Meredith Nicholson

“ Billy Caldwell, thinking he might stop a performance which threatened to continue forever, seated himself at the piano and began to play, laboriously picking out tunes with one finger to express his sense of utter desolation. Peggy, who by this time had elicited from Nuttina the information that he had at times experimented a little with mind-reading, paused to urge Billy to play “Whose Eyes are Dearest?” ”

“ What a solace they are to the troubled spirit of man!”
“JUST hoping you'd turn up!” exclaimed Barnes, intercepting Nuttina the evening of the day Peggy and Tomlin left town for Sunset Lodge, the Thornton's country-place. “I need you like thunder!”
“You know you can call on me for anything, Mr. Barnes,” the young man replied amiably. “I'm feeling just a little bit lonely!”
“I understand perfectly! The intrepid Peggy has fled to the country, and we do miss her when she's away. Tomlin's a lucky dog; he's at the house-party too—doesn't belong to the proletariat like you and me.” ”

“ It bores her greatly that Conny insists on dabbling with art—the child really thinks she can paint, and in New York she's been mingling with those absurd Greenwich Village people and is full of Bohemian ideas. Her mother is anxious to bring her back to normal, and so it occurs to me, George,”—Barnes had not previously called him by his first name, and Deal's heart warmed under the familiarity,—“it occurs to me that you may be of help to us. Of course, Conny isn't really interested in painting—it's all imaginary. You know how young girls get a whim of that sort. ”

“ You need vigorous competition to evoke your best talents as a wooer. I thought of entering the lists myself for that very purpose, but Peggy isn't quite my ideal, and I'm too old for her. I suppose some widow just emerging from the wistful lilac shades will be my fate.”
“Peggy might fall in love with him!” said Tomlin, frowning in his uncertainty as to whether Barnes was chaffing him or not.
It became necessary for Peggy to blindfold Nuttina and then he must needs hold her hand. All this caused Tomlin most poignant anguish. ”

“ I spend an hour practicing every morning at a school of music where I pay two dollars for the unrestrained use of a piano by an alley window overlooking a fragrant garage. Every other afternoon I sketch at the art-school. ”

“ Tomlin retorted.
“Tomlin's the best fellow in the world,” said Barnes when Fred had gone to the telephone. “Always doing nice things for people. You're bound to like him when you get acquainted. A little difficult, but sweet and sound at the core.”
Tomlin returned with the intelligence that Peggy would be at home and delighted to meet Mr. Deal. She also sent a characteristic message to Barnes, that he might come, but he would have to very very, very nice, as he had neglected her most shamefully. ”

“ To think a practical man like Raymond would fall for a lot of drool about the tunes in his own machine-shop!”
“It's true that the points he suggested seemed to impress Raymond, but that doesn't mean that he wants to marry his only child to a young man who, if he was taken into the family, would play the Raymond plant as though it were a pipe-organ! I'm going to arrange with Mrs. Abby Thornton to ask you on a house-party she's pulling off at her country-place next week. What you want to do at the Thornton farm is to renew Peggy's interest in Nature, the dear mother of us all. ”

“ When they reached the Club, Nuttina thanked them, though not effusively, for a pleasant evening and betook himself to his room.
The moment he was out of sight, Tomlin attacked Barnes bitterly for what he declared to be a blunder the magnitude of which no terms at his command could describe.
“That's just what I was afraid of! All these hicks are full of small-town parlor-trick stuff, and certainly he has the whole line. And Peggy just ate it up! That fool hasn't anything else to do, and he'll be at the house right after breakfast every morning. ”

“ Dudley Barnes, a bachelor of thirty-five and the club cynic, was a successful lawyer. Tomlin frequently confided in him, and though he didn't always accept Barnes' reasoning on weighty matters, the attorney's judicial attitude toward all problems great and small never failed to interest him
“I thought at first,” said Tomlin meditatively, “that Nuttina's game might be to work his way in here and sell some bum stock to members, but I've had to give that up. The bird never speaks to anybody!” ”

“ And I've made the suggestion that he tell Nuttina that he ought to have some regular occupation—that old and irrefutable philosophy that every young man should work whether he needs to or not. So I've suggested to Raymond that he take Nuttina into his machine-shop. Perhaps wearing overalls in a big noisy place like Raymond's engine-factory will take the jazz out of him. He'll at least have something to do besides chasing over the hills and far away with Peggy, and he'll be too tired at night to pound the Raymond piano. ”

“ Normally the sniff-hounds are a melancholy lot. The game bores me excessively.'
“I was thinking,” remarked Tomlin, catching a meaningful gleam in Barnes' eye, “that you might like to step out a little bit, socially speaking. Barnes, you know the Raymonds? Friendly people—and Peggy's one of the nicest girls in town.”
“She's all of that,” Barnes agreed soberly. “I'm sure Mr. Deal would like Peggy; she's a real person—lively, clever and all that sort of thing.”
“I'd be glad to meet Miss Raymond,” said Deal composedly. ”

