The Early Bird Part 13

"How delightful! And so you compose, too?"

"Not at all," he hastily a.s.sured her. "This is the only thing, and it seemed to come just sort of naturally to me from time to time. I don't suppose it's finished yet, because I never play it exactly as I did before. I always seem to add a little bit to it. I do wish that I had had time to know more of music. What little I play I learned from a pianola."

"A what?" she gasped.

He laughed in a half-embarra.s.sed way.

"A pianola," he repeated. "You see I've always been hungry for music, and while my kid brother was still in college I began to be able to afford things, and one of the first luxuries was a pianola. You know the machine has a little lever which throws the keys in or out of engagement, so that you can play it as a regular piano if you wish, and if you leave the keys engaged while you are playing the rolls, they work up and down; so by watching these I gradually learned to pick out my favorite tunes by hand. I couldn't play them so well by myself as the rolls played them, but somehow or other they gave me more satisfaction."

Miss Stevens did not laugh. In some indefinable way all this made a difference in Sam Turner--a considerable difference--and she felt quite justified in having deliberately come to the conclusion that she had been "mean" to him; in having deliberately slipped away from the others as they were all going over to the bowling alleys; in having come back deliberately to find him.

"Your favorite tunes," she repeated musingly. "What was the first one, I wonder? One of those that you have just been playing?"

"The first one?" he returned with a smile. "No, it was a sort of rag-time jingle. I thought it very pretty then, but I played it over the other day, the first time in years, and I didn't seem to like it at all. In fact, I wonder how I ever did like it."

Rag-time! And now, left entirely to his own devices and for his own pleasure, he was playing Chopin! Yes, it made quite a difference in Sam Turner. She was glad that she had decided to wear his roses, glad even that he recognized them. At her solicitation Sam played again the plaintive little air of his own composition--and played it much better than ever he had played it before. Then they walked out on the porch and strolled down toward the bowling shed. Half way there was a little side path, leading off through an arbor into a shady way which crossed the brook on a little rustic bridge, which wound about between flowerbeds and shrubbery and back by another little bridge, and which lengthened the way to the bowling shed by about four times the normal distance--and they took that path; and when they reached the bowling alley they were not quite ready to go in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sam played again the plaintive little air]

There seemed no reasonable excuse for staying out longer, however, for the bowling had already started, and, moreover, young Tilloughby happened to come to the door and spied them. Princeman was just getting up to bowl for the honor and glory of Meadow Brook, and within one minute later Miss Stevens was watching the handsome young paper manufacturer with absorbed interest. He was a fine picture of athletic manhood as he stood up, weighing the ball, and a splendid picture of masculine action as he rushed forward to deliver it. Sam had to acknowledge that himself, and out of fairness he even had to join in the mad applause when Princeman made strike after strike. They had Princeman up again in the last frame, and it was a ticklish moment.

The Hollis Creek team was fifty points ahead. Dramatic unities, under the circ.u.mstances, demanded that Princeman, by a tremendous exercise of coolness and skill, overcome that lead by his own personal efforts, and he did, winning the tournament for Meadow Brook with a breathless few points to spare.

But did Sam Turner care that Princeman was the hero of the hour? More power to Princeman, for from the bevy of flushed and eager girls who flocked about the Adonis-like victor, Miss Josephine Stevens was absent. She was there, with him, in Paradise! Incidentally Sam made an engagement to drive with her in the morning, and when, at the close of that delightful evening, the carryall carried her away, she beamed upon him; gave him two or three beams in fact, and said good-by personally and waved her hand to him personally; n.o.body else was there in all that crowd but just they two!

CHAPTER XI

THE WESTLAKES DECIDE TO INVEST

Miss Hastings did not exactly snub Sam in the morning, but she was surprisingly indifferent to him after all her previous cordiality, and even went so far as to forget the early morning const.i.tutional she was to have taken with him; instead she pa.s.sed him coolly by on the porch right after an extremely early breakfast, and sauntered away down lovers' lane, arm in arm with Billy Westlake, who was already looking very much comforted. Sam, who had been dreading that walk, released it with a sigh of intense satisfaction, planning that in the interim until time for his drive, he would improve his tennis a bit with Miss Westlake. He was just hunting her up when he met Bob Tilloughby, who invited him to join a riding party from both houses for a trip over to Sunset Rock.

