Peter Clark MacFarlane

“ While evidently the innocent victim of one of Chauncey's absurd impulses, her situation had been most awkward; yet the simple little thing had borne herself admirably.
“Well, that is a pretty how-do-you-do, isn't it?” commented Miss Henrietta in tones that managed dexterously to convey sympathy for the girl and condemnation for the mother. “And who is the one you love?”
“Joe Holmquist, the strong-man in the show.”
“Strong-man! H'mph! And he let your mother outgeneral him?”
“Oh, but Mother can outgeneneral anybody,” explained Freda dolefully. ”

“ Scipio is still sitting warily in the door of his cage. Cecil, a sadder and a humbler dog, is curled up in the fat-man's booth. Chauncey is helping Freda down from the platform from which she is perfectly able to assist herself, and is asking Al if they can't have a little run. In fact, all is set for another tangle in the skeins of somebody's life. ”

“ With this breath-taking knowledge secure in her possession, Frau Goebel's mind had assumed a speculative hue, and her attitude to the sportive idler's visits had changed considerably. Knowing that it is the human instinct to crab another's game, she had imparted the secret of the name to all, but the young man's position and prospects in life to none save Freda. ”

“ Now, young lady, does that relieve your distress of mind any?”
“Oh, yes sir; you are very kind,” murmured Freda.
“Perhaps in time you might even come to think the real Chauncey almost as nice as the fake one,” he further unbent to suggest, a little bit as if his pride was touched that a young lady should still have eyes for his chauffeur after once having contemplated him.
“Perhaps,” admitted Freda, so doubtfully that Miss Henrietta laughed heartily, while Chauncey's lips parted in a disappointed grin.
“This child is so honest.” said Miss Henrietta, “I feel we must do something for her. ”

“ There was an eye, however, which did note the strong-man's actions and brand them as suspicious. This was the innocent, amber optic of Scipio, the five-year-old orang-outang. Affectionate, curious, sedate,—not yet come to those years of viciousness which invariably overtake his kind in captivity—the baby ape-man sprawled upside down before the monkey-cage on a cast-off automobile cushion, head hanging off, meditatively picking his teeth with a straw. ”

“ Milton relieved himself of a very Gallic gesture. “After that I had to dress the part.”
“Why, it's the very truth!” gasped Freda, astonished to recall the exact facts, and glad of anything that would enable her to acquit the pseudo-princeling of misconduct. “We deceived ourselves, and he only let us have our way about it. I remember now that when I called him Chauncey the first time he only said: 'Somebody's been guessing.'”
The real Chauncey had turned a significantly inquiring glance at Milton when the girl was speaking. ”

“ They're sensitive, and they brood and crab. There's a little man in our show fifty-two years old and thirty-two inches high. I have never seen him smile. He just stands or sits and broods all day on his little platform. The tones of his voice are the saddest I've ever heard.”
“The poor young man!” ejaculated Miss Ewing.
“Mother's not a freak, of course,” went on Freda, “but she don't mind the associations and wants me to stay with her till I get a chance to marry well. She thought I might marry Chauncey, but I couldn't.” ”

“ There were tables and chairs also with spider legs, and two upholstered chairs and a couch, each beautiful after its kind, as if designed to comfort the eye as well as the body. Moreover the whole room and all within it was done in soft blue-gray and silver tones that made each detail seem to belong to and be a part of every other detail, just as if it had grown there. ”

“ Miss Ewing, unconsciously perhaps, withdrew abruptly from the vicinity of the suit-case, now open on the coach.
“And you?” she inquired apprehensively, as prepared to hear the worst concerning one who had slept in her bed. “You are a snake-charmer also?”
“No,” smiled Freda. “I do a dance in the bally.”
“In the ballet, you mean,” corrected Miss Ewing with careful consideration.
“No—on it,” insisted Freda,
What use to argue with one ignorant? Miss Ewing returned to the main point.
“Where did you meet Chauncey?”
“There! He was always hanging round.” ”

“ The idea of Chauncey Ewing, with all those rooms in his house, sleeping in his garage on her account!
“Isn't that being rather—rather particular?” she inquired, blushing in the darkness, because of anxiety not to say the wrong thing.
“Can a young lady be too particular?” rejoined Chauncey in a self-effacing sort of way.
“No, I suppose not,” admitted Freda, and to emphasize her intention to accept the hospitality of the aunt's bedchamber so generously extended by proxy, she got out of the automobile. ”

“ But getting into Freda's street-clothes did not prove so easy. The famous beach-resort was full of people. It was a reaping time with Gallagher's. Swannick kept the girl getting on and off the bally-box all the afternoon and evening. Chauncey did get the suit-case out, but that was as far as the plan seemed to work till desperation had seized the girl and she decided to fly to Miss Henrietta Ewing in what department-stores call “as is”—that is to say, in her present apparel; and her present apparel was dancing clothes. ”

“ She tries a glance at Joe, but he, moodily waiting for the ballyhoo to escort the crowd in his direction, has no eye for her until that petite back is turned. Then he scans the figure longingly and gazes at the door until the voice of the barker rouses him to his act. Whereupon he trundles out his ponderous bar-bell.
“Will some gentleman kindly step upon the platform and heft this for me?” he inquires in tired, professional tones. ”

“ Now she's trying to cage Joe.”
Miss Ewing controlled an impulse to laughter.
“My nephew was going to help you?”
“Yes—to go to business college and study stenography.”
“Stenography?” Miss Ewing was dazed.
“You can't imagine, Miss—Miss Ewing,” said Freda with appeal in her voice, “what the atmosphere of a freak-show is like. Everyone has got something the matter with them. They're not normal; they're monstrosities of some kind so terrible that people will pay money to come and stare at them, and while you'd think they'd get hardened, they never do. ”

“ Perhaps for one alarming moment Freda doubted, and perhaps Chauncey, seeing her hand clutch tightly at the side of the car, sensed this doubt.
“Tell you,” he proposed hopefully: “I'll put you in my aunt's room for to-night, and to-morrow we'll decide what to do next. I'll sleep in the garage myself.” ”

“ With gold-stockinged, shapely legs and ankles cunningly clocked and daintily crossed, and with bosom heaving gently from recent exercise, the girl sat in a chair on a platform some four feet above the sidewalk along which streamed the first instalments of a Saturday afternoon throng at Coney Island. ”

“ I knew you'd be frightened to death, so all summer long I've been spoofing you, leaving Milton to keep the house open, take care of Cecil and reinclose my letters to you, which were written to read as if 'made in Brooklyn.' Last week they packed me off home because of a little touch of fever. Don't feel hard against me, will you? ”

“ Parkyns assisted my lady to alight, and with armfuls of suit-cases staggered up the front steps. With arms full of a Pomeranian on a cushion the maid followed. Parkyns produced a key and opened the front door. Tall, prim and and tailored in gray, my lady stepped in and sniffed.
“Dead air!” she announced with added with added displeasure. “Chauncey has not had the house open in a week.” ”