A Fool For Love | Page 4

than
the ossifying exile," he remarked. And then: "I am going back into the
Rosemary to pay my respects to Miss Virginia Carteret. Won't you
come along?"
"No," said Winton, more shortly than the invitation warranted; and the
other went his way alone.

II
IN WHICH AN ENGINE IS SWITCHED

"'Scuse me, sah; private cyah, sah."
It was the porter's challenge in the vestibule of the Rosemary. Adams
found a card.
"Take that to Miss Carteret--Miss Virginia Carteret," he directed, and
waited till the man came back with his welcome.
The extension table in the open rear third of the private car was closed
to its smallest dimensions, and the movable furnishings were disposed
about the compartment to make it a comfortable lounging room.
Mrs. Carteret was propped among the cushions of a divan with a book.
Her daughter occupied the undivided half of a tete-a-tete chair with a
blond athlete in a clerical coat and a reversed collar. Miss Virginia was
sitting alone at a window, but she rose and came to greet the visitor.
"How good of you to take pity on us!" she said, giving him her hand.
Then she put him at one with the others: "Aunt Martha you have met;
also Cousin Bessie. Let me present you to Mr. Calvert: Cousin Billy,
this is Mr. Adams, who is responsible in a way for many of my
Boston-learned gaucheries."
Aunt Martha closed the book on her finger. "My dear Virginia!" she
protested in mild deprecation; and Adams laughed and shook hands
with the Reverend William Calvert and made Virginia's peace all in the
same breath.
"Don't apologize for Miss Virginia, Mrs. Carteret. We were very good
friends in Boston, chiefly, I think, because I never objected when she
wanted to--er--to take a rise out of me." Then to Virginia: "I hope I
don't intrude?"
"Not in the least. Didn't I just say you were good to come? Uncle
Somerville tells us we are passing through the famous Golden
Belt,--whatever that may be,--and recommends an easy-chair and a
window. But I haven't seen anything but stubble-fields--dismally wet
stubble-fields at that. Won't you sit down and help me watch them go

by?"
Adams placed a chair for her and found one for himself.
"'Uncle Somerville'--am I to have the pleasure of meeting Mr.
Somerville Darrah?"
Miss Virginia's laugh was non-committal.
"Quien sabe?" she queried, airing her one Westernism before she was
fairly in the longitude of it. "Uncle Somerville is a law unto himself. He
had a lot of telegrams and things at Kansas City, and he is locked in his
den with Mr. Jastrow, dictating answers by the dozen, I suppose."
"Oh, these industry colonels!" said Adams. "Don't their toilings make
you ache in sheer sympathy sometimes?"
"No, indeed," was the prompt rejoinder; "I envy them. It must be fine to
have large things to do, and to be able to do them."
"Degenerate scion of a noble race!" jested Adams. "What ancient
Carteret of them all would have compromised with the necessities by
becoming a captain of industry?"
"It wasn't their metier, or the metier of their times," said Miss Virginia
with conviction. "They were sword-soldiers merely because that was
the only way a strong man could conquer in those days. Now it is
different, and a strong man fights quite as nobly in another field--and
deserves quite as much honor."
"Think so? I don't agree with you--as to the fighting, I mean. I like to
take things easy. A good club, a choice of decent theaters, the society
of a few charming young women like--"
She broke him with a mocking laugh.
"You were born a good many centuries too late, Mr. Adams; you would
have fitted so beautifully, into decadent Rome."

"No--thanks. Twentieth-century America, with the commercial frenzy
taken out of it, is good enough for me. I was telling Winton a little
while ago--"
"Your friend of the Kansas City station platform?" she interrupted.
"Mightn't you introduce us a little less informally?"
"Beg pardon, I'm sure--yours and Jack's: Mr. John Winton, of New
York and the world at large, familiarly known to his intimates--and
they are precious few--as 'Jack W.' As I was about to say--"
But she seemed to find a malicious satisfaction in breaking in upon
him.
"'Mr. John Winton': it's a pretty name as names go, but it isn't as strong
as he is. He is an 'industry colonel,' isn't he? He looks it."
The Bostonian avenged himself at Winton's expense for the unwelcome
interruption.
"So much for your woman's intuition," he laughed. "Speaking of idlers,
there is your man to the dotting of the 'i'; a dilettante raised to the nth
power."
Miss Carteret's short upper lip curled in undisguised scorn.
"I like men who do things," she asserted with pointed