ogden. Don't you think his treatment would be just what Ogden needs?"
Mr. Pett's eyes gleamed.
"It's a shame he can't have a week or two of it!"
Ann played a little tune with her finger-tips on the desk.
"It would do him good, wouldn't it?"
Silence fell upon the room, broken only by the tapping of the typewriter. Mr. Pett, having finished the comic supplement, turned to the sporting section, for he was a baseball fan of no lukewarm order. The claims of business did not permit him to see as many games as he could wish, but he followed the national pastime closely on the printed page and had an admiration for the Napoleonic gifts of Mr. McGraw which would have gratified that gentleman had he known of it.
"Uncle Peter," said Ann, turning round again.
"Eh?"
"It's funny you should have been talking about Ogden getting kidnapped. This story of aunt Nesta's is