Chapter III: Part 3

This morning at breakfast Uncle passed me over the portion of the paper which contains the social news. As he did so, his face wore a teasing smile and his eyes twinkled. I was unable to with-hold the little cry that sprang to my lips as I read,—“An addition to the coterie of pretty maids (for whom this city is justly famous) who will adorn our society this winter is Miss Elsie Travers, the guest of Mr. and Mrs. George Somers, Iroquois Avenue.”

“Oh! Mumsie, listen to this,” I cried, and read it out. We all laughed; but how proud I felt. I felt myself colouring to the roots of my hair. After such a pretty notice, I hope I shall find social progress easy.

“Elsie,” said Mumsie, beaming, “I congratulate you. My Micawber here and I will be completely outdistanced.”

“Elsie, I’m proud of you,” Uncle endorsed.

I hope he was sincere—he was certainly kind enough.

Mr. Bang said nothing. I dislike him!

My eyes passed down the column and were again arrested. “Mrs. Lien has issued invitations to the younger set to a dance at her home on New Year’s Eve.” No invitation had come for me; my heart sank.

Again I read the notice aloud.

“No doubt a very swell affair,” suggested Uncle, rather cynically.

“I must get you an invitation,” said Mumsie.

“Me! an invitation!” I exclaimed. “Can you get me an invitation?”

“I can ask for one. In the old days———”

“Don’t do it, Auntie,” cut in Bang.

“Why not?” I demanded. Why should this beast of a man interfere with me and my joys and ambitions?

“Because,” and he looked at me with the most exasperating smile I have ever seen on a man’s face, “I can arrange it—I can ask Mrs. Malone.”

I gasped and then I wilted. I hope I did not display the anger I had felt.

“That would do nicely,” agreed Mumsie. “Good idea.”

Whatever I had done or whatever misdirected temper I displayed, I must see it through, so I asked, with what I hoped was a sincere smile:

“That would be so kind of you Mr. Bang, but who is Mrs. Malone that she does as you wish?”

“Mrs. Malone happens to be the society editress of the _Telegraph_, and when she suggests a social favour it is generally acted upon.” He was certainly frank enough and natural. “Besides, something you may well be excused for not knowing, Mrs. Lien clapped eyes on me the other day. If I mistake not she knows I am your fellow guest, and if Auntie asks an invitation for you, it will carry with it a suggestion for me, which I don’t want at any cost. Mrs. Malone will discreetly acquaint Mrs. Lien with the fact that I leave for Toronto on New Year’s Eve.”

Mr. Bang was more good natured at the close of his big speech, but did the world ever know such another man?

No more was said, and Mr. Bang went with Uncle to town; I to my room. About lunch-time the telephone rang and Mumsie was told by Mrs. Lien that an invitation for me was on the way.

In the afternoon I walked out with Mumsie and we ended up at the Queen Charlotte tea-rooms. Whom should we meet there but Mrs. Bassett and Ethel? Of course we joined them. In two minutes Mrs. Bassett was pouring out a tale of woe about her cook who was Scotch and untidy. The standard topic of respectable society seems to be the servant question.

“Don’t talk to me about servants—old country servants, at least the kind we get out here, are exasperating, and the native-born domestic has ceased to exist. I’m all right now, but a month ago I had a terror—English. She wore white, transparent stockings, and tennis shoes about the house and, above deck, low neck dresses. I told her she must alter her attire, and she used up a bottle of my blacking transforming her tennis shoes. As to rising she was another Elsie Marley. One morning Mr. Somers met her on the stairs late as usual, and told her he was about to take her breakfast up to her. This did not affect her in the least for next day she admired a brooch I was wearing. ‘What a nice brooch,’ she exclaimed, ‘are the stones real?’”

This sort of talk went on until in came Mrs. Mount. I was so glad, for although Mrs. Bassett was warming up, she was yet leagues behind Mrs. Mount in her appeal to my interest. Imagine my joy, therefore, when I saw Mrs. Mount making directly towards us. She bounced up to our table and sat down, giving an order to a waitress as she did so. “So glad to see you both,” she gushed, evidently viewing Ethel and myself as nonentities or not viewing us at all, “Doris and I are sailing on the _Carmania_ from New York for the Mediterranean on January 15th; and, do you know, really, it is such a fag. There’s Mrs. Lien’s ball on New Year’s Eve. Of course Doris must have a new dress and possibly I may give a dance too, before we sail. I suppose you girls have been invited?” And we were for the first time honoured by her notice.

“They both are going,” replied Mumsie.

“Mrs. Lien is so kind; and, after all, there is nothing like the old families, provided there is go in them.”

I could see however, she was surprised at my being invited.

“What I was going to say is that I will take this opportunity of saying good-bye.”

“You like Italy?” I could see Mumsie was brimming with merriment.

“Yes, I like Italy,” she threw her head back as if to bring her chin into special prominence. “But, now it is so beastly common, full of trippers, German and American. One meets them everywhere and cannot get away from them. Their ways are”—she paused for the word—“uncouth. Naples?—No! Rome?—No! Florence? Yes. Florence has the best tea-room in Europe.”

“Venice must be very interesting,” suggested Mrs. Bassett, with a half sigh that told me she felt her prospects of seeing Italy were remote, and her desire to do so great, “the Palace of the Doges,—the Lion of St. Mark.”

“Venice is no place to go to; most disappointing. There is not a decent tea-room in the place.”

