THE LITTLE LADY OF 
 THE BIG HOUSE 
 
 BY 
 
 JACK LONDON 
 
 Author of "The Valley of the Moon," "The Star 
 Rover," "The Sea Wolf," Etc. 
 
 fork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1915 
 By JACK LONDON 
 
 Copyright, 1916 
 
 By JACK LONDON 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1916 
 
 Copyrighted in Great Britain 
 
 
P 
 
 
 
 /f/W/J 
 
 THE LITTLE LADY OF THE 
 BIG HOUSE 
 
 333809 
 
THE LITTLE LADY OF THE 
 BIG HOUSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HE awoke in the dark. His awakening was 
 simple, easy, without movement save for 
 the eyes that opened and made him aware 
 of darkness. Unlike most, who must feel and grope 
 and listen to, and contact with, the world about them, 
 he knew himself on the moment of awakening, in 
 stantly identifying himself in time and place and per 
 sonality. After the lapsed hours of sleep he took 
 up, without effort, the interrupted tale of his days. 
 He knew himself to be Dick Forrest, the master of 
 broad acres, who had fallen asleep hours before 
 after drowsily putting a match between the pages of 
 " Road Town " and pressing off the electric reading 
 lamp. 
 
 Near at hand there was the ripple and gurgle of 
 some sleepy fountain. From far off, so faint and 
 far that only a keen ear could catch, he heard a 
 sound that made him smile with pleasure. He knew 
 it for the distant, throaty bawl of King Polo King 
 Polo, his champion Short Horn bull, thrice Grand 
 Champion also of all bulls at Sacramento at the Cali 
 fornia State Fairs. The smile was slow in easing 
 
2 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 from Dick Forrest s face, for he dwelt a moment on 
 the new triumphs he had destined that year for King 
 Polo on the Eastern livestock circuits. He would 
 show them that a bull, California born and finished, 
 could compete with the cream of bulls corn-fed in 
 Iowa or imported overseas from the immemorial 
 home of Short Horns. 
 
 Not until the smile faded, which was a matter of 
 seconds, did he reach out in the dark and press the 
 first of a row of buttons. There were three rows of 
 such buttons. The concealed lighting that spilled 
 from the huge bowl under the ceiling revealed a 
 sleeping-porch, three sides of which were fine-meshed 
 copper screen. The fourth side was the house wall, 
 solid concrete, through which French windows gave 
 access. 
 
 He pressed the second button in the row and the 
 bright light concentered at a particular place on the 
 concrete wall, illuminating, in a row, a clock, a 
 barometer, and centigrade and Fahrenheit thermom 
 eters. Almost in a sweep of glance he read the mes 
 sages of the dials: time 4:30; air pressure, 29:80, 
 which was normal at that altitude and season; and 
 temperature, Fahrenheit, 36. With another press, 
 the gauges of time and heat and air were sent back 
 into the darkness. 
 
 A third button turned on his reading lamp, so 
 arranged that the light fell from above and behind 
 without shining into his eyes. The first button 
 turned off the concealed lighting overhead. He 
 reached a mass of proofsheets from the reading 
 stand, and, pencil in hand, lighting a cigarette, he 
 began to correct. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 3 
 
 The place was clearly the sleeping quarters of a 
 man who worked. Efficiency was its key note, 
 though comfort, not altogether Spartan, was also 
 manifest. The bed was of gray enameled iron to 
 tone with the concrete wall. Across the foot of the 
 bed, an extra coverlet, hung a gray robe of wolfskins 
 with every tail a-dangle. On the floor, where rested 
 a pair of slippers, was spread a thick-coated skin of 
 mountain goat. 
 
 Heaped orderly with books, magazines and scrib 
 ble-pads, there was room on the big reading stand 
 for matches, cigarettes, an ash-tray, and a thermos 
 bottle. A phonograph, for purposes of dictation, 
 stood on a hinged and swinging bracket. On the 
 wall, under the barometer and thermometers, from 
 a round wooden frame laughed the face of a girl. 
 On the wall, between the rows of buttons and a 
 switchboard, from an open holster, loosely projected 
 the butt of a .44 Colt s automatic. 
 
 At six o clock, sharp, after gray light had begun 
 to filter through the wire netting, Dick Forrest, with 
 out raising his eyes from the proofsheets, reached 
 out his right hand and pressed a button in the second 
 row. Five minutes later a soft-slippered Chinese 
 emerged on the sleeping-porch. In his hands he bore 
 a small tray of burnished copper on which rested a 
 cup and saucer, a tiny coffee pot of silver, and a cor 
 respondingly tiny silver cream pitcher. 
 
 u Good morning, Oh My," was Dick Forrest s 
 greeting, and his eyes smiled and his lips smiled as he 
 uttered it. 
 
 " Good morning, Master," Oh My returned, as 
 he busied himself with making room on the reading 
 
4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 stand for the tray and with pouring the coffee and 
 cream. 
 
 This done, without waiting further orders, noting 
 that his master was already sipping coffee with one 
 land while he made a correction on the proof with 
 
 ie other, Oh My picked up a rosy, filmy, lacy bou- 
 from the floor and departed. His exit was 
 lioiseless. He ebbed away like a shadow through 
 the open French windows. 
 
 At six-thirty, sharp to the minute, he was back with 
 a larger tray. Dick Forrest put away the proofs, 
 reached for a book entitled " Commercial Breeding 
 of Frogs," and prepared to eat. The breakfast was 
 simple yet fairly substantial more coffee, a half 
 grape-fruit, two soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass 
 with a dab of butter and piping hot, and a sliver of 
 bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his own 
 raising and curing. 
 
 By this time the sunshine was pouring in through 
 the screening and across the bed. On the outside of 
 the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early- 
 hatched for the season and numb with the night s 
 cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the 
 meat-eating yellow-jackets. Sturdy, more frost-re 
 sistant than bees, they were already on the wing and 
 preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy 
 noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, 
 with rarely ever a miss, pounced on their helpless 
 victims and sailed away with them. The last fly was 
 gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of coffee, 
 marked " Commercial Breeding of Frogs " with a 
 match, and taken up his proofsheets. 
 
 After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadow- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 5 
 
 lark, first vocal for the day, caused him to desist. 
 He looked at the clock. It marked seven. He set 
 aside the proofs and began a series of conversations 
 by means of the switchboard, which he manipulated 
 with a practiced hand. 
 
 " Hello, Oh Joy," was his first talk. " Is Mr. 
 Thayer up? . . . Very well. Don t disturb him. 
 I don t think he ll breakfast in bed, but find out. . . . 
 That s right, and show him how to work the hot 
 water. Maybe he doesn t know . . . Yes, that s 
 right. Plan for one more boy as soon as you can 
 get him. There s always a crowd when the good 
 weather comes on. . . . Sure. Use your judgment. 
 Good-by." 
 
 " Mr. Hanley? . . . Yes," was his second con 
 versation, over another switch. " I ve been thinking 
 about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the figures 
 on the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing. . . . 
 Yes, that s it. I imagine that the gravel-haul will 
 cost anywhere between six and ten cents a yard more 
 than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill is 
 what eats up the gravel-teams. Work out the fig 
 ures. . . . No, we won t be able to start for a fort 
 night. . . . Yes, yes; the new tractors, if they ever 
 deliver, will release the horses from the plowing, but 
 they ll have to go back for the checking. . . . No, 
 you ll have to see Mr. Everan about that. Good- 
 
 by." 
 
 And his third call : 
 
 " Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my 
 porch right now. It must be white with frost down 
 on the levels. But it s most likely the last this 
 year. . . . Yes, they swore the tractors would be de- 
 
6 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 livered two days ago. . . . Call up the station agent. 
 ... By the way, you catch Hanley for me. I for 
 got to tell him to start the * rat-catchers out with 
 the second instalment of fly-traps. . . . Yes, pronto. 
 There were a couple of dozen roosting on my screen 
 this morning. . . . Yes. . . . Good-by." 
 
 At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pa 
 jamas, slipped his feet into the slippers, and strode 
 through the French windows to the bath, already 
 drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, 
 shaved as well, he was back in bed, reading his frog 
 book while Oh My, punctual to the minute, massaged 
 his legs. 
 
 They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, 
 five-foot-ten man who weighed a hundred and eighty 
 pounds. Further, they told a tale of the man. The 
 left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. 
 Across the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scat 
 tered half a dozen scars the size of half-dollars. 
 When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee a 
 shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince. 
 The right shin was colored with several dark scars, 
 while a big scar, just under the knee, was a positive 
 dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin 
 was the mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously 
 dotted with the minute scars of stitches. 
 
 A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the 
 match between the pages of the frog book, and, while 
 Oh My proceeded partly to dress his master in bed, 
 including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly 
 on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. 
 Down the road, through the swaying purple of the 
 early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, paced 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 7 
 
 a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun- 
 gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fet 
 locks, his noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, 
 the trumpet of his love-call echoing through the 
 springing land. 
 
 Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with 
 joy and anxiety joy in the glorious beast pacing 
 down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in that the 
 stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed 
 from the round wooden frame on his wall. He 
 glanced quickly across the two-hundred-foot court to 
 the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the house. 
 The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They 
 did not stir. Again the stallion nickered, and all that 
 moved was a flock of wild canaries, upspringing from 
 the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising like a 
 green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise. 
 
 He watched the stallion out of sight through the 
 lilacs, seeing visions of fair Shire colts mighty of 
 bone and frame and free from blemish, then turned, 
 as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and spoke 
 to his body servant. 
 
 " How s that last boy, Oh My? Showing up? " 
 
 " Him pretty good boy, I think," was the answer. 
 " Him young boy. Everything new. Pretty slow. 
 All the same bime by him show up good." 
 
 " Why? What makes you think so? " 
 
 " I call him three, four morning now r . Him sleep 
 like baby. Him wake up smiling just like you. 
 That very good." 
 
 " Do I wake up smiling? " Forrest queried. 
 
 Oh My nodded his head violently. 
 
 " Many times, many years, I call you. Always 
 
8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 your eyes open, your eyes smile, your mouth smile, 
 your face smile, you smile all over, just like that, 
 right away quick. That very good. A man wake 
 up that way got plenty good sense. I know. This 
 new boy like that. Bime by, pretty soon, he make 
 fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What 
 name you call him this place? " 
 
 Dick Forrest meditated. 
 
 " What names have we already? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh 
 My," the Chinese rattled off. " Oh Joy him say 
 call new boy " 
 
 He hesitated and stared at his master with a chal 
 lenging glint of eye. Forrest nodded. 
 
 " Oh Joy him say call new boy Oh Hell. 1 " 
 
 " Oh ho ! " Forrest laughed in appreciation. 
 " Oh Joy is a josher. A good name, but it won t 
 do. There is the Missus. We ve got to think an 
 other name." 
 
 " Oh Ho, that very good name." 
 
 Forrest s exclamation was still ringing in his con 
 sciousness so that he recognized the source of Oh 
 My s inspiration. 
 
 " Very well. The boy s name is Oh Ho." 
 
 Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through 
 the French windows, and as swiftly returned with the 
 rest of Forrest s clothes-gear, helping him into under 
 shirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him 
 to knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and 
 spurs. A Baden Powell hat and a quirt completed 
 his appareling the quirt, Indian-braided of raw 
 hide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt 
 that hung from his wrist on a loop of leather. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 9 
 
 But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed 
 him several letters, with the explanation that they 
 had come up from the station the previous night after 
 Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand 
 ends across and glanced at the contents of all but 
 one with speed. The latter he dwelt upon for a mo 
 ment, with an irritated indrawing of brows, then 
 swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed 
 the button that made the cylinder revolve, and swiftly 
 dictated, without ever a pause for word or idea : 
 
 " In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry 
 to learn that you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally 
 sorry that you have seen fit to charge me with the respon 
 sibility. And just as equally am I sorry that the boar we 
 sent you is dead. 
 
 " I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera 
 here, and that we have been clear of cholera for eight years, 
 with the exception of two Eastern importations, the last two 
 years ago, both of which, according to our custom, were 
 segregated on arrival and were destroyed before the con 
 tagion could be communicated to our herds. 
 
 " I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did 
 I charge the sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On 
 the contrary, as you should know, the incubation of hog 
 cholera being nine days, I consulted the shipping dates of 
 the animals and knew that they had been healthy when 
 shipped. 
 
 "Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are 
 largely responsible for the spread of cholera? Did you ever 
 hear of a railroad fumigating or disinfecting a car which 
 had carried cholera? Consult the dates: First, of ship 
 ment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by you; and, 
 third, of appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say, 
 because of washouts, the boar was five days on the way. 
 Not until the seventh day after you receipted for same did 
 the first symptoms appear. That makes twelve days after 
 it left my hands. 
 
10 
 
 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 "No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible 
 for the disaster that overtook your herd. Furthermore, 
 doubly to assure you, write to the State Veterinary as to 
 whether or not my place is free of cholera. 
 " Very truly yours . . ." 
 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 WHEN Forrest went through the French win 
 dows from his sleeping-porch, he crossed, 
 first, a comfortable dressing room, window- 
 divaned, many-lockered, with a generous fireplace, 
 out of which opened a bathroom; and, second, a long 
 office room, wherein was all the paraphernalia of 
 business desks, dictaphones, filing cabinets, book 
 cases, magazine files, and drawer-pigeonholes that 
 tiered to the low, beamed ceiling. 
 
 Midway in the office room, he pressed a button 
 and a series of book-freightened shelves swung on a 
 pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway of steel, which 
 he descended with care that his spurs might not catch, 
 the bookshelves swinging into place behind him. 
 
 At the foot of the stairway, a press on another 
 button pivoted more shelves of books and gave him 
 entrance into a long low room shelved with books 
 from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, 
 directly to a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on 
 the book he sought. A minute he ran the pages, 
 found the passage he was after, nodded his head to 
 himself in vindication, and replaced the book. 
 
 A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete 
 columns spanned with redwood logs and interlaced 
 with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough and 
 crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark. 
 
 ii 
 
12 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 It was evident, since he had to skirt several hun 
 dred feet of concrete walls of wandering house, that 
 he had not taken the short way out. Under wide- 
 spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails, 
 bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the 
 stamping place of many horses, he found a pale- 
 golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare. Her well- 
 groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the 
 morning sun that slanted straight under the edge of 
 the roof of trees. She was herself alive and flaming. 
 She was built like a stallion, and down her backbone 
 ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an 
 ancestry of many range mustangs. 
 
 " How s the Man-Eater this morning? " he 
 queried, as he unsnapped the tie-rope from her 
 throat. 
 
 She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse 
 possessed ears that told of some thoroughbred s 
 wild loves with wild mares among the hills and 
 snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked- 
 gleaming eyes. 
 
 She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into 
 the saddle, and, sidling and attempting to rear, she 
 went off down the graveled road. And rear she 
 would have, had it not been for the martingale that 
 held her head down and that, as well, saved the 
 rider s nose from her angry-tossing head. 
 
 So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely 
 aware of her antics. Automatically, with slightest 
 touch of rein against arched neck, or with tickle of 
 spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way 
 he willed. Once, as she whirled and danced, he 
 caught a glimpse of the Big House. Big it was in 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 13 
 
 all seeming, and yet, such was the vagrant nature of 
 it, it was not so big as it seemed. Eight hundred 
 feet across the front face, it stretched. But much of 
 this eight hundred feet was composed of mere corri 
 dors, concrete-walled, tile-roofed, that connected and 
 assembled the various parts of the building. There 
 were patios and pergolas in proportion, and all the 
 walls, with their many right-angled juts and reces 
 sions, arose out of a bed of greenery and bloom. 
 
