Terry | Page 3

to the core, had set her face in defiant smile lest she burst into tears: Ellis, devoted to Terry but tickled by the situation, had smothered his snickers in protracted fits of coughing.
Terry threw aside a handbook on the curing of pelts and rose at their entrance, smiling:
"Well, do you good folks think you are safe in sitting at the same table with an unrepentant sinner?"
Susan had been crying. "Oh, Dick! Why did you do it? How do you do such things?"
He waved his hand in humorous deprecation. "Easy. It's the simplest thing I do. It isn't difficult if you have a knack for it."
"But, Dick, it's no joke. I saw the three elders of our church--Ballard, Remington and Van Slyke--talking about it, and they were very bitter. And you know they can expel any church member."
Terry made no answer save to put his arm around each and lead them into the dining room. But Susan was not content.
"Dick, I wish you would explain it to Ballard or Van Slyke. They are influential men and both are very religious."
Ellis took a hand: "Their religion is all right, so far as it goes--but they mix it up with their dyspepsia too much to suit me!"
As his wife turned rebuking eyes upon him he pursued doggedly: "Not that their dyspepsia and religion are always mixed; they have their dyspepsia seven days in the week!"
She joined in their laughter over Ellis' exaggerated defense, then turned again to her brother.
"What are you going to do with that nasty thing you shot, Dick?"
"Nasty?" broke in Ellis in quick alarm. "You didn't shoot a skunk, did you?"
She ignored her husband and persisted: "Tell me why you shot that fox, Dick. You have been out hunting nearly every day for two weeks and have shot nothing else, so I know you have a reason."
"I'm not going to help eat it!" Ellis broke in. "I've heard they are stringy--and a bit smelly."
"Ellis, will you stop being ridiculous? Dick, why have you hunted that fox so long?"
Ellis had seen that Terry was not to be pumped, that this was another of his queer quests. He tried again to shunt Susan away.
"Maybe it was a personal matter between him and the fox, Sue."
She turned on him a look she endeavored to make disdainful, but only succeeded in raising another laugh from both. But she was not to be deterred. Her eyes lit with sudden inspiration.
"I'll bet--I'll bet anything--" she began.
"Susan Terry Crofts! Even Dick would not bet on Sunday!"
"I will bet anything," she insisted, "that it is something for Deane--for Christmas!"
In the slight flush that rose in her brother's face Susan learned that she had hit the mark. But she was instantly sorry that she had pressed the issue, as she had learned long before to respect what was to her his queer reticence.
Ellis hurried into the breach: "Wonder what Bruce will give Deane this Christmas? He is about due to present her with something really worth while--like a patent mop!"
Even Terry laughed. The struggle for Deane's favor between Bruce Ballard and Terry had been in progress nearly ten years and had become one of the town's institutions. The first formal offerings tendered by the two boys on the occasion of her graduation from high school typified the contrasting characters of the rivals: Terry, idealistic, impressionable, reserved, had sent her a beautiful copy of the "Love Letters of a Musician," while Bruce, sincere, obvious and practical, had given her a hat-pin.
On her succeeding birthday Terry, after a six-hour climb, had won for her a box of trailing arbutus from Mount Defiance's cool top; Bruce had sent her candy. From his medical college at Baltimore Bruce had sent, as succeeding Christmas gifts, an ivory toilet set, a thermos bottle, a reading lamp and a chafing dish.
Terry's offerings on those occasions had been a Japanese kimono embroidered with her favorite flower--a wondrous thing secured by correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy of the world.
The rivalry had divided the town into two camps. The pro-Bruce faction, composed largely of men folk, claimed for their protégé a splendid common sense in selection of his gifts: but the women and girls, who made up the other group, envied Deane not only the gifts Terry gave her, but also--and more so--the rarefied romantic spirit of the youth who conceived and offered them.
Deane realized that both Bruce and Terry stayed on in the dull old town principally to be near her. This was true of Bruce particularly, as he was a young surgeon of such promise that he had