Mumsie seemed amused at this, and Ethel Bassett grinned broadly. After this last delivery the lady with a few more gushes shook hands with us all and beamed upon Ethel and me. Possibly this was by way of recompense for her earlier slight.

Mrs. Mount seems a woman of whims; no doubt is of a nervous disposition. At the rink only two days ago she was, I am sure, on the verge of declaring herself my friend. To-day she announces she is off to Europe and treats me as if she had never seen me before.

I waited until soup was finished at dinner to-night ere I thanked Mr. Bang for his good offices. “Possibly you have more than that to thank him for,” suggested Mumsie.

“I have thanked him for the skins,” I replied.

“Possibly there is something else,” she added.

I looked at my benefactor but his face was inscrutable. He evidently had no desire to have this line of conversation pursued, for he put in:

“Mrs. Malone is one of the few women in this city for whom I have a regard.”

“Oh!” I said. I couldn’t help it. A man has no right suddenly to make that sort of statement.

“She has had a hard time of it,” cried Uncle, “drunken husband—one of the old families—and has been forced to fight her way by writing trash for the society columns,——”

“Mrs. Malone is a good friend, and a good woman, and you know you always read the social columns,” asserted Mumsie interrupting her husband.

“Of course, to laugh at———”

“You read it, nevertheless; and therefore justify those columns in the newspaper.”

“A newspaper is supposed to tell the news—the news!” he emphasized.

“Isn’t the social column news?”

“No. It’s a free advertising column for social climbers.”

“Which you and everybody else reads, either because of your gaping curiosity, or because you are a cynical old stick.”

“Exactly!”

This time Mumsie had downed Uncle beautifully and I was glad. Uncle did not seem to mind, however, for he turned to me and continued:

“Remember, my dear, as your young mind seems set upon these vain things, Mrs. Malone is a woman who can make or break the social future of any boy or girl in this city. That is why she can command almost any invitation she cares to ask for. Our lady society-writers on the whole, and Mrs. Malone in particular, are, anyhow, just.”

“They are, and kindly too,” agreed Mr. Bang. “Of course, they display their personal bias occasionally; they would not be human, if they didn’t. I know one girl at least who first gained a reputation as a belle and then won a rich husband through Mrs. Malone’s good offices.”

“Evidently Mrs. Malone is not as exacting as you are,” I ventured.

“The girl’s mother happens to be an old friend of Mrs. Malone’s,” retorted Mr. Bang with unnecessary severity. “The newspapers as a rule give their society reporters free scope,” he went on, “they being awake enough not to overlook the wives and daughters of good advertisers. But occasionally notices are inspired. I know this because of experiences I gained when I attended a public ball in Toronto. I did not know many of the ladies present, as is to be supposed; but outside the few I danced with, saw a rather pretty girl I knew. I did not ask her to dance for the reason I did not think her people amounted to much. Next day’s paper contained a triumphant account of this damsel’s appearance, etc., etc., and I felt sorry I had not asked her to dance, and then I knew myself to be a snob.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

“And you certainly were!” said Mumsie.

“Never mind, Jack,” laughed Uncle, “you have anyhow the strength to confess your old weakness.”

“A day or two later I met the lady who puts together the society news for that particular paper. The ball came up for discussion, and I introduced the subject of the belle. ‘Oh, yes, quite pretty, is she not? I do not know her myself; she is a friend of our general manager’s, who asked me to notice her favourably,’ was my friend’s reply. This actually consoled me,” he went on, “but I could not absolve myself of snobbishness.”

“And a knowledge of the fault in yourself enables you to remark it in others,” I said, not caring much if I offended or not.

“That’s it exactly. Isn’t Little Partner getting severe?” he said. “Snobbery is always disgusting.”

This was not the answer I had anticipated. I could only smile in answer; what else could I do? Mumsie smiled too, while Mr. Bang naively added, “Had I had an English Public School education, I should have had it knocked out of me in my boyhood. Snobbishness is an inherent human failing. It is only the truly Christlike spirit that is free from it.”

This kaleidoscopic character had given himself another turn and presented a new picture. I had never recognized in him religious inclinations, and had gathered from his tirades against people in high places, that his was a democratic nature. Mumsie evidently had a similar impression, for she asked:

“How comes it, Jack, that you have developed such a high regard for the English, and please, when did you take religion?”

“I have not ‘taken’ religion as the cynical call it, but Christ seems to me the perfect man, free from every vice and worldliness and meanness—and looked at in the light of His ideal what a paltry organization your society is.”

“And the Englishman?”

“We Canadians, as boys in the process of ancestor worship, look upon the Englishman as a superior being. As youths we meet the remittance-man and consider ourselves infinitely his superior. As grown men we recognize the salt of the earth to be the English. And”—he paused—“it is the judgment of grown manhood that counts.”

“How is Timkins?” asked Uncle with an aggression that displayed a marked desire to change the subject, “is he a millionaire yet?”

“He is getting on that way.”

“And, who is Mr. Timkins?” I asked, interested in anyone with whom this extraordinary Bang was acquainted.

“Timkins is of Jack’s school of philosophy—Jack, tell your Little Partner about Timkins.”

“Ha! Timkins is a chap, who has been through the mill out West. He reads the news of the stock-market, knows the especial affiliations of each newspaper, broker, and many of the reporters. He works on the theory that all newspaper talk in the stock-market is inspired, and governs himself accordingly—and makes money.” Mr. Bang looked at Mumsie and then at me somewhat defiantly.