 Spanish in character, the architecture of the Big 
 House was not of the California-Spanish type which 
 had been introduced by way of Mexico a hundred 
 years before, and which had been modified by modern 
 architects to the California-Spanish architecture of 
 the day. Hispano-Moresque more technically classi 
 fied the Big House in all its hybridness, although 
 there were experts who heatedly quarreled with the 
 term. 
 
 < Spaciousness without austerity and beauty without 
 ostentation were the fundamental impressions the 
 Big House gave. Its lines, long and horizontal, 
 broken only by lines that were vertical and by the 
 lines of juts and recesses that were always right- 
 angled, were as chaste as those of a monastery. The 
 irregular roof-line, however, relieved the hint of 
 monotony. 
 
 Low and rambling, without being squat, the square 
 upthrusts of towers and of towers over-topping 
 towers gave just proportion of height without being 
 sky-aspiring. The sense of the Big House was 
 solidarity. It defied earthquakes. It was planted 
 for a thousand years. ,!> The honest concrete was 
 overlaid by a cream-stucco of honest cement. Again, 
 
i 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 this very sameness of color might have proved 
 monotonous to the eye had it not been saved by the 
 many flat roofs of warm-red Spanish tile. 
 
 In that one sweeping glance while the mare whirled 
 unduly, Dick Forrest s eyes, embracing all of the Big 
 House, centered for a quick solicitous instant on the 
 great wing across the two-hundred-foot court, where, 
 under climbing groups of towers, red-snooded in the 
 morning sun, the drawn shades of the sleeping-porch 
 tokened that his lady still slept. 
 
 About him, for three quadrants of the circle of the 
 world, arose low-rolling hills, smooth, fenced, 
 cropped, and pastured, that melted into higher hills 
 and steeper wooded slopes that merged upward, 
 steeper, into mighty mountains. The fourth quad 
 rant was unbounded by mountain walls and hills. It 
 faded away, descending easily to vast far flat-lands, 
 which, despite the clear brittle air of frost, were too 
 vast and far to scan across. 
 
 The mare under him snorted. His knees tight 
 ened as he straightened her into the road and forced 
 her to one side. Down upon him, with a pattering 
 of feet on the gravel, flowed a river of white shim 
 mering silk. He knew it at sight for his prize herd 
 of Angora goats, each with a pedigree, each with a 
 history. There had to be a near two hundred of 
 them, and he knew, according to the rigorous selec 
 tion he commanded, not having been clipped in the 
 fall, that the shining mohair draping the sides of the 
 least of them, as fine as any human new-born baby s 
 hair and finer, as white as any human albino s thatch 
 and whiter, was longer than the twelve-inch staple, 
 and that the mohair of the best of them would dye 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 15 
 
 any color into twenty-inch switches for women s heads 
 and sell at prices unreasonable and profound. 
 
 The beauty of the sight held him as well. The 
 roadway had become a flowing ribbon of silk, 
 gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated past 
 wary and curious in their regard for him and his 
 nervous horse. Two Basque herders brought up the 
 rear. They were short, broad, swarthy men, black- 
 eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of 
 expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked 
 their heads to him. Forrest lifted his right hand, 
 the quirt dangling from wrist, the straight forefinger 
 touching the rim of his Baden Powell in semi-military 
 salute. 
 
 The mare, prancing and whirling again, he held 
 her with a touch of rein and threat of spur, and gazed 
 after the four-footed silk that filled the road with 
 shimmering white. He knew the significance of their 
 presence. The time for kidding was approaching 
 and they were being brought down from their brush- 
 pastures to the brood-pens and shelters for jealous 
 care and generous feed through the period of in 
 crease. And as he gazed, in his mind, comparing, 
 was a vision of all the best of Turkish and South 
 African mohair he had ever seen, and his flock bore 
 the comparison well. It looked good. It looked 
 very good. 
 
 He rode on. From all about arose the clacking 
 whir of manure-spreaders. In the distance, on the 
 low, easy-sloping hills, he saw team after team, and 
 many teams, three to a team abreast, what he knew 
 were his Shire mares, drawing the plows back and 
 forth across, contour-plowing, turning the green sod 
 
1 6 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 of the hillsides to the rich dark brown of humus-filled 
 earth so organic and friable that it would almost 
 melt by gravity into fine-particled seed-bed. That 
 was for the corn- and sorghum-planting for his silos. 
 Other hill-slopes, in the due course of his rotation, 
 were knee-high in barley; and still other slopes were 
 showing the good green of burr clover and Canada 
 pea. 
 
 Everywhere about him, large fields and small were 
 arranged in a system of accessibility and workability 
 that would have warmed the heart of the most metic 
 ulous efficiency-expert. Every fence was hog-tight 
 and bull-proof, and no weeds grew in the shelters of 
 the fences. Many of the level fields were in alfalfa. 
 Others, following the rotations, bore crops planted 
 the previous fall, or were in preparation for the 
 spring-planting. Still others, close to the brood 
 barns and pens, were being grazed by rotund Shrop 
 shire and French-Merino ewes, or were being hogged 
 off by white Gargantuan brood-sow r s that brought a 
 flash of pleasure in his eyes as he rode past and 
 gazed. 
 
 He rode through what was almost a village, save 
 that there were neither shops nor hotels. The 
 houses were bungalows, substantial, pleasing to the 
 eye, each set in the midst of gardens where stouter 
 blooms, including roses, were out and smiling at the 
 threat of late frost. Children were already astir, 
 laughing and playing among the flowers or being 
 called in to breakfast by their mothers. 
 
 Beyond, beginning at a half-mile distant to circle 
 the Big House, he passed a row of shops. He 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 17 
 
 paused at the first and glanced in. One smith was 
 working at a forge. A second smith, a shoe fresh- 
 nailed on the fore-foot of an elderly Shire mare that 
 would disturb the scales at eighteen hundred weight, 
 was rasping down the outer wall of the hoof to 
 smooth with the toe of the shoe. Forrest saw, 
 saluted, rode on, and, a hundred feet away, paused 
 and scribbled a memorandum in the notebook he drew 
 from his hip-pocket. 
 
 He passed other shops a paint-shop, a wagon- 
 shop, a plumbing shop, a carpenter-shop. While he 
 glanced at the last, a hybrid machine, half-auto, half- 
 truck, passed him at speed and took the main road 
 for the railroad station eight miles away. He knew 
 it for the morning butter-truck freighting from the 
 separator house the daily output of the dairy. 
 
 The Big House was the hub of the ranch organiza 
 tion. Half a mile from it, it was encircled by the 
 various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, saluting con 
 tinually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy 
 center, which was almost a sea of buildings with bat 
 teries of silos and with litter carriers emerging on 
 overhead tracks and automatically dumping into wait 
 ing manure-spreaders. Several times, business-look 
 ing men, college-marked, astride horses or driving 
 carts, stopped him and conferred with him. They 
 were foremen, heads of departments, and they were 
 as brief and to the point as was he. The last of 
 them, astride a Palomina three-year-old that was as 
 graceful and wild as a half-broken Arab, was for 
 riding by with a bare salute, but was stopped by his 
 employer. 
 
1 8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Hennessy, and how soon 
 will she be ready for Mrs. Forrest? " Dick Forrest 
 asked. 
 
 " I d like another week," was Hennessy s answer. 
 " She s well broke now, just the way Mrs. Forrest 
 wanted, but she s over-strung and sensitive and I d 
 like the week more to set her in her ways." 
 
 Forrest nodded concurrence, and Hennessy, who 
 was the veterinary, went on : 
 
 u There are two drivers in the alfalfa gang I d 
 like to send down the hill." 
 
 " What s the matter with them? " 
 
 " One, a new man, Hopkins, is an ex-soldier. He 
 may know government mules, but he doesn t know 
 Shires." 
 
 Forrest nodded. 
 
 " The other has worked for us two years, but he s 
 drinking now, and he takes his hang-overs out on his 
 horses " 
 
 " That s Smith, old r type American, smooth-shaven, 
 with a cast in his left eye?" Forrest interrupted. 
 
 The veterinary nodded. 
 
 " I ve been watching him," Forrest concluded. 
 " He was a good man at first, but he s slipped a cog 
 recently. Sure, send him down the hill. And send 
 that other fellow Hopkins, you said? along 
 with him. By the way, Mr. Hennessy." As he 
 spoke, Forrest drew forth his pad book, tore off the 
 last note scribbled, and crumpled it in his hand. 
 " You ve a new horse-shoer in the shop. How does 
 he strike you? " 
 
 " He s too new to make up my mind yet." 
 
 "Well, send him down the hill along with the 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 19 
 
 other two. He can t take your orders. I observed 
 him just now fitting a shoe to old Alden Bessie by 
 rasping off half an inch of the toe of her hoof." 
 
 " He knew better." 
 
 " Send him down the hill," Forrest repeated, as he 
 tickled his champing mount with the slightest of spur- 
 tickles and shot her out along the road, sidling, head- 
 tossing, and attempting to rear. 
 
 Much he saw that pleased him. Once, he mur 
 mured aloud, " A fat land, a fat land." Divers 
 things he saw that did not please him and that won 
 a note in his scribble pad. Completing the circle 
 about the Big House and riding beyond the circle 
 half a mile to an isolated group of sheds and corrals, 
 he reached the objective of the ride: the hospital. 
 Here he found but two young heifers being tested for 
 tuberculosis, and a magnificent Duroc Jersey boar in 
 magnificent condition. Weighing fully six hundred 
 pounds, its bright eyes, brisk movements, and sheen 
 of hair shouted out that there was nothing the mat 
 ter with it. Nevertheless, according to the ranch 
 practice, being a fresh importation from Iowa, it 
 was undergoing the regular period of quarantine. 
 Burgess Premier was its name in the herd books of 
 the association, age two years, and it had cost For 
 rest five hundred dollars laid down on the ranch. 
 
 Proceeding at a hand gallop along a road that was 
 one of the spokes radiating from the Big House hub, 
 Forrest overtook Crellin, his hog manager, and, in a 
 five-minute conference, outlined the next few months 
 of destiny of Burgess Premier, and learned that the 
 brood sow, Lady Isleton, the matron of all matrons 
 of he O. I. C. s and blue-ribboner in all shows from 
 
20 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Seattle to San Diego, was safely farrowed of eleven. 
 Crellin explained that he had sat up half the night 
 with her and was then bound home for bath and 
 breakfast. 
 
 " I hear your oldest daughter has finished high 
 school and wants to enter Stanford," Forrest said, 
 curbing the mare just as he had half-signaled depart 
 ure at a gallop. 
 
 Crellin, a young man of thirty-five, with the ma 
 turity of a long-time father stamped upon him along 
 with the marks of college and the youthfulness of a 
 man used to the open air and straight-living, showed 
 his appreciation of his employer s interest as he half- 
 flushed under his tan and nodded. 
 
 Think it over," Forrest advised. " Make a 
 statistic of all the college girls yes, and State Nor 
 mal girls you know. How many of them follow 
 career, and how many of them marry within two 
 years after their degrees and take to baby farming." 
 
 " Helen is very seriously bent on the matter," 
 Crellin urged. 
 
 " Do you remember when I had my appendix 
 out? " Forrest queried. " Well, I had as fine a nurse 
 as I ever saw and as nice a girl as ever walked on 
 two nice legs. She was just six months a full-fledged 
 nurse, then. And four months after that I had to 
 send her a wedding present. She married an auto 
 mobile .agent. She s lived in hotels ever since. 
 She s never had a chance to nurse never a child of 
 her own to bring through a bout with colic. But 
 . . . she has hopes . . . and, whether or not her 
 hopes materialize, she s confoundedly happy. But 
 . . . what good was her nursing apprenticeship? " 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 21 
 
 Just then an empty manure-spreader passed, forc 
 ing Crellin, on foot, and Forrest, on his mare, to 
 edge over to the side of the road. Forrest glanced 
 with kindling eye at the off mare of the machine, a 
 huge, symmetrical Shire whose own blue ribbons, 
 and the blue ribbons of her progeny, would have re 
 quired an expert accountant to enumerate and 
 classify. 
 
 " Look at the Fotherington Princess," Forrest 
 said, nodding at the mare that warmed his eye. 
 " She is a normal female. Only incidentally, through 
 thousands of years of domestic selection, has man 
 evolved her into a draught beast breeding true to 
 kind. But being a draught-beast is secondary. 
 Primarily she is a female. Take them by and large, 
 our own human females, above all else, love us men 
 and are intrinsically maternal. There is no 
 biological sanction for all the hurly burly of woman 
 to-day for suffrage and career." 
 
 " But there is an economic sanction," Crellin ob 
 jected. 
 
 " True," his employer agreed, then proceeded to 
 discount. " Our present industrial system prevents 
 marriage and compels woman to career. But, re 
 member, industrial systems come, and industrial sys 
 tems go, while biology runs on forever." 
 
 " It s rather hard to satisfy young women with 
 marriage these days," the hog-manager demurred. 
 
 Dick Forrest laughed incredulously. 
 
 "I don t know about that," he said. v There s 
 your wife for an instance. She with her sheepskin 
 classical scholar at that well, what has she done 
 with it? ... Two boys and three girls, I believe? 
 
22 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 As I remember your telling me, she was engaged to 
 you the whole last half of her senior year." 
 
 " True, but " Crellin insisted, with an eye- 
 twinkle of appreciation of the point, " that was 
 fifteen years ago, as well as a love-match. We just 
 couldn t help it. That far, I agree. She had 
 planned unheard-of achievements, while I saw noth 
 ing else than the deanship of the College of Agricul 
 ture. We just couldn t help it. But that was fifteen 
 years ago, and fifteen years have made all the differ 
 ence in the world in the ambitions and ideals of our 
 young women." 
 
 " Don t you believe it for a moment. I tell you, 
 Mr. Crellin, it s a statistic. All contrary things are 
 transient. Ever woman remains woman, everlast 
 ing, eternal. Not until our girl-children cease from 
 playing with dolls and from looking at their own en- 
 ticingness in mirrors, will woman ever be otherwise 
 than what she has always been: first, the mother, sec 
 ond, the mate of man. It is a statistic. I ve been 
 looking up the girls who graduate from the State 
 Normal. You will notice that those who marry by 
 the way before graduation are excluded. Neverthe 
 less, the average length of time the graduates actu 
 ally teach school is little more than two years. And 
 when you consider that a lot of them, through ill 
 looks and ill luck, are foredoomed old maids and are 
 foredoomed to teach all their lives, you can see how 
 they cut down the period of teaching of the mar 
 riageable ones." 
 
 " A woman, even a girl-woman, will have her way 
 where mere men are concerned," Crellin muttered, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 23 
 
 unable to dispute his employer s figures but resolved 
 to look them up. 
 
 " And your girl-woman will go to Stanford," For 
 rest laughed, as he prepared to lift his mare into a 
 gallop, " and you and I and all men, to the end of 
 time, will see to it that they do have their way." 
 
 Crellin smiled to himself as his employer dimin 
 ished down the road; for Crellin knew his Kipling, 
 and the thought that .caused the smile was : " But 
 where s the kid of your own, Mr. Forrest? " He 
 decided to repeat it to Mrs. Crellin over the break 
 fast coffee. 
 
 Once again Dick Forrest delayed ere he gained the 
 Big House. The man he stopped he addressed as 
 Mendenhall, who was his horse-manager as well as 
 pasture expert, and who was reputed to know, not 
 only every blade of grass on the ranch, but the length 
 of every blade of grass and its age from seed-germi 
 nation as well. 
 
 At signal from Forrest, Mendenhall drew up the 
 two colts he was driving in a double breaking-cart. 
 What had caused Forrest to signal was a glance he 
 had caught, across the northern edge of the valley, of 
 great, smooth-hill ranges miles beyond, touched by 
 the sun and deeply green where they projected into 
 the vast flat of the Sacramento Valley. 
 
