Chapter X

About this time also, Blink, having received the invitation by word of mouth from the minister, and not having declared himself either way about accepting it, repaired to the meadow lot opposite the Silver place and proceeded to fill a large tin can with the choicest bait the town afforded from a private and secret source underneath some old rotting logs which had long furnished him with better angles than any other boy was able to produce. He was not yet sure whether he would go to the party, but he would at least be ready with an offering should the fates, when the time arrived, seem propitious.

Sooner than he had expected the can was filled, and he lay back on the sweet smelling turf of the meadow and gazed up at the blue of the sky, watching the tiny, lazy, gauzy clouds that floated slowly, drifting like thistle down whither it happened. It was easy to feel he was floating on one of them drifting too. He often did that. It was his way of reading poetry. He read a great deal of living poetry at that stage of his existence.

Lying so with a clump of blue violets close to his hand, and the tinkle of a cow bell not far away he could drift and think of a great many things that an ordinary boy in the everyday of life wouldn’t consider profitable for one of his standing.

Out of the tale of his eye he saw the minister, presently, going in the white gate between the hedges. He thought of the little grave covered with violets, and the young mother, a social outcast, with her new sorrow and bewilderment in her face. No one had told him about it. It was one of those things that Blink always knew. By and by he would slip back to the cemetery and water those flowers. It wouldn’t be necessary for the minister to bother with that. The flowers would just grow all right and he could let them off his mind. Blink knew how to relieve him at odd little phases of the way. The minister was a good scout. If Silas Pettigrew made any more of those pharisaical remarks about the minister letting handsome young women of the street go to some “mother in Israel” when they were in trouble he would see that he found a way to tell Silas where to get off. Silas wasn’t such a saint anyway if he _was_ an elder in the church! There was that time when he bought Widow Emmet’s house for twenty-five hundred dollars and then discovered the very next day that the railroad would buy it at twelve thousand to complete their new franchise, and he never let the widow in on the deal! Old cotton mouth! Thinking he could put one over on the town, and get the minister in Dutch with the old tabbies, just because that poor girl—when everybody knew young Sil Pettigrew—but _there_!

He watched with satisfaction as the great door opened with a glimpse of Anne in black silk and sheer collar. He too might be thus received later in the evening if he so chose. He reflected that “the girl” would be there. It seemed a pleasing circumstance. She liked dogs. She was all right.

Then suddenly his attention was attracted to a motion, a shadow, what was it moving at an upper side window of the house. Someone was climbing out to the pergola below, a boy it looked like, heavily built with a shock of football hair, knee trousers, and a strange belted kind of jacket.

He sat up stealthily, leaning on one elbow, his young face growing grave as he watched. Now who the deuce could that be? Not a burglar, this time of afternoon, sun still up? Still. That wasn’t any town figure, none of the boys’ shoulders that shape, nor hair. It might be a disguise but—how pink the face looked, like a Chinese painting on a fan!

Without taking his eyes from the object of his attention he made ready to take a hasty departure. One hand went out and secured the can of bait. His mind turned over the available hiding places where he might store it safely. How clumsy that guy was! Wasn’t much of a climber. What in time was he doing up there in that house anyway?

Slowly the figure crept to the front of the pergola, glanced cautiously around, peeked back and over the vines as if watching some one, and then dropped heavily down among the myrtle beds. A moment more and he saw it rise, jamb a curious looking mushroom hat down over the shock of hair, and come out the gate to the street, with furtive glances back toward the house. The whole attitude of the person showed secrecy and stealth. Once outside the gate it turned toward the direction of the stores and walked rapidly with a free stride despite its stocky build.

Blink arose from his bed of green and lost no time in following. The can of bait was deposited in the hollow of a tree a rod from the street, and Blink was over the fence and making good time in a trice. The stranger was still in sight, had passed the first cross street and was almost to the drug store. Blink fell into a lope and made the garage diagonally across from the drug store just as the figure paused, one foot on the step, one hand on the latch and looked up and down the street. He had a full view of her face. Good night! It was a _girl_! A girl in knickers! They passed through the town sometimes, girls like that, out on walks with men Sundays and holidays, but there were none indigenous to the soil of Silver Sands. It was _not done_! And look at her face! Ye gods. Fell in the flour barrel! Painted like an image! Good night! Did a girl think she was nice looking that way he would like to know? And coming from the Silver house! How was it possible? Blink did not use the word “incongruous” in common parlance but it was the way he felt. For one awful second he experienced deep and horrible disappointment. “The girl.” She liked dogs but she was like that! Then instantly the thing was impossible. No, she hadn’t been a fat thing like that. She wasn’t the same one. But who was she? Some interloper? How did she get there without his knowing? Did the family know? What did she have to do with them? Oughtn’t something to be done about it?