“You means he gambles in the market!” suggested Mumsie.

“Auntie,” replied Mr. Bang with mock gravity, (I assume it was affected, though it seemed so real) “I’m afraid you stick to the respectable at any and every cost. This is the great Canadian tendency.” Turning to me, he continued, (and I put down his words as I am able, for I am not used to the phrases of the market, but I think I have it). “According to Mr. Timkins, the tendency people have to cater to the respectable is played upon by those who sell stocks. A purchaser comes to a broker with money he wishes to employ. Nine times out of ten he is a buyer and probably names an issue or two that have suggested themselves to him. Nine times out of ten, the broker has special affiliations, so he hedges the customer about with one objection after another, until he has him on the path he wishes. In this process, if all else fails, the broker intimates that the course the customer would pursue would be gambling, shrugs his shoulders and leaves the old reliable spirit of respectability to do the rest.”

“And—the rest?” asked Uncle.

“Is that the customer buys what the broker wishes him to buy—and loses.”

“Always?” asked Mumsie. “You are much too positive, Jack.”

“Well, Auntie, I think I’m justified. People who follow the advice of those so-called brokers lose nineteen times out of twenty; statistics show it.”

“Why ‘so-called’ brokers?”

“Because the term broker means one who buys and sells on commission, but many of our brokers are really what in England is called a jobber, who speculate for themselves and underwriters.

“And your friend Mr. Timkins?”

“Plays a lone hand and wins. He is the twentieth or the hundredth, as the case may be.”

“I don’t think that is a very respectable way to make money,” objected Mumsie.

“If you take the ordinary broker’s advice, there is no fear of your making money—according to Timkins.”

“Bother Timkins!”

“People make money selling stocks, not buying them.”

“You mean short selling?” asked Uncle becoming interested.

“Either short selling or promoting, and there is really not much difference.”

“I never could get at the bottom of this short selling, do tell me what it means?”

“I have told you often,” Uncle said to his wife. “No woman has ever been able to understand it and not overly many men. In ordinary commerce a man buys and sells later: the short seller in the market, or the bear, sells first and buys afterwards: it is the simple reversal of a simple process.”

“But it’s gambling, I’ve read so in the papers,” protested Mumsie.

“So are lots of things; in fact, it is a rare process in this world that is not a gamble,” replied Mr. Bang with heat. “I know the whole argument, but let me say that anyone who buys a stock because he thinks it will go up is as much of a gambler as he who sells it because he thinks it will go down. In England, where the fundamentals are sought for, and the people are not so much humbugged as they are here, the prejudice against ‘selling a bear’ in the market is unknown.”

“You’re joking.”

“Indeed I am not: our land is filled with milk-fed sophistries and the men who propagate them. The ordinary mind is incapable of matching the processes of the wit of our stock exchanges. Let us examine the processes of one of our millionaires. He buys a water-power for a trifle: organizes it into a stock company, and sells stock to the widow and orphan at an advance of anywhere from a hundred to a thousand per cent. profit. He makes his money not because he holds the stock, but because he sells it—because the public buys it.”

“That sounds reasonable,” grimly asserted Uncle.

“But the interesting study is that of the public. The promoter makes a grant of say, $50,000 to a charity. The foolish woman in the country, doctor, or lawyer, reasons that one who would give so much to the public must be really very godly and would not cheat a poor body, so he or she puts money into any old proposition such philanthropists advance. This, I fancy, is token of the shallowness of the ordinary mind in financial matters, and such shallowness explains why some men easily accumulate wealth, the result of labour.”

I believe Mr. Bang can see no good in anybody or anything, his is—in spite of his personal kindness, like the gift of the furs—a narrow nature. Mumsie, I am sure, was not convinced, no more was I; probably she remained silent out of weariness.

“Jack, you certainly would not increase your popularity by publishing such statements,” said Uncle.

“I know that well. Timkins tried it with the result that throughout the financial districts every man’s voice was against him. When you cannot refute a man’s statement, the next thing to do is drown it with calumny. The inference the public draws is that a liar cannot speak the truth, or a dishonest man honest, or a fool occasionally wise. So the thing to do is to persuade the public that one’s enemy is a liar, a rascal or a fool.”

“But, what has become of Timkins?”

“He fell into bad ways; he misjudged the limitations of _The Tarbrush_, the sheet to which he contributed, and wrote up the President of a rascally mining promotion. The President of the Mining Company was also President of a social club to which the editor and proprietor were ambitious members. In the process of re-establishing themselves the two jelly-fish wrote a letter of apology to the injured president, promising to receive no more communications from the offender. That illustrates the processes of a certain type of financial newspaper, for, after all, the writer was not responsible, as the article had passed a sub-editor.”

“And Timkins?”

“Timkins will go to London. As a budding author he can establish himself there. All Canadian writers, as soon as they begin to gain a footing in the literary world here, go to England. Canada is a land whose people do not seem to trust their own.”

I am weary—it has been the most difficult job I ever knew—of writing all these expressions of Mr. Bang’s, but doing so is anyhow practice for the book I am some day to write. How agreeable a character he would be, did he say pleasant things, instead of unpleasant; were he constructive, instead of a puller-down. But as I have decided before, he would never do in a novel—never. And now about novels. Mr. Bang appears to have opinions on all subjects. I thought, therefore, I would ask him what he knows about novel writing.