“ Barnes remarked. “She plays to a full house—always a lot of fellows around. And they're young men who don't bring out the best in her. The talk up there is of the most trifling sort—not to put too fine a point on it, piffle, the sheerest rot! It grieves me that Peggy's so tolerant of imbecility.”
“You must remember that I'm up there a good deal!” interrupted Tomlin with a rueful grin
NUTTINA seemed colorless, and the thought of adding him to the Raymond circle didn't please Tomlin, now that Barnes had beguiled him into committing himself. ”

“ Barnes knew people in Kernville whom Nuttina knew—the circuit judge, a banker and a lawyer or two.
Nuttina broke a lump of sugar and dropped half of it into his coffee-cup. A slight pressure of Barnes' foot on Tomlin's toe reminded him that it was time to proceed farther with the conspiracy. Tomlin looked at his watch.
“We were speaking of the Raymonds,” he forced himself to say; “it just occurs to me that we might go up there this evening—the three of us. I'll go through the formality of telephoning Peggy to ask if we may bring Mr. Deal.” ”

“ And the family are strong for you. You stand high with old Raymond, and Peggy's the apple, not to say the peach of his eye. You needn't be afraid he'll let her marry the lad from the upper waters of the Sycamore even if she wanted to. He's strong for the old-family stuff, and a newcomer blowing in from the out townships hasn't a chance.”
WHILE Tomlin and Barnes were discussing him, Nuttina was writing in the library. The green lamp-shade added to his pallor as his pen moved swiftly across the sheets of club stationery. ”

“ The night-hovering owl of our native forests has nothing on Nuttina for solemnity. On the face of it he'd hardly prove a merrymaker, and yet you never can tell. There's always a big bunch at the Raymonds—that's one of your difficulties; Peggy likes having a crowd around, and you never see her alone. If our pale anemic friend casts as much gloom in the domestic parlor as he does in this club, he'd be serving you a good turn. He'd gas the enemy so you could dash right on to victory.”
“That might work,” Tomlin agreed reluctantly. “But there's no accounting for girls ”

“ Raymond? But lately the tone's gone into a higher register—like that!” Nuttina hummed as he struck the keys. “Those castings are harder than they ought to be. It takes longer to trim them up. From what the boys at the shop say, it's up to the foundry to make the castings softer—leave them in the sand longer. And if you'll notice the boring-mill, there's a growl—it's something like this—” He hummed again as he found chords that elicited something akin to the sound he described. “Now, the note oughtn't to change the way it does, and it wouldn't if the core of the cylinder-casting were true. ”

“ Tomlin knew, just as Barnes knew, that Nuttina left the Club regularly every evening at exactly twenty minutes of eight, which gave him just time enough to motor to the Raymonds and land on the doorstep at eight o'clock. ”

“ Barnes assented; “but you're taking the whole business too seriously. I'm rather for the boy, all things considered. I despise his style of cranial decoration—his hair, I mean; but he dresses faultlessly—those quiet neutral shades that are affected by men of breeding, and he's the only man in the house who puts on a dinner coat with religious regularity. In fact, he's the most correct male in the whole bloomin' commonwealth He's certainly not making a nuisance of himself. The only member who ever speaks to him is old man Burrows who hitches on to him every evening for an hour ”

“ You hear a lot about club-life in the large cities, but this house is a tomb compared with the Elks Club in Kernville. “Nobody speaks to me but the waiters, and they act as though I might have smallpox or be otherwise a menace to public health. There's one old guy who comes in to read the Congressional Record occasionally that I sort o' chum with. ”

“ It's creditable to his upbringing that he waits to be spoken to; but on the other hand it's wholly contemptible for the rest of us to treat him as we wouldn't dare treat the municipal servants who remove the garbage from the sacred urns at the alley gate. ”

“ Barnes answered. “But understand, I'm anxious to serve all concerned, and I confess that I don't share your animosity toward the boy. Considering the amount of temperament he carries, he's a mighty nice little chap. I advise you to get in your work now before the rest of the old crew find out what's in the air.”
THE foreman of Shop Number Two of the Raymond Boiler & Engine Company good-naturedly took George Buckingham Deal into his ward and keep, and turned him over to an old employee who operated a planer, with an injunction to give the boy a good try-out. ”

“ You ought to put in a kick to the foundry about that. You're wasting time, because the workmen have to run the boring-mill slower to keep from breaking the cutting tool. When the core is true, the borer hits a uniform note—there! ”