Under the Skylights | Page 6

likely to encourage her with hints or advice.
"So much energy, so much talent going to waste, so many young people tumbling up anyhow and presently tumbling over--all for lack of thorough and systematic training," she said, across her own broad bosom.
"I know of but one training that is needed," said Abner massively: "the training of the sense of social justice--such training of the public conscience as will insist upon seeing that each and every freeman gets an even chance."
"An even chance?" repeated Eudoxia, rather dashed. "What I think of offering is an even start. Doesn't it come to much the same thing?"
But Abner would none of it. Possessed of the fatalistic belief in the efficacy of mere legislation such as dominates the rural townships of the West, he grasped his companion firmly by the arm, set his sturdy legs in rapid motion, walked her from assembly hall to assembly hall through this State, that and the other, and finally fetched up with her under the dome of the national Capitol. Senators and representatives co-operated here, there and everywhere, the chosen spokesmen of the sovereign people; Abner seemed almost to have enrolled himself among them. Confronted with this august company, whose work it was to set things right, Eudoxia Pence felt smaller than ever. What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. Ten to one we shall never see her profile here again!" Yes, Eudoxia was feeling, with a sudden faintness, that the Better Things might after all be beyond her reach. She looked about for herself without finding herself: she had dwindled away to nothingness.

VI
"Do you take her money--such money?" Abner asked of Giles with severity. Eudoxia had returned to Medora and the samovar.
"Such money?" returned Giles. "Is it different from other money? What do you mean?"
"Isn't her husband the head of some trust or other?"
"Why, yes, I believe so: the Feather-bed Trust, or the Air-and-Sunlight Trust--something of that sort; I've never looked into it closely."
"Yet you accept what it offers you."
"And give a good return for it. Yes, she had paid me already for my sketches--a prompt and business-like way of doing things that I should be glad to encounter oftener."
Abner shook his head sadly. "I thought we might come to be real friends."
"And I hope so yet. Anyway, it takes a little money to keep the tea-pot boiling."
Abner drifted back to the shelter of his canopy and darkly accused himself for his acceptance of such hospitality. He ought to go, to go at once, and never to come back. But before he found out how to go, Clytie Summers came along and hemmed him in.
Clytie was not at all afraid of big men; she had already found them easier to manage than little ones. Indeed she had pretty nearly come to the conclusion that a lively young girl with a trim figure and a bright, confident manner and a fetching mop of sunlit hair and a pair of wide, forthputting, blue eyes was predestined to have her own way with about everybody alike. But Clytie had never met an Abner Joyce.
And as soon as Clytie entered upon the particulars of her last slumming trip through the river wards she began to discover the difference. She chanced to mention incidentally certain low-grade places of amusement.
"What!" cried Abner; "you go to theatres--and such theatres?"
"Surely I do!" cried Clytie in turn, no less disconcerted than Abner himself. "Surely I go to theatres; don't you?"
"Never," replied Abner firmly. "I have other uses for my money." His rules of conduct marshalled themselves in a stiff row before him; forlorn Flatfield came into view. Neither his principles nor his practice of making monthly remittances to the farm permitted such excesses.
"Why, it doesn't cost anything," rejoined Clytie. "There's no admission charge. All you have to do is to buy a drink now and then."
"Buy a drink?"
"Beer--that will do. You can stay as long as you want to on a couple of glasses. Lots of our girls didn't take but one."
"Lots of----?"
"Yes, the whole class went. We found the place most interesting--and the audience. The men sit about with their hats on, you know, in a big hall full of round tables, drinking and smoking----"
"And you mixed up in such a----?"
"Well, no; not exactly. We had a box--as I suppose you would call it; three of them. Of course that did cost a little something. And then Mr. Whyland bought a few cigars----"
"Mr. Whyland----?"
"Yes, he was with us; he thought there ought to be at least one gentleman along. He couldn't