The Auction Block | Page 3

declared James. "New York's the place for pretty women; the town is full of them."
"If it's full of pretty women what chance has she got?" queried Peter. "She can't break into society on my fifteen hundred--"
"She won't need to. She can go on the stage." "Good Lord! What makes you think she can act?"
"Do you remember that Miss Donald who stopped at Myrtle Lodge last summer? She's an actress."
"No!" Mr. Knight was amazed.
"She told me a good deal about the show business. She said Lorelei wouldn't have the least bit of trouble getting a position. She gave me a note to a manager, too, and I sent him Lorelei's photograph. He wrote right back that he'd give her a place."
"Really?"
"Yes; he's looking for pretty girls with good figures. His name is Bergman."
Jim broke in eagerly. "You've heard of Bergman's Revues, pa. We saw one last summer, remember? Bergman's a big fellow."
"THAT show? Why, that was--rotten. It isn't a very decent life, either."
"Don't worry about Sis," advised Jim. "She can take care of herself, and she'll grab a millionaire sure--with her looks. Other girls are doing it every day--why not her? Ma's got the right idea."
Impassively Mrs. Knight resumed her argument. "New York is where the money is--and the women that go with money. It's the market- place. The stage advertises a pretty girl and gives her chances to meet rich men. Here in Vale there's nobody with money, and, besides, people know us. The Stevens girls have been nasty to Lorelei all winter, and she's never invited to the golf-club dances any more."
At this intelligence Mr. Knight burst forth indignantly:
"They're putting on a lot of airs since the Interurban went through; but Ben Stevens forgets who helped him get the franchise. I could tell a lot of things--"
"Bergman writes," continued Mrs. Knight, "that Lorelei wouldn't have to go on the road at all if she didn't care to. The real pretty show-girls stay right in New York."
Jim added another word. "She's the best asset we've got, pa, and if we all work together we'll land her in the money, sure."
Peter Knight pinched his full red lips into a pucker and stared speculatively at his wife. It was not often that she openly showed her hand to him.
"It seems like an awful long chance," he said.
"Not so long, perhaps, as you think," his wife assured him. "Anyhow, it's our ONLY chance, and we're not popular in Vale."
"Have you talked to her about it?"
"A little. She'll do anything we ask. She's a good girl that way."
The three were still buried in discussion when Lorelei appeared at the door.
"I'm going over to Mabel's," she paused a moment to say. "I'll be back early, mother."
In Peter Knight's eyes, as he gazed at his daughter, there was something akin to shame; but Jim evinced only a hard, calculating appraisal. Both men inwardly acknowledged that the mother had spoken less than half the truth, for the girl was extravagantly, bewitchingly attractive. Her face and form would have been noticeable anywhere and under any circumstances; but now in contrast with the unmodified homeliness of her parents and brother her comeliness was almost startling. The others seemed to harmonize with their drab surroundings, with the dull, unattractive house and its furnishings, but Lorelei was in violent opposition to everything about her. She wore her beauty unconsciously, too, as a princess wears the purple of her rank. Neither in speech nor in look did she show a trace of her father's fatuous commonplaceness, and she gave no sign of her mother's coldly calculating disposition. Equally the girl differed from her brother, for Jim was anemic, underdeveloped, sallow; his only mark of distinction being his bright and impudent eye, while she was full-blooded, healthy, and clean. Splendidly distinctive, from her crown of warm amber hair to her shapely, slender feet, it seemed that all the hopes, all the aspirations, all the longings of bygone generations of Knights had flowered in her. As muddy waters purify themselves in running, so had the Knight blood, coming through unpleasant channels, finally clarified and sweetened itself in this girl. In the color of her eyes she resembled neither parent; Mrs. Knight's were close-set and hard; Peter's shallow, indefinite, weak. Lorelei's were limpid and of a twilight blue. Her single paternal inheritance was a smile perhaps a trifle too ready and too meaningless. Yet it was a pleasant smile, indicative of a disposition toward courtesy, if not self- depreciation.
But there all resemblance ceased. Lorelei Knight was mysteriously different from her kin; she might almost have sprung from a different strain, and except as one of those "throwbacks" which sometimes occur in a mediocre family, when an exotic offspring blooms like a delicate blossom in a bed of weeds, she was inexplicable. Simple living had made