Instead of the Thorn

"Surely you know of her sorrow?" said Whitcomb, and his expression was a reproach to the girl's drawling speech.

"Oh, so you are attached! Forgive me, won't you? All the same, if I'm ever in mourning I'm determined not to freeze my sister-woman and slink away from her into by-ways."

"Madge, dear," warned Mrs. Lindsay.

"Oh, Mother and Miss Barry have had some traffic over ferns; and Mrs. Porter's offishness is different from Linda Barry's. She's a queen, Mrs. Porter is. I'd take lessons of her just for the companionship, only that she'd think I thought I had a voice."

"And so you have, a very nice one," chirped Mamma.

"Her goose is such a swan," exclaimed Madge, with a lazy smile. "No one should be without a mother."

"Shoo, all of you," said Whitcomb, motioning with his hands. "I want King to go to sleep."

The convalescent's eyes closed as his head rested against the pillow of his reclining chair. "There goes Whitcomb, again," he announced through his nose. "Baby always goes to sleep in his carriage when he hits the oxygen, you know."

"No, no, Mr. King. Cabbage, cabbage," exclaimed Madge in reminder, as she jumped off the rickety steps.

Her acquaintance with Whitcomb had been very casual heretofore. There had been a few hours in New York and a few hours in Chicago at various times when cousinly amenities were exchanged; and now, as her youthful vitality had reasserted itself, the rôle of vegetable was becoming a frightful bore, and this invasion of the two young men restored an interest in life.

There was a level plain back of Miss Benslow's house and Madge had discovered signs that previous boarders had essayed to play tennis there. She led Whitcomb to it now.

"Don't you think we might fix it up?" she asked.

He looked dubiously at the tufts of grass. "And crack a few tendons over these hummocks?" he suggested. "Do you play much?"

Her dark eyes gave him a provocative glance. "I might surprise you," she drawled.

"Good enough. It will be better than nothing."

"Which? A girl antagonist or the court?"

"I'll tell you that later."

"Then go and ask Luella for a scythe and a lawn mower. Let's begin right off. I'm aching to play."

"Don't believe I can this afternoon," returned Whitcomb, rather consciously. "I ought to go over to Miss Barry's and call the first thing."

"Oh, yes. I forgot the attachment." Madge's dark, tanned face lighted brilliantly with a gleam of white teeth. She feigned a shiver. "Be careful that she doesn't freeze you. To call on Linda Barry seems an intrepid act to me."

"You didn't grow up with her."

"I suppose she's really charming when one knows her," said Madge, as they turned away from the potential court and strolled toward the house. Whitcomb's manner as he replied had suggested danger. "She's certainly lovely to look upon."

"You haven't seen her yet in a normal condition," he replied, somewhat mollified. "People can't get over shocks like hers in a minute. This must have been a great place for her, though."

Whitcomb's eyes swept the vastness of sea and sky.

"If you don't find her much improved, tell her of the cabbage stunt," said Madge. Then she pointed out to her companion the low, broad, shingled cottage, clinging to the rocky shore, and turned away toward the house.

"To-morrow morning for the tennis court," said Whitcomb gayly as he left her.

"How tiresome," she thought. "That Barry iceberg will never like me, and now Fred will want to drag her into everything. If only Mr. King had his sea legs."

She looked disapprovingly toward the piazza, where the convalescent's clear-cut face showed, sleeping against the blue chintz pillow.

"Where has Fred gone, dear?" asked her mother's voice at her elbow. The sharp eyes had witnessed her child's desertion.

"Gone over to call on Linda Barry. I think that's all he came here for."

"H'm. Shows Fred's not mercenary. Still, you know, things aren't going to turn out so badly as people expected. I had a talk with Fred this morning and he's quite optimistic. It seems that that Mr. King is the hero of the whole affair. I'll tell you about it sometime. Hasn't he an aristocratic face!" added Mrs. Lindsay, with an approving snap of her eyes toward the steamer chair.

"I wanted to fix the tennis court. I wish that human Thermos bottle was in Kamchatka."

Mrs. Lindsay laughed. "They retain heat as well as cold, remember. Perhaps Fred knows what is inside that one better than you do."

Madge yawned and put an arm around her mother as they walked toward the house. They were excellent friends.

The following morning, when Whitcomb had finished ministering to the convalescent's needs, and had placed him comfortably in the hammock, he was ready for the tennis court proposition.