But before I could frame the question, Mumsie began to tell of her gossip in the tea-room and of having related the story of the drowsy domestic.

“How old was she?” asked Mr. Bang.

“About twenty-five,” Mumsie replied patiently, though apparently not a little surprised at the enquiry.

“It might not have been the girl’s fault at all: extreme drowsiness is often developed in a change of climate, especially in the case of young people, and possibly the girl was not accustomed to hard work———”

“She never did enough around here to keep herself warm,” retorted Uncle. “You can find much more worthy objects for your sympathy, my boy.”

Advancing obscure and outlandish theories is evidently a habit with Mr. Bang.

Mumsie reported Mrs. Mount’s conversation. Uncle and Mr. Bang roared when they heard what she said about the tea-rooms. I’m afraid there is some point in that I don’t quite see: I shall not ask, because to do so would display ignorance, but what could be more natural than that a lady travelling should visit especially those cities with the nice tea-rooms?

“What is your idea of the Mediterranean trip?” Uncle asked, looking towards Mr. Bang. I verily believe Uncle asked the question to draw him out, for my especial benefit. How Uncle could dream of my being entertained by such expressions of ill-nature I don’t know. I hope he is not slyly poking fun at me.

“The Mediterranean trip is a most beneficial experience for a Canadian: it teaches him to value his own country. ‘Thank God I live in Canada,’ is the exclamation of most of us, as we view the filth of Naples, hear its noise, and suffer from its chilling winds, when the weather is mean.”

“See Naples and die,” quoted Uncle.

“Among my grandfather’s papers,” said Mr. Bang, “is a letter from one of his staff when on a visit to Naples in 1823. The writer says he would value the place more, if there was less noise and more honesty.”

“There is Pompeii,” suggested Mumsie. “That’s some compensation.”

“Yes,” replied Mr. Bang reflectively, “there is Pompeii. Pompeii will always remind me of Captain Jinks, an English gentleman-guide, who according to his own account, had already gone through two fortunes, and, unsatisfied with past exploits, wanted to go through mine.”

Mr. Bang paused for us to laugh, though my mirth must have sounded hollow, for I merely followed Uncle’s example. I could not see anything clever in the remark.

“The vast majority of people,” Mr. Bang continued, “who go to Italy in the winter are of the Mrs. Mount type, mere slaves of silly fashion. Jinks told me of a Yankee, who gave him a commission at five hundred dollars, to write a genealogy, tracing his descent from a citizen of Pompeii, who, as a butcher, flourished previous to A.D. 78. The only fact upon which the descent was to be based was a fancied similarity of names.”

Now was my chance; I cut in.

“It is a puzzle to me, Mr. Bang, that with all your varied experiences, you have never attempted to write a book.”

“He has literary ideas too,” seconded Mumsie, evidently approving of my attempt at conversation.

“Perhaps, some day,” gravely responded the adventurer, “in the meantime I am supplying Timkins with mighty thoughts.”

“Drat Timkins, but if it must be Timkins, what has he to say on book building?”

“Have a story and tell it, use simple language and be consistent, and above all make your characters stand out. That’s his gospel. No matter how you do it, make each character announce himself in the first sentence he utters; and maintain it no matter if your character is like nothing on the earth above, and talks a dialect that never was uttered by tongue of man, make him say, ‘It is I, Jacques, who says it.’”

“Jack has, as always, the right idea,” said Uncle.

“Oh you men!” said Auntie.

“In painting and sculpture it is the same. The great masters, both with the brush and the chisel, formed lines out of proportion and introduced figures in impossible positions, but they told their story, they reached their aim. So with letters.”

“And then out West we have the animal fakers. Lord! how the men of the wilds do hate those fellows who hear the dear beasts talk like Sunday teachers.”

“They make lots of money,” suggested Uncle, ever practical.

“So they do, and so do the chaps who manufacture quack medicines.”

I won’t write any more of this dialogue; I’m tired and it is all really much the same. I really wonder more and more as the days go by, why I bother over Mr. Bang. I suppose I give him more space than Uncle for two reasons; one, because he says more; secondly, because his aggressive manner impresses itself upon me. I dislike the man exceedingly.

But what he said about writing, I have taken to heart. Let me analyze my diary to date. Of characters I have Mumsie first. Then Uncle and Mr. Bang—one the same character as the other, only more so. I’ll leave Uncle out of it as a character, and hold out Mr. Bang. Then there’s Mrs. Mount. She is a character certainly. And then I believe I am a character too.

One, two, three, four real, live characters, that would do for a story. If Mr. Bang would only elope, or commit a murder, or flare-up in some way, I might make this into something. As it is there is too much philosophy and talk in this diary and too little action. However, Mrs. Lien’s party is coming, and with the passing of New Year’s Day society will get under way again. I wonder what Mumsie was hinting at in suggesting that I had something more for which my thanks were due to Mr. Bang. Could it be—did he inspire that notice in the newspaper—ask Mrs. Malone to insert it. Had he wished to please me he could not have done better, but then why is he inconsistent? He condemns social ambition and conceit in others. Why should he encourage it in me?

The furs are to be home to-morrow evening.

DECEMBER 28TH.

“I wish you all to come and see a hockey match with me to-night,” said Mr. Bang, at breakfast.

