Quote Distribution over Book

42

Book Section (20-page chunks)

"Porter Pinckard," Miss Breckenridge answered

"But we knew where he was," Billy said quickly,

"He wasn't there -- I asked him not to go," said Billy.

"Do you good women realize what time it is?" Miss Breckenridge asked

"Well -- I was wondering!"

"What do you think -- we'll dance."

"Long ago," said Billy

"I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl added

"Who said I met him -- places?" she said

"I like him. And you can't make me deny it!"

"I don't see why!" she burst

"And I think that if you tell him YOU interfere in a matter that doesn't in the LEAST concern you," Billy pursued

"You have no BUSINESS to!"

"In the first place," Billy said sullenly, "you'll tell him a lot of things that aren't so!"

"You can tell him what you please," she said in a cold fury, "but I'll know WHY you did it -- it's because you're jealous, and you want everyone in the world to be in love with YOU! You hate me because my father loves me, and you would do anything in the world to make trouble between us! I've known it ever since I was a little girl, even if I never have said it before! I -- " She choked

"I will not!" said the girl at white heat.

"Are you going to speak to Clancy?" the girl demanded

"You -- you used to like Joe, Rachael," she said

"He's awfully kind -- and -- and good, and Lucy never understood him, or tried to understand him!" said Billy

"If Joe Pickering told you any sentimental nonsense like that, kindly don't retail it to me," she said amusedly.

"I hate you!" she said

"Same old thing," Carol answered briefly.

"Well, I'll telephone them. If Florence comes in this morning I'm going to say you're asleep, so keep quiet up here. Do you want to see Greg again?"

"sick"

"That's not fair, Rachael!" the girl said hotly, "and you know it's not!"

"How do, Tante Firenze!" said Carol

"How are the girls? Say, listen! Is Isabelle going to the Bowditches'?"

"I should think you'd have to answer Mrs. Bowditch," said Carol

"But, my gracious -- Charlotte's two months older than I am, and she won't know any of the men!" Carol protested.

"You couldn't drop me at the club, on your way to church, Tante?"

"I told Dad where I was going!"

"When M'ma asks you a question, Isabelle, do not answer with another question, dear. I dropped Carol at the club, but I think Aunt Rachael means to pick her up there later, and go on to Mrs. Whittaker's for tea."

"We met Mrs. Whittaker in the Exchange yesterday, M'ma, and she very sweetly said that you were to -- that is, that she hoped you would bring us in for a little while this afternoon. Didn't she, Isabelle?"

"Listen, Rachael," said their hostess, coming up suddenly, and speaking quickly and lightly, "Clarence is here. Where in the name of everything sensible is Billy?"

"If Greg takes you home, send Alfred back with the runabout for me," Billy suggested.

"And you're only making me conspicuous for something that's ENTIRELY in your own brain!" blazed Billy.

"Nonsense!" said Billy

"If you loved me you'd have some consideration for me!"

"I'll tell you why -- because I won't stand for it!"

"Well, I won't be taken home like a bad child!" flamed Billy.

"Good-bye, Aunt Gertrude! I'm sorry for this, but it's not my fault!"

"I'm not crazy about it," Billy agreed fretfully.

"Oh, I'm GOING!" Billy said discontentedly.

"But I don't see why you and Rachael have to go."

"Joe Pickering's going to be in Texas this whole summer, if that's what you mean!" flamed Billy.

"And I'm capable of running my own affairs," finished Billy with a look far from filial.

"Well, what does he drink and smoke so much, and get this way for?" Billy demanded sullenly.

"You're awfully decent about all this, Rachael." Billy said

"Well?" she asked

"You mean because Joe is divorced?" Billy asked in a somewhat troubled voice.

"That is, you don't think divorced people ought to remarry, even if the divorce is fair enough?" Billy pursued, determined to be

"That's what you've always SAID!" Billy accused her vivaciously

"Isn't it fierce?" Billy said

"Don't you suppose they ever AIR it?" pursued the younger woman in a low tone.

"What do you know about Charles asking for Charlotte?" was Billy's only answer.

"Isn't he just the sort of mutt who would ask for Charlotte!"

"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want to move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at all!"

"Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged

"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much rather have gone to California, Dad!"

"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!" Billy laughed.

"No, I suppose there isn't," Billy said slowly.

"But I wish she'd not ask us every summer. I suppose we shall be doing this for the rest of our lives!"

"Handsome, and rich as Croesus, and his wife would divorce him, and belongs to one of the best families," summarized Billy. "Why, I think you would be a fool to do anything else!"

."Have a heart, and tell me who it is," teased Carol, slipping her foot from her low shoe to study a hole in the heel of her silk stocking.