It proved that Luella's lawn mower was an antique whose working days were over; and she indicated to the young people a house where one could be borrowed. It was not Miss Barry's cottage!

When they had traversed some distance across the field on the errand, a demurely stepping figure approached them. It was a very young girl in a blue frock, bareheaded, and carrying with great solicitude a bowl covered with a napkin.

As she approached, Whitcomb recognized her, and it was with some relief that she recognized him, bareheaded, and in khaki trousers and sweater, with a general appearance of being long for this world. He was laughing and talking with Luella's boarder in a reassuring manner, and when his eyes fell upon her, he spoke. "Why, good-morning, Blanche Aurora."

"Good mornin', Mr. Whitcomb," she responded loudly in her best manner and with a sharp glance at the dark young lady in the rose gown.

"Whither away, Blanche Aurora?"

"I'm carryin' jell to the king," she announced.

"What's this?" Fred's eyes lighted curiously on the snowy napkin. "Something nice for King, eh? Bertram the first?"

"Lemon jell," announced Blanche Aurora, with a proud accession of lung power, and an evident desire not to be delayed.

"Well, Mr. King's over there in a hammock," said Whitcomb, looking doubtful. "I don't believe I need to go back."

"Go back? Of course not!" cried Madge. – "Ask for Mrs. Lindsay when you get to Miss Benslow's and she'll see to it. Come on, Fred."

Blanche Aurora gave the young lady one look, as cold and impersonal as china-blue optics are capable of bestowing, and moved on her way. Call for Mrs. Lindsay! Not likely, now that she knew the king was easy prey in a hammock.

"But poor King," protested Whitcomb, as he followed Madge's determined march. "Is it fair? No cotton for his ears."

"Oh, she probably won't see him at all. The young one will give the jelly to Mother and she'll attend to it."

Little Madge Lindsay knew of the swelling heart beneath the blue gingham frock. Blanche Aurora's confused and excited meditations had conferred royalty upon the mysterious stranger, and should she find him informally wearing a crown in his hammock, it would not astonish her in the least.

Arriving at the Benslow house, she cast glances askance toward piazza and windows, fearing that some one might inquire her business; but it was ten-thirty in the morning, a busy time for housekeepers, and she proceeded unmolested toward the Balm-of-Gilead trees.

One hammock hung empty, its fringes stirring but lightly in the protected nook to which the trees owed their life.

The visitor caught sight of fair hair on the pillow of the second swinging couch, and continuing from the head a long black chrysalis.

She approached eagerly. King, glancing around at a sound, suddenly saw beside him a blue-clothed figure with long, white, pipe-stem legs, and white sneakers. The newcomer's red braided hair glinting in the sun was surmounted by a voluminous blue bow.

As he turned his head, the better to see his visitor, she burst forth in one breath: "I'm Miss Belinda Barry's help, Blanche Aurora Martin, Blanche Aurora for short, and I've brought you a snack, O King."

The invalid turned, chrysalis and all, the better to view the bowl being extended to him.

"Why – why" – he said, exhibiting broadly the teeth Linda had commended, – "somebody is being very kind to me."

"It's Miss Barry; but I made the jell and she sent it with her compliments. Snacks is good for folks that's sick and delicate."

As she spoke, the visitor was devouring the royal features with intent to verify her suspicion concerning the new photograph, and to understand the great man's influence on Miss Linda.

"What did you say was your name?"

"Blanche Aurora."

"Well, you're a very kind little girl. Do you say that jelly is for me?"

"Yes, and you'd better eat it right off, O King, 'cause the middle o' the mornin' is the time for snacks. I've got a spoon in here," – she took off the napkin and revealed it. "If you eat it now, you see, I can take the bowl back; 'cause if it once gits in with Luella's things, no tellin' when we'd ever see it again."

King's gray eyes twinkled. "Blanche Aurora, you're a joy," he declared mildly, "and never in my life have I seen anything look so good as that jelly."

"It is good, O King," admitted the visitor, stentorianly modest. "It's got orange juice in it, too."

"Then, get that chair over there under the tree, and bring it here where you'll be more sociable; and would you mind getting the pillow out of the other hammock so I can be royally propped up. If I'm a king, nothing's too good for me, eh?"

"Of course, nothin's too good for you," declared Blanche Aurora solemnly, as she carried out his directions.