“The Maple Leafs against the Beavers?” enquired Uncle.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I should care to go,” said Mumsie. “I must do a lot of running round this afternoon———”

“And I have some reading which I must do and which I have put off already too long, but you and Elsie go.” This from Uncle. It struck me that he was fibbing and that Mumsie would not have been too tired had she really wished to go, or had not a reason for staying away.

“I don’t think I should like to go. Hockey does not interest me,” I ventured.

“Have you ever seen a real hockey match?” Mr. Bang asked.

“I have seen the school boys playing it on the ice at home.”

“That’s not real hockey,” said Uncle looking at me over his glasses, with his dear, kindly twinkle. “You had better accept Jack’s invitation; it will be a grand sight. There’ll be thousands there and the game should be one of the best of the season.”

“The first of the Champion series,” said Mr. Bang.

“Do go, Elsie, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it,” persuaded Mumsie.

“There’ll be thousands there?” I asked weakly.

“There will be three or four thousand,” replied Uncle.

“Anything up to ten thousand,” Mr. Bang added.

I agreed to go.

Much shouting seemed to make the great rink shake, as we entered; shout after shout went up. The giant building seemed to vibrate with noise.

Mr. Bang grasped my arm and struggled through the swaying mass of people crowding the entrances; and when I got inside I found myself beneath a great vaulted roof ribbed by arches bearing a myriad of electric lights.

Around the ice a great amphitheatre was ranged, rising till it met the roof; and the whole was drawn on such magnitude and the occupants of the seats were so densely numerous, that in nearly every direction I found it impossible to pick out individuals. I knew those black and mottled masses ranged about me were human beings, closely packed, because they could be nothing else, and the noise was human, but otherwise they were merely a vague, vast mass.

We found our seats, they were behind two young men, who kept up an almost continuous shouting, with frequent gesticulation. I suppose throwing the arms about might be properly called gesticulating.

When not giving vent to their exuberance, they exchanged remarks in voices that were hoarse, from liquor or shouting, possibly from both.

Only vaguely, at first, could I make out the contest. Figures were rushing about at marvellous speed, doubling back, twisting, circling. Sticks were banging, skates were clashing, and men were tumbling.

As my eyes became accustomed to the light I made out the costumes of the players: some were in pale blue with white stripes, the others in red with black stripes. Mr. Bang volunteered the information that the players in blue were the Beavers, and those in red the Maple Leafs. My eyes began to mark the movements and exploits of two of the players, one was a great fat Maple Leaf, evidently known as Buster; the other a slight, wiry, nimble, scurrying, dashing, eminently agile, fair-haired youth, belonging to the Beavers. “Go it, Lien, well done, Beavers, lean to it,” shouted the enthusiasts.

The name struck me, I whispered an enquiry.

“He is Mrs. Lien’s son,” said my companion.

Instinctively I named the fat man Froggy. Buster might do for the populace, but to me he appeared a great, fat frog. No doubt Buster was a name applied when his present proportions were less. His movements were those of a frog; in skating he held his legs far apart and drew them after him, skate edge to ice. He was “Back” on his side, a sort of outpost to the goal-keeper. His movements were deliberate and seldom hurried, at least they were performed in a matter of fact sort of way, yet they were wonderfully effective.

Clashes between Lien and Froggy were frequent. In fact the game seemed to be carried on through the strivings of these two. The movements of the forwards were too quick almost for the eye to follow, but out of the confusion Lien would dart, manoeuvring the puck. Now he would slam it against the side boards and dodging his opponents, pick it up and on towards the goal and the obtruding Froggy. Again he would carry it down the middle of the rink, feinting, feigning, dodging: he was simply marvellous. Soon I too was breathless with excitement and felt glad the two young men made so much noise, for my enthusiasm matched theirs. Even the infection carried to my companion, as shown by his fixed attention and occasional shout of approval or groan of dismay.

Once the Leafs carried the puck close upon the goal of the Beavers and the raid ended in a grand mêlée. Out of this darted Lien with the puck, with two swift raiders after him. The whole sheet of ice was clear save for Froggy and the goal-keeper. Blows fell upon Lien’s stick and bodies bumped against him, but he managed to worm his way through. Then he was forced against the right side of the rink, and it looked as if he would be either checked or compelled to resort to the dangerous expedient of bumping the puck into the boards. His opponents closed in, and he manoeuvred his club to dash the puck against the boards.

But it was a feint. So quick that eye could scarce follow the move, he twitched the puck into the middle of the ice, jumped over an opponent’s club, and picking up the puck again, was off. The cheer that went up seemed as if it would lift the roof, friend and foe seemed to combine in frenzy. In a second he was upon Froggy, my heart stood still. For the first time he eluded him and shot the puck at goal. The cheering was frantic, evidently anticipating a victory. But not yet. The puck was met by one of the goal-keepers and although young Lien threw himself against the goal-keeper, as if to carry puck and man together in the onslaught, the desperate recourse was of no avail. With his skate the goal-keeper knocked away the puck and a friendly stick sent it spinning behind the goal. Everybody, including myself, cheered.

“A fast game,” murmured my companion. “How do you like it?”

“It’s grand, Oh! I adore it—the excitement,” and I smiled. It was the first time I had felt cordial towards him.

Almost at once after the unsuccessful try the puck was at the Beavers’ goal, threatening it—occasion for more shouting. What a fast game hockey is! How exhilarating to watch! How I envied those boys. What excitement, what exhilaration it must be for them! Here was fame spontaneous, overwhelming, real. This was their world, much what the social world would be to me,—I hoped.