 The talk that followed was quick and abbrevi 
 ated to terms of understanding between two men who 
 knew. Grass was the subject. Mention was made 
 of the winter rainfall and of the chance for late 
 spring rains to come. Names occurred, such as the 
 Little Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, the Yolo and 
 
24 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 the Miramar hills, the Big Basin, Round Valley, and 
 the San Anselmo and Los Banos ranges. Move 
 ments of herds and droves, past, present, and to 
 come, were discussed, as well as the outlook for cult 
 vated hay in far upland pastures and the estimat 
 of such hay that still remained over the winter in re 
 mote barns in the sheltered mountain valleys where 
 herds had wintered and been fed. 
 
 Under the oaks, at the stamping posts, Forrest 
 was saved the trouble of tying the Man-Eater. A 
 stableman came on the run to take the mare, and For 
 rest, scarce pausing for a word about a horse by the 
 name of Buddy, was clanking his spurs into the Big 
 House. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 FORREST entered a section of the Big House 
 by way of a massive, hewn-timber, iron- 
 studded door that let in at the foot of what 
 seemed a donjon keep. The floor was cement, and 
 doors let off in various directions. One, opening to 
 a Chinese in the white apron and starched cap of a 
 chef, emitted at the same time the low hum of a 
 dynamo. It was this that deflected Forrest from his 
 straight path. He paused, holding the door ajar, 
 and peered into a cool, electric-lighted cement room 
 where stood a long, glass-fronted, glass-shelved re 
 frigerator flanked by an ice-machine and a dynamo. 
 On the floor, in greasy overalls, squatted a greasy 
 little man to whom his employer nodded. 
 
 "Anything wrong, Thompson?" he asked. 
 
 u There was/ was the answer, positive and com 
 plete. 
 
 Forrest closed the door and went on along a pas 
 sage that was like a tunnel. Narrow, iron-barred 
 openings, like the slits for archers in medieval castles, 
 dimly lighted the way. Another door gave access 
 to a long, low room, beam-ceilinged, with a fireplace 
 in which an ox could have been roasted. A huge 
 stump, resting on a bed of coals, blazed brightly. 
 Two billiard tables, several card tables, lounging 
 corners, and a miniature bar constituted the major 
 
 25 
 
26 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 furnishing. Two young men chalked their cues and 
 returned Forrest s greeting. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Naismith," he bantered. 
 " More material for the Breeders Gazette?" 
 
 Naismith, a youngish man of thirty, with glasses, 
 smiled sheepishly and cocked his head at his com 
 panion. 
 
 Wainwright challenged me," he explained. 
 
 ;< Which means that Lute and Ernestine must still 
 be beauty-sleeping," Forrest laughed. 
 
 Young Wainwright bristled to acceptance of the 
 challenge, but before he could utter the retort on his 
 lips his host was moving on and addressing Naismith 
 over his shoulder. 
 
 u Do you want to come along at eleven ithirty? 
 Thayer and I are running out in the machine to look 
 over the Shropshires. He wants about ten carloads 
 of rams. You ought to find good stuff in this matter 
 of Idaho shipments. Bring your camera along. 
 Seen Thayer this morning? " 
 
 " Just came in to breakfast as we were leaving," 
 Bert Wainwright volunteered. 
 
 " Tell him to be ready at eleven-thirty if you see 
 him. You re not invited, Bert . . . out of kind 
 ness. The girls are sure to be up then." 
 
 " Take Rita along with you anyway," Bert 
 pleaded. 
 
 " No fear," was Forrest s reply from the door. 
 " We re on business. Besides, you can t pry Rita 
 from Ernestine with block-and-tackle." 
 
 " That s why I wanted to see if you could," Bert 
 grinned. 
 
 " Funny how fellows never appreciate their own 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 27 
 
 sisters." Forrest paused for a perceptible moment. 
 " I always thought Rita was a real nice sister. 
 What s the matter with her?" 
 
 Before a reply could reach him, he had closed the 
 door and was jingling his spurs along the passage to 
 a spiral stairway of broad concrete steps. As he 
 left the head of the stairway, a dance-time piano 
 measure and burst of laughter made him peep into 
 a white morning room, flooded with sunshine. A 
 young girl, in rose-colored kimono and bou 
 doir cap, was at the instrument, while two others, 
 similarly accoutered, in each other s arms, were par 
 odying a dance never learned at dancing school 
 nor intended by the participants for male eyes to 
 see. 
 
 The girl at the piano discovered him, winked, and 
 played on. Not for another minute did the dancers 
 spy him. They gave startled cries, collapsed, laugh 
 ing, in each other s arms, and the music stopped. 
 They were gorgeous, healthy young creatures, the 
 three of them, and Forrest s eye kindled as he looked 
 at them in quite the same way that it had kindled 
 when he regarded the Fotherington Princess. 
 
 Persiflage, of the sort that obtains among young 
 things of the human kind, flew back and forth. 
 
 " I ve t>een here five minutes," Dick Forrest as 
 serted. 
 
 The two dancers, to cover their confusion, doubted 
 his veracity and instanced his many well-known and 
 notorious guilts of mendacity. The girl at the 
 piano, Ernestine, his sister-in-law, insisted that pearls 
 of truth fell from his lips, that she had seen him 
 from the moment he began to look, and that as she 
 

 28 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 estimated the passage of time he had been looking 
 much longer than five minutes. 
 
 * Well, anyway," Forrest broke in on their babel, 
 " Bert, the sweet innocent, doesn t think you are up 
 yet." 
 
 We re not ... to him," one of the dancers, a 
 vivacious young Venus, retorted. " Nor are we to 
 you either. So run along, little boy. Run along." 
 
 " Look here, Lute," Forrest began sternly. 
 * Just because I am a decrepit old man, and just be 
 cause you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen to 
 be my wife s sister, you needn t presume to put the 
 high and mighty over on me. Don t forget and I 
 state the fact, disagreeable as it may be, for Rita s 
 sake don t forget that in the past ten years I ve 
 paddled you more disgraceful times than you care to 
 dare me to enumerate. 
 
 " It is true, I am not so young as I used to was, 
 but " He felt the biceps of his right arm and 
 made as if to roll up the sleeve. " But, I m not 
 all in yet, and for two cents . . ." 
 
 " What? " the young woman challenged belliger 
 ently. 
 
 " For two cents," he muttered darkly. " For two 
 cents . . . Besides, and it grieves me to inform you, 
 your cap is not on straight. Also, it is not a very 
 tasteful creation at best. I could make a far more 
 becoming cap with my toes, asleep, and . . . yes, 
 seasick as well." 
 
 Lute tossed her blond head defiantly, glanced at 
 her comrades in solicitation of support, and said: 
 
 " Oh, I don t know. It seems humanly reason 
 able that the three of us can woman-handle a mere 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 29 
 
 man of your elderly and insulting avoirdupois. 
 What do you say, girls? Let s rush him. He s not 
 a minute under forty, and he has an aneurism. Yes, 
 and though loath to divulge family secrets, he s got 
 Meniere s Disease." 
 
 Ernestine, a small but robust blonde of eighteen, 
 sprang from the piano and joined her two comrades 
 in a raid on the cushions of the deep window seats. 
 Side by side, a cushion in each hand, and with proper 
 distance between them cannily established for the 
 swinging of the cushions, they advanced upon the 
 foe. 
 
 Forrest prepared for battle, then held up his hand 
 for parley. 
 
 " Fraid cat! " they taunted, in several at first, and 
 then in chorus. 
 
 He shook his head emphatically. 
 
 " Just for that, and for all the rest of your in 
 solences, the three of you are going to get yours. 
 All the wrongs of a lifetime are rising now in my 
 brain in a dazzling brightness. I shall go Berserk 
 in a moment. But first, and I speak as an agricul 
 turist, and I address myself to you, Lute, in all hu 
 mility, in heaven s name what is Meniere s Disease? 
 Do sheep catch it?" 
 
 " Meniere s Disease is," Lute began, ... u is 
 what you ve got. Sheep are the only known living 
 creatures that get it." 
 
 Ensued red war and chaos, Forrest made a foot 
 ball rush of the sort that obtained in California be 
 fore the adoption of Rugby; and the girls broke the 
 line to let him through, turned upon him, flanked 
 him on either side, and pounded him with cushions. 
 
30 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, 
 each finger a hook, and grappled the three. The 
 battle became a whirlwind, a be-spurred man the cen 
 ter, from which radiated flying draperies of flimsy 
 silk, disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hair 
 pins. There were thuds from the cushions, grunts 
 from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles from the 
 girls, and from the totality of the combat inextin 
 guishable laughter and a ripping and tearing of fra 
 gile textures. 
 
 Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, 
 the wind half knocked out of him by shrewdly de 
 livered cushions, his head buzzing from the buffeting, 
 and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally dis 
 rupted girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses. 
 
 In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, 
 stood Rita, alert as a fawn and ready to flee. In 
 the other doorway, likewise flame-checked, stood 
 Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother 
 of the Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped 
 severely about her and held severely about her by 
 her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered behind 
 the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by 
 the menace of Forrest, who, on hands and knees, 
 stamped loudly with the palms of his hands on the 
 hardwood floor, rolled his head savagely, and 
 emitted bull-like roars. 
 
 " And they still believe that old prehistoric myth^" 
 Ernestine proclaimed from safety, " that once he, 
 that wretched semblance of a man-thing prone in 
 the dirt, captained Berkeley to victory over Stan 
 ford." 
 
 Her breasts heaved from the exertion, and he 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 31 
 
 marked the pulsating of the shimmering cherry-col 
 ored silk with delight as he flung his glance around 
 to the other two girls similarly breathing. 
 
 The piano was a miniature grand a dainty thing 
 of rich white and gold to match the morning room. 
 It stood out from the wall, so that there was possi 
 bility for Lute to escape around either way of it. 
 Forrest gained his feet and faced her across the 
 broad, flat top of the instrument. As he threatened 
 to vault it, Lute cried out in horror : 
 
 " But your spurs, Dick! Your spurs! " 
 
 " Give me time to take them off," he offered. 
 
 As he stooped to unbuckle them, Lute darted to 
 escape, but was herded back to the shelter of the 
 piano. 
 
 " All right," he growled. " On your head be it. 
 If the piano s scratched I ll tell Paula." 
 
 " I ve got witnesses," she panted, indicating with 
 her blue joyous eyes the young things in the door 
 ways. 
 
 " Very well, my dear." Forrest drew back his 
 body and spread his resting palms. :< I m coming 
 over to you." 
 
 Action and speech were simultaneous. His body, 
 posited sidewise from his hands, was vaulted across, 
 the perilous spurs a full foot above the glossy white 
 surface. And simultaneously Lute ducked and went 
 under the piano on hands and knees. Her mis 
 chance lay in that she bumped her head, and, before 
 she could recover way, Forrest had circled the piano 
 and cornered her under it. 
 
 " Come out! " he commanded. " Come out and 
 take your medicine ! " 
 
32 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " A truce," she pleaded. " A truce, Sir Knight, 
 for dear love s sake and all damsels in distress." 
 
 " I ain t no knight," Forrest announced in his 
 deepest bass. ;< I m an ogre, a filthy, debased and 
 altogether unregenerate ogre. I was born in the 
 tule-swamps. My father was . an ogre and my 
 mother was more so. I was lulled to slumber on 
 the squalls of infants dead, foreordained, and pre- 
 damned. I was nourished solely on the blood of 
 maidens educated in Mills Seminary. My favorite 
 chophouse has ever been a hardwood floor, a loaf 
 of Mills Seminary maiden, and a roof of flat piano. 
 My father, as well as an ogre, was a California 
 horse-thief. I am more reprehensible than my 
 father. I have more teeth. My mother, as well as 
 an ogress, was a Nevada book-canvasser. Let all 
 her shame be told. She even solicited subscriptions 
 for ladies magazines. I am more terrible than my 
 mother. I have peddled safety razors." 
 
 " Can naught soothe and charm your savage 
 breast?" Lute pleaded in soulful tones while she 
 studied her chances for escape. 
 
 " One thing only, miserable female. One thing 
 only, on the earth, over the earth, and under its ruin 
 ing waters " 
 
 A squawk of recognized plagiarism interrupted 
 him from Ernestine. 
 
 " See Ernest Dowson, page seventy-nine, a thin 
 book of thin verse ladled out with porridge to young 
 women detentioned at Mills Seminary," Forrest went 
 on. " As I had already enunciated before I was so 
 rudely interrupted, the one thing only that can balm 
 and embalm this savage breast is the Maiden s 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 33 
 
 Prayer. Listen, with all your ears ere I chew them 
 off in multitude and gross! Listen, silly, unbeauti- 
 ful, squat, short-legged and ugly female under the 
 piano ! Can you recite the Maiden s Prayer ? " 
 
 Screams of delight from the young things in the 
 doorways prevented the proper answer and Lute, 
 from under the piano, cried put to young Wain- 
 wright, who had appeared : 
 
 " A rescue, Sir Knight ! A rescue ! " 
 
 " Unhand the maiden ! " was Bert s challenge. 
 
 " Who art thou? " Forrest demanded. 
 
 " King George, sirrah ! I mean, er, Saint 
 George." 
 
 " Then am I thy dragon," Forrest announced with 
 due humility. " Spare this ancient, honorable, and 
 only neck I have." 
 
 "Off with his head!" the young things encour 
 aged. 
 
 " Stay thee, maidens, I pray thee," Bert begged. 
 " I am only a Small Potato. Yet am I unafraid. I 
 shall beard the dragon. I shall beard him in his 
 gullet, and, while he lingeringly chokes to death over 
 my unpalatableness and general spinefulness, do you, 
 fair damsels, flee to the mountains lest the valleys 
 fall upon you. Yolo, Petaluma, and West Sacra 
 mento are about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave 
 and many big fishes." 
 
 u Off with his head! " the young things chanted. 
 " Slay him in his blood and barbecue him ! " 
 
 " Thumbs down," Forrest groaned. " I am un 
 done. Trust to the unstrained quality of mercy pos 
 sessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 
 who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do 
 
34 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 not marry foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint 
 George. I am expired. Further deponent sayeth 
 not." 
 
 And Forrest, with sobs and slubbcrings, with real 
 istic shudders and kicks and a great jingling of spurs, 
 lay down on the floor and expired. 
 
 Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was 
 joined by Rita and Ernestine in an extemporized 
 dance of the harpies about the slain. 
 
 In the midst of it, Forrest sat up, protesting. 
 Also, he was guilty of a significant and privy wink to 
 Lute. 
 
 4 The hero ! " he cried. " Forget him not. 
 Crown him with flowers." 
 
 And Bert was crowned with flowers from the 
 vases, unchanged from the day before. When a 
 bunch of water-logged stems of early tulips, pro 
 pelled by Lute s vigorous arm, impacted soggily on 
 his neck under the ear, he fled. The riot of pursuit 
 echoed along the hall and died out down the stairway 
 toward the stag room. Forrest gathered himself to 
 gether, and, grinning, went jingling on through the 
 Big House. 
 
 He crossed two patios on brick walks roofed with 
 Spanish tile and swamped with early foliage and 
 blooms, and gained his wing of the house, still 
 breathing from the fun, to find, in the office, his secre 
 tary awaiting him. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Blake," he greeted. " Sorry 
 I was delayed." He glanced at his wrist-watch. 
 " Only four minutes, however. I just couldn t get 
 away sooner." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 FROM nine till ten Forrest gave himself up to 
 his secretary, achieving a correspondence that 
 included learned societies and every sort of 
 breeding and agricultural organization and that 
 would have compelled the average petty business 
 man, unaided, to sit up till midnight to accomplish. 
 
 For Dick Forrest was the center of a system which 
 he himself had built and of which he was secretly 
 very proud. Important letters and documents he 
 signed with his ragged fist. All other letters were 
 rubber-stamped by Mr. Blake, who, also, in short 
 hand, in the course of the hour, put down the indi 
 cated answers to many letters and received the for 
 mula designations of reply to many other letters. 
 Mr. Blake s private opinion was that he worked 
 longer hours than his employer, although it was 
 equally his private opinion that his employer was a 
 wonder for discovering work for others to perform. 
 