"I'm afraid somebody has been – well – stringing you, to put it informally, concerning myself," remarked the invalid when his visitor had propped his shoulders to her liking. "If my head should lie any uneasier if it wore a crown, the game wouldn't be worth the candle. Could you pull that pillow a little higher – there, that's fine. Now, then, for the jelly."

The visitor took it from the chair, and handing it to him, seated herself, with her demurest company manner.

"One thing more, you good child. Can you tuck the end of that rug under my feet?"

"Is your feet cold?" asked Blanche Aurora sharply as she jumped up and complied. "Do you wish you had a hot-water bag?"

"I dare say Whitcomb brought one."

"But the hens can lend you all you want," declared Blanche Aurora earnestly. "They don't need 'em this weather."

"The hens? What sort of a place have I got into?"

So the visitor explained Luella's invention, and King laughed till he was weak, while the little girl eyed him solemnly.

"Do stop," he begged. "Spare me this last humiliation of being in the old hen's class. Now, Blanche Aurora, here goes." And he began an appreciative attack on the jelly.

CHAPTER XXIV

WHITCOMB'S CONFESSION

Blanche Aurora never removed her eyes from her beneficiary.

"The best jelly ever," he remarked between two mouthfuls.

"You don't talk a bit like a king," she declared judicially.

"Have you known many?"

"Only in stories."

"Somebody evidently has told you a fairy story about me," – the speaker continued to eat industriously. "Who tried to induce you to believe that I was anything but an American rack of bones?"

"I knew you was a great man, and they said King."

"A great man, eh? How's that?"

"And I believed nobody but a king could make Miss Linda cry."

The gray eyes lifted for a look at the visitor before the eating recommenced.

"Not guilty," said King.

"She cried somethin' terrible 'cause you was sick."

The memory seemed to make the small piquant nose tingle, for Blanche Aurora wiggled it and snapped the china-blue eyes.

"She cries a good deal, I suppose."

"She never cries," declared the small maid indignantly. "Why should anybody that can have anythin' in the world and do anythin' in the world cry? I didn't know Miss Linda could cry; but her beau came over – "

The gray eyes lifted again, for a moment, but the convalescent's appetite appeared to be still ravenous.

" – And she was walkin' with him, and she come into the house and told Miss Barry you was sick, and – " Again Blanche Aurora's nose and lips wiggled in grievous reminiscence.

"Do you mean Mr. Frederick Whitcomb?"

"That's him. He told me he was her beau, but I guess he ain't no longer. I don't believe" – a shrewd look coming into the blue gazing eyes – "I don't believe she'd cry like that about him, 'cause she never does cry." The addition was made with a return of indignation. "She's the beautifulest, kindest lady in the whole world."

"H'm," mumbled King, over an extra large spoonful.

"She give me this dress" – the speaker grasped a fold of the azure gingham – "and a pink one, too, and ribbons. She used to wear the dresses herself, 'fore her pa died. When she come here first I looked like a scarecrow."

"My compliments, Blanche Aurora." King bowed toward his companion whose small white teeth gleamed in a face thrilled into vivacity. "You do Miss Linda credit."

"So I wondered what you was like, O King – I mean Mr. King. I guess you're just plain Mister, ain't you?"

"There never was a plainer."

"And so, when I seen this new likeness on Miss Linda's table, standin' by her pa's, I wondered if perhaps 'twas you, and it is!" finished Blanche Aurora with all the triumph of a Sherlock Holmes. "I put a wild rose front of her pa every day, and says I to her this mornin', 'Shall I git a rose for the new picture, too?' – but she looked awful sad and she shook her head and says, 'I'm afraid not, Blanche Aurora. We need pansies for that'; and we ain't got a pansy on the place. I'm awful sorry."

"Do you know, I don't believe I can quite finish this delicious jelly? I feel now as if my sweater wouldn't give any more."

"Well, you've et quite a lot," observed the visitor, looking into the bowl.

"I certainly have; and will you thank Miss Barry for me, and tell her that I feel in these noticeable bones that I'm going to be up and around before very long?"

"I'll tell her; and, oh, yes! Be you able to see folks?"

King's eyes twinkled. "Well, I seem to have seen you without any danger."

"Yes, but they didn't expect I was goin' to see you." There was a triumphant gleam in the speaker's eyes. "They told me to leave the jell."

"You think for yourself, don't you, Blanche Aurora?" laughed King, settling down comfortably into his pillow.