Time was called and the cheering fell to a subdued murmur. The players left the ice for their dressing-rooms. The first period was over—no score.

The interval, of course, was devoted to conversation, but I used the opportunity to look about me.

I could see people, no doubt in society, women well and fashionably dressed, men prosperous-looking and intelligent. But my opportunities of observation were extremely limited, extending only to right and left of me a small distance, in front of me and behind. Of course, it would not be good form to stare over my shoulder too often. The opposite side of the amphitheatre and the ends were too far distant for exact observation.

“Say, I tell you, this is some game,” I heard one flashy young man say to the other.

“That ain’t no lie,” replied his companion.

“First period gone, and no score!”

“That’s going some.”

“Lien is right up to the mark; say that fellow could get five thousand dollars a season if he turned professional.”

“That ain’t no lie neither, but say, what’s the use of money to a guy like that, his father’s got lots.”

“They say his father’s father stole it from the ‘boobs’.”

“I guess that ain’t no dream. Most fellows what get money steals it anyway one way or another.”

“Cornering hockey tickets is stealing money I say, or makin’ a feller stand in line all night to pay two dollars and a half each for them ain’t no better. Tickets were bringin’ ten dollars apiece at five o’clock this afternoon.”

Imagine paying ten dollars, or even two dollars and a half, to see a hockey match, and my companion must have paid well for his, for he did not purchase until to-day. I had thought the cost of admission must have been twenty-five cents at the most; and the thousands present! I am afraid Mr. Bang is extravagant.

The intermission ended and again the sides “faced off.” A clash of sticks, a scraping of skates and the game was on. The crowd gave a shout, evidently for practice, possibly it was exultation that again something was doing, for in hockey something is doing every minute.

In the second period Lien made one of the earliest drives; he picked the puck out of the initial scrimmage and got away with it. Of course much noise was made. I believe our people like to work themselves into a frenzy, noise being both the cause and the expression of that condition.

The second period was even more swift and exciting than the first; and what an excitement there was when Lien finally scored a goal! A moment before he had fallen, tripped over another player’s skate and sprawled at full length over the ice and lay as if stunned. No doubt he was. But waking he caught sight of the puck coming towards him. He jumped to his feet, made a dash on goal, outwitted Froggy and landed the puck. What a cheer there was! What yelling, shouting, cat-calls, and the hammering of hockey sticks against the boards that bounded the ice! How proud I felt, for I had glued my sympathy to Lien, not that I cared for his mother, but it was that I knew something of him and I disliked Froggy, and also (perhaps this was the most potent influence) I felt my companion’s interest was with the Leafs and against Lien.

As I watched the continuance of the battle, the raging, storming men, charging and clashing through entangled sticks and ringing skates, I found my mind occupied with the problem of whether Mr. Bang’s championing of the Leafs was due to predilections for them, or to mere opposition.

The finish came, the Beavers away in the lead and Lien the darling of the populace. With the close of the contest a stream of figures jumped over the boards to the ice and crowded round the players, and in me was awakened a spirit of pride, as I noticed the marked demonstrations directed towards Lien.

Slowly the masses moved towards the exits. The shoutings had died away and in its place was the shuffling of feet and the clatter of conversation. With my cavalier I passed towards the street.

A woman hailed Mr. Bang; he turned to her. She had a clever face, with kind eyes and was dressed in workable, rather than fashionable clothes.

“So this is your Little Partner; well, she’s all you said of her.” She beamed at me.

“Yes, this is she,” and turning to me, Mr. Bang said, “Let me introduce you to Mrs. Malone.”

I greeted Mrs. Malone with warmth; had she not spoken well of me, and did not Uncle say she could make or break any boy or girl in the social world.

“Wasn’t he lovely?” I asked with enthusiasm.

“You mean Charlie Lien? Yes, he’s a wonderful boy if he does not get his head turned. I suppose this was quite a novelty to you?” Mrs. Malone accompanied the question with a smile, so good natured that her question did not appear the least patronizing.

“Believe me, she is quite a fan,” put in Mr. Bang, whereat I laughed.

We entered the street and as we did so great gusts of snow-laden wind came down. A blizzard had got up during the process of the game and drove against us in breath-taking, blinding swirls.

“How are you going to get home?” asked my cavalier of his jolly friend.

“Walk,” she answered.

“Walking through the storm is fine fun for the young and active———”

“But grass widows of uncertain age had better take a cab, eh?”

“I should think so.” How horribly frank Mr. Bang is; but then Mrs. Malone seemed to take it as a joke. “Wait here and see if I can engage one,” and away he went leaving me with her. We tried to put our backs against the storm but this ended in our tramping round and round, for the immense building seemed so to twist the wind that it came from every direction at once.

“Glorious, isn’t it?” laughed Mrs. Malone.

“Yes,” I gasped.

“There is not a cab to be had,” announced the spectral figure of Mr. Bang, as he loomed up out of the storm. “We’ll see you home; you’re good for it, are you not, Little Partner?”

So we, notwithstanding her protests, walked home with Mrs. Malone and sought temporary refuge in her flat, whence Mr. Bang telephoned for a sleigh and in due course he and I arrived home. Mrs. Malone kissed me as I left her, so no doubt I have a place in her regard, even after all allowance is made for the warmth of her Irish heart.