 At ten, to the stroke of the clock, as Pittman, For 
 rest s show-manager, entered the office, Blake, bur 
 dened with trays of correspondence, sheafs of docu 
 ments, and phonograph cylinders, faded away to his 
 own office. 
 
 From ten to eleven a stream of managers and 
 foremen flowed in and out. All were well disci 
 plined in terseness and time-saving. As Dick For 
 rest had taught them, the minutes spent with him 
 were not minutes of cogitation. They must be pre- 
 35 
 
36 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 pared before they reported or suggested. Bon- 
 bright, the assistant secretary, always arrived at ten 
 to replace Blake; and Bonbright, close to shoulder, 
 with flying pencil, took down the rapid-fire inter 
 change of question and answer, statement and pro 
 posal and plan. These shorthand notes, transcribed 
 and typed in duplicate, were the nightmare and, on 
 occasion, the Nemesis, of the managers and foremen. 
 For, first, Forrest had a remarkable memory; and, 
 second, he was prone to prove its worth by reference 
 to those same notes of Bonbright. 
 
 A manager, at the end of a five or ten minute ses 
 sion, often emerged sweating, limp and frazzled. 
 Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, Forrest met 
 all comers, with a master s grip handling them and 
 all the multifarious details of their various depart 
 ments. He told Thompson, the machinist, in four 
 flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the dynamo 
 to the Big House refrigerator, laid the fault home to 
 Thompson, dictated a note to Bonbright, with cita 
 tion by page and chapter to a volume from the li 
 brary to be drawn by Thompson, told Thompson 
 that Parkman, the dairy manager, was not satisfied 
 with the latest wiring up of milking machines, and 
 that the refrigerating plant at the slaughter house 
 was balking at its accustomed load. 
 
 Each man was a specialist, yet Forrest was the 
 proved master of their specialties. As Paulson, the 
 head plowman, complained privily to Dawson, the 
 crop manager: "I ve worked here twelve years 
 and never have I seen him put his hands to a plow, 
 and yet, damn him, he somehow seems to know. 
 He s a genius, that s what he is. Why, d ye know, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 37 
 
 I ve seen him tear by a piece of work, his hands full 
 with that Man-Eater of his a-threatenin sudden fu 
 neral, an , next morning, had m mention casually to 
 a half-inch how deep it was plowed an what plows d 
 done the plowin ! Take that plowin of the 
 Poppy Meadow, up above Little Meadow, on Los 
 Cuatos. I just couldn t see my way to it, an had to 
 cut out the cross-sub-soiling, an thought I could slip it 
 over on him. After it was all finished he kind of 
 happened up that way I was lookin an he didn t 
 seem to look an , well, next A.M. I got mine in 
 the office. No ; I didn t slip it over. I ain t tried to 
 slip nothing over since." 
 
 At eleven sharp, Wardman, his sheep manager, 
 departed with an engagement scheduled at eleven: 
 thirty to ride in the machine along with Thayer, the 
 Idaho buyer, to look over the Shropshire rams. At 
 eleven, Bonbright having departed with Wardman 
 to work up his notes, Forrest was left alone in the 
 office. From a wire tray of unfinished business - 
 one of many wire trays superimposed in groups of 
 five he drew a pamphlet issued by the State of 
 Iowa on hog cholera and proceeded to scan it. 
 
 Five feet, ten inches in height, weighing a clean- 
 muscled one hundred and eighty pounds, Dick For 
 rest was anything but insignificant for a forty years 1 
 old man. The eyes were gray, large, over-arched by 
 bone of brow, and lashes and brows were dark. 
 The hair, above an ordinary forehead, was light 
 brown to chestnut. Under the forehead, the cheeks 
 showed high-boned, with underneath the slight hol 
 lows that necessarily accompany such formation. 
 The jaws were strong without massiveness, the nose, 
 
38 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 large-nostriled, was straight enough and prominent 
 enough without being too straight or prominent, the 
 chin square without harshness and uncleft, and the 
 mouth girlish and sweet to a degree that did not hide 
 the firmness to which the lips could set on due provo 
 cation. The skin was smooth and well-tanned, al 
 though, midway between eyebrows and hair, the tan 
 of forehead faded in advertisement of the rim of 
 the Baden Powell interposed between him and the 
 sun. 
 
 Laughter lurked in the mouth corners and eye- 
 corners, and there were cheek lines about the mouth 
 that would seem to have been formed by laughter. 
 Equally strong, however, every line of the face that 
 meant blended things carried a notice of surety. 
 Dick Forrest was sure sure, when his hand 
 reached out for any object on his desk, that the hand 
 would straightly attain the object without a fumble 
 or a miss of a fraction of an inch; sure, when his 
 brain leaped the high places of the hog cholera text, 
 that it was not missing a point; sure, from his bal 
 anced body in the revolving desk-chair to the bal 
 anced back-head of him; sure, in heart and brain, 
 of life and work, of all he possessed, and of him 
 self. 
 
 He had reason to be sure. Body, brain, and 
 career were long-proven sure. A rich man s son, he 
 had not played ducks and drakes with his father s 
 money. City born and reared, he had gone back to 
 the land and made such a success as to put his name 
 on the lips of breeders wherever breeders met and 
 talked. He was the owner, without encumbrance, 
 of two hundred and fifty thousand acres of land 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 39 
 
 land that varied in value from a thousand dollars an 
 acre to a hundred dollars, that varied from a hun 
 dred dollars to ten cents an acre, and that, in 
 stretches, was not worth a penny an acre. The im 
 provements on that quarter of a million acres, from 
 drain-tiled meadows to dredge-drained tule swamps, 
 from good roads to developed water-rights, from 
 farm buildings to the Big House itself, constituted a 
 sum gaspingly ungraspable to the country-side. 
 
 Everything was large-scale but modern to the last 
 tick of the clock. His managers lived, rent-free, 
 with salaries commensurate to ability, in five- and ten- 
 thousand-dollar houses but they were the cream 
 of specialists skimmed from the continent from the 
 Atlantic to the Pacific. When he ordered gasoline- 
 tractors for the cultivation of the flat lands, he or 
 dered a round score. When he dammed water in 
 his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of mil 
 lions of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, 
 instead of contracting the excavation, he bought the 
 huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack 
 work on his own marshes, he contracted for the 
 draining of the marshes of neighboring big farmers, 
 land companies, and corporations for a hundred 
 miles up and down the Sacramento River. 
 
 He had brain sufficient to know the need of buying 
 brains and to pay a tidy bit over the current market 
 price for the most capable brains. And he had 
 brain sufficient to direct the brains he bought to a 
 profitable conclusion. 
 
 And yet, he was just turned forty^ was clear-eyed, 
 calm-hearted, hearty-pulsed, man-strong; and yet, his 
 history, until he was thirty, had been harum-scarum 
 
40 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 and erratic to the superlative. He had run away 
 from a millionaire home when he was thirteen. He 
 had won enviable college honors ere he was twenty- 
 one and after that he had known all the purple ports 
 of the purple seas, and, with cool head, hot heart, 
 and laughter, played every risk that promised and 
 provided in the wild world of adventure that he had 
 lived to see pass under the sobriety of law. 
 
 In the old days of San Francisco Forrest had been 
 a name to conjure with. The Forrest Mansion had 
 been one of the pioneer palaces on Nob Hill where 
 dwelt the Floods, the Mackays, the Crockers, and 
 the O Briens. " Lucky " Richard Forrest, the 
 father, had arrived, via the Isthmus, straight from 
 old New England, keenly commercial, interested be 
 fore his departure in clipper ships and the building 
 of clipper ships, and interested immediately after his 
 arrival in water-front real estate, river steamboats, 
 mines, of course, and, later, in the draining of the 
 Nevada Comstock and the construction of the South 
 ern Pacific. 
 
 He played big, he won big, he lost big; but he won 
 always more than he lost, and what he paid out at 
 one game with one hand, he drew back with his other 
 hand at another game. His winnings from the 
 Comstock he sank into the various holes of the bot 
 tomless Daffodil Group in Eldorado County. The 
 wreckage from the Benicia Line he turned into the 
 Napa Consolidated, which was a quicksilver venture, 
 and it earned him five thousand per cent. What he 
 lost in the collapse of the Stockton boom was more 
 than balanced by the realty appreciation of his key- 
 holdings at Sacramento and Oakland. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 41 
 
 And, to cap it all, when " Lucky " Richard For 
 rest had lost everything in a series of calamities, so 
 that San Francisco debated what price his Nob Hill 
 palace would fetch at auction, he grubstaked one, 
 Del Nelson, to a prospecting in Mexico. As soberly 
 set down in history, the result of the said Del Nel 
 son s search for quartz was the Harvest Group, in 
 cluding the fabulous and inexhaustible Tattlesnake, 
 Voice, City, Desdemona, Bullfrog, and Yellow Boy 
 claims. Del Nelson, astounded by his achievement, 
 within the year drowned himself in an enormous 
 quantity of cheap whisky, and, the will being incon- 
 testible through lack of kith and kin, left his half to 
 Lucky Richard Forrest. 
 
 Dick Forrest was the son of his father. Lucky 
 Richard, a man of boundless energy and enterprise, 
 though twice married and twice widowed, had not 
 been blessed with children. His third marriage oc 
 curred in 1872, when he was fifty-eight, and in 1874, 
 although he lost the mother, a twelve-pound boy, 
 stout-barreled and husky-lunged, remained to be 
 brought up by a regiment of nurses in the palace on 
 Nob Hill. 
 
 Young Dick was precocious. Lucky Richard was 
 a democrat. Result: Young Dick learned in a 
 year from a private teacher what would have re 
 quired three years in the grammar school, and used 
 all of the saved years in playing in the open air. 
 Also, result of precocity of son and democracy of 
 father, Young Dick was sent to grammar school for 
 the last year in order to learn shoulder-rubbing 
 democracy with the sons and daughters of workmen, 
 tradesmen, saloon-keepers and politicians. 
 
42 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 In class recitation or spelling match his father s 
 millions did not aid him in competing with Patsy Hal- 
 loran, the mathematical prodigy whose father was a 
 hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a 
 wizard at spelling and whose widowed mother ran a 
 vegetable store. Nor were his father s millions and 
 the Nob Hill palace of the slightest assistance to 
 Young Dick when he peeled his jacket and, bare- 
 knuckled, without rounds, licking or being licked, 
 milled it to a finish with Jimmy Botts, Jean Choy- 
 insky, and the rest of the lads that went out over the 
 world to glory and cash a few years later, a genera 
 tion of prizefighters that only San Francisco, raw and 
 virile and yeasty and young, could have produced. 
 
 The wisest thing Lucky Richard did for his boy 
 was to give him this democratic tutelage. In his 
 secret heart, Young Dick never forgot that he lived 
 in a palace of many servants and that his father was 
 a man of power and honor. On the other hand, 
 Young Dick learned two-legged, two-fisted democ 
 racy. He learned it when Mona Sanguinetti spelled 
 him down in class. He learned it when Berney Mil 
 ler out-dodged and out-ran him when running across 
 in Black Man. 
 
 And when Tim Hagan, with straight left for the 
 hundredth time to bleeding nose and mangled mouth, 
 and with ever reiterant right hook to stomach, had 
 him dazed and reeling, the breath whistling and 
 sobbing through his lacerated lips was no time for 
 succor from palaces and bank accounts. On his two 
 legs, with his two fists, it was either he or Tim. 
 And it was right there, in sweat and blood and iron 
 of soul, that Young Dick learned how not to lose a 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 43 
 
 losing fight. It had been uphill from the first blow, 
 but he stuck it out until in the end it was agreed that 
 neither could best the other, although this agreement 
 was not reached until they had first lain on the ground 
 in nausea and exhaustion and with streaming eyes 
 wept their rage and defiance at each other. After 
 that, they became chums and between them ruled the 
 schoolyard. 
 
 Lucky Richard died the same month Young Dick 
 emerged from grammar school. Young Dick was 
 thirteen years old, with twenty million dollars, and 
 without a relative in the world to trouble him. He 
 was the master of a palace of servants, a steam 
 yacht, stables, and, as well, of a summer palace down 
 the Peninsula in the nabob colony at Menlo. One 
 thing, only, was he burdened with : guardians. 
 
 On a summer afternoon, in the big library, he at 
 tended the first session of his board of guardians. 
 There were three of them, all elderly, and successful, 
 all legal, all business comrades of his father. Dick s 
 impression, as they explained things to him, was that, 
 although they meant well, he had no contacts with 
 them. In his judgment, their boyhood was too far 
 behind them. Besides that, it was patent that him, 
 the particular boy they were so much concerned with, 
 they did not understand at all. Furthermore, in his 
 own sure way he decided that he was the one person 
 in the world fitted to know what was best for him 
 self. 
 
 Mr. Crockett made a long speech, to which Dick 
 listened with alert and becoming attention, nodding 
 his head whenever he was directly addressed or ap 
 pealed to. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum also had 
 
44 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 their say and were treated with equal consideration. 
 Among other things, Dick learned what a sterling, 
 upright man his father had been, and the program 
 already decided upon by the three gentlemen which 
 would make him into a sterling and upright man. 
 
 When they were quite done, Dick took it upon him 
 self to say a few things. 
 
 " I have thought it over," he announced, " and 
 first of all I shall go traveling." 
 
 * That will come afterward, my boy," Mr. 
 Slocum explained soothingly. " When say 
 when you are ready to enter the university. At that 
 time a year abroad would be a very good thing . . . 
 a very good thing indeed." 
 
 u Of course," Mr. Davidson volunteered quickly, 
 having noted the annoyed light in the lad s eyes and 
 the unconscious firm-drawing and setting of the lips, 
 u of course, in the meantime you could do some 
 traveling, a limited amount of traveling, during your 
 school vacations. I am sure my fellow guardians 
 will agree under the proper management and 
 safeguarding, of course that such bits of travel 
 sandwiched between your school-terms, would be ad 
 visable and beneficial." 
 
 "How much did you say I am worth?" Dick 
 asked with apparent irrelevance. 
 
 1 Twenty millions at a most conservative esti 
 mate that is about the sum," Mr. Crockett an 
 swered promptly. 
 
 " Suppose I said right now that I wanted a hun 
 dred dollars ! " Dick went on. 
 
 u Why er ahem." Mr. Slocum looked 
 about him for guidance. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 45 
 
 " We would be compelled to ask what you wanted 
 it for," answered Mr. Crockett. 
 
 " And suppose," Dick said very slowly, looking 
 Mr. Crockett squarely in the eyes, " suppose I said 
 that I was very sorry, but that I did not care to say 
 what I wanted it for? " 
 
 u Then you wouldn t get it," Mr. Crockett said 
 so immediately that there was a hint of testiness and 
 snap in his manner. 
 
 Dick nodded slowly, as if letting the information 
 sink in. 
 
 u But, of course, my boy," Mr. Slocum took up 
 hastily, " you understand you are too young to handle 
 money yet. We must decide that for you." 
 
 " You mean I can t touch a penny without your 
 permission? " 
 
 " Not a penny," Mr. Crockett snapped. 
 
 Dick nodded his head thoughtfully and murmured, 
 " Oh, I see." 
 
 " Of course, and quite naturally, it would only be 
 fair, you know, you will have a small allowance for 
 your personal spending," Mr. Davidson said. 
 " Say, a dollar, or, perhaps, two dollars, a week. As 
 you grow older this allowance will be increased. 
 And by the time you are twenty-one, doubtlessly you 
 will be fully qualified with advice, of course to 
 handle your own affairs." 
 
 " And until I am twenty-one my twenty million 
 wouldn t buy me a hundred dollars to do as I please 
 with? " Dick queried very subduedly. 
 
