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Updated: June 20, 2025
"And all of you managed to cling to the timbers of the bridge?" questioned Mazie, looking with open admiration, first at Max, and then those with him, until a puzzled frown came on her pretty face, for she had finally noticed Shack Beggs, and could not understand how a boy of his bad reputation chanced to be in the company of Max and his chums.
That is, he dwelt on the general deterioration of the world about him. There was no discipline; there was no respect; authority was laughed at. All this was the result of laxness, of the sentimentality he condemned; a firmer hand was needed everywhere. He turned with relief to the contemplation of Meta Beggs; she was enormously satisfactory to consider.
He was now, he realized dimly, at the crucial point of his existence: with Meta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he might still wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuous youth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses. With Lettice in Greenstream he would rapidly sink into the dullness of increasing age.
"What's the trouble, Gord?" the latter asked. Two or three others were compactly grouped behind him. "Why, Buckley's hot because I walked with Miss Beggs while he took a drink." The men about Buckley Simmons closed up. "Don't let Gordon crowd you down," they advised their principal; "put it up against him." "Haven't you got enough at home," Buckley demanded, "without playing around here?"
"Sends her best regards to both of you," answered Dave, blushing. "She writes mostly about that proposed trip to Yellowstone Park, and wants to know if you fellows are going along." "One of these letters is from Luke Watson and he will be here to-morrow," said Roger. "And another is from Shadow and he is coming, too. And this one well, I declare! Just listen to this! It's from Buster Beggs."
Meta Beggs shivered. "I'll go mad here," she declared, "in this this nothingness. Look the moon dropping into wilderness; other lucky people are watching it disappear behind great houses and gardens; women in the arms of their lovers are watching it through silk curtains." He gazed critically over the valley, the mountains, into the sky scarfed by night.
The women come with their lovers in little closed carriages, and go back to little closed rooms hung in brocade. They never wear anything but evening clothes, for they are never out but at night satin gowns with trains and bare shoulders." He endeavored to picture himself in such a city, amid such a life, with Meta Beggs.
Of course none of them are of any great length, but of the entire number, some thirteen hundred, forty are navigable for more or less distances for commercial purposes. Mr. John Beggs, a former planter of Porto Rico, says that the island is perfectly adapted for commerce.
He sat answering her endless queries, fears, assenting half-absently to her projections, with the thought of Meta Beggs at the back of his mind. He wanted to be as nice as possible to Lettice. Suddenly she seemed a little removed from him, from the world in general, the world of the emotions and ideas that centered about the school-teacher. Lettice was superior; he recognized it pridefully.
They must have shattered what little nerve Shack Beggs had remaining, for although he had not gone more than half way between the four chums and the further shore, he had turned around, and was now approaching them again. His face looked strangely ghastly, owing to his deadly fear; and the way in which Shack tried to force a grin upon it only made matters worse.
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