Play the Game! | Page 9

little in the beginning,
before she, too, came under the spell of the boy from the East.
Mrs. Lorimer came smiling back from her call. "Very nice," she told
her husband and her daughter, "really charming. And her things are
quite wonderful ... rare rugs ... portraits of ancestors. A widow. Here
for her health, and the boy's health; he's never been strong. All she has
in the world ... wrapped up in him. Very Eastern!"--she laughed at the
memory. "She said, 'And from what part of the East do you come, Mrs.
Lorimer?' When I said I was born here in Los Angeles she almost
gasped, and then she flushed and said, 'Oh, really? Is it possible? But I
met some people on shipboard, once--the time before last when I was
crossing--who were natives, and they were quite delightful.'"
"The word 'native' intrigues them," said Stephen, drawing off her long,
limp suede gloves and smoothing them. "I daresay she'll be looking for
war whoops and tomahawks. And if it comes to that, we can furnish the
former, especially Sunday night."
"Muzzie, did you meet the boy?" Honor wanted to know.
"Yes. He came in for tea with us. A beautifully mannered boy. Very
much at ease. We must have him here, Honor."
"Yes, Jimsy's already asked him for Sunday night, Muzzie. Jimsy likes
him."

"Well, he may. He has a something ... I don't know what it is, exactly,
but he will be good for all of you."
"We'll be good for him, too," said her daughter, calmly. "It must be
fearfully dull for him, not knowing any one, and being lame."
He came to supper, a trim young glass of fashion, and it was he, the
stranger, who was entirely at his ease, and the "bunch," the gay,
accustomed bunch, which was a little shy and constrained. Jimsy stood
sponsor for him and Honor was an earnest hostess. He said he enjoyed
himself; certainly he made himself gently agreeable to Mrs. Lorimer, to
the girls. Honor's stepfather observed him with his undying curiosity.
He was a plain boy with a look of past pain in his colorless face, a
shadowed bitterness in his eyes, a droop at the corners of his mouth
when he was not speaking. For all his two motor cars and his rare old
rugs and the portraits of ancestors and his idolized only sonship, life
had clearly withheld from him the things he had wanted most. There
was a baffled imperiousness about him, Stephen decided.
"A clever youngster," he told his wife, watching him from across the
room. "Brains. But I don't like him."
"Stephen! Why not?"
He shook his head. "I don't know yet. But I know. I had a curious sense,
as he came limping into the room to-night, of 'Enter the villain.'"
"My dear,--that poor, frail boy, with his lovely, gentle manners!"
"I know. It does sound rather piffle. Daresay I'm wrong. The kids will
size him up."
When Carter Van Meter came to tell his hostess good-by, he smiled
winningly. "This has been very jolly, Mrs. Lorimer. It was good of you
to let me come. Mother asked me to say how much she appreciated it.
But"--he hesitated--"May I come in some afternoon when--just you and
Miss Honor are here?" He looked wistful, and frailer at the end of the
evening than he had at the beginning.

"Of course you may, my dear boy!" Mrs. Lorimer gave him the glory of
her special smile. "Come soon!"
He came the next day but one, and as her mother was at a bridge
afternoon it was Honor who entertained him. She had just come home
from High School and she wore a middy blouse and a short skirt and
looked less than her years. "Let's sit in the garden, shan't we?--I hate
being indoors a minute more than I can help!" She led the way across
the green, springy lawn to the little rustic building over which the vivid
Bougainvillæa climbed and swarmed, and he followed at his halted
pace. "Besides, we can see Jimsy from here when he comes by from
football practice, and call him in. I just didn't happen to go to watch
practice to-day, and now"--she smiled at him,--"I'm glad I didn't."
There was something intensely pitiful about this lad to her mothering
young heart, for all his poise and pride.
He waited gravely until she had established herself on a bench before
he sat. "Tell me about this fellow King. Every one seems very keen
about him."
Honor leaned back and took a serge-clad knee between two tanned
hands. "Well, I don't know how to begin! He's--well, he's just Jimsy
King, that's all! But it's more than any other boy in the world."
"You're great friends, aren't you?"
"Jimsy