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Updated: May 1, 2025
What the mischief was happening up there in Maine, anyhow? She hadn't written for some time; and he hadn't had a word from Peter Champneys. And when Marcia came home and found out he'd been meddling well, the meddler would have to pay the fiddler, that's all! The office boy came in with a telegram. Mr. Vandervelde paused in his dictation, tore open the envelop, and read the message.
I have been very circumspect," said he, moodily. And he added angrily: "She seems to regard me as a sort of cicerone, a perambulating, vocal Baedeker!" Mrs. Vandervelde smiled openly. "It is your surest hold upon her. I shouldn't cavil at it, if I were you. To Anne you are the sum total of human knowledge. Your dictum is the last word to be said about anything." But Berkeley still looked sulky.
Feeling herself down and out now, she had done so. "Honest to Gawd, the poor little simp thinks this feller's a angel. Why, when she gets out o' her head, she don't rave about nothin' but him, beggin' him to help her. Ain't it somethin' fierce, though?" The blonde person dabbed at her eyes with a scented handkerchief. Mr. Vandervelde rubbed his nose thoughtfully.
He was vaguely aware that he had been astrally scratched across the nose. "And you think a girl like Anne will be willing to play patient Griselda?" he asked, scornfully. "I don't know. You think she shouldn't?" "I think she shouldn't. I tell you frankly he doesn't deserve it." "Oh, as for that!" said Mrs. Vandervelde, airily. Hayden paused in his restless walk, and looked at her earnestly.
He was assisted by the chief of the Socialist party, M. Vandervelde, and by an eminent authority on international law, M. Van den Heuvel. But for reasons which elude analysis, none of the three delegates hit it off with the duumvirate who were spinning the threads of the world's destinies.
Would she explain as concisely as possible just why and for whom she had come? She explained ramblingly. Mr. Vandervelde gathered that a certain "lady friend" of hers, one Gracie Cantrell, now in the hospital, said her prayers to Mr. Peter Champneys, whom she had met on a time, and who had advised her if ever she needed help to apply to his uncle, and to tell him that he had sent her.
"I wanted to see if you was good enough for him," said the gutter-candle, as if she were throwing a light into the secret places of Anne Champneys's soul. "You ain't. But you could be." Vandervelde had the horrid sensation as of walking in a nightmare. He wished somebody in mercy would wake him up. Anne's brows came together. She bent upon Gracie one of her long, straight, searching looks.
He had written Vandervelde that he couldn't forego his summer's work, but would probably be in New York that autumn. In the meantime, let Vandervelde look after his interests as usual and see to it that Mrs. Champneys was more adequately and liberally provided for. He forgot to inquire as to the real value of his possessions. He did say to himself soberly: "Jingo!
And then Vandervelde made a suggestion which rather pleased Peter. Why not go to a little place he knew, a quiet and very beautiful place on the Maine coast? Very few people knew of its existence. Vandervelde had stumbled upon it on a motor trip a few years before, and he was rather jealous of his discovery.
Fancy his wishing to send such a girl to his uncle and being sure that old Chadwick wouldn't misunderstand! Gracie cast a new light upon Peter Champneys, and a very likable one. Vandervelde had seen in the uncle something of that same unworldliness that the nephew displayed, and it had established the human equation between Peter and the shrewd old man.
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