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It was fortunate for Lily's prestige that her plain, unambitious father was dead, and her mother kept well in the background. No one quite knew about the fortune. Richard Weir was certainly hard hit. He made a pretence of devoting himself to his studies to keep away from Gaynor's raillery. But one day he said to Jim,
Gaynor led the way through a room where were piano and victrola and from the floor of which the rugs were still rolled; through a dining-room and into what was at once a small library and Gaynor's study; King noted that even a telephone had found its way hither.
Weeks of busy gaiety on her part, of steady, persistent seeking on his. Now again Gloria and her mother and Ben were at the log house in the mountains, this time with a fresh set of guests. Only one of the former flock had been invited: Mr. Gratton. And this despite Ben Gaynor's uneasy "This chap Gratton, Nellie. He's cutting in pretty strong here of late, and I don't know that I like him.
Be still," he commanded, as she sought to wriggle out of his grasp, to avoid the direct blaze of his eyes. "I am going to do what I can for you; to see you safe through this, if I can. Not because you are anything to me, but just because you are Ben Gaynor's, and he is my friend. Understand?" "You are hurting me," she said in defiance. "Take your dirty hands off."
He wanted to see Gaynor, not a lot of Gaynor's San Francisco guests. No, not Gaynor's; rather the friends of Gaynor's womenfolk. It was King's hope that they were going down toward the lake; thus he would avoid meeting them. He'd come in at the back, have his talk with Ben, and be on his way without the bore of shaking a lot of flabby hands and listening to a lot of gushing exclamations.
Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle," may also have a pleasant and harmless place of their own.
So masterly a performance, indeed, hardly needed the offset of Miss Gaynor's door-step words "To be so kind to me, how she must have liked you!" though he caught himself wishing it lay within the bounds of fitness to transmit them, as a final tribute, to the one woman he knew who was unfailingly certain to enjoy a good thing.
This year the wife and daughter, drawn by the new summer home, had come early in the season, and King's business was urgent. Besides, he had told himself a dozen times, there really existed no sane reason in the world why he should avoid Ben Gaynor's family as though they were leprous. ... What King said in answer to his friend's approval was by way of a bantering: "Miracles do happen!
Miss Gloria had a pretty way of commanding, half beseeching and yet altogether tyrannical. King, having agreed to stay to luncheon, was in the bathroom off Gaynor's room, shaving. Gloria had caught her father and dragged him off into a corner. "Oh, papa, he is simply magnificent! Why didn't you tell me?
They were still in the log house when, twenty-four hours later, the telephone rang, and Gloria, quick to forestall her mother, heard the operator saying: "Coloma calling Ben Gaynor's residence." "Coloma!" thought Gloria with a quickened heartbeat. Then it wouldn't be her father, after all; it would be Mark King But her father it was, and she was disappointed. The message, however, was for King.
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