"I was bound I was goin' to see who it was could make Miss Linda sob, and sob, and besides, I wanted to see if the likeness was you that wasn't ever on her table before."

Long after the visitor's departure King lay, a deep line between his brows, his perplexed thoughts accompanied by the constant sound as of rain in the rustling Balm-of-Gilead leaves above him. Linda in wild tears; Linda placing a photograph of himself beside that of her father and all following Fred Whitcomb's visit; there was something here to be inquired into.

It was nearly noon when the laborers on the tennis court returned. King could hear their laughter as they approached the house; and shortly Whitcomb appeared beside the hammock, exasperatingly robust and gay, and wiping his moist brow.

"How goes it?" he asked, grasping the rope and swinging the couch.

"Stop that, or I'll murder you," growled King.

"Sure thing. I forgot," said Whitcomb as he tightened his hold and brought the chrysalis to a standstill. "Madge Lindsay's a scream," he continued. "She's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. She knows every word of the Winter Garden and Follies songs for the last two years. I'll get her started so you can hear her one of these times."

"Good Lord, deliver us!" uttered King devoutly.

"Got a grouch, old man?" asked Whitcomb with a solicitous change of tone. "Did Blanche A-roarer, the human siren, blow her whistle too near you? We met her and she said she was bringing you jell."

"She did, and it's safely stowed away under my sweater. What are you going to do next?"

"Why, we thought we'd go into the water. We both took a Turkish bath out there on that Transgressor's Boulevard that we're trying to turn into a tennis court. It's high tide, and Madge says there's a beach down here where we can get a ducking when the water's high. That's the trouble with this place. It's so jagged and deep, only a submarine could go bathing here at low tide. Why?" added Whitcomb. "Did you want me for anything?"

"No. What should I want you for? Get out."

"All right. You'll be coming with us in a little while. So long. We're watching the time and we'll be on hand for dinner. Mackerel, the fair Luella told me. I can hardly wait."

King gazed after his friend as the latter ran across the grass and disappeared within their tent. He closed his eyes, and opening them in a few minutes at a sound, found beside him a figure in a long black cloak, with a dark face beneath a red bathing-cap. Miss Lindsay was smiling down at him.

"We're going for a dip, Mr. King. I wish you could come."

"Pardon my not rising," said the invalid.

"It's such fun to have somebody to play with. I'm so glad you brought Fred here. I was getting so bored."

"That's a consoling way of putting it," remarked King. "It's a proud moment when I am spoken of as taking anybody anywhere."

"Oh, you'll be out of that hammock in a week. Do you like the banjo, Mr. King?"

"I hate it," he replied distinctly; then seeing the dark face fall, "but not more than I do everything."

"So discouraging," drawled Madge. "I was going to promise to give you some perfectly jolly darky tunes to-night."

"Good Lord, deliver us!" again rose to King's lips, but he swallowed the phrase. "Don't mind about me," he said. "Just give me a few board nails to bite, and let it go at that. I'm not worse than other convalescents, I dare say."

"Lemon jelly wasn't the thing to feed him," said Madge to Whitcomb, as a few minutes later they were scrambling down the bank toward a short stretch of pebbly beach. "He should be fed saccharine and nothing else. You never do know what to do with such people. You don't like not to be civil. You have a wonderful disposition, Fred. Yes, you have. I've always noticed it."

"I fancy I am something of an optimist," admitted Whitcomb, "but I need to be, as badly as anybody that ever lived. Now I'm trying to think that that sunny water will feel the way it looks."

"Come on, then," cried Madge, flinging aside her cloak, and seizing his hand she drew him, protesting and howling, into the icy flood. The wind was offshore, and Madge, thoroughly acclimated, had been anticipating mischievously the effect upon the tenderfoot.

He was game, however, and Lake Michigan had made him practically amphibious, so they had an exhilarating swim before coming out on the white pebbles for a sun bath.

"I'm afraid it will be a long time before King can stand that," remarked Whitcomb.

"What did you mean," asked Madge, "by saying a few minutes ago that you need a happy disposition more than other people? Is it because Mr. King is so difficult?"

"No," replied Whitcomb, gathering up a few pebbles and beginning to play jackstones. He avoided his companion's very good-looking but enterprising eyes.

"Well, aren't you going to tell me?"

"I don't know why I shouldn't. You're my cousin. I adore a girl who doesn't care a hang for me."

