The Coming of Bill | Page 2

rare moods of
discouragement, was her niece, Ruth Bannister, daughter of John
Bannister, the millionaire. It was not so long ago, she reflected with
pride, that she had induced Ruth to refuse to marry Basil Milbank--a
considerable feat, he being a young man of remarkable personal
attractions and a great match in every way. Mrs. Porter's objection to
him was that his father had died believing to the last that he was a
teapot.
There is nothing evil or degrading in believing oneself a teapot, but it
argues a certain inaccuracy of the thought processes; and Mrs. Porter
had used all her influence with Ruth to make her reject Basil. It was her
success that first showed her how great that influence was. She had
come now to look on Ruth's destiny as something for which she was
personally responsible--a fact which was noted and resented by others,
in particular Ruth's brother Bailey, who regarded his aunt with a dislike
and suspicion akin to that which a stray dog feels towards the boy who
saunters towards him with a tin can in his hand.
To Bailey, his strong-minded relative was a perpetual menace, a sort of
perambulating yellow peril, and the fact that she often alluded to him as
a worm consolidated his distaste for her.
* * * * *
Mrs. Porter released the clutch and set out on her drive. She rarely had
a settled route for these outings of hers, preferring to zigzag about New

York, livening up the great city at random. She always drove herself
and, having, like a good suffragist, a contempt for male prohibitions,
took an honest pleasure in exceeding a man-made speed limit.
One hesitates to apply the term "joy-rider" to so eminent a leader of
contemporary thought as the authoress of "The Dawn of Better
Things," "Principles of Selection," and "What of To-morrow?" but
candour compels the admission that she was a somewhat reckless
driver. Perhaps it was due to some atavistic tendency. One of her
ancestors may have been a Roman charioteer or a coach-racing maniac
of the Regency days. At any rate, after a hard morning's work on her
new book she felt that her mind needed cooling, and found that the rush
of air against her face effected this satisfactorily. The greater the rush,
the quicker the cooling. However, as the alert inhabitants of Manhattan
Island, a hardy race trained from infancy to dodge taxicabs and
ambulance wagons, had always removed themselves from her path with
their usual agility, she had never yet had an accident.
But then she had never yet met George Pennicut. And George, pawn of
fate, was even now waiting round the corner to upset her record.
George, man of all work to Kirk Winfield, one of the youngest and
least efficient of New York's artist colony, was English. He had been in
America some little time, but not long enough to accustom his rather
unreceptive mind to the fact that, whereas in his native land vehicles
kept to the left, in the country of his adoption they kept to the right; and
it was still his bone-headed practice, when stepping off the sidewalk, to
keep a wary look-out in precisely the wrong direction.
The only problem with regard to such a man is who will get him first.
Fate had decided that it should be Lora Delane Porter.
To-day Mrs. Porter, having circled the park in rapid time, turned her car
down Central Park West. She was feeling much refreshed by the
pleasant air. She was conscious of a glow of benevolence toward her
species, not excluding even the young couple she had almost reduced to
mincemeat in the neighbourhood of Ninety-Seventh Street. They had
annoyed her extremely at the time of their meeting by occupying till the

last possible moment a part of the road which she wanted herself.
On reaching Sixty-First Street she found her way blocked by a
lumbering delivery wagon. She followed it slowly for a while; then,
growing tired of being merely a unit in a procession, tugged at the
steering-wheel, and turned to the right.
George Pennicut, his anxious eyes raking the middle distance--as usual,
in the wrong direction--had just stepped off the kerb. He received the
automobile in the small of the back, uttered a yell of surprise and
dismay, performed a few improvised Texas Tommy steps, and fell in a
heap.
In a situation which might have stimulated another to fervid speech,
George Pennicut contented himself with saying "Goo!" He was a man
of few words.
Mrs. Porter stopped the car. From all points of the compass citizens
began to assemble, many swallowing their chewing-gum in their
excitement. One, a devout believer in the inscrutable ways of
Providence, told a friend as he ran that only two