The Cruise of the Dazzler | Page 2

a vague worry came into his eyes. He began resolutely to whistle, but this dwindled away till it was a thin and very subdued little sound, which ceased altogether as he rode up the driveway to a large two-storied house.
"Oh, Joe!"
He hesitated before the door to the library. Bessie was there, he knew, studiously working up her lessons. She must be nearly through with them, too, for she was always done before dinner, and dinner could not be many minutes away. As for his lessons, they were as yet untouched. The thought made him angry. It was bad enough to have one's sister--and two years younger at that--in the same grade, but to have her continually head and shoulders above him in scholarship was a most intolerable thing. Not that he was dull. No one knew better than himself that he was not dull. But somehow--he did not quite know how--his mind was on other things and he was usually unprepared.
"Joe--please come here." There was the slightest possible plaintive note in her voice this time.
"Well?" he said, thrusting aside the portière with an impetuous movement.
He said it gruffly, but he was half sorry for it the next instant when he saw a slender little girl regarding him with wistful eyes across the big reading-table heaped with books. She was curled up, with pencil and pad, in an easy-chair of such generous dimensions that it made her seem more delicate and fragile than she really was.
"What is it, Sis?" he asked more gently, crossing over to her side.
She took his hand in hers and pressed it against her cheek, and as he stood beside her came closer to him with a nestling movement.
"What is the matter, Joe dear?" she asked softly. "Won't you tell me?"
He remained silent. It struck him as ridiculous to confess his troubles to a little sister, even if her reports were higher than his. And the little sister struck him as ridiculous to demand his troubles of him. "What a soft cheek she has!" he thought as she pressed her face gently against his hand. If he could but tear himself away--it was all so foolish! Only he might hurt her feelings, and, in his experience, girls' feelings were very easily hurt.
She opened his fingers and kissed the palm of his hand. It was like a rose-leaf falling; it was also her way of asking her question over again.
"Nothing 's the matter," he said decisively. And then, quite inconsistently, he blurted out, "Father!"
His worry was now in her eyes. "But father is so good and kind, Joe," she began. "Why don't you try to please him? He does n't ask much of you, and it 's all for your own good. It 's not as though you were a fool, like some boys. If you would only study a little bit--"
"That 's it! Lecturing!" he exploded, tearing his hand roughly away. "Even you are beginning to lecture me now. I suppose the cook and the stable-boy will be at it next."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked forward into a melancholy and desolate future filled with interminable lectures and lecturers innumerable.
"Was that what you wanted me for?" he demanded, turning to go.
She caught at his hand again. "No, it wasn't; only you looked so worried that I thought--I--" Her voice broke, and she began again freshly. "What I wanted to tell you was that we're planning a trip across the bay to Oakland, next Saturday, for a tramp in the hills."
"Who 's going?"
"Myrtle Hayes--"
"What! That little softy?" he interrupted.
"I don't think she is a softy," Bessie answered with spirit. "She 's one of the sweetest girls I know."
"Which is n't saying much, considering the girls you know. But go on. Who are the others?"
"Pearl Sayther, and her sister Alice, and Jessie Hilborn, and Sadie French, and Edna Crothers. That 's all the girls."
Joe sniffed disdainfully. "Who are the fellows, then?"
"Maurice and Felix Clement, Dick Schofield, Burt Layton, and--"
"That 's enough. Milk-and-water chaps, all of them."
"I--I wanted to ask you and Fred and Charley," she said in a quavering voice. "That 's what I called you in for--to ask you to come."
"And what are you going to do?" he asked.
"Walk, gather wild flowers,--the poppies are all out now,--eat luncheon at some nice place, and--and--"
"Come home," he finished for her.
Bessie nodded her head. Joe put his hands in his pockets again, and walked up and down.
"A sissy outfit, that 's what it is," he said abruptly; "and a sissy program. None of it in mine, please."
She tightened her trembling lips and struggled on bravely. "What would you rather do?" she asked.
"I 'd sooner take Fred and Charley and go off somewhere and do something--well, anything."
He paused and looked at her. She was waiting patiently for him to