 Mr. Davidson started to corroborate in soothing 
 phrases, but was waved to silence by Dick, who con 
 tinued: 
 
46 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " As I understand it, whatever money I handle 
 will be by agreement between the four of us ? " 
 
 The Board of Guardians nodded. 
 
 " That rs, whatever we agree, goes? " 
 
 Again the Board of Guardians nodded. 
 
 " Well, I d like to have a hundred right now," 
 Dick announced. 
 
 What for? " Mr. Crockett demanded. 
 
 " I don t mind telling you," was the lad s steady 
 answer. u To go traveling." 
 
 "You ll go to bed at eight .-thirty this evening," 
 Mr. Crockett retorted. " And you don t get any 
 hundred. The lady we spoke to you about will be 
 here before six. She is to have, as we explained, 
 daily and hourly charge of you. At six-thirty, as 
 usual, you will dine, and she will dine with you and 
 see you to bed. As we told you, she will have to 
 serve the place of a mother to you see that your 
 ears are clean, your neck washed " 
 
 " And that I get my Saturday night bath," Dick 
 amplified meekly for him. 
 
 11 Precisely." 
 
 " How much are you am I paying the lady 
 for her services?" Dick questioned in the discon 
 certing, tangential way that was already habitual to 
 him, as his school companions and teachers had 
 learned to their cost. 
 
 Mr. Crockett for the first time cleared his throat 
 for pause. 
 
 " I m paying her, ain t I ? " Dick prodded. " Out 
 of the twenty million, you know." 
 
 " The spit of his father," said Mr. Slocum in an 
 aside. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 47 
 
 " Mrs. Summerstone, the lady as you elect to call 
 her, receives one hundred and fifty a month, eighteen 
 hundred a year in round sum," said Mr. Crockett. 
 
 " It s a waste of perfectly good money," Dick 
 sighed. " And board and lodging thrown in! " 
 
 He stood up not the born aristocrat of the gen 
 erations, but the reared aristocrat of thirteen years 
 in the Nob Hill palace. He stood up with such a 
 manner that his Board of Guardians left their leather 
 chairs to stand up with him. But he stood up as no 
 Lord Fauntleroy ever stood up ; for he was a mixer. 
 He had knowledge that human life was many-faced 
 and many-placed. Not for nothing had he been 
 spelled down by Mona Sanguinetti. Not for noth 
 ing had he fought Tim Hagan to a standstill and, 
 co-equal, ruled the schoolyard roost with him. 
 
 He was birthed of the wild gold-adventure of 
 Forty-nine. He was a reared aristocrat and a gram 
 mar-school-trained democrat. He knew, in his 
 precocious immature way, the differentiations between 
 caste and mass; and, behind it all, he was possessed 
 of a will of his own and of a quiet surety of self 
 that was incomprehensible to the three elderly gentle 
 men who had been given charge of his and his destiny 
 and who had pledged themselves to increase his 
 twenty millions and make a man of him in their own 
 composite image. 
 
 " Thank you for your kindness," Young Dick 
 said generally to the three. " I guess we ll get 
 along all right. Of course, that twenty millions is 
 mine, and of course you ve got to take care of it for 
 me, seeing I know nothing of business 
 
 " And we ll increase it for you, my boy, we ll in- 
 
48 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 crease it for you in safe, conservative ways," Mr. 
 Slocum assured him. 
 
 " No speculation," Young Dick warned. " Dad s 
 just been lucky I ve heard him say that times have 
 changed and a fellow can t take the chances every 
 body used to take." 
 
 From which, and from much which has already 
 passed, it might erroneously be inferred that Young 
 Dick was a mean and money-grubbing soul. On 
 the contrary, he was at that instant entertaining 
 secret thoughts and plans so utterly regardless and 
 disdainful of his twenty millions as to place him on 
 a par with a drunken sailor sowing the beach with 
 a three years pay-day. 
 
 " I am only a boy," Young Dick went on. u But 
 you don t know me very well yet. We ll get better 
 acquainted by and by, and, again thanking you . . ." 
 
 He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in 
 Nob Hill palaces early learn to bow, and, by the 
 quality of the pause, signified that the audience was 
 over. Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his 
 guardians. They, who had been co-lords with his 
 father, withdrew confused and perplexed. Messrs. 
 Davidson and Slocum were on the point of resolving 
 their perplexity into wrath, as they went down the 
 great stone stairway to the waiting carriage, but Mr. 
 Crockett, the testy and snappish, muttered ecstatic 
 ally: "The son of a gun! The little son of a 
 gun!" 
 
 The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific 
 Union Club, where, for another hour, they gravely 
 discussed the future of Young Dick Forrest and 
 pledged themselves anew to the faith reposed in them 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 49 
 
 by Lucky Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on 
 foot, where grass grew on the paved streets too steep 
 for horse-traffic, Young Dick hurried. As the height 
 of land was left behind, almost immediately the pal 
 aces and spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way 
 to the mean streets and wooden warrens of the 
 working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as m ~ 
 continently intermingled its slums and mansions as 
 did the old cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like 
 any medieval castle, from the mess and ruck of 
 common life that denned and laired at its base. 
 
 Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner 
 grocery, the second story of which was rented to 
 Timothy Hagan Senior, who, by virtue of being a 
 policeman with a wage of a hundred dollars a month, 
 rented this high place to dwell above his fellows who 
 supported families on no more than forty and fifty 
 dollars a month. 
 
 In vain Young Dick whistled up through the un 
 screened, open windows. Tim Hagan Junior was 
 not at home. But Young Dick wasted little wind 
 in the whistling. He was debating on possible ad 
 jacent places where Tim Hagan might be, when 
 Tim himself appeared around the corner, bearing a 
 lidless lard-can that foamed with steam beer. He 
 grunted greeting, and Young Dick grunted with equal 
 roughness, just as if, a brief space before, he had 
 not, in most lordly fashion, terminated an audience 
 with three of the richest merchant-kings of an im 
 perial city. Nor did his possession of twenty in 
 creasing millions hint the slightest betrayal in his 
 voice or mitigate in the slightest the gruffness of his 
 grunt. 
 
50 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Ain t seen yeh since yer old man died," Tim 
 Hagan commented. 
 
 ;t Well, you re seein me now, ain t you ? " was 
 Young Dick s retort. " Say, Tim, I come to see you 
 on business." 
 
 " Wait till I rush the beer to the old man," said 
 Tim, inspecting the state of the foam in the lard-can 
 with an experienced eye. " He ll roar his head off 
 if it comes in flat." 
 
 " Oh, you can shake it up," Young Dick assured 
 him. " Only want to see you a minute. I m hitting 
 the road to-night. Want to come along? " 
 
 Tim s small, blue Irish eyes flashed with interest. 
 
 1 Where to?" he queried. 
 
 u Don t know. Want to come? If you do, we 
 can talk it over after we start? You know the ropes. 
 What d ye say?" 
 
 " The old man ll beat the stuffin outa me," Tim 
 demurred. 
 
 " He s done that before, an you don t seem to be 
 much missing," Young Dick callously rejoined. 
 " Say the word, an we ll meet at the Ferry Building 
 at nine to-night. What d ye say? I ll be there." 
 
 " Supposin I don t show up?" Tim asked. 
 
 :< I ll be on my way just the same." Young Dick 
 turned as if to depart, paused casually, and said over 
 his shoulder, " Better come along." 
 
 Tim shook up the beer as he answered with equal 
 casualness, " Aw right. I ll be there." 
 
 After parting from Tim Hagan Young Dick spent 
 a busy hour or so looking up one, Marcovich, a Slav 
 onian schoolmate whose father ran a chop-house in 
 which was reputed to be served the finest twenty-cent 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 51 
 
 meal in the city. Young Marcovich owed Young 
 Dick two dollars, and Young Dick accepted the pay 
 ment of a dollar and forty cents as full quittance of 
 the debt. 
 
 Also, with shyness and perturbation, Young Dick 
 wandered down Montgomery Street and vacillated 
 among the many pawnshops that graced that thor 
 oughfare. At last, diving desperately into one, he 
 managed to exchange for eight dollars and a ticket 
 his gold watch that he knew was worth fifty at the 
 very least. 
 
 Dinner in the Nob Hill palace was served at six- 
 thirty. He arrived at six-forty-five and encountered 
 Mrs. Summerstone. She was a stout, elderly, de 
 cayed gentlewoman, a daughter of the great Porter- 
 Rickington family that had shaken the entire Pacific 
 Coast with its financial crash in the middle seventies. 
 Despite her stoutness, she suffered from what she 
 called shattered nerves. 
 
 " This will never, never do, Richard," she cen 
 sured. " Here is dinner waiting fifteen minutes al 
 ready, and you have not yet washed your face and 
 hands." 
 
 " I am sorry, Mrs. Summerstone," Young Dick 
 apologized. " I won t keep you waiting ever again. 
 And I won t bother you much ever." 
 
 At dinner, in state, the two of them alone in the 
 great dining room, Young Dick strove to make things 
 easy for the lady, whom, despite his knowledge that 
 she was on his pay-roll, he felt toward as a host must 
 feel toward a guest. 
 
 " You ll be very comfortable here," he promised, 
 " once you are settled down. It s a good old house, 
 
52 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 and most of the servants have been here for 
 years." 
 
 " But, Richard," she smiled seriously to him; " it 
 is not the servants who will determine my happiness 
 here. It is you." 
 
 " I ll do my best," he said graciously. " Better 
 than that. I m sorry I came in late for dinner. In 
 years and years you ll never see me late again. I 
 won t bother you at all. You ll see. It will be just 
 as though I wasn t in the house." 
 
 When he bade her good night, on his way to bed, 
 he added, as a last thought: 
 
 " I ll warn you of one thing: Ah Sing. He s the 
 cook. He s been in our house for years and years 
 oh, I don t know, maybe twenty-five or thirty years 
 he s cooked for father, from long before this house 
 was built or I was born. He s privileged. He s so 
 used to having his own way that you ll have to handle 
 him with gloves. But once he likes you he ll work 
 his fool head off to please you. He likes me that 
 way. You get him to like you, and you ll have the 
 time of your life here. And, honest, I won t give 
 you any trouble at all. It ll be a regular snap, just 
 as if I wasn t here at all." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 AT nine in the evening, sharp to the second, clad 
 in his oldest clothes, Young Dick met Tim 
 Hagan at the Ferry Building. 
 
 " No use headin north," said Tim. " Winter ll 
 come on up that way and make the sleepin crimpy. 
 D ye want to go East that means Nevada and the 
 deserts." 
 
 "Any other way?" queried Young Dick. 
 " What s the matter with south ? We can head for 
 Los Angeles, an Arizona, an New Mexico oh, 
 an Texas." 
 
 " How much money you got? " Tim demanded. 
 
 "What for?" Young Dick countered. 
 
 We gotta get out quick, an payin our way at 
 the start is quickest. Me I m all hunkydory; but 
 you ain t. The folks that s lookin after you ll raise 
 a roar. They ll have more detectives out than you 
 can shake at stick at. We gotta dodge em, that s 
 what." 
 
 " Then we will dodge," said Young Dick. 
 " We ll make short jumps this way and that for 
 a couple of days, layin low most of the time, paying 
 our way, until we can get to Tracy. Then we ll quit 
 payin an beat her south." 
 
 All of which program was carefully carried out. 
 They eventually went through Tracy as pay pas 
 sengers, six hours after the local deputy sheriff had 
 
 S3 
 
54 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 given up his task of searching the trains. With an 
 excess of precaution Young Dick paid beyond Tracy 
 and as far as Modesto. After that, under the teach 
 ing of Tim, he traveled without paying, riding blind 
 baggage, box cars, and cow-catchers. Young Dick 
 bought the newspapers, and frightened Tim by read 
 ing to him the lurid accounts of the kidnapping of the 
 young heir to the Forrest millions. 
 
 Back in San Francisco the Board of Guardians of 
 fered rewards that totaled thirty thousand dollars 
 for the recovery of their ward. And Tim Hagan, 
 reading the same while they lay in the grass by some 
 water-tank, branded forever the mind of Young Dick 
 with the fact that honor beyond price was a matter 
 of neither place nor caste and might outcrop in the 
 palace on the height of land or in the dwelling over 
 a grocery down on the flat. 
 
 " Gee 1 " Tim said to the general landscape. 
 " The old man wouldn t raise a roar if I snitched on 
 you for that thirty thousand. It makes me scared to 
 think of it." 
 
 And from the fact that Tim thus openly mentioned 
 the matter, Young Dick concluded that there was no 
 possibility of the policeman s son betraying him. 
 
 Not until six weeks afterward, in Arizona, did 
 Young Dick bring up the subject. 
 
 " You see, Tim," he said, " I ve got slathers of 
 money. It s growing all the time, and I ain t spend 
 ing a cent of it, not so as you can notice . . . though 
 that Mrs. Summerstone is getting a cold eighteen 
 hundred a year out of me, with board and carriages 
 thrown in, while you an I are glad to get the leav 
 ings of firemen s pails in the round-houses. Just the 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 55 
 
 same, my money s growing. What s ten per cent, 
 on twenty dollars? " 
 
 Tim Hagan stared at the shimmering heat-waves 
 of the desert and tried to solve the problem. 
 
 " What s one-tenth of twenty million?" Young 
 Dick demanded irritably. 
 
 " Huh ! two million, of course." 
 
 " Well, five per cent. s half of ten per cent. What 
 does twenty million earn at five per cent, for one 
 year?" 
 
 Tim hesitated. 
 
 " Half of it, half of two million! " Young Dick 
 cried. " At that rate I m a million richer every year. 
 Get that, and hang on to it, and listen to me. When 
 I m good and willing to go back but not for years 
 an years we ll fix it up, you and I. When I say 
 the word, you ll write to your father. He ll jump 
 out to where we are waiting, pick me up, and cart me 
 back. Then he ll collect the thirty thousand reward 
 from my guardians, quit the police force, and most 
 likely start a saloon." 
 
 4 Thirty thousand s a hell of a lot of money," 
 was Tim s nonchalant way of expressing his gratitude. 
 
 " Not to me," Young Dick minimized his gen 
 erosity. Thirty thousand goes into a million 
 thirty-three times, and a million s only a year s turn 
 over of my money." 
 
 But Tim Hagan never lived to see his father a 
 saloon keeper. Two days later, on a trestle, the 
 lads were fired out of an empty box-car by a brake- 
 man who should have known better. The trestle 
 spanned a dry ravine. Young Dick looked down at 
 the rocks seventy feet below and demurred. 
 
56 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 "There s room on the trestle," he said; " but 
 what if the train starts up? " 
 
 " It ain t goin to start beat it while you got 
 time," the brakeman insisted. " The engine s takin 
 water at the other side. She always takes it 
 here." 
 
 But for once the engine did not take water. The 
 evidence at the inquest developed that the engineer 
 had found no water in the tank and started on. 
 Scarcely had the two boys dropped from the side- 
 door of the box-car, and before they had made a 
 score of steps along the narrow way between the train 
 and the abyss, than the train began to move. Young 
 Dick, quick and sure in all his perceptions and adjust 
 ments, dropped on the instant to hands and knees on 
 the trestle. This gave him better holding and more 
 space, because he crouched beneath the overhang of 
 the box-cars. Tim, not so quick in perceiving and 
 adjusting, also overcome with Celtic rage at the 
 brakeman, instead of dropping to hands and knees, 
 remained upright to flare his opinion of the brake 
 man, to the brakeman, in lurid and ancestral terms. 
 
 " Get down ! drop ! " Young Dick shouted. 
 
 But the opportunity had passed. On a down 
 grade, the engine picked up the train rapidly. Fac 
 ing the moving cars, with empty air at his back and 
 the depth beneath, Tim tried to drop on hands and 
 knees. But the first twist of his shoulders brought 
 him in contact with the car and nearly out-balanced 
 him. By a miracle he recovered equilibrium. But 
 he stood upright. The train was moving faster and 
 faster. It was impossible to get down. 
 
