Oh, Money! Money! Part 37

"But you like--Donald?"

"Very much. I've been looking him up for some time. He's all right."

"I'm glad."

"Yes." Mr. Smith spoke abstractedly, without enthusiasm. Plainly Mr.

Smith was still thinking of something else.

Miss Maggie asked other questions--Miss Maggie was manifestly interested--and Mr. Smith answered them, but still without enthusiasm.

Very soon he said good-night and went to his own room.

For some days after this, Mr. Smith did not appear at all like himself.

He seemed abstracted and puzzled. Miss Maggie, who still felt self-conscious and embarra.s.sed over her misconception of his attentions to Mellicent, was more talkative than usual in her nervous attempt to appear perfectly natural. The fact that she often found his eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her, and felt them following her as she moved about the room, did not tend to make her more at ease. At such times she talked faster than ever--usually, if possible, about some member of the Blaisdell family: Miss Maggie had learned that Mr. Smith was always interested in any bit of news about the Blaisdells.

It was on such an occasion that she told him about Miss Flora and the new house.

"I don't know, really, what I am going to do with her," she said. "I wonder if perhaps you could help me."

"Help you?--about Miss Flora?"

"Yes. Can you think of any way to make her contented?"

"CONTENTED! Why, I thought--Don't tell me SHE isn't happy!" There was a curious note of almost despair in Mr. Smith's voice. "Hasn't she a new house, and everything nice to go with it?"

Miss Maggie laughed. Then she sighed.

"Oh, yes--and that's what's the trouble. They're TOO nice. She feels smothered and oppressed--as if she were visiting somewhere, and not at home. She's actually afraid of her maid. You see, Miss Flora has always lived very simply. She isn't used to maids--and the maid knows it, which, if you ever employed maids, you would know is a terrible state of affairs."

"Oh, but she--she'll get used to that, in time." "Perhaps," conceded Miss Maggie, "but I doubt it. Some women would, but not Miss Flora. She is too inherently simple in her tastes. 'Why, it's as bad as always living in a hotel!' she wailed to me last night. 'You know on my trip I was so afraid always I'd do something that wasn't quite right, before those awful waiters in the dining-rooms, and I was antic.i.p.ating so much getting home where I could act natural--and here I've got one in my own house!'"

Mr. Smith frowned, but he laughed, too.

"Poor Miss Flora! But why doesn't she dismiss the lady?"

"She doesn't dare to. Besides, there's Hattie. She says Hattie is always telling her what is due her position, and that she must do this and do that. She's being invited out, too, to the Pennocks' and the Bensons'; and they're worse than the maid, she declares. She says she loves to 'run in' and see people, and she loves to go to places and spend the day with her sewing; but that these things where you go and stand up and eat off a jiggly plate, and see everybody, and not really see ANYBODY, are a nuisance and an abomination."

"Well, she's about right there," chuckled Mr. Smith.

"Yes, I think she is," smiled Miss Maggie; "but that isn't telling me how to make her contented."

"Contented! Great Scott!" snapped Mr. Smith, with an irritability that was as sudden as it was apparently causeless. "I didn't suppose you had to tell any woman on this earth how to be contented--with a hundred thousand dollars!"

"It would seem so, wouldn't it?"

Something in Miss Maggie's voice sent Mr. Smith's eyes to her face in a keen glance of interrogation.

"You mean--you'd like the chance to prove it? That you wish YOU had that hundred thousand?"

"Oh, I didn't say--that," twinkled Miss Maggie mischievously, turning away.

It was that same afternoon that Mr. Smith met Mrs. Jane Blaisdell on the street.

"You're just the man I want to see," she accosted him eagerly.

"Then I'll turn and walk along with you, if I may," smiled Mr. Smith.

"What can I do for you?"

"Well, I don't know as you can do anything," she sighed; "but somebody's got to do something. Could you--DO you suppose you could interest my husband in this Blaisdell business of yours?"

Mr. Smith gave a start, looking curiously disconcerted.

"B-Blaisdell business?" he stammered. "Why, I--I thought he was--er--interested in motoring and golf."

"Oh, he was, for a time; but it's too cold for those now, and he got sick of them, anyway, before it did come cold, just as he does of everything. Well, yesterday he asked a question--something about Father Blaisdell's mother; and that gave me the idea. DO you suppose you could get him interested in this ancestor business? Oh, I wish you could!

It's so nice and quiet, and it CAN'T cost much--not like golf clubs and caddies and gasoline, anyway. Do you think you could?"

"Why, I--I don't know, Mrs. Blaisdell," murmured Mr. Smith, still a little worriedly. "I--I could show him what I have found, of course."

"Well, I wish you would, then. Anyway, SOMETHING'S got to be done," she sighed. "He's nervous as a witch. He can't keep still a minute. And he isn't a bit well, either. He ate such a lot of rich food and all sorts of stuff on our trip that he got his stomach all out of order; and now he can't eat anything, hardly."

"Humph! Well, if his stomach's knocked out I pity him," nodded Mr.

Smith. "I've been there."

"Oh, have you? Oh, yes, I remember. You did say so when you first came, didn't you? But, Mr. Smith PLEASE, if you know any of those health fads, don't tell them to my husband. Don't, I beg of you! He's tried dozens of them until I'm nearly wild, and I've lost two hired girls already. One day it'll be no water, and the next it'll be all he can drink; and one week he won't eat anything but vegetables, and the next he won't touch a thing but meat and--is it fruit that goes with meat or cereals? Well, never mind. Whatever it is, he's done it. And lately he's taken to inspecting every bit of meat and groceries that comes into the house. Why, he spends half his time in the kitchen, nosing 'round the cupboards and refrigerator; and, of course, NO girl will stand that! That's why I'm hoping, oh, I AM hoping that you can do SOMETHING with him on that ancestor business. There, here is the Bensons', where I've got to stop--and thank you ever so much, Mr.

Smith, if you will."

"All right, I'll try," promised Mr. Smith dubiously, as he lifted his hat. But he frowned, and he was still frowning when he met Miss Maggie at the Duff supper-table half an hour later.

"Well, I've found another one who wants me to tell to be contented, though afflicted with a hundred thousand dollars," he greeted her gloweringly.

"Is that so?" smiled Miss Maggie.

"Yes.--CAN'T a hundred thousand dollars bring any one satisfaction?"

Miss Maggie laughed, then into her eyes came the mischievous twinkle that Mr. Smith had learned to watch for.

"Don't blame the poor money," she said then demurely. "Blame--the way it is spent!"

CHAPTER XVIII

JUST A MATTER OF BEGGING

True to his promise, Mr. Smith "tried" Mr. Frank Blaisdell on "the ancestor business" very soon. Laboriously he got out his tabulated dates and names and carefully he traced for him several lines of descent from remote ancestors. Painstakingly he pointed out a "Submit,"

who had no history but the bare fact of her marriage to one Thomas Blaisdell, and a "Thankful Marsh," who had eluded his every attempt to supply her with parents. He let it be understood how important these missing links were, and he tried to inspire his possible pupil with a frenzied desire to go out and dig them up. He showed some of the interesting letters he had received from various Blaisdells far and near, and he spread before him the genealogical page of his latest "Transcript," and explained how one might there stumble upon the very missing link he was looking for.