Chapter XV: The Cure

THEY were out for a walk one Saturday evening, Peggy and Amy, with Graham and Bob in attendance, when in front of a little movie theater, Peggy stopped short. A young couple stood at the ticket booth, the girl giggling vacuously as the very slender youth fumbled in his pockets for the price of admission. Peggy's abrupt halt was not due to the charm of the flaring poster, representing a fat woman with a broom in pursuit of a thin man attired in a bath-robe. Her attention was absorbed by the young couple, who were planning to enjoy the show. For while she had never seen the girl before, the slender youth was her younger brother, Dick.

As the two disappeared behind the swinging doors, Peggy turned to her companions. "Think you could stand it?" She indicated the poster by a gesture, and Bob Carey, who did not have the pleasure of Dick's acquaintance, looked surprised, while Graham's face wore an expression of doubt.

"I've seen just as bad, Peggy, and still survive," Graham said. "But I hardly think--"

"Of course we can stand it, if you'd like to go in, Peggy," interrupted Amy. And Bob, though evidently puzzled by Peggy's taste moved quickly forward to purchase the tickets, thus getting ahead of Graham who was still inclined to remonstrate. Graham understood that Peggy was not especially pleased to discover Dick in company with a girl she knew nothing about, especially since her manner had made anything but a favorable impression in the few seconds she had been under observation. But Dick, while considerably short of his majority, was old enough to resent interference in his affairs, and Graham could not see that Peggy would gain anything by trying to play detective.

The film which constituted the evening's entertainment was exceptionally poor. The comedy was of the atrocious, slap-stick sort that moves the judicious almost to tears while the feature play, a melodrama only saved from being a tragedy by an inconsistently happy ending, was frequently so overdone as to be extremely funny. Peggy paid comparatively little attention to the drama as it unrolled before her eyes. First of all she set herself to locate Dick and his companion, and then to evolve a plan of action suited to the requirements of the case.

Graham spoke confidentially in her ear. "Don't worry, Peggy. Every boy has his silly times. I did myself." Graham's manner suggested that he was speaking from the vantage-point of discreet middle age.

"Yes, I know." Peggy did not mean her answer just as it sounded. She was simply thinking of something else. Graham stared at the inane chase, unfolding on the screen, where a procession of people ran into everything imaginable from a peanut vendor's cart to an express train, and presently tried again. "You want to be careful, Peggy. He's just at the age to resent your trying to manage him."

"Yes, I know," whispered Peggy again. She was fully as alive as Graham to the necessity of tact. But she was aware, too, that all boys do not pass through the silly stage as unscathed as Graham had done. All the loyal sister in her was alert.

They sat through the depressing comedy and the amusing tragedy, and then suddenly Peggy rose. She had seen Dick on ahead getting to his feet. In the darkness of the picture house there was no danger he would recognize her. Indeed it was unlikely that he would have seen her even if the lights had been turned on, so engrossed was he by the plump little person whose head barely reached his shoulder.

Peggy and her party were outside first. All unaware of the ambush, Dick came blundering on. He was talking fast and the girl was giggling approval. Peggy saw that she was all she had feared. Her round cheeks were rouged so as to give an excellent imitation of a pair of Baldwin apples. Between the crimson circles her nose gleamed ludicrously white, suggesting a very recent use of her powder puff. Her bobbed hair, together with her diminutive frame, gave her a childish air, contradicted by the shrewdness of her eyes. Peggy guessed that Dick's friend was considerably his senior, probably not far from her own age.

Dick was laughing rather boisterously at one of his own witticisms, when Peggy touched his arm. "Hello, Dick!" Her tone was nonchalant, but Dick started, straightened himself and flushed angrily. All his masculine pride was up in arms at the thought of coercion. But Peggy's matter-of-fact air partly allayed his suspicions.

"We sat about six rows back of you," she explained. "Dick, you haven't met Mr. Carey, have you? My brother, Richard, Bob."

The two shook hands and Dick realized that reciprocity was in order. Under the most favorable circumstances, performing the ceremony of introduction was to Dick an agonizing ordeal, and the present situation increased his inevitable embarrassment a hundred fold. He was the color of a ripe tomato as he blurted out, "Miss Coffin, let me introduce you to my sister--Miss Raymond--and Miss--Miss----" He had forgotten Amy's name after having known it all his life, and Peggy came to the rescue, and introduced the others.