"Well, I shall guess, if I can," the other woman warned her. And presently she added: "I'll tell you what, if you do give it up, I'm going straight to Bowman, and ask for your place in your new show! There's nothing about it that I couldn't do, and I believe he might give me a chance! I'll tell you what: you wait until the last moment before you tell him, and then he can't be prepared in advance. And I'll risk having Jacqueline make me a couple of gowns, and be all ready to jump in. I'll learn the part, too," said Billy kindling; "you'll coach me in it, won't you?"

"Oh, I know that!" Billy answered absently.

"Well, perhaps we shall have a change here, Anna?" Billy said brightly but cautiously, when she was in the hall.

"How shall you like keeping house for a man and wife?" Billy pursued.

"And do you like Miss Clay's young man?" Billy said boldly.

"Down on the ocean shore," Billy went on, "where you could go in bathing every day, and roll in the surf, and picnic, and sleep out of doors!"

"Their mother did, and she says that you can stay as long as you're a good boy, down there where it's nice and cool, digging in the sand, and going bare foot -- "

"You won't have to work, old man!"

"I never thought of doing anything else," Billy said, breathing the fresh salt air with obvious pleasure. "I had no idea that it was such a trip. But he was an angel -- look at them now, aren't they cute together?"

"Oh, thank you, but -- " Billy began in perfunctory regret. Her tone changed: "I should love to!" she said honestly.

"I was just thinking that you've not changed much, Rachael."

"And how's Greg?" Billy did not understand the sudden shadow that fell across Rachael's face, but she saw it, and wondered.

"Does he get down here often? It's a hard trip."

"You're more charming than ever, Rachael; you're one of the sweetest women I ever saw!"

"You've grown so gentle, and good," said Billy a little awkwardly. "Perhaps it's just because you're so sweet to Breck, and because you have such a nice way with children, but I -- I am ever and ever so grateful to you! I've often thought of you, all this time, and of the old days, and been glad that so much happiness of every sort has come to you. At first I felt dreadfully -- at that time, you know -- "

"Well, it was only -- you know how I loved him -- " Billy said quickly. "I've so often thought that perhaps you were the only person who knew what it all meant to me. I only thought he would be angry for a while. I thought then that Joe would surely win him. And afterward, I thought I would go crazy, thinking of him sitting there in the club. I had failed him, you know! I've never talked about it. I guess I'm all tired out from the trip down."

"I killed him!" sobbed Billy. "He spoke of me the last of all. He said to Berry Stokes that he -- he loved me. And he had a little old picture of me -- you remember the one in the daisy frame? -- over his heart. Oh, Daddy, Daddy! -- always so good to me!"

"Oh, I do believe it!" said Billy fervently, kneeling on the floor at Rachael's feet, her wet, earnest eyes on Rachael's face, her arms crossed on the older woman's knees.

"Ah, wasn't he?" Billy's eyes brimmed again. "Always that to me. But not to you, Rachael, and little cat that I was -- I knew it. But you see I had no particular reverence for marriage, either. How should I? Why, my own mother and my half-sisters -- hideous girls, they are, too -- were pointed out to me in Rome a year ago. I didn't know them! I could have made your life much easier, Rachael. I wish I had. I was thinking that this afternoon when Breck was letting you carry him out into deep water, clinging to you so cunningly. He is a cute little kid, isn't he? And he'll love you to death! He's a great kisser."

"Ah, but he was terrible to you, Rachael!" Billy said generously. "You deserved happiness if anyone ever did!"

"Oh, well" -- Billy had always hated statistics -- "we sold the Belvedere Bay place last year, you know, but it was a perfect wreck, and the Moultons said they had to put seventeen thousand dollars into repairs, but I don't believe it, and that money, and some other things, were put into the bank. Joe was just making a scene about it -- we have to draw now and then -- we sank I don't know what into those awful ponies, and we still have that place -- it's a lovely house, but it doesn't rent. It's too far away. The kid adores it of course, but it's too far away, it gives me the creeps. It's just going to wreck, too. Joe says sometimes that he's going to raise chickens there. I see him!" Billy scowled, but as Rachael did not speak, she presently came back to the topic. "But just how much of my money is left, I don't know. There are two houses in East One Hundredth -- way over by the river. Daddy took them for some sort of debt."

"Why he took them I don't know," Billy resumed, "ten flats, and all empty. They say it would cost us ten thousand dollars to get them into shape. They're mortgaged, anyway."

"My dear, perhaps it would. But do you think you could get Joe Pickering to do it? As long as the money in the bank lasts -- I forget what it is, several thousand, more than twenty, I think -- we'll go along as we are. Joe has a half-interest in a patent, anyway, some sort of curtain-pole; it's always going to make us a fortune!"