I lay long awake glowing with warmth, the reaction after our struggle through the storm, and with satisfaction at being snug in bed; while outside the storm raged.

DECEMBER 29TH.

This morning at breakfast I noticed Mumsie look puzzled as she read a letter she had just received. Then my eye caught that of Uncle’s and he, too, read his wife’s face.

“What have you got?” asked he.

Mumsie sighed.

“Anything serious, your death warrant?”

“Just a letter from Mary.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Mr. Bang. “What does she want now?”

“She does not say she wishes for anything,” replied Mumsie.

“She never does,” retorted Mr. Bang.

“Let us have it,” suggested Uncle.

“My dear Aunt Bell: It was so sweet of you to remember me at Christmas: (I sent her a card only) it is so satisfactory to know one is not forgotten. (I send her a card every Christmas, but this is the only time she has ever acknowledged one.) The children had a splendid time, especially Jessie. Lawrence is yet too young to anticipate his joys or measure their fulness. Everybody was so good to them. Jessie was enraptured with the doll Jack sent her, and Lawrence makes no end of a row with his horn. James put up with it over Christmas day, but since then, insists we hide it when he is at home.

“How is dear Jack? I should like so much to see the dear boy. It is so nice too, that Uncle takes such an interest in him. I wonder when I shall see him again.

“With love to all, I remain,

“Affectionately yours,
“Mary.”

“That is plain as day,” commented Mr. Bang. “She wishes to pay you a visit or come to town for some reason or other, possibly to do some shopping.”

“Who is Mary,” I enquired, full of wonder at such open criticism, even from Mr. Bang. I cannot help asking questions.

“My sister,” coldly replied Mr. Bang, “has a husband, a civil servant, named James Strickland. Sister Mary is respectable, and the personification of propriety.”

There seemed to me bitterness in Mr. Bang’s tone.

“I fancy Jack is right. Mary wishes to pay us a visit,” declared Uncle in a matter of fact tone.

“What shall I do?” asked Mumsie absentmindedly.

“Ask her to come,” replied he with decision.

“Where can I put her?” Mumsie then asked, wrinkling her forehead.

“Give her my room, put me anywhere, or I can go to an hotel,” said Mr. Bang.

“You’ll stay right here,” said Uncle. “She’ll only want one room, even if she brings the children. Hope she does, I’d like to see ’em.”

“I’ll give up my room if you have any other place to put me,” I said, with a forced cheerfulness, for the idea of giving up my room was really unpleasant.

“I’ll write and ask her and the children, perhaps she does not really wish to come.”

“Auntie, I wager you a box of candy she comes,” declared Mr. Bang.

To-morrow evening is Skating Club night. Mr. Bang’s friend Mr. Timkins has put him up there, and for some time at least I shall have entree. So it would be well for me to practise waltzing. But Badger Lake would be covered with the snow of last night’s storm. Somehow or other I blurted out my desires and fears at breakfast.

Mr. Bang knew of a rink we could go to. No, it was not the hockey rink, nor the Skating Club rink, but another. I wonder why Mr. Bang is so attentive to Me. I surely am not overly polite to him. Why is he so patient—so unnaturally so, it almost seems? I wonder if he will marry. Our personalities—his and mine—are far from being parallel, so that I am safe. What keeps him east? He says business, and, indeed, he leaves for Toronto on New Year’s Eve. If he wants a wife, I should suggest his addressing his attention to Ethel Bassett. She is the type of womanhood of which he approves. I cannot admire dowdiness myself.

Again, Mr. Bang’s bitterness puzzles me. Fancy anyone disliking a sister enough to speak of her as he spoke. I determined upon asking him why it should be so, and as we walked to the rink I did so.

“Do I?” he cried. “I’m sorry if I appear bitter, bitter is an ugly word but no doubt I have earned it, if you, who are my friend, find bitterness in my words. Sister Mary is a type—one of those scheming women, scheming in harmless little ways, who fancies herself clever, when she is really most transparent. I think you may accept it as an axiom, that the average of us are more adept at seeing through the schemes of others than covering up one’s own designs. Sister Mary had a great deal to do with bringing me up; perhaps my bitterness arises from her having made so complete a failure of the job.”

“Are you a failure?” I asked with genuine surprise. A man who can give away furs!

But my interruption did not alter the trend of his ideas.

“I fancy though, I may justly charge her with the hatred I have for the respectable. The inherent pugnacity of the human animal made me irresponsible early in life, partly as an affectation, but later from habit and inclination.

“How strange!” I exclaimed.

“Not strange, but a frequent circumstance: the parson’s son is proverbially a madcap.”

We skated about, hand in hand: my thoughts dwelling upon the strange being who was my companion. My mental attitude towards him had undergone a change. My interest, my sympathy were aroused. He was in the full glow of manhood, full of ambition, fighting his way in the world; and evidently doing so successfully. His abilities were constructive; his past had been hard. The story he told at the Christmas dinner while showing what he had seen and experienced also showed much of himself. Yet he could be egotistical. He is one of those who can talk of themselves without paining or boring the hearer; after all, a rare and delightful accomplishment. But his peculiar animosity to his sister I could not understand. I prompted him.

