A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
when I can spend it with you? I was just going to meet Mater at the jail
where she has been pinning rosebuds on repentant bosoms. Come, tell me
all about yourself!” He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, and
hands clasped, dropping his voice to a confidential tone, and bringing
the whole battery of his glances to play upon her.
“Why should I?” asked Connie archly. “You haven't been near me since I
went to the country.”
“What was the use? You couldn't expect me to compete with a hero, who is
making such a grandstand play as Morley. Giving himself up for an act he
says he didn't commit, refunding money when he doesn't have to, going to
work as a scrub reporter when he has lived like a lord all his life!
I don't see how the theatrical managers have overlooked him! He is the
stuff matinee idols are made of. He's turned the heads of half the girls
in town!”
“He's turned mine all right,” said Connie complacently. “I'm crazy about
him. And he isn't doing all those things for effect either. He is not
that kind. Is he, Mr. Wicker?”
Noah, thus suddenly appealed to, was compelled to answer truthfully that
he was not. But he did so with a protesting jerk of the elbow, that sent
an ink-bottle flying to the floor.
Gerald took advantage of the mishap to get Connie over to the window.
“It's beastly lonesome without you,” he whispered. “When are you coming
home?”
“Heaven knows!” said Connie, putting her hands behind her for
safe-keeping. “Now that somebody else has rented the College Street
house, and Miss Lady has sold Thornwood, I don't know what's to become
of us.”
“Don't you miss me a little bit?” asked Gerald, playing with the silver
purse on her wrist.
“Of course I do, silly. Is my hat on straight? I wish I had a mirror.”
Noah kneeling on the floor, mopping up the ink, reached toward the desk,
and then paused.
“I'll be your mirror!” said Gerald, presenting his eyes in a way that
only a very near-sighted person could have taken advantage of.
“City Hall clock's striking four,” said Noah grimly.
But Noah's desire to have Connie to himself was not to be gratified. No
sooner had Gerald gone, than Hattie arrived, very slim and angular, and
carrying a prodigious stack of school-books.
“What was the sense of my meeting you here?” she demanded of Connie,
wasting no time on amenities. “You've made me miss the four-two train,
and come out of my way. What did you want with me?”
“I wanted to use your mileage book, dear,” said Connie sweetly. “How
long do you suppose it will be, Mr. Wicker, before Mr. Gooch comes in?”
“Any minute now,” said Noah, smoothing down his hair with an inky
finger. “I--I think the clock is a little fast.” Then as Connie laughed,
he jerked up the top of his desk and disappeared behind it.
“Stuffy old place!” said Connie, wandering about the room. “If Mr. Gooch
wasn't so stingy he'd have it cleaned up.”
“I wouldn't call a man stingy who had given a library to the law
school,” Hattie objected.
“Yes, and he's spent the rest of his life saving every penny to pay
himself back for it. He has eaten fifty-two suppers a year at our house
for ten years, that's five hundred and twenty suppers, and he's never
even treated us to a chocolate sundae!”
“I don't think it's stingy to be economical,” Hattie said with her most
superior air.
Noah, who was facing the open door, suddenly began making strange
gestures, and violent appeals for silence, but the girls were off on an
old argument and did not see him.
“Besides,” Connie was saying conclusively, “he cheats at cards; you know
he does.”
“Only at solitaire. I don't see any reason why he shouldn't cheat
himself if he wants to. He's all right, even if he is queer, and I think
you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk about him the way you do!”
“How do you do, Harriet?” said Mr. Gooch dryly, entering from the outer
room and not glancing at Connie. “A message from your father?”
Connie slipped the note into Hattie's hand and took refuge with Noah
behind the desk top.
“Did he hear?” she whispered hysterically. Then not waiting for a reply
she pounced upon an object in the desk. “Is that a mirror?”
Noah shamefacedly produced it.
“Hold it for me,” she commanded. “Not so far off. Like that!”
Standing there behind the desk holding his little mirror for her to
powder her nose seemed to Noah the apotheosis of romance.
“Too much?” she asked, tilting her face for inspection. “And is my hat
right? I want to look my best, because you know I _may_ meet Donald
Morley on the steps.”
She was evidently not disappointed, for Noah, standing at the window
waiting to catch the last flutter of her feather as she passed up the
street, had to wait five agonizing minutes, at the end of which Don
spoke to him from the door.
“Hello, Wick. Is Mr. Gooch here?”
“He was a minute ago.”
“Is he coming back?”
“I don't know, I'm sure.”
Noah made the answers in a tone that discouraged further conversation,
and Donald after a sharp glance at him, shrugged his shoulders and
picked up a book. He had not long to wait before Mr. Gooch returned.
“I've been telephoning all over town for you,” said the lawyer testily.
“Is this rumor true that you have bought back your bank stock?”
“It is. It was the only honest thing I could do.”
“Not at all,” complained Mr. Gooch, who became passionately attached
to the contrary opinion the moment he ascertained yours. “It was a most
quixotic, a most reckless course to take. I suppose you know of the
double liability?”
“Yes, I know,” Donald flung out impatiently.
“You are singularly fortunate, Mr. Morley, to be able to indulge these
magnanimous whims. Your resources I presume--”
“My resources consist in a piece of real estate and a couple of race
horses. That's about all that's left.”