"Except that I would simply die!" Billy said. "I love the city, and the excitement of not knowing what will turn up. And if Joe would behave himself, and if I should make a hit, why, we'll be all right."

"Hello, dearie! But I'm interrupting -- -" said Billy.

"I should think you could write a letter to your beau with your eyes shut," Billy said. "You've had practice enough! I know you're busy, but I won't interrupt you long. Upon my word, I had a hard enough time getting to you. There was no boy at the lift, and only a dear old Irish girl mopping up the floors. We had a long heart- to-heart talk, and I gave her a dollar."

"Well, she unpinned her skirts and went after the boy," Billy said idly, "and it was the only thing I had." She was trying quietly to see the name on the envelope Magsie had destroyed, but being unsuccessful, she went on more briskly, "How is the beau, by the way?"

"I thought she would!" Billy said wisely. "I didn't see any woman, especially if she's not young, giving all that up without a fight! You know I said so."

"Well, she can refuse to give him his divorce, can't she?" Billy said sensibly.

"Of course she can!"

"Went to see her? For heaven's sake, what did you do that for?"

"For heaven's sake! You had your nerve! And what sort of a person is she?"

"But now she's changed her mind?"

"Well, what does HE say?" Billy asked after a pause.

"Well, I don't know that he can -- here. There are states -- "

"Not with a married man," Billy interrupted. Magsie halted, a little dashed.

"You'd have to show you had been injured -- and you've known all along he was married," Billy said.

"Of course, if his wife DID consent, and then changed her mind, and you sent his letters to her," Billy said after cogitation. "It might -- he may have glossed it all over, to her, you know."

"Make him pay!" said the practical Billy.

"Tell him. Ever so much more effective than writing!" Billy suggested.

"Are there children?" asked Billy.

"Grown?" pursued the visitor.

"What are you doing this afternoon?" asked Billy. "I have the Butlers' car for the day. Joe brought it into town to be fixed, and can't drive it out until tomorrow. We might do something. It's a gorgeous car."

"Joe Pickering?" asked Billy. "Oh, he's gone off with some men for some golf and poker. We might find someone, and go on a party. Where could we go -- Long Beach? It's going to be stifling hot."

"I can't to-day. I'm lunching with a theatrical man at Sherry's. I tell you I'm in deadly earnest. I'm going to break in! Suppose I come here for you at just three. Meanwhile, you think up someone. How about Bryan Masters?"

"Well," said Billy, departing, "you think of someone, and I will. Perhaps the Royces would go -- a nice little early party. The worst of it is, no one's in town!"

"Sherry's, please, Hungerford," said Billy easily. "And then you might get your lunch, and come for me sharp at half-past two."

"This is a nice way to act!" Billy began. "Your janitor's wife said you had come here. I've got two men -- " Magsie's expression stopped her.

"You ARE?" Billy ejaculated in amazement.

"But what'll the other man say?" demanded Billy.

"Won't know? But what will you tell him?"

"MARRIED!" For once in her life Billy was completely at a loss. "But are you going to MARRY him?"

"Why don't you let me run you about?" suggested Billy. "I don't have to meet the men until six -- I'll have to round up another girl, too; but I'd love to. Let Mama go back to Mr. Gardiner!"

"All righto!" agreed Billy.

"I wonder if you would let me into Miss Clay's apartment?" she said to the beaming janitor's wife fifteen minutes later. "Miss Clay isn't here, and I left my gloves in her rooms."

"Mv DEAR RACHAEL: The letter with the darling little 'B' came yesterday. I think he is cute to learn to write his own letter so quickly. Tell him that mother is proud of him for picking so many blackberries, and will love the jam. It is as hot as fire here, and the park has that steamy smell that a hothouse has. I have been driving about in Joe Butler's car all afternoon. We are going to Long Beach to-night.

"Rachael -- Magsie Clay and a man named Richard Gardiner were married this afternoon. He is an invalid or something; he is at St. Luke's Hospital, and she and his mother are going to take him to California at once. What do you know about that? Of course this is a secret, and for Heaven's sake, if you tell anybody this, don't say I gave it away.

"If Magsie Clay should send you a bunch of letters, she will just do it to be a devil, and I want to ask you to burn them up before you read them. You know how you talked to me about divorce, Rachael! What you don't know can't hurt you. Don't please Magsie Clay to the extent of doing exactly what she wants you to do. If anyone you love has been a fool, why, it is certainly hard to understand how they could, but you stand by what you said to me the other day, and forget it.

"I feel as if I was breaking into your own affairs. I hope you won't care, and that I'm not all in the dark about this -- " "Affectionately, BILLY."