Play the Game! | Page 2

her know
what it comes to,--shall we? Run along, Top Step!"
"All right, Stepper," said the child, relievedly. "You explain it to her."
She went contentedly away and a moment later they heard her robust
young voice lifted on the lawn next door,--"Jim-zee! Oh, Jimsy!
Come-mawn-out!"
"You see?" Mrs. Lorimer wanted rather inaccurately to know. "That's
what we've got to stop, Stephen."
He smiled. "But--as your eldest offspring just now inquired--why?"
"Why?" She lifted her hands and let them fall into her lap again, palm
upward, and regarded him in gentle exasperation. "Stephen, you know,
really, sometimes I feel that you are not a bit of help to me with the
children."
"Sometimes you do, I daresay," he granted her, serenely, "but most of
the time you must be simply starry-eyed with gratitude over the
brilliant way I manage them. Come along over here and we'll talk it
over!" He patted the place beside him on the couch.
"You mean," said his wife a little sulkily, going, nevertheless, "that
you'll talk me over!"
"That is my secret hope," said Stephen Lorimer.
It was all quite true. He did manage her children and their
children--there were three of each--with astonishing ease and success.
They amused him, and adored him. He understood them utterly. Honor
was seven when her own father died and nine when her mother married
again. Stephen Lorimer would never forget her first inspection of him.
Nursemaids had done their worst on the subject of stepfathers; fairy
tales had presented the pattern. He knew exactly what was going on in
her mind, and--quite as earnestly beneath his persiflage as he had set
himself to woo the widow--he set himself to win her daughter. It was a

matter of moments only before he saw the color coming back into her
square little face and the horror seeping out of her eyes. It was a matter
of days only until she sought him out and told him, in her mother's
presence, that she believed she liked him better than her first father.
"Honor, dear! You--you mustn't, really----" Mildred Lorimer insisted
with herself on being shocked.
"Don't you, Muzzie? Don't you like him better?" the child wanted
persistently to know. "He was very nice, of course; I did like him
awfully. But he was always 'way off Down Town ... at The Office. We
didn't have any fun with him. Stepper's always home. I'm glad we
married a newspaper one this time."
"Stephen, that dreadful name.... What will people think?"
Her new husband didn't in the least care. He and Honor had gravely
considered on that first day what they should call each other. It seemed
to Stephen Lorimer that it was hardly fair to the gentleman who had
stayed so largely at The Office to have his big little daughter and his
tiny sons calling his successor Father or Dad, and Papa with all its
shades and shifts of accent left him cold. "Let's see, Honor. 'Stepfather'
as a salutation sounds rather accusing, doesn't it? 'Step-pa,' now, is less
austere, but----"
"Oh, Stephen, dear!" They were not consulting Mrs. Lorimer at all.
"I've got it! It's an inspiration! 'Stepper!' Neat, crisp, brisk. Means, if
any one should ask you, 'Step-pa' and also, literally, stepper; a stepper;
one who steps--into another's place."
"Stephen----"
"Well, haven't I, my dear?" He considered the three young Carmodys,
nine, seven, and five. "Steps yourselves, aren't you? Honor's the top
step and----"
"Oh, Stepper, call me Top Step! I like that."

"Right. And Billy's Bottom Step and Ted's the Tweeny! Now we're all
set!"
"Yes," said Honor, contentedly. She herded her little brothers out of the
room and came back alone. "But--what'll I tell people you are?"
"Why, I think," he considered, "you're young enough and trusting
enough to call me A Writer."
"I mean, are you Muzzie's step-husband, too?"
It was the first time she had seen the lightness leave his eyes. "No. No. I
am your moth--I am her husband. There is no step there." He got up
and walked over to where his wife was sitting and towered over her. He
was a tall man and he looked especially tall at that moment. "Her
plain--husband. Extremely plain, as it happens"--he was himself again
for an instant--"but--her husband." It seemed to the child that he had
forgotten which one of them had asked him the question and was
addressing himself to her mother by mistake. He seemed at once angry
and demanding and anxious, and she had never seen her mother so pink.
However, her question had been answered and she had affairs of her
own. She went away without a backward glance so she did not see her
stepfather drop to his knees beside the chair and gather the quiet
woman roughly into his arms, nor