"The Thermos bottle," thought Madge acutely. "But you won't tell me who?" she hazarded aloud.

"Why should I?"

"You don't have to; but just remember this, Freddy Whitcomb. Look at this great ocean. It's like the great world. That saying, 'there's just as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it,' is true; and" – Madge captured Whitcomb's reluctant gaze with as bright eyes as ever sparkled under a red cap – "some people are only fish with gold scales," she drawled.

"She isn't," blurted out the young man defensively.

"Of course not," laughed Madge. "Want to go in once more?"

Whitcomb sprang to his feet. "Once more, and then what ho! for the mackerel!"

As he helped Madge up the bank a little later he said: "I must stay with King this afternoon."

"And call at the Barrys'," thought his companion.

"I'm afraid he got sort of down this morning, all alone."

"Well, we'll have another go at the court to-morrow," replied Madge good-naturedly. "Freddy needn't have worried," she thought. She was far too clever to satiate a man with her society.

King came to the dinner table and did full justice to the meal. "I'm quite sure," he said to Mrs. Lindsay, "that those hammocks were dedicated to the naps of yourself and your daughter, and I want to assure you that I've had my share of them for to-day."

The ladies protested kindly.

"I've had my eye on a big rock there is over there nearer the water," said King. "I'm going to try my rickety legs that far."

A chorus of approval of the plan arose, and after a short time of sitting about the discouraged piazza, he and Whitcomb rambled slowly off.

To King's disgust, his friend as they left had picked up a steamer rug.

"Oh, cut it out," begged the convalescent.

"Shut up!" returned the other cheerfully.

Arrived at their goal, he threw down the rug and King was glad to sit on it under the lee of the big rock.

"What did you do yesterday, Freddy?" asked King, going directly to the subject uppermost in his mind.

"I called on Linda and Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter told you, didn't she?"

"Yes. She came over, exuding gratitude to you at every pore, and adorably sympathetic and charming to me."

"Well, that's all right, isn't it?" returned Whitcomb, a little uncomfortable under his friend's gaze, which seemed more portentous than was necessary. "Women always overdo the gratitude business. Just like her to praise me for engineering an extra long vacation for myself."

"Freddy, you haven't told me everything," said King sternly. "Now, spit it right out in Papa's hand."

"What are you talking about?" asked the other uneasily.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out. When Linda left Chicago I was the blackest sheep on her black list. What did you tell her to change her attitude? It wasn't that I had been ill, for she would have buried me cheerfully. Now, out with it!"

"Is this the third degree?" Whitcomb was gathering the daisies within reach.

"Yes. It wasn't any opinion you had of me contrary to hers. She thinks for herself; so give me the real stuff."

"Why do you believe she has changed?" Whitcomb returned the other's gaze now doggedly.

"Because, after you left, she wept; – according to impartial testimony, loud and long. Also she dug up my photograph and placed it on a table beside her father's. This information was fed to me with the jelly."

"Blanche Aurora!" exclaimed Whitcomb, scowling.

"Exactly. Now, then!"

"Well," said Whitcomb, "it seems the time to tell you. While you were in the hospital your jabbering aroused my suspicions. I wasn't Henry Radcliffe and I hadn't been forbidden; so I went through some of your papers. When I had found the Antlers correspondence I didn't need to go any farther."

King's thoughtful frown deepened and his face grew slowly and darkly red.

Whitcomb maintained his steady regard. "At that time I didn't know whether you were going to live or not, but I did know that justice was going to be done you."

Recollection of Whitcomb's devotion swept over the other man like a tide, submerging the first sensation of outraged privacy: of having been outwitted.

"You meant well," he said in a low tone.

"Yes, and I did well," said Whitcomb slowly. "I didn't tell Radcliffe till the night before we left Chicago. Harriet was in Wisconsin. I don't know her so well as Linda; but Linda is as fair-minded as another fellow. There was only one thing to do in her case."

There was a short silence, then Whitcomb continued: —

"I'll tell you frankly that if I had had any idea of the depth of her feeling in the matter, I should have hesitated. This laying down your life for a friend isn't in my line. It's beyond me. You know how I've banked on seeing her. Well, she can't see me. I used to be awfully afraid of you and it passed. Now I'm afraid of you again."

King saw his friend's increasing difficulty of speech, and he put a hand on the big brown arm.