 Young Dick, kneeling and holding, watched. The 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 57 
 
 train gathered way. The cars moved more swiftly. 
 Tim, with a cool head, his back to the fall, his face 
 to the passing cars, his arms by his sides, with no 
 where save under his feet a holding point, balanced 
 and swayed. The faster the train moved, the wider 
 he swayed, until, exerting his will, he controlled him 
 self and ceased from swaying. 
 
 And all would have been well with him, had it not 
 been for one car. Young Dick knew it, and saw it 
 coming. It was a " palace horse-car," projecting six 
 inches wider than any car on the train. He saw Tim 
 see it coming. He saw Tim steel himself to meet 
 the abrupt subtraction of half a foot from the nar 
 row space wherein he balanced. He saw Tim 
 slowly and deliberately sway out, sway out to the 
 extremest limit, and yet not sway out far enough. 
 The thing was physically inevitable. An inch more, 
 and Tim would have escaped the car. An inch more 
 and he would have fallen without impact from the 
 car. It caught him, in that margin of an inch, and 
 hurled him backward and side-twisting. Twice he 
 whirled sidewise, and two and a half times he turned 
 over, ere he struck on his head and neck on the 
 rocks. 
 
 He never moved after he struck. The seventy- 
 foot fall broke his neck and crushed his skull. And 
 right there Young Dick learned death not the or 
 dered, decent death of civilization, wherein doctors 
 and nurses and hypodermics ease the stricken one into 
 the darkness, and ceremony and function and flowers 
 and undertaking institutions conspire to give a happy 
 leave-taking and send-off to the departing shade, but 
 sudden death, primitive death, ugly and ungarnished, 
 
5 8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 like the death of a steer in the shambles or a fat 
 swine stuck in the jugular. 
 
 And right there Young Dick learned more the 
 mischance of life and fate; the universe hostile to 
 man ; the need to perceive and to act, to see and know, 
 to be sure and quick, to adjust instantly to all instant 
 shiftage of the balance of forces that bear upon the 
 living. And right there, beside the strangely crum 
 pled and shrunken remnant of what had been his com 
 rade the moment before, Young Dick learned that 
 illusion must be discounted, and that reality never 
 lied. 
 
 In New Mexico, Young Dick drifted into the 
 Jingle-bob Ranch, north of Roswell, in the Pecos 
 Valley. He was not yet fourteen, and he was ac 
 cepted as the mascot of the ranch and made into a 
 " sure-enough " cowboy by cowboys who, on legal 
 papers, legally signed names such as Wild Horse, 
 Willie Buck, Boomer Deacon, and High Pockets. 
 
 Here, during a stay of six months, Young Dick, 
 soft of frame and unbreakable, achieved a knowl 
 edge of horses and horsemanship, and of men in the 
 rough and raw, that became a life asset. More he 
 learned. There was John Chisum, owner of the 
 Jingle-bob, the Bosque Grande, and of other cattle 
 ranches as far away as the Black River and beyond. 
 John Chisum was a cattle king who had foreseen the 
 coming of the farmer and adjusted from the open 
 range to barbed wire, and who, in order to do so, 
 had purchased every forty acres carrying water and 
 got for nothing the use of the millions of acres of 
 adjacent range that was worthless without the water 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 59 
 
 he controlled. And in the talk by the camp-fire and 
 chuck wagon, among forty-dollar-a-month cowboys 
 who had not foreseen what John Chisum foresaw, 
 Young Dick learned precisely why and how John 
 Chisum had become a cattle king while a thousand 
 of his contemporaries worked for him on wages. 
 
 But Young Dick was no cool-head. His blood 
 was hot. He had passion, and fire, and male pride. 
 Ready to cry from twenty hours in the saddle, he 
 learned to ignore the thousand aching creaks in his 
 body and with the stoic brag of silence to withstrain 
 from his blankets until the hard-bitten punchers led 
 the way. By the same token he straddled the horse 
 that was apportioned him, insisted on riding night- 
 herd, and knew no hint of uncertainty when it came 
 to him to turn the flank of a stampede with a flying 
 slicker. He could take a chance. It was his joy 
 to take a chance. But at such times he never failed 
 of due respect for reality. He was well aware that 
 men were soft-shelled and cracked easily on hard 
 rocks or under pounding hoofs. And when he re 
 jected a mount that tangled its legs in quick action 
 and stumbled, it was not because he feared to be 
 cracked, but because, when he took a chance on being 
 cracked, he wanted, as he told John Chisum himself, 
 " an even break for his money/ 
 
 It was while at the Jingle-bob, but mailed by a cat 
 tleman from Chicago, that Young Dick wrote a let 
 ter to his guardians. Even then, so careful was he, 
 that the envelope was addressed to Ah Sing. 
 Though unburdened by his twenty millions, Young 
 Dick never forgot them, and, fearing his estate might 
 be distributed among remote relatives who might 
 
60 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 possibly inhabit New England, he warned his guard 
 ians that he was still alive and that he would return 
 home in several years. Also, he ordered them to 
 keep Mrs. Summerstone on at her regular salary. 
 
 But Young Dick s feet itched. Half a year, he 
 felt, was really more than he should have spent at 
 the Jingle-bob. As a boy hobo, or road-kid, he 
 drifted on across the United States, getting ac 
 quainted with its peace officers, police judges, vag 
 rancy laws, and jails. And he learned vagrants 
 themselves at first hand, and floating laborers and 
 petty criminals. Among other things, he got ac 
 quainted with farms and farmers, and, in New York 
 State, once picked berries for a week with a Dutch 
 farmer who was experimenting with one of the first 
 silos erected in the United States. Nothing of what 
 he learned came to him in the spirit of research. He 
 had merely the human boy s curiosity about all 
 things, and he gained merely a huge mass of data 
 concerning human nature and social conditions that 
 was to stand him in good stead in later years, when, 
 with the aid of the books, he digested and classified 
 it. 
 
 His adventures did not harm him. Even when 
 he consorted with jail-birds in jungle camps, and 
 listened to their codes of conduct and measurements 
 /of life, he was not affected. He was a traveler, and 
 / they were alien breeds. Secure in the knowledge of 
 / his twenty millions, there was neither need nor temp 
 tation for him to steal or rob. All things and all 
 places interested him, but he never found a place 
 nor a situation that could hold him. He wanted to 
 see, to see more and more, and to go on seeing. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 61 
 
 At the end of three years, nearly sixteen, hard of 
 body, weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, he 
 judged it time to go home and open the books. So 
 he took his first long voyage, signing on as boy on a 
 windjammer bound around the Horn from the Dela 
 ware Breakwater to San Francisco. It was a hard 
 voyage, of one hundred and eighty days, but at the 
 end he weighed ten pounds the more for having 
 made it. 
 
 Mrs. Summerstone screamed when he walked in on 
 her, and Ah Sing had to be called from the kitchen to 
 identify him. Mrs. Summerstone screamed a second 
 time. It was when she shook hands with him and 
 lacerated her tender skin in the fisty grip of his rope- 
 calloused palms. 
 
 He was shy, almost embarrassed, as he greeted his 
 guardians at the hastily summoned meeting. But 
 this did not prevent him from talking straight to the 
 point. 
 
 " It s this way," he said. " I am not a fool. I 
 know what I want, and I want what I want. I am 
 alone in the world, outside of good friends like you, 
 of course, and I have my own ideas of the world and 
 what I want to do in it. I didn t come home be 
 cause of a sense of duty to anybody here. I came 
 home because it was time, because of my sense of duty 
 to myself. I m all the better from my three years 
 of wandering about, and now it s up to me to go on 
 with my education my book education, I mean." 
 The Belmont Academy," Mr. Slocum suggested. 
 " That will fit you for the university " 
 
 Dick shook his head decidedly. 
 
 " And take three years to do it. So would a high 
 
62 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 school. I intend to be in the University of Cali 
 fornia inside one year. That means work. But my 
 mind s like acid. It ll bite into the books. I shall 
 hire a coach, or half a dozen of them, and go to it. 
 And I ll hire my coaches myself hire and fire 
 them. And that means money to handle." 
 
 " A hundred a month," Mr. Crockett suggested. 
 
 Dick shook his head. 
 
 " I ve taken care of myself for three years without 
 any of my money. I guess I can take care of myself 
 along with some of my money here in San Francisco. 
 I don t care to handle my business affairs yet, but I 
 do want a bank account, a respectable-sized one. I 
 want to spend it as I see fit, for what I see fit." 
 
 The guardians looked their dismay at one another. 
 
 " It s ridiculous, impossible," Mr. Crockett began. 
 " You are as unreasonable as you were before you 
 went away." 
 
 " It s my way, I guess," Dick sighed. " The other 
 disagreement was over my money. It was a hun 
 dred dollars I wanted then." 
 
 " Think of our position, Dick," Mr. Davidson 
 urged. " As your guardians, how would it be looked 
 upon if we gave you, a lad of sixteen, a free hand 
 with money." 
 
 " What s the Freda worth, right now? " Dick de 
 manded irrelevantly. 
 
 " Can sell for twenty thousand any time," Mr. 
 Crockett answered. 
 
 " Then sell her. She s too large for me, and she s 
 worth less every year. I want a thirty-footer that I 
 can handle myself for knocking around the Bay, and 
 that won t cost a thousand. Sell the Freda and put 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 63 
 
 the money to my account. Now what you three are 
 afraid of is that I ll misspend my money taking to 
 drinking, horse-racing, and running around with 
 chorus girls. Here s my proposition to make you 
 easy on that : let it be a drawing account for the four 
 of us. The moment any of you decide I am mis 
 spending, that moment you can draw out the total 
 balance. I may as well tell you, that just as a side 
 line I m going to get a business college expert to 
 come here and cram me with the mechanical side of 
 the business game." 
 
 Dick did not wait for their acquiescence, but went 
 on as from a matter definitely settled. 
 
 u How about the horses down at Menlo ? never 
 mind, I ll look them over and decide what to keep. 
 Mrs. Summerstone will stay on here in charge of the 
 house, because I ve got too much work mapped out 
 for myself already. I promise you you won t regret 
 giving me a free hand with my directly personal af 
 fairs. And now, if you want to hear about the last 
 three years, I ll spin the yarn for you." 
 
 
 
 Dick Forrest had been right when he told his 
 guardians that his mind was acid and would bite into 
 the books. Never was there such an education, and 
 he directed it himself but not without advice. He 
 had learned the trick of hiring brains from his father 
 and from John Chisum of the Jingle-bob. He had 
 learned to sit silent and to think while cow men talked 
 long about the campfire and the chuck wagon. And, 
 by virtue of name and place, he sought and obtained 
 interviews with professors and college presidents and 
 practical men of affairs; and he listened to their talk 
 
64 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 through many hours, scarcely speaking, rarely asking 
 a question, merely listening to the best they had to 
 offer, content to receive from several such hours one 
 idea, one fact, that would help him to decide what 
 sort of an education he would go in for and how. 
 
 Then came the engaging of coaches. Never was 
 there such an engaging and discharging, such a hiring 
 and firing. He was not frugal in the matter. For 
 one that he retained a month, or three months, he 
 discharged a dozen on the first day, or the first week. 
 And invariably he paid such dischargees a full month 
 although their attempts to teach him might not have 
 consumed an hour. He did such things fairly and 
 grandly, because he could afford to be fair and grand. 
 
 He, who had eaten the leavings from firemen s 
 pails in round-houses and " scoffed " mulligan-stews 
 at water-tanks, had learned thoroughly the worth of 
 money. He bought the best with the sure knowl 
 edge that it was the cheapest. A year of high school 
 physics and a year of high school chemistry were 
 necessary to enter the university. When he had 
 crammed his algebra and geometry, he sought out the 
 heads of the physics and chemistry departments in the 
 University of California. Professor Carey laughed 
 at him ... at the first. 
 
 " My dear boy," Professor Carey began. 
 
 Dick waited patiently till he was through. Then 
 Dick began, and concluded. 
 
 " I m not a fool, Professor Carey. High school 
 and academy students are children. They don t 
 know the world. They don t know what they want, 
 or why they want what is ladled out to them. I know 
 the world. I know what I want and why I want it. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 65 
 
 They do physics for an hour, twice a week, for two 
 terms, which, with two vacations, occupy one year. 
 You are the top teacher on the Pacific Coast in phys 
 ics. The college year is just ending. In the first 
 week of your vacation, giving every minute of your 
 time to me, I can get the year s physics. What is 
 that week worth to you? " 
 
 u You couldn t buy it for a thousand dollars," Pro 
 fessor Carey rejoined, thinking he had settled the 
 matter. 
 
 " I know what your salary is " Dick began. 
 
 "What is it?" Professor Carey demanded 
 sharply. 
 
 " It s not a thousand a week," Dick retorted as 
 sharply. :t It s not five hundred a week, nor two- 
 fifty a week " He held up his hand to stall off 
 interruption. * You ve just told me I couldn t buy 
 a week of your time for a thousand dollars. I m 
 not going to. But I am going to buy that week for 
 two thousand. Heavens ! I ve only got so many 
 years to live " 
 
 "And you can buy years?" Professor Carey 
 queried slyly. 
 
 " Sure. That s why I m here. I buy three years 
 in one, and the week from you is part of the deal." 
 
 " But I have not accepted," Professor Carey 
 laughed. 
 
 " If the sum is not sufficient," Dick said stiffly, 
 " why name the sum you consider fair." 
 
 And Professor Carey surrendered. So did Pro 
 fessor Barsdale, head of the department of chem 
 istry. 
 
 Already had Dick taken his coaches in mathe- 
 
66 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 matics duck hunting for weeks in the sloughs of the 
 Sacramento and the San Joaquin. After his bout 
 with physics and chemistry he took his two coaches 
 in literature and history into the Curry County hunt 
 ing region of southwestern Oregon. He had 
 learned the trick from his father, and he worked, 
 and played, lived in the open air, and did three con 
 ventional years of adolescent education in one year 
 without straining himself. He fished, hunted, swam, 
 exercised, and equipped himself for the university at 
 the same time. And he made no mistake. He knew 
 that he did it because his father s twenty millions 
 had invested him with mastery. Money was a tool. 
 He did not over-rate it, nor under-rate it. He used 
 it to buy what he wanted. 
 
 " The weirdest form of dissipation I ever heard," 
 said Mr. Crockett, holding up Dick s account for the 
 year. " Sixteen thousand for education, all item 
 ized, including railroad fares, porters tips, and shot 
 gun cartridges for his teachers." 
 
 " He passed the examinations just the same," 
 quoth Mr. Slocum. 
 
 " And in a year," growled Mr. Davidson. " My 
 daughter s boy entered Belmont at the same time, 
 and, if he s lucky, it will be two years yet before he 
 enters the university." 
 
 " Well, all I ve got to say," proclaimed Mr. 
 Crockett, " is that from now on what that boy says 
 in the matter of spending his money goes." 
 
 " And now I ll have a snap," Dick told his guard 
 ians. " Here I am, neck and neck again, and years 
 ahead of them in knowledge of the world. Why, I 
 know things, good and bad, big and little, about men 
 
OF THE lG HOUSE 67 
 
 and women and life that sometimes I almost doubt 
 myself that they re true. But I know them. 
 
 " From now on, I m not going to rush. I ve 
 caught up, and I m going through regular. All I 
 have to do is to keep the speed of the classes, and 
 I ll be graduated when I m twenty-one. From now 
 on I ll need less money for education no more 
 coaches, you know and more money for a good 
 
 time." 
 
 Mr. Davidson was suspicious. 
 