Whatever Dick's feeling in regard to the meeting, it was clear that Miss Coffin was not displeased. She fixed a hypnotic gaze on Bob Carey as she exclaimed, "Fierce name, isn't it! But take it from me, I'm no dead one, Coffin or no coffin."

Peggy's smile gave no hint of her inward anguish. "We're just going home to have some oysters. Won't you and Dick come along, Miss Coffin?"

Graham had difficulty in choking down an impatient exclamation. What was Peggy thinking of? It was bad enough for Dick to be associating with a girl of this sort, but for Peggy to encourage him in his folly by welcoming the girl to her home, the first time she had ever seen her, impressively illustrated the feminine incapacity to act reasonably in a crisis. While it was impossible to put his disapproval into words, Graham's manner left little unexpressed.

Dick looked as if he agreed with Graham, but Peggy had not addressed herself to him. And as for Miss Coffin, Peggy's invitation was responsible for a marked increase in her sprightliness. "Eats!" she cried dramatically, "Oh, boy! Lead me to it!"

They went down the street in the direction of Friendly Terrace, Miss Coffin chattering animatedly at Dick's elbow, and speaking loudly enough to be heard easily by the others. Indeed, there was ground for supposing that she was willing to allow her vivacious conversation to make an impression on more important listeners than Dick. Her youthful escort, stalking awkwardly at her side, was almost as silent as Graham who walked on ahead with Peggy. But the silence of her brother and her lover, even though it implied criticism and displeasure, seemingly failed to shadow Peggy's spirits. She turned her head every now and then to address a remark to Dick's companion, and Miss Coffin showed her appreciation of the friendly attitude by the request that she "cut out the formal stuff." "You kids are the kind that can call me Mazie," she chirruped, apparently under the impression that she was addressing some one at a considerable distance.

It was perhaps as well for the success of Peggy's plan that neither her father nor her mother were at home. She ushered her guests into the living room and insisted on their laying aside their wraps. Mazie Coffin having removed her hat, went straight as a homing pigeon to the mirror over the mantel, and made an unabashed and quite unnecessary use of her powder puff.

"You're coming out to help me, aren't you, Amy?" Peggy inquired casually. "I thought I'd fix little pigs-in-blankets, you know. They're awfully good, but rather fussy."

"Why, of course I'll help," responded Amy, wondering if Mazie, also, would be called on to render assistance. But apparently Peggy's acquaintance with Mazie had not progressed to that point of informality. "We'll try not to be any longer than we can help," she smiled, "and we'll leave you to amuse one another till we're ready."

Out in the kitchen as they wrapped fat oysters in blankets of bacon, pinning the latter in place with wooden tooth-picks, the two girls exchanged significant glances. "What's the idea?" Amy asked, with the frankness of long friendship.

"Well, I'm not sure that it will do any good. But I've got an idea--Don't you know that the impression a thing makes on you depends a lot on the background?"

"Hm! I don't quite understand what you mean."

"Well, if you see a girl on the stage with a skirt nine inches long, it doesn't make the same impression on you that it would if you saw her in your own home."

"No, it doesn't."

"Dick's been used to nice people all his life," Peggy went on, plainly trying to encourage herself as well as to explain matters to Amy. "A girl like this might attract his attention if he saw her behind the counter of a cigar store--"

"Does she work in a cigar store?"

"I haven't the least idea. I only meant she wouldn't seem particularly out of place in a tobacco shop. But here in our home--Oh, it seems as though Dick must see how cheap and tawdry she is."

Amy skewered a particularly juicy oyster with a vicious thrust of the tooth pick. "Hope so, anyway," she said, and felt an exasperated desire to box Dick's ears.

But when Peggy had left the field to Mazie Coffin, she had builded better than she knew, Mazie had accepted the responsibility of entertaining the masculine portion of the company with extreme complacency. Never for a moment had she doubted her ability to make a favorable impression. As she gave her smiling attention to the trio, her late escort occupied a very small fraction of her thoughts. Dick was only a boy, a boy to whom shaving was still a novel art, and whose voice cracked ludicrously in moments of excitement. But Graham and Bob were young men, and good looking young men at that. Mazie hoped that the girls would not hurry with the oysters.

