The Day of Days | Page 9

"How shall I hide the fact of my infatuation? If my family cast me off, so be it!"
"I told you, behave! Next thing you know, George will be bitin' the fence.... What's all this about you givin' a box party at the Knickerbocker to-night?"
"It's a fact," affirmed P. Sybarite. "Only I had counted on the pleasure of inviting you myself," he added with a patient glance at George.
"Never mind about that," interposed the lady. "I'm just as tickled to death, and I love you a lot more'n I do George, anyway. So _that's_ all right. Only I was afraid for a while he was connin' me."
"You feel better now?"
Violet placed a theatrical hand above her heart. "Such a relief!" she declared intensely--"you'll never know!" Then she jumped up and wheeled about to the door with petticoats professionally a-swirl. "Well, if I'm goin' to do a stagger in society to-night, it's me to go doll myself up to the nines. So long!"
"Hold on!" George cried in alarm. "You ain't goin' to go dec--decol--low neck and all that? Cut it, kid: me and P.S. ain't got no dress soots, yunno."
"Don't fret," returned Violet from the doorway. "I know how to pretty myself for my comp'ny, all right. Besides, you'll be at the back of the box and nobody'll know you exist. Me and Molly Leasing'll get all the yearnin' stares."
She disappeared by way of the vestibule. George shook a head heavy with forebodings.
"Class to that kid, all right," he observed. "Some stepper, take it from me. Anyway, I'm glad it's a box: then I can hide under a chair. I ain't got nothin' to go in but these hand-me-downs."
"You'll be all right," said P. Sybarite hastily.
"Well, I won't feel lonely if you don't dress up like a horse. What are you going to wear, anyway?"
"A shave, a clean collar, and what I stand in. They're all I have."
"Then you got nothin' on me. What's your rush?"--as P. Sybarite would have passed on. "Wait a shake. I wanna talk to you. Sit down and have a cig."
There was a hint of serious intention in the manner of the shipping clerk to induce P. Sybarite, after the hesitation of an instant, to accede to his request. Squatting down upon the steps, he accepted a cigarette, lighted it, inhaled deeply.
"Well?"
"I dunno how to break it to you," Bross faltered dubiously. "You better brace yourself to lean up against the biggest disappointment ever."
P. Sybarite regarded him with sharp distrust. "You interest me strangely, George.... But perhaps you're no more addled than usual. Consider me gently prepared against the worst--and get it off your chest."
"Well," said George regretfully, "I just wanna put you next to the facts before you ask her. Miss Lessing ain't goin' to go with us to-night."
P. Sybarite looked startled and grieved.
"No?" he exclaimed.
George wagged his head mournfully. "It's a shame. I know you counted on it, but I guess you'll have to get summonelse."
"I'm afraid I don't understand. How do you know Miss Lessing won't go? Did she tell you so?"
"Not what you might call exactly, but she won't all right," George returned with confidence. "There ain't one chance in a hundred I'm in wrong."
"In wrong? How?"
"About her bein' who she is."
P. Sybarite subjected the open, na?f countenance of the shipping clerk to a prolonged and doubting scrutiny.
"No, I ain't crazy in the head, neither," George asseverated with some heat. "I suspicioned somethin' was queer about that girl right along, but now I know it."
"Explain yourself."
"Ah, it ain't nothin' against her! You don't have to scorch your collar. _She's_ all right. Only--she 's in bad. I don't s'pose you seen the evenin' paper?"
"No."
"Well, I picked up the Joinal down to Clancey's--this is it." With an effective flourish, George drew the sheet from his coat pocket and unfolded its still damp and pungent pages. "And soon's I seen that," he added, indicating a smudged halftone, "I begun to wise up to that little girl. It's sure some shame about her, all right, all right."
Taking the paper, P. Sybarite examined with perplexity a portrait labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the coarse mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable individuality in the pose of the head remotely suggested Molly Lessing.
In a further endeavour to fathom his meaning, the little bookkeeper conned carefully the legend attached to the putative likeness:
MARIAN BLESSINGTON
only daughter of the late Nathaniel Blessington, millionaire founder of the great Blessington chain of department stores. Although much sought after on account of the immense property into control of which she is to come on her twenty-fifth birthday, Miss Blessington contrived to escape matrimonial entanglement until last January,