"Sorry," said Sam with secret satisfaction, "but I've an engagement over at Hollis Creek at ten o'clock," and Tilloughby carried that information back to Miss Westlake, who had sent him.

An engagement at Hollis Creek at ten o'clock, eh? Well, Miss Westlake knew who that meant; none other than her dear friend, Josephine Stevens! Being a young lady of considerable directness, she went immediately to her father.

"Have you definitely made up your mind, pop, to take stock in Mr.

Turner's company?" she asked, sitting down by that placid gentleman.

Without removing his interlocked hands from their comfortable resting-place in plain sight, he slowly twirled his thumbs some three times, and then stopped.

"Yes, I think I shall," he said.

"About how much?" Miss Westlake wanted to know.

"Oh, about twenty-five thousand."

"Who's to get it?"

"Why, I thought I'd divide it between Billy and you."

Miss Westlake put her hand on her father's arm.

"Say, pop, give it to me, please," she pleaded. "Billy can take the next stock you buy, or I'll let him have some of my other in exchange."

Mr. Westlake surveyed his daughter out of a pair of fish-gray eyes without turning his head.

"You seem to be especially interested in this stock. You asked about it yesterday and Sunday and one day last week."

"Yes, I am," she admitted. "It's a really first-cla.s.s business investment, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think it is," replied Westlake; "as good as any stock in an untried company can be, anyhow. At least it's an excellent investment chance."

"That's what I thought," she said. "I'm judging, of course, only by what you say, and by my impression of Mr. Turner. It seems to me that almost anything he goes into should be highly successful."

Mr. Westlake slowly whirled his thumbs in the other direction, three separate twirls, and stopped them.

"Yes," he agreed. "I'm investing the money in just Sam myself, although the scheme itself looks like a splendid one."

Miss Westlake was silent a moment while she twisted at the b.u.t.ton on her father's coat sleeve.

"I don't quite understand this matter of stock control," she went on presently. "You've explained it to me, but I don't seem quite to get the meaning of it."

"Well, it's like this," explained Mr. Westlake. "Sam Turner, with only a paltry investment, say about five thousand dollars, wants to be able to dictate the entire policy of a million-dollar concern. In other words, he wants a majority of stock, which will let him come into the stock-holders' meetings, and vote into office his own board of directors, who will do just what he says; and if he wanted to he might have them vote the entire profits of the concern for his salary."

"But, father, he wouldn't do anything like that," she protested, shocked.

"No, he probably wouldn't," admitted Mr. Westlake, "but I wouldn't be wise to let him have the chance, just the same."

"But, father," objected Miss Hallie, after further thought, "it's his invention, you know, and his process, and if he doesn't have control couldn't all you other stock-holders get together and appropriate the profits yourselves?"

Mr. Westlake gave his thumbs one quick turn.

"Yes," he grudgingly confessed. "In fact, it's been done," and there was a certain grim satisfaction at the corners of his mouth which his daughter could not interpret, as he thought back over the long list of absorptions which had made old Bill Westlake the power that he was.

"But--but, father," and she hesitated a long time.

"Yes," he encouraged her.

"Even if you won't let him have enough stock to obtain control, if some one other person should own enough of the stock, couldn't they put their stock with his and let him do just about as he liked?"

"Oh, yes," agreed Mr. Westlake without any twirling of his thumbs at all; "that's been done, too."

"Would this twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of stock that you're buying, pop, if it were added to what you men are willing to let Mr.

Turner have, give him control?"

Again Mr. Westlake turned his speculative gray eyes upon his daughter and gave her a long, careful scrutiny, which she received with downcast lashes.