As this young woman's methods were not characterized by subtlety, it was not long before Dick realized that he was being disregarded. Mazie had eyes only for his seniors. She had begun by saying, as the door closed behind Peggy and Amy, "Gee, but they're trusting! How do they know that I won't vamp you two guys!" And when Dick, resenting his new rôle of unnoticed on-looker, had attempted to bear his part in the conversation, Mazie had silenced him with a jocose, "What are you butting in for, kid? Children must be seen and not heard, you know."

Dick Raymond was by no means a bad boy, and he was just as far from being a stupid boy. Mazie's conversational advances, as she had weighed out peanut brittle and caramels in quarter pound lots, had flattered his vanity. Dick was not accustomed to being regarded as a young man, and Mazie's manner of considering him worth-while game had naturally convinced him that she was a girl of exceptional insight. But now as she made eyes at Graham and smiled at Bob, the conviction seized Dick that her previous attentions had been due to the fact that he was the only one of his kind within reach. As was natural, the discovery made him critical. He noticed the harshness of Mazie's voice, the vacuity of her giggle. Her repetition of cheap slang began to jar on him, even though he was himself a similar offender. He looked distrustfully at the crimson cheeks, with the powdered nose gleaming whitely between. "I'll be 'jiggered if it doesn't look exactly like a marshmallow," he told himself.

The possibility that Dick's mood was critical did not trouble Mazie. She had looked Peggy and Amy over with the complacent certainty of her superior charms. Dick's sister wasn't a bad looker, Mazie owned condescendingly, but she was slow, dead slow, and nowadays the fellows liked plenty of pep. Mazie prided herself, not without reason, on having an abundance of that essential quality. She was sorry when the fragrance of frying bacon and coffee greeted her nostrils. Though Graham was stiffly polite and Bob Carey plainly amused, she would have been glad of a little more time.

The impromptu supper in the dining-room completed Dick's disillusionment. Determined not to yield any advantage she had gained Mazie continued to take the lead in the conversation. She gestured freely and frequently with the hand which held her fork, even with an oyster impaled on the tines. She drank her coffee noisily. Once, Dick was sure, he saw Bob choke down a laugh, though he made a pretence of coughing behind his napkin. And it was not, Dick was certain, because he found her amusing, but because he thought her ridiculous. Dick glared furiously at the averted shoulder of his erst-while charmer. Mazie had elected to treat him like a little boy, but if she had listened to him, thought Dick, he could have kept her from making a fool of herself.

Mazie seemed willing to linger, even after Amy and Bob had taken their departure. "Guess we might as well be starting," suggested Dick, his thoughts upon the probable return of his father and mother, rather than on his responsibility as host.

"Getting sleepy aren't you, little boy?" mocked Mazie. "Don't let me keep you from your downy. I can get home somehow," and she glanced significantly at Graham, whose good looks, for all his air of reserve, had made a strong impression on her susceptible temperament.

When at length she left under the escort of a frankly sulky Dick, she turned back to remind Graham that he could always find her in Streeter's Sweet Shop between the hours of nine and five. And then she took Dick's arm, and went out the door, smiling back coquettishly over her shoulder.

Graham hardly waited for them to be out of hearing before he exploded. The evening had been a great disappointment, and while Graham would have resented any outside suggestion that Peggy came short of absolute perfection, there were times when he felt himself quite capable of pointing out her errors in judgment. Peggy's painstaking explanation failed to enlighten him, and while Peggy thought Graham the most wonderful of men, in this instance she found him disappointingly slow of comprehension. They did not quarrel, but they kept on arguing the question long after it was clear that neither would be able to take the other's point of view. They were still arguing when Dick returned.

Dick was in that state of irritation when scolding somebody seems an indispensable luxury. "See here, Peggy, just because you see me with a girl, you don't have to start right in and invite her to the house."

"Why, Dick, I thought--"

"Sometimes a fellow asks a girl out just so he can size her up. And if he finds that she's a blamed idiot, he don't want her mixed up with his family. You mean all right, Peggy, but you don't understand life the way Graham and I do. I don't want you to have anything more to do with Mazie Coffin, Peggy. She's not the sort of girl for you to associate with. You can ask Graham about it if you don't believe me."

And as Dick stalked off to bed, ill tempered and aggrieved and abnormally dignified, even Graham was obliged to admit that it looked like a cure.