The Perils of Pauline | Page 3

was usually pronounced "Mugumry" and thence degenerated into "Mug." Mug's inflamed and scowling face and bulging eyes usually conveyed the general impression that he was about to burst into profanity -- a conjecture which frequently proved correct. In this case he merely remarked in a sort of "newsboy" voice:
"Mr. Raymond Owen, I believe?"
The secretary's sallow face flushed a little as he stepped aside and let Harry and Pauline pass out of earshot.
"See here, Mug," complained Owen, "I haven't a cent for you. You will get me discharged if you come around here like this."
"Well, I'll get you fired right now," growled Mug, "if you don't come across with the money." And he started toward the front steps. Owen led him out of sight of the house and finally got rid of him. For a blackmailer knows he can strike but once, and, having struck, he loses all power over his victim. So Hicks withheld the blow, collected a paltry thirty dollars, and consented to wait a little while for Marvin to die.
Harry and Pauline passed on into the house. He had the straight backbone and well poised head of the West Pointer, but without the unnatural stiffness of the soldier's carriage; the shoulders of the "halfback," and the lean hips of a runner were his, and he had earned them in four years on his varsity football and track teams. The girl beside him, half a head shorter, tripped along with the easy action of a thoroughbred. Both bore the name of Marvin, yet there was no relationship.
Harry's mother, long dead, had adopted this girl on Mr. Marvin's first trip to Egypt. Pauline was the daughter of an English father and a native mother.
Mrs. Marvin first saw her as a blue-eyed baby, too young to understand that its parents had just been drowned in the Nile. As brother and sister they grew up together until college separated the two. After four years Pauline's dainty prettiness struck Harry with a distinct shock, the delightful sort of shock known as love at first sight. It was really Harry's first sight of her as a woman. Every sense and instinct in him shouted, "Get that girl," and nothing in him answered "No."
Mr. Marvin looked unusually pale as those two very vital young persons stepped into the library. He read their thoughts and said quietly.
"Harry, I've been placed in the hands of a receiver."
"Receiver?" echoed Harry, with amazement, for he knew that Marvin enterprises were financed magnificently.
"Yes, Dr. Stevens is the receiver. He says I have exhausted my entire stock of nervous capital, that my account at the bank of physical endurance is overdrawn, nature has called her loans, and you might say that I am a nervous bankrupt."
"So All you need is rest," cried Pauline, "and you will be as strong as ever."
"Well, before I rest I want to assure myself about you children. Harry, you love Pauline, don't you?
"You bet I do, father."
"Pauline, you love Harry, don't you?"
"Yes," answered Pauline slowly.
"And you will marry right away?"
"This very minute, if she would have me," said Harry.
"And you, Pauline?" queried the old man.
"Yes, father," for she loved him and felt toward him as if she were indeed his daughter. "Perhaps some time I'll marry Harry, but not for a year or two. I couldn't marry him now, it wouldn't be right."
"Wouldn't be right?? Well, I'd like to know why not."
Pauline was silent a moment. She hated to oppose this fine old man, but her will was as firm as his, and well he knew it. Harry spoke for her:
"Oh, she wants to see life before she settles down -- wild life, sin and iniquity, battle, murder and sudden death and all that sort of stuff. I don't know what has gotten into women these days, anyway."
Then Polly, prettily, daintily, as she did all things, and with charming little blushes and hesitations, confessed her secret. In short, it was her ambition to be a writer, a writer of something worth while -- a great writer. To be a great writer one must know life, and to know life one must see it -- see the world. She ended by asking the two men if this were not so.
They looked at each other and coughed with evident relief it the comparative harmlessness of her whim.
"Yes, Polly," said old man Marvin, "a great writer ought to see life in order to know what he is writing about. But what makes you suspect that you have the ability to be even an ordinary writer?"
Marvin sire winked at Marvin son and Marvin son winked back, for no man is too old or too young to enjoy teasing a pretty and serious girl.
Pauline saw the wink, and her foot ceased tracing a pattern in the carpet and stamped on it