“The real estate?” Mr. Gooch looked encouraged. “City property?”
“No, it's a farm.”
“Where?”
“On the Cane Run Road.”
Noah's head appeared above the desk for the first time during the
conversation and he looked surprised, as if he had made a discovery.
“Adjoining your sister's property, I judge?” continued Mr. Gooch.
“That's good, very good. It ought to bring about--?”
“It's not for sale,” said Donald shortly.
Mr. Gooch, who had emerged to the rim of his shell, promptly went in
again.
“You see, Mr. Gooch,” said Donald, leaning forward and speaking
earnestly, “when you took this case I had no need to think of the
financial end of it. I wanted to get the affair straight, and I didn't
care a hang what it would cost. Since then things have changed. I think
it's only fair to tell you that after I sell my horses and settle things
up, there won't be more than a thousand dollars left. Will that cover
your fee?”
Mr. Gooch was visibly offended. “It is not my custom, sir, to name a
sum in advance. There's a great deal of work on this case, of a very
annoying nature. We might try to come under the amount stipulated, and
in a pinch of course you could sell the real estate.”
“No,” said Donald, “I shall not sell it. And I've got to know to-day
what your terms will be. I've got work with the _Herald-Post_ as
temporary correspondent at the Capitol. I'm going up there to-morrow,
and will probably stay on until my case is called. I'd like to have your
definite answer at once.”
“Well, I didn't want the case in the beginning,” said Mr. Gooch. “It's
the sort of thing I don't care for. I might be able to finish it for a
thousand dollars, but I don't know that I'd care to commit myself.”
“Very well,” said Donald, rising with spirit. “That means that I'll have
to get another lawyer.”
“You'll be making a mistake,” said Mr. Gooch, twisting his small
features into a hard knot, and watching Donald closely. “It's a great
risk to change lawyers in the middle of a case. There's a great deal at
stake. You oughtn't to stand back on a question of money at a critical
time like this.”
“Good Lord, man! I'm not standing back on a question of money! I'd put
up all I had if it was a million. Do you suppose I would have taken a
job in Frankfort for ten dollars a week if I had any money?”
“But you still hold property!”
“I do, Mr. Gooch, and for reasons you could never understand I shall
continue to hold it. Good day.”
“Stop a minute!” Noah Wicker unfolded himself in sections, and got to
his feet.
“Suppose you let me take your case.”
Donald and Mr. Gooch looked at him with equal amazement.
“I haven't had much experience,” Noah went on slowly and grimly. “I
didn't even know a reputable lawyer could throw a case over in the
middle when a client lost his money. I've got a lot to learn. But I do
know this case from end to end, and I know you, Don Morley. If I can't
clear you with or without money, I'd better give up the practice of law
right here and now. Do you think you'd be willing to trust me?”
Donald hesitated for a moment, glancing from Noah's honest, homely face
to Mr. Gooch's sneering one, then he jumped to a decision.
“It's a go, Wick! And the fee--”
Noah extended a hand, the breadth of whose palm has already been
commented upon.
“The fee be damned,” he drawled.
CHAPTER XXIV
Donald Morley packed his few belongings and went on his small mission
for the _Herald-Post_ with a determination worthy of a larger cause. The
remuneration was less than he had been in the habit of paying his stable
boy, but failure to secure a position, together with a depleted bank
account, had chastened his spirit, and he was ready to grasp at anything
that would give him a chance to justify the belief of his friends.
When he first arrived at the sleepy little town where the state
transacted its business, he took two rooms at the hotel. Later he moved
to a boarding-house, and by the end of the third week he was in a small,
bare room in an office building, eating his breakfasts at the depot,
his luncheons at a restaurant, and his dinners at the hotel. For in his
determination to square himself with the world he had managed to dispose
of nearly all he had, excepting a thousand dollars which he had secretly
deposited to Noah's account.
At first poverty was a somewhat diverting novelty; it served to keep
his mind off those pursuing terrors that had filled his horizon. For
the first time in life he was economizing for a purpose. But to make the
usual expenditure of a day extend over a week requires forethought and
judgment, neither of which qualities Donald possessed. He had counted
on augmenting the small sum received from the _Herald-Post_ by writing
feature articles for other papers, but his efforts had met with small
success. In vain he arranged his article after the exact plan laid down
by Cropsie Decker. He clipped, pasted and pinned, looked up statistics,
verified statements and ruthlessly weeded out every little vagrant fancy
that dared intrude on the solemn company of facts. But his efforts when
finished bore the same relation to Cropsie's that a pile of bricks does
to a house.
Only once had he set Cropsie and his lapboard literature aside,
and followed his own impulse. It was after his first call at the
Queeringtons', when the Doctor had advised him to choose a congenial
theme and let his fancy have full rein. A word of encouragement was all
he needed to begin a series of tales that had burned for utterance ever
since he left India. They were the adventures related to him by his
Mohammedan bearer, Khalil Samad, who had sat on his heels many a night
before the young sahib's fire, and spun yarns of marvelous variety.
Donald had only to close his eyes to see the keen, subtle face
surmounted by its huge white turban, and to hear the torrent of
picturesque broken English that poured from the lips of one of the few
Mohammedans in India who could curse the various natives in their own