 " What do you mean by a good time? " 
 
 " Oh, I m going in for the frats, for football, hold 
 my own, you know and I m interested in gasoline 
 engines. I m going to build the first ocean-going 
 gasoline yacht in the world " 
 
 "You ll blow yourself up," Mr. Crockett de 
 murred. " It s a fool notion all these cranks are 
 rushing into over gasoline." 
 
 " I ll make myself safe," Dick answered, " and 
 that means experimenting, and it means money, so 
 keep me a good drawing account same old way - 
 all four of us can draw." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 DICK FORREST proved himself no prodigy 
 at the university, save that he cut more lec 
 tures the first year than any other student. 
 The reason for this was that he did not need the 
 lectures he cut, and he knew it. His coaches, while 
 preparing him for the entrance examinations, had car 
 ried him nearly through the first college year. Inci 
 dentally, he made the Freshman team, a very scrub 
 team, that was beaten by every high school and acad 
 emy it played against. 
 
 But Dick did put in work that nobody saw. His 
 collateral reading was wide and deep, and when he 
 went on his first summer cruise in the ocean-going 
 gasoline yacht he had built no gay young crowd ac 
 companied him. Instead, his guests, with their fami 
 lies, were professors of literature, history, juris 
 prudence, and philosophy. It was long remembered 
 in the university as the " high-brow " cruise. The 
 professors, on their return, reported a most enjoyable 
 time. Dick returned with a greater comprehension 
 of the general fields of the particular professors than 
 he could have gained in years at their class-lectures. 
 And time thus gained, enabled him to continue to cut 
 lectures and to devote more time to laboratory work. 
 
 Nor did he miss having his good college time. 
 College widows made love to him, and college girls 
 
 68 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 69 
 
 loved him, and he was indefatigable in his dancing. 
 He never cut a smoker, a beer bust, or a rush, and he 
 toured the Pacific Coast with the Banjo and Mando 
 lin Club. 
 
 And yet he was no prodigy. He was brilliant 
 at nothing. Half a dozen of his fellows could out- 
 banjo and out-mandolin him. A dozen fellows were 
 adjudged better dancers than he. In football, and he 
 gained the Varsity in his Sophomore year, he was 
 considered a solid and dependable player, and that 
 was all. It seemed never his luck to take the ball 
 and go down the length of the field while the Blue and 
 Gold host tore itself and the grandstand to pieces. 
 But it was at the end of heart-breaking, grueling slog 
 in mud and rain, the score tied, the second half im 
 minent to its close, Stanford on the five-yard line, 
 Berkeley s ball, with two downs and three yards to 
 gain it was then that the Blue and Gold arose and 
 chanted its demand for Forrest to hit the center and 
 hit it hard. 
 
 He never achieved super-excellence at anything. 
 Big Charley Everson drank him down at the beer 
 busts. Harrison Jackson, at hammer-throwing, al 
 ways exceeded his best by twenty feet. Carruthers 
 out-pointed him at boxing. Anson Burge could al 
 ways put his shoulders to the mat, two out of three, 
 but always only by the hardest work. In English 
 composition a fifth of his class excelled him. Edlin, 
 the Russian Jew, out-debated him on the contention 
 that property was robbery. Schultz and Debret left 
 him with the class behind in higher mathematics ; and 
 Otsuki, the Japanese, was beyond all comparison with 
 him in chemistry. 
 
70 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 But if Dick Forrest did not excel at anything, he 
 failed in nothing. He displayed no superlative 
 strength, he betrayed no weakness nor deficiency. As 
 he told his guardians, who, by his unrelenting good 
 conduct had been led into dreaming some great career 
 for him; as he told them, when they asked what he 
 wanted to become: 
 
 " Nothing. Just all around. You see, I don t 
 have to be a specialist. My father arranged that for 
 me when he left me his money. Besides, I couldn t 
 be X specialist if I wanted to. It isn t me." 
 /And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed 
 ^clearly his key. He had no flare for anything. He 
 /was that rare individual, normal, average, balanced, 
 all-around. 
 
 When Mr. Davidson, in the presence of his fellow 
 guardians, stated his pleasure in that Dick had shown 
 no wildness since he had settled down, Dick replied : 
 
 " Oh, I can hold myself when I want to." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Slocum gravely. " It s the finest 
 thing in the world that you sowed your wild oats 
 early and learned control." 
 
 Dick looked at him curiously. 
 
 " Why, that boyish adventure doesn t count," he 
 said. " That wasn t wildness. I haven t gone wild 
 yet. But watch me when I start. Do you know 
 Kipling s * Song of Diego Valdez ? Let me quote 
 you a bit of it. You see, Diego Valdez, like me, 
 had good fortune. He rose so fast to be High Ad 
 miral of Spain that he found no time to take the 
 pleasure he had merely tasted. He was lusty and 
 husky, but he had no time, being too busy rising. 
 But always, he thought, he fooled himself with the 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 71 
 
 thought, that his lustiness and huskiness would last, 
 and, after he became High Admiral he could then 
 have his pleasure. Always he remembered: 
 
 " comrades 
 
 Old playmates on new seas 
 When as we traded orpiment 
 
 Among the savages 
 A thousand leagues to south ard 
 And thirty years removed 
 They knew not noble Valdez, 
 But me they knew and loved. 
 
 " Then they that found good liquor 
 
 They drank it not alone, 
 And they that found fair plunder, 
 
 They told us every one, 
 Behind our chosen islands 
 
 Or secret shoals between, 
 When, walty from far voyage, 
 
 We gathered to careen. 
 
 * There burned our breaming-fagots, 
 
 All pale along the shore: 
 There rose our worn pavilions 
 
 A sail above an oar: 
 As flashed each yearning anchor 
 
 Through mellow seas afire, 
 So swift our careless captains 
 
 Rowed each to his desire. 
 
 " Where lay our loosened harness? 
 
 Where turned our naked feet? 
 Whose tavern mid the palm-trees? 
 
 What quenchings of what heat? 
 Oh fountain in the desert! 
 
 Oh cistern in the waste! 
 Oh bread we ate in secret ! 
 
 Oh cup we spilled in haste ! 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 c The youth new-taught of longing, 
 
 The widow curbed and wan 
 The goodwife proud at season, 
 
 And the maid aware of man; 
 All souls, unslaked, consuming, 
 
 Defrauded in delays, 
 Desire not more than quittance 
 
 Than I those forfeit days! 
 
 " Oh, get him, get him, you three oldsters, as IVe 
 got him! Get what he says next: 
 
 : I dreamed to wait my pleasure, 
 
 Unchanged my spring would bide : 
 Wherefore, to wait my pleasure, 
 
 I put my spring aside, 
 Till, first in face of Fortune, 
 
 And last in mazed disdain, 
 I made Diego Valdez 
 
 High Admiral of Spain ! 
 
 "Listen to me, guardians!" Dick cried on, his 
 face a flame of passion. " Don t forget for one 
 moment that I am anything but unslaked, consuming. 
 I am. I burn. But I hold myself. Don t think 
 I am a dead one because I am a darn nice, meritori 
 ous boy at college. I am young. I am alive. I 
 am all lusty and husky. But I make no mistake. 
 I hold myself. I don t start out now to blow up on 
 the first lap. I am just getting ready. I am going 
 to have my time. I am not going to spill my cup in 
 haste. ^Vnd in the end I am not going to lament as 
 Diego Valdez did: 
 
 There walks no wind neath heaven 
 
 Nor wave that shall restore 
 The old careening riot 
 
 And the clamorous, crowded shore 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 73 
 
 The fountain in the desert, 
 
 The cistern in the waste, 
 The bread we ate in secret, 
 
 The cup we spilled in haste. 
 
 " Listen, guardians ! Do you know what it is to 
 hit your man, to hit him in hot blood square to the 
 jaw and drop him cold? I want that. And I 
 want to love, and kiss, and risk, and play the lusty, 
 husky fool. I want to take my chance. I want my 
 careening riot, and I want it while I am young, but 
 not while I am too young. And I m going to have 
 it. And in the meantime I play the game at college, 
 I hold myself, I equip myself, so that when I turn 
 loose I am going to have the best chance of my best. 
 Oh, believe me, I do not always sleep well of nights." 
 
 " You mean? " queried Mr. Crockett. 
 
 " Sure. That s just what I mean. I haven t 
 gone wild yet, but just watch me when I start." 
 
 " And you will start when you graduate? " 
 
 The remarkable youngster shook his head. 
 
 " After I graduate I m going to take at least a 
 year of post-graduate courses in the College of Ag 
 riculture. You see, I m developing a hobby farm 
 ing. I want to do something . . . something con 
 structive. My father wasn t constructive to amount 
 to anything. Neither were you fellows. You struck 
 a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money 
 like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from the 
 grass roots in a virgin placer - 
 
 " My lad, I ve some little experience in Cali- 
 fornian farming," Mr. Crockett interrupted in a hurt 
 way. 
 
 " Sure you have, but you weren t constructive. 
 
74 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 You were well, facts are facts you were de 
 structive. You were a bonanza farmer. What did 
 you do ? You took forty thousand acres of the finest 
 Sacramento Valley soil and you grew wheat on it 
 year after year. You never dreamed of rotation. 
 You burned your straw. You exhausted your hu 
 mus. You plowed four inches and put a plow-sole 
 like a cement sidewalk just four inches under the 
 surface. You exhausted that film of four inches and 
 now you can t get your seed back. 
 
 4 You ve destroyed. That s what my father did. 
 They all did it. Well, Fm going to take my father s 
 money and construct. I m going to take worked-out 
 wheat-land that I can buy as at a fire-sale, rip out the 
 plow-sole, and make it produce more in the end than 
 it did when you fellows first farmed it." 
 
 It was at the end of his Junior year that Mr. 
 Crockett again mentioned Dick s threatened period 
 of wildness. 
 
 " Soon as I m done with cow college," was his 
 answer. " Then I m going to buy, and stock, and 
 start a ranch that ll be a ranch. And then I ll set out 
 after my careening riot." 
 
 " About how large a ranch will you start with? " 
 Mr. Davidson asked. 
 
 " Maybe fifty thousand acres, maybe five hundred 
 thousand. It all depends. I m going to play un 
 earned increment to the limit. People haven t be 
 gun to come to California yet. Without a tap of my 
 hand or a turn over, fifteen years from now land that 
 I can buy for ten dollars an acre will be worth fifty, 
 and what I can buy for fifty will be worth five hun 
 dred." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 75 
 
 " A half million acres at ten dollars an acre means 
 five million dollars," Mr. Crockett warned gravely. 
 
 " And at fifty it means twenty-five million," Dick 
 laughed. 
 
 But his guardians never believed in the wild oats 
 pilgrimage he threatened. He might waste his for 
 tune on new-fangled farming, but to go literally wild 
 after such years of self-restraint was an unthinkable 
 thing. 
 
 Dick took his sheepskin with small honor. He 
 was twenty-eighth in his class, and he had not set the 
 college world afire. His most notable achievement 
 had been his resistance and bafflement of many nice 
 girls and of the mothers of many nice girls. Next, 
 after that, he had signalized his Senior year by cap 
 taining the Varsity to its first victory over Stanford 
 in five years. It was in the day prior to large- 
 salaried football coaches, when individual play meant 
 much; but he hammered team-work and the sacrifice 
 of the individual into his team, so that on Thanksgiv 
 ing Day, over a vastly more brilliant eleven, the 
 Blue and Gold was able to serpentine its triumph 
 down Market Street in San Francisco. 
 
 In his post-graduate year in cow college, Dick de 
 voted himself to laboratory work and cut all lectures. 
 In fact, he hired his own lecturers, and spent a siz 
 able fortune on them in mere traveling expenses over 
 California. Jacques Ribot, esteemed one of the 
 greatest world authorities on agricultural chemistry, 
 who had been seduced from his two thousand a year 
 in France by the six thousand offered by the Uni 
 versity of California, who had been seduced to Ha 
 waii by the ten thousand of the sugar planters, Dick 
 
76 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Forrest seduced with fifteen thousand and the more 
 delectable temperate climate of California on a five 
 years contract. 
 
 Messrs. Crockett, Slocum, and Davidson threw up 
 their hands in horror and knew that this was the 
 wild career Dick Forrest had forecast. 
 
 But this was only one of Dick Forrest s similar dis 
 sipations. He stole from the Federal Government, 
 at a prodigal increase of salary, its star specialist 
 in livestock breeding, and by similar misconduct he 
 robbed the University of Nebraska of its greatest 
 milch cow professor, and broke the heart of the Dean 
 of the College of Agriculture of the University of 
 California by appropriating Professor Nirdenham- 
 mer, the wizard of farm management. 
 
 " Cheap at the price, cheap at the price," Dick 
 
 explained to his guardians. " Wouldn t you rather 
 
 see me spend my money in buying professors than in 
 
 buying race horses and actresses? Besides, the 
 
 trouble with you fellows is that you don t know the 
 
 game of buying brains. I do. That s my specialty. 
 
 ^-Pnr going to make money out of them, and, better 
 
 than that, I m going to make a dozen blades of grass 
 
 \ grow where you fellows didn t leave room for half 
 
 2 blade in the soil you gutted." 
 
 So it can be understood how his guardians could 
 not believe in his promise of wild career, of kissing 
 and risking, and hitting men hot on the jaw. 
 
 u One year more," he warned, while he delved in 
 agricultural chemistry, soil analysis, farm manage 
 ment, and traveled California with his corps of high- 
 salaried experts. And his guardians could only ap 
 prehend a swift and wide dispersal of the Forrest 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 77 
 
 millions when Dick attained his majority, took charge 
 of the totality of his fortune, and actually embarked 
 on his agricultural folly. 
 
 The day he was twenty-one the purchase of his 
 principality, that extended west from the Sacramento 
 River to the mountain tops, was consummated. 
 
 " An incredible price," said Mr. Crockett. 
 
 " Incredibly cheap," said Dick. " You ought to 
 see my soil reports. You ought to see my water-re 
 ports. And you ought to hear me sing. Listen, 
 guardians, to a song that is a true song. I am the 
 singer and the song." 
 
 Whereupon, in the queer quavering falsetto that is 
 the sense of song to the North American Indian, the 
 Eskimo, and the Mongol, Dick sang: 
 
 " Hu -tim yo -kim koi-o-di ! 
 Wi -hi yan -ning koi-o-di ! 
 Lo -whi yan -ning koi-o-di ! 
 Yo-ho Nai-ni , hal-u -dom yo nai, yo-ho nai- 
 nim !" 
 
 " The music is my own," he murmured apologeti 
 cally, " the way I think it ought to have sounded. 
 You see, no man lives who ever heard it sung. The 
 Nishinam got it from the Maidu, who got it from the 
 Konkau, who made it. But the Nishinam and the 
 Maidu and the Konkau are gone. Their last ranch- 
 eria is not. You plowed it under, Mr. Crockett, 
 with you bonanza gang-plowing, plow-soling farm 
 ing. And I got the song from a certain ethnological 
 report, volume three, of the United States Pacific 
 Coast Geographical and Geological Survey. Red 
 Cloud, who was formed out of the sky, first sang this 
 
78 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 song to the stars and the mountain flowers in the 
 morning of the world. I shall now sing it for you 
 in English." 
 
 And again, in Indian falsetto, ringing with tri 
 umph, vernal and bursting, slapping his thighs and 
 stamping his feet to the accent, Dick sang : 
 
 " The acorns come down from heaven ! 
 I plant the short acorns in the valley ! 
 I plant the long acorns in the valley ! 
 I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout! " 
 
 Dick Forrest s name began to appear in the news 
 papers with appalling frequency. He leaped to in 
 stant fame by being the first man in California who 
 paid ten thousand dollars for a single bull. His 
 livestock specialist, whom he had filched from the 
 Federal Government, in England outbid the Roths 
 childs Shire farm for Hillcrest Chieftain, quickly 
 to be known as Forrest s Folly, paying for that 
 kingly animal no less than five thousand guineas. 
 