Since he had been able to walk alone Blink had been a self-constituted member of the police force of Silver Sands. He belonged to a clan who seldom said what they meant, seldom talked but in parables, and kept their eyes open. Many a wrong had been righted and a petty criminal saved through their ministrations to become a worthy citizen after due chastisement and discipline. They reserved the right to use their own judgment, and on occasion had been known to evade the law for their own wise and worthy reasons, to save an underlying principle which in their opinion would be lost if the law had its course. The strangest part of it all was that the outcome usually would seem to warrant the venture, and occasionally the Chief of Police himself had been known to wink at some open break on the part of the boy because he had come to have utter faith in his working principle. Blink had been known to search out the criminal and the facts in some mystery more than once where others had failed to get a clue, and the Chief always felt it well to keep in with Blink. He took him with him now and again when a raid on some lawbreaker was imminent. He had faith in Blink’s intuition.

Blink himself had unerring faith in his own judgment. It was to him like a clear magnifying glass that had been given him at birth, which showed up Truth, and he couldn’t see why other people didn’t exercise the same faculty. They all must have the same thing if they only used it.

Athalie seeing nothing else down the principal business street more attractive than the drug store, opened the door and went in. Blink leaned up against the show window of the garage in front of a great pasteboard model of a new kind of tire, looked idly up and down the street and saw every move the strange girl made.

She looked about the store with that curious appraising glance she gave to everything the first time of seeing, and then turned into one of the two telephone booths that huddled by the corner window, close to the entrance door. She took the front one facing the door and seemed to be looking through the book for a number. When she had taken down the receiver, Blink, without seeming to have been looking that way, sauntered thoughtfully across the street and entered the drug store most casually, taking one full impersonal look at the girl’s face as he passed. No, it was not _the_ girl. He had been pretty sure before, but he was glad to _know_.

And this one was pretty enough, if she hadn’t been so ghastly painted, and such funny eyebrows, almost as if she wanted you to see she hadn’t them in the right place. She had big brilliant white teeth, with those vivid red lips like the clown in the circus, and she had a hard bold look in her eyes. When he entered she was talking and laughing boisterously. She could be heard all over the store, if there had been anyone around to hear but stupid Sam Hutchins the “soda” clerk.

Blink stalked over to the counter and threw down a nickel for a package of life savers, and then as if he had had no other purpose in entering he sauntered straight to the other telephone booth and shut himself in to a careful inspection of the W’s in the telephone directory. Not that he wanted anyone with a name beginning with W. It was just the first page he happened to open.

Clear and distinct came the voice from the booth ahead:

“Now _Bobs_! You don’t mean you didn’t know my voice! Well, I’ll say that’s a slam! I’m off you for life! Oh! Really? Awwww—Bobbbbs! Now, that’s awfully _darling_ of you!”

Blink was disgusted. Just one of these foolish Janes. He had heard them talk before, only why did they want to dress like a man, and why should one of them climb out of a second story window in the Silver house? He slammed the book shut and called up the captain of a neighboring baseball team in the next township. He was disgusted with himself for caring. He would listen no more. It was likely some queer visitor. But one thing was settled. He was not going to the Silver house that night. Not with so many girls about. He couldn’t stand girls!

“Is that you kid? Oh, isn’t he? Well, call him won’t you? I’ll wait. This is Blink. Yes, Blink. _I_ said it.”

“Boom!” came the girl’s voice into his waiting. “Well, you’ve got to come and get me, Bobs. You said you would if I sent for you. I’m having a horrid time. No, I haven’t been down to meals. I didn’t have any success at all. If it hadn’t been for your five pounder I’d have starved. Yes, been on a hunger strike. But honestly, Bobs, it’s no use. I simply can’t stick it out! I shall expire. Can’t you come down this evening and take me a ride? No, he’d never find it out. I’ve retired to my room with a sick headache, see? He expects to hear nothing more from me till morning. I’ve shocked him so hard he would be glad if he never had to see me any more. I’ll make him sit up and take notice yet. I promised Lilla I would and I mean to keep my word. But Bobs, you’ve simply got to stand by or I sha’n’t survive. Aw, come on, Bobs! I’ve found a way to get in the window. We can stay as late as we like. Nobody will ever find it out. I can shin up the pergola. Oh, sure! I useta do it in gym. . . . Aw, _why_ Bobs? . . . . I think you’re _too mean_—! . . . . Well, then, how about t’morra? . . . . You won’t stand me up? . . . . Well, if you do all right for you! . . . . Where will I meet you? . . . . Why I’m down at the drug store now. Couldn’t you come here? . . . . Aw why? . . . . I don’t see. What do I care for these country simps! Let ’em tell dad! I’ll have the fun first won’t I? Leave it to me. I’ll get away with it. . . . What is it you’re afraid of, you poor fish? Your reputation? Well I like that! I didn’t know you had any! . . . . All right, Bobs. I’ll come. Where do you say it is? Walk over the bridge at the other end of the village? . . . Yes. . . . Woods? On the right hand side? . . . . I didn’t get that. Oh, you want me to walk in a little way from the road out of sight? . . . . I see. Yes. Sure. All right, I’ll be there, Bobs. Four o’clock sharp! But don’t you be late or fail me. If you do I’ll never speak to you again, Bobs. And I’ll tell Lilla how mean you were. No, I’ll tell her you said she was getting _old_. That’ll get her goat! Then she won’t speak to you either! . . . . All right, Bobs. I’ll be there!”