“I often think,” he said, his voice soft, his speech slow and thoughtful, his utterance suggesting his desire to speak true, “that I perhaps wrong my sister; that the lack of balance, which I had so much trouble in combating in my earlier youth was due really to heredity. I believe that many of the tendencies which experience has told me are to my hurt were as strongly developed in and as detrimental to my grandfather. It is wrong, I believe, to look upon a child’s character as something which may be moulded as a piece of clay. One might as well try and mould his features.”

“But that may be done,” I exclaimed, remembering the maternal squeezing of some infant snub-noses.

“But an Apollo could not be made out of Richard the Third. No,” he went on thoughtfully, as is his wont, “we are in appearance as nature intended us to be, and temperamentally also. We may use artifice to change our appearance or we may study mannerisms—some do—but they are all more or less subterfuge. As a child my failing was unwittingly to antagonize people, and the same attribute was the bane of my grandfather.”

“Tell me of him,” I suggested, and I think my curiosity pleased him.

“He was educated in law; and, when the California gold excitement developed, walked across the continent to San Francisco. There he wished to practise his profession, but the Yankees would not let him do so, unless he became naturalized. This he refused to do—a right Canadian he!—so he worked in the mines and then walked home again and died in penury. The probabilities are that he would have accumulated great wealth had he become a citizen of California, the opportunity there was so great.”

“He was at least a patriot,” I suggested. “Bravo for Canada!”

“Assuredly he was so. His son, my Uncle, told my mother that his lack of success in life was due neither to lack of ability, nor of industry, but to his unfortunate manner, which alienated the sympathy of those he met.”

“Dear! Dear! I have heard of such people,” I said.

“Yes,” replied my companion, “such failings are sometimes, even, the attributes of genius, but in the case of my grandfather and Uncle I have never heard that either developed brilliancy in any direction.”

“And yourself?” I asked. “Perhaps you ———”

He laughed. “If I have any genius, it has yet to be proved, and I’m old enough to have doubts of it. I’ve inherited the wrong traits that’s certain. Perhaps it is that those of us who believe in heredity find its evidence in our faults.”

For the first time Mr. Bang spoke to me without shrouded facetiousness but in earnest, and I felt pleased. I forgot he was a young man; and I am ready to believe he forgot I was a girl. We were just friends. It was a new experience to me and I welcomed it.

Suddenly I came to realize there were others about, that I was skating round and round the rink with my companion openly holding my hand. I brought myself up with a round turn, and suggested we practise our figures, threes and eights.

Mr. Bang came out of his reverie. He corrected my skating in a kindly way, though he was exact enough, and showed no tendency to gloss over my mistakes. After an hour’s skating, we decided to walk home. I was glad of this, for it gave opportunity for further conversation and I asked him several questions, to which generally he said—as well as I can remember it:

“I don’t think I was a bad boy; I never had any vices except indolence; yet I alienated my people at such an early date that I cannot remember the time when they did not think it necessary to apologize to others for me. Pleasant, wasn’t it? Ours was a large family, yet no member of it dreamed of planting in my mind those seeds of worldly wisdom so useful to youth. On the other hand, I was shunted, given up for hopeless, before I was well on the threshold of life. My mother, while she taught me the Bible, sighed: ‘What will become of the boy?’ That sort of apology did not improve me. One brother was in the habit of telling me I would be a perpetual expense to the family, though he did not help me to learn to do otherwise, or give me any money encouragement. I was certainly kept in the back ground. The result was that I early got so mean an opinion of myself that I was ready to apologize for my very existence. Whether this was an inherited trait and itself explains the attitude of my people towards me, or whether it developed under the contempt of my own people, I have no opinion. I had to be a sort of crab. Couldn’t help it!”

Mr. Bang could not have offered me a greater token of friendship than so to lay bare before me his thoughts and confidence like this. Why he should do so is the greater puzzle the more I think of it. Had I been as frank with him what a mean girl I should seem.

“I suppose,” he continued with a smile, “you will see me as the small boy, who ever laments that he is not understood—like so many martyrs in novels and dramas?”

I could only answer with a smile, also. Then we trudged along not speaking. The night was falling, the air was clear and refreshing: but the jingle of the bells on the passing sleighs, and hootings of the motor horns spoiled the peace. The bells brought to me visions of the old Canadian world, of a homely social life, such as Uncle talks of and looks back upon with sighs. The hootings seemed the message of a new order, the power of wealth—discordant and a pollution. And then I started inwardly; was I a traitor to my own ambitions? I had recently become a convert to the new order; why was I forsaking my allegiance?

As we were nearly home Mr. Bang added: “Being what I was, I followed the lines of least resistance and went west. Settled industry and competition with normal personalities offered me no field; and by a natural process I evaded the issue. I threw myself into the mill. I fought while I starved, and starved while I fought. It was a stern conflict, a bitter struggle.”

My companion paused ere he continued:

“There is no personality so out of tune with mankind but he will be attractive to some one; no nature so unlovely but will find a responding chord; no murderer but may gain an advocate; so there is no money-making scheme so unbalanced but will draw support from some foolish purse.”

“There never was a Jack, without a Jill,” I said. I don’t know why I said it; it just came out.

“There never was a Jack who could not find his Jill—though sometimes, alas! too late.”

“I once found a friend,” he ventured. “We won.”

We found Mumsie in the hall; I kissed her and ran to my room; I was unsettled. In my ears sounded the sleigh bells. My conscience was troubling me; perhaps it was my self-respect, the spirit of my forefathers. Like a ghost of the past my grandfather’s presence was with me, reproving me, admonishing me, cherishing me.