 " Let them laugh," Dick told his ex-guardians. 
 " I am importing forty Shire mares. I ll write off 
 half his price the first twelvemonth. He will be the 
 sire and grandsire of many sons and grandsons for 
 which the Californians will fall over themselves to 
 buy of me at from three to five thousand dollars a 
 clatter." 
 
 Dick Forrest was guilty of many similar follies in 
 those first months of his majority. But the most 
 unthinkable folly of all was, after he had sunk mil 
 lions into his original folly, that he turned it over to 
 his experts personally to develop along the general 
 broad lines laid down by him, placed checks upon 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 79 
 
 them that they might not go catastrophically wrong, 
 bought a ticket in a passenger brig to Tahiti, and 
 went away to run wild. 
 
 Occasionally his guardians heard from him. At 
 one time he was owner and master of a four-masted 
 steel sailing ship that carried the English flag and 
 coals from Newcastle. They knew that much, be 
 cause they had been called upon for the purchase 
 price, because they read Dick s name in the papers 
 as master when his ship rescued the passengers of 
 the ill-fated Orion, and because they collected the in 
 surance when Dick s ship was lost with most of all 
 hands in the great Fiji hurricane. In 1896, he was 
 in the Klondike; in 1897, he was in Kamchatka and 
 scurvy-stricken ; and, next, he erupted with the Ameri 
 can flag into the Philippines. Once, although they 
 could never learn how nor why, he was owner and 
 master of a crazy tramp steamer, long since rejected 
 by Lloyd s, which sailed under the aegis of Siam. 
 
 From time to time business correspondence com 
 pelled them to hear from him from various purple 
 ports of the purple seas. Once, they had to bring 
 the entire political pressure of the Pacific Coast to 
 bear upon Washington in order to get him out of a 
 scrape in Russia, of which affair not one line appeared 
 in the daily press, but which affair was secretly pro 
 vocative of ticklish joy and delight in all the chancel 
 lories of Europe. 
 
 Incidentally, they knew that he lay wounded in 
 Maf eking; that he pulled through a bout with yellow 
 fever in Guayaquil; and that he stood trial for bru 
 tality on the high seas in New York City. Thrice 
 they read in the press dispatches that he was dead: 
 
8o THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 once, in battle, in Mexico; and twice, executed, in 
 Venezuela. After such false flutterings, his guard 
 ians refused longer to be thrilled when he crossed 
 the Yellow Sea in a sampan, was " rumored " to have 
 died of beri-beri, was captured from the Russians by 
 the Japanese at Mukden, and endured military im 
 prisonment in Japan. 
 
 The one thrill of which they were still capable, 
 was when, true to promise, thirty years of age, his 
 wild oats sown, he returned to California with a wife 
 to whom, as he announced, he had been married sev 
 eral years, and whom all his three guardians found 
 they knew. Mr. Slocum had dropped eight hundred 
 thousand along with the totality of her father s for 
 tune in the final catastrophe at the Los Cocos mine in 
 Chihuahua when the United States demonetized sil 
 ver. Mr. Davidson had pulled a million out of the 
 Last Stake along with her father when he pulled eight 
 millions from that sunken, man-resurrected, river 
 bed in Amador County. Mr. Crockett, a youth at 
 the time, had " spooned " the Merced bottom with 
 her father in the late fifties, had stood up best man 
 with him at Stockton when he married her mother, 
 and, at Grant s Pass, had played poker with him and 
 with the then Lieutenant U. S. Grant when all the 
 little the western world knew of that young lieuten 
 ant was that he was a good Indian fighter but a poor 
 poker player. 
 
 And Dick Forrest had married the daughter of 
 Philip Desten! It was not a case of wishing Dick 
 luck. It was a case of garrulous insistence on the 
 fact that he did not know how lucky he was. His 
 guardians forgave him all his wildness. He had 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 81 
 
 made good. At last he had performed a purely ra 
 tional act. Better; it was a stroke of genius. Paula 
 Desten! Philip Desten s daughter! The Desten 
 blood! The Destens and the Forrests! It was 
 enough. The three aged comrades of Forrest and 
 Desten of the old Gold Days, of the two who had 
 played and passed on, were even severe with Dick. 
 They warned him of the extreme value of his treas 
 ure, of the sacred duty such wedlock imposed on him, 
 of all the traditions and virtues of the Desten and 
 Forrest blood, until Dick laughed and broke in with 
 the disconcerting statement that they were talking 
 like a bunch of fanciers or eugenics cranks which 
 was precisely what they were talking like, although 
 they did not care to be told so crassly. 
 
 At any rate, the simple fact that he had married 
 a Desten made them nod unqualified approbation 
 when he showed them the plans and building esti 
 mates of the Big House. Thanks to Paula Desten, 
 for once they were agreed that he was spending 
 wisely and well. As for his farming, it was incon- 
 testible that the Harvest Group was unfalteringly 
 producing, and he might be allowed his hobbies. 
 Nevertheless, as Mr. Slocum put it: " Twenty-five 
 thousand dollars for a mere work-horse stallion is a 
 madness. Work-horses are work-horses; now had 
 it been running stock. . . ." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 WHILE Dick Forrest scanned the pamphlet 
 on hog cholera issued by the State of Iowa, 
 through his open windows, across the wide 
 court, began to come sounds of the awakening of the 
 girl who laughed from the wooden frame by his 
 bed and who had left on the floor of his sleeping 
 porch, not so many hours before, the rosy, filmy, 
 lacy, boudoir cap so circumspectly rescued by Oh My. 
 
 Dick heard her voice, for she awoke, like a bird, 
 with song. He heard her trilling, in and out through 
 open windows, all down the long wing that was hers. 
 And he heard her singing in the patio garden, where, 
 also, she desisted long enough to quarrel with her 
 Airedale and scold the collie pup unholily attracted 
 by the red-orange, divers-finned, and many-tailed 
 Japanese goldfish in the fountain basin. 
 
 He was aware of pleasure that she was awake. 
 It was a pleasure that never staled. Always, up 
 himself for hours, he had a sense that the Big House 
 was not really awake until he heard Paula s morning 
 song across the patio. 
 
 But having tasted the pleasure of knowing her to 
 be awake, Dick, as usual, forgot her in his own af 
 fairs. She went out of his consciousness as he be 
 came absorbed again in the Iowa statistics on hog 
 cholera. 
 
 82 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 83 
 
 " Good morning, Merry Gentleman/* was the next 
 he heard, always adorable music in his ears; and 
 Paula flowed in upon him, all softness of morning 
 kimono and stayless body, as her arm passed around 
 his neck and she perched, half in his arms, on one 
 accommodating knee of his. And he pressed her, 
 and advertised his awareness of her existence and 
 nearness, although his eyes lingered a full half min 
 ute longer on the totals of results of Professor 
 Kenealy s hog inoculations on Simon Jones farm at 
 Washington, Iowa. 
 
 " My! " she protested. "You are too fortunate. 
 You are sated with riches. Here is your Lady Boy, 
 your c little haughty moon, and you haven t even 
 said, * Good morning, Little Lady Boy, was your 
 sleep sweet and gentle ? 
 
 And Dick Forrest forsook the statistical columns 
 of Professor Kenealy s inoculations, pressed his wife 
 closer, kissed her, but with insistent right fore-finger 
 maintained his place in the pages of the pamphlet. 
 
 Nevertheless, the very terms of her reproof pre 
 vented him from asking what he should have asked 
 the prosperity of her night since the boudoir cap 
 had been left upon his sleeping porch. He shut the 
 pamphlet on his right fore-finger, at the place he in 
 tended to resume, and added his right arm to his left 
 about her. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried. " Oh ! Oh ! Listen ! " 
 
 From without came the flute-calls of quail. She 
 quivered against him with the joy she took in the 
 mellow-sweet notes. 
 
 * The coveys are breaking up," he said. 
 
 " It means spring," Paula cried. 
 
84 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " And the sign that good weather has come." 
 
 "And love!" 
 
 " And nest-building and egg-laying," Dick laughed. 
 " Never has the world seemed more fecund than this 
 morning. Lady Isleton is farrowed of eleven. The 
 angoras were brought down this morning for the 
 kidding. You should have seen them. And the 
 wild canaries have been discussing matrimony in the 
 patio for hours. I think some free lover is trying 
 to break up their monogamic heaven with modern 
 love-theories. It s a wonder you slept through the 
 discussion. Listen! There they go now. Is that 
 applause ? Or is it a riot? " 
 
 Arose a thin twittering, like elfin pipings, with 
 sharp pitches and excited shrillnesses, to which Dick 
 and Paula lent delighted ears, till, suddenly, with 
 the abruptness of the trump of doom, all the micro- 
 phonic chorus of the tiny golden lovers was swept 
 away, obliterated, in a Gargantuan blast of sound 
 no less wild, no less musical, no less passionate with 
 love, but immense, dominant, compelling by very 
 vastitude of volume. 
 
 The eager eyes of the man and woman sought in 
 stantly the channel past open French windows and 
 the screen of the sleeping porch to the road through 
 the lilacs, while they waited breathlessly for the 
 great stallion to appear who trumpeted his love-call 
 before him. Again, unseen, he trumpeted, and Dick 
 said: 
 
 " I will sing you a song, my haughty moon. It 
 is not my song. It is the Mountain Lad s. It is 
 what he nickers. Listen ! He sings it again. This 
 is what he says: Hear me ! I am Eros. I stamp 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 85 
 
 upon the hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares 
 hear me, and startle, in quiet pastures ; for they know 
 me. The grass grows rich and richer, the land is 
 filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. It is 
 the spring. The spring is mine. I am monarch of 
 my kingdom of the spring. The mares remember my 
 voice. They know me aforetime through their moth 
 ers before them. Hear me ! I am Eros. I stamp 
 upon the hills, and the wide valleys are my heralds, 
 echoing the sound of my approach. 
 
 And Paula pressed closer to her husband, and was 
 pressed, as her lips touched his forehead, and as 
 the pair of them, gazing at the empty road among 
 the lilacs, saw it filled with the eruptive vision of 
 Mountain Lad, majestic and mighty, the gnat-crea 
 ture of a man upon his back absurdly small; his eyes 
 wild and desirous, with the blue sheen that surfaces 
 the eyes of stallions; his mouth, flecked with the 
 froth and fret of high spirit, now brushed to bur 
 nished knees of impatience, now tossed skyward to 
 utterance of that vast, compelling call that shook the 
 air. 
 
 Almost as an echo, from afar off, came a thin- 
 sweet answering whinney. 
 
 " It is the Fotherington Princess," Paula breathed 
 softly. 
 
 Again Mountain Lad trumpeted his call, and Dick 
 chanted : 
 
 " Hear me ! I am Eros ! I stamp upon the 
 hills!" 
 
 And almost, for a flash of an instant, circled soft 
 and close in his arms, Paula knew resentment of her 
 husband s admiration for the splendid beast. And 
 
86 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 the next instant resentment vanished, and, in acknowl 
 edgment of due debt, she cried gaily : 
 
 " And now, Red Cloud! the Song of the Acorn! " 
 Dick glanced half absently to her from the pam 
 phlet folded on his finger, and then, with equal pitch 
 of gaiety, sang: 
 
 The acorns come down from heaven ! 
 I plant the short acorns in the valley ! 
 I plant the long acorns in the valley! 
 I sprout, I, the black-oak acorn, sprout, I sprout! " 
 
 She had impressed herself very close against him 
 during his moment of chanting, but, in the first mo 
 ments that succeeded she felt the restless movement 
 of the hand that held the finger-marked hog-pam 
 phlet and caught the swift -though involuntary flash 
 of his eye to the clock on his desk that marked 1 1 125. 
 Again she tried to hold him, although, with equal 
 involuntariness, her attempt was made in mild terms 
 of resentment. 
 
 You are a strange and wonderful Red Cloud," 
 she said slowly. " Sometimes almost am I con 
 vinced that you are utterly Red Cloud, planting your 
 acorns and singing your savage joy of the planting. 
 And, sometimes, almost you are to me the ultra 
 modern man, the last word of the two-legged, male 
 human that finds Trojan adventures in sieges of sta 
 tistics, and, armed with test tubes and hypodermics, 
 engages in gladiatorial contests with weird micro 
 organisms. Almost, at times, it seems you should 
 wear glasses and be bald-headed; almost, it 
 seems. . . ." 
 
 " That I have no right of vigor to possess an arm- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 87 
 
 ful of girl," he completed for her, drawing her still 
 closer. " That I am a silly scientific brute who 
 doesn t merit his vain little breath of sweet rose- 
 colored dust. Well, listen, I have a plan. In a 
 few days. ..." 
 
 But his plan died in birth, for, at their backs, came 
 a discreet cough of warning, and, both heads turn 
 ing as one, they saw Bonbright, the assistant secre 
 tary, with a sheaf of notes on yellow sheets in his 
 hand. 
 
 " Four telegrams," he murmured apologetically. 
 " Mr. Blake is confident that tw r o of them are very 
 important. One of them concerns that Chile ship 
 ment of bulls. . . ." 
 
 And Paula, slowly drawing away from her hus 
 band and rising to her feet, could feel him slipping 
 from her toward his tables of statistics, bills of 
 lading, and secretaries, foremen, and managers. 
 
 " Oh, Paula," Dick called, as she was fading 
 through the doorway; " I ve christened the last boy 
 he s to be known as * Oh Ho. How do you like 
 it?" 
 
 Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that 
 vanished with her smile, as she warned: 
 
 " You will play ducks and drakes with the house- 
 boys names." 
 
 " I never do it with pedigreed stock," he assured 
 her with a solemnity belied by the challenging twin 
 kle in his eyes. 
 
 " I didn t mean that," was her retort " I meant 
 that you were exhausting the possibilities of the 
 language. Before long you ll have to be calling 
 them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 
 
88 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 1 Oh was a mistake. You should have started with 
 Red. Then you could have had Red Bull, Red 
 Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern and, and 
 all the rest of the reds." 
 
 She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, 
 and, the next moment, the telegram before him, he 
 was immersed in the details of the shipment, at two 
 hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three 
 hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges 
 of Chile. Even so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, 
 he heard Paula sing her way back across the patio 
 to her long wing of house; though he was unaware 
 that her voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, sub 
 dued. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FIVE minutes after Paula had left him, punctual 
 to the second, the four telegrams disposed of, 
 Dick was getting into a ranch motor car, along 
 with Thayer, the Idaho buyer, and Naismith, the 
 special correspondent for the Breeders Gazette. 
 Wardman, the sheep manager, joined them at the 
 corrals where several thousand young Shropshire 
 rams had been assembled for inspection. 
 
 There was little need for conversation. Thayer 
 was distinctly disappointed in this, for he felt that 
 the purchase of ten carloads of such expensive crea 
 tures was momentous enough to merit much conver 
 sation. 
 
 " They speak for themselves," Dick had assured 
 him, and turned aside to give data to Naismith for 
 his impending article on Shropshires in California 
 and the Northwest. 
 
 " I wouldn t advise you to bother to select them," 
 Dick told Thayer ten minutes later. " The average 
 is all top. You could spend a week picking your 
 ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you 
 had taken the first to hand." 
 
 This cool assumption that the sale was already 
 consummated so perturbed Thayer, that, along with 
 the sure knowledge that he had never seen so high 
 a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his 
 order to twenty carloads. 
 
 As he told Naismith, after they had regained the 
 
 89 
 
90 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Big House and as they chalked their cues to finish 
 the interrupted game: 
 
 " It s my first visit to Forrest s. He s a wizard. 
 I ve been buying in the East and importing. But 
 those Shropshires won my judgment. You noticed 
 I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be 
 wild for them. I only had buying orders straight 
 for six carloads, and contingent on my judgment for 
 two carloads more ; but if every buyer doesn t double 
 his order, straight and contingent, when he sees them 
 rams, and if there isn t a stampede for what s left, 
 I