The receiver hung up with a click and the girl adjourned to the soda water counter where she tried various compounds and chatted affably with Sam Hutchins in a lofty patronizing tone, telling him how to prepare the special concoctions they used to get at school. She made out quite a respectable lunch, what with the sponge cake they kept in a glass showcase, and several chocolate ice cream sundaes. Certainly enough to keep the breath of life in her plump well cared for body until the next morning, and then she took her leave and stalked on down the street to the end of the village and crossed the bridge. Blink went across to the garage, borrowed a motor cycle, and took a breezy turn that way himself. He felt that this young adventuress needed a chaperone. She came from the house of a man he liked and loyalty to his friends, even his very new friends, was one of Blink’s specialties. He felt instinctively that Patterson Greeves would not like a guest of his whoever she might be to be sailing through the open country side alone in such a garb at the hour when the workmen from the quarry half a mile below the town would be coming home.

So he chortled noisily by her on his wheezy steed and sailed on down the road, arranging to have something the matter with the cycle about the time she turned off the road toward the woods, which made it necessary for him to dismount and get down in the road to examine into it.

Athalie did not stay in the woods very long. Nature unadorned never had much attraction for her. She entered a narrow winding path, followed it to a log a few rods within the thick grove, and sat down. But solitude never appealed to Athalie, and after a moment’s reconnoitering she came back to the road again and pursued a monotonous way to the village.

“Fat thing!” reflected Blink contemptuously jogging along behind at a sickly pace for one of his ambitions. Whenever he came too near he had to stop and examine his engine again, but in course of time the two arrived in the neighborhood of the drug store. Athalie went in, purchased some salted almonds and went on to her father’s house. Blink returned his motor cycle, and took a back way to the meadow, arriving in plenty of time to watch the lady mount the pergola and enter her window once more.

The incident finished, Blink sat for some minutes turning it over in his mind, decided there was something here that needed further investigation, and that he must accept the invitation to the house and see what he might see, although he could not bring himself to go through the agony of a dinner with _girls_. To this end he picked himself up from the ground, retrieved his can of bait and took the shortest cut to his home, where he began a thorough search for a clean shirt and its accompaniments.

Athalie, having regained the stronghold of her room was about to return to her task of moving her clothes to the front room closet when suddenly the sound of a tinkling, spoon against a thin china cup, and a ripple of soft laughter, with an undertone of heavier gaiety sent her flying to her window.

For an instant her face took on the wild look of a young savage as she gazed down at the pretty tea table set out on the terrace below, the plate of thin bread and butter, so tempting to her bonbon-jaded appetite, the orange marmalade like drops of amber, the dainty dish of sugar cookies, thin and attractive in clover leaf form. The whiff of orange pekoe wafted up as Silver passed her father his cup. Tea on the terrace and she not even told! And there was that stunning-looking man again! Who was he? Did that other girl think she would take possession of him too as well as her father, and the house, and the best room, and everything? Well, they would find out! She was going down at once. She would show that stuck up girl—!

Athalie turned from the window after a moment more and began to fly around with catlike tread, dropping off garments and sliding into others, searching wildly amid the mass of finery for the thing she wanted. It was a coral crêpe she finally chose, with a low cut bodice of silver cloth, and startling touches of black velvet fastened with jewelled buckles.

She worked frantically over her complexion and brushed out her permanent waves until they looked like an electric sign. A platinum chain like a breath of air about her plump white neck held a single jewel like a drop of dew. In her ears were long jet earrings, giving her a more brazen expression than ever. Her large pink arms were guiltless of sleeves as she stood before the mirror, turning this way and that on the high heels of her little silver slippers into which her plump feet seemed to be fairly forced. She was well pleased with herself. Probably this wasn’t exactly the right kind of costume according to social rules, for that early hour in the day, but at least it was effective, and that was all she really cared. She felt that she could afford to be a law unto herself.

As she took her final glimpse and tiptoed toward the door she seemed like some great gay bird with a large part of its gaudy plumage plucked away. The floating coral and silver were inadequate. “Naked” was what Anne Truesdale expressed it to herself as she stood in frozen horror behind the pantry door with a plate of fresh cookies and watched the bright apparition move out of the door to the terrace and stand a moment, “the very devil of a smile on her lips” as Tom who was watching behind the lilacs afterwards told his wife Molly.

Then Patterson Greeves with his cup half way to his lips, and a look of comfort and relaxation on his brow, suddenly looked up and stared. They all looked up and saw her. Athalie came forward, her eyes fixed straight upon the minister, her most coaxing spoiled-baby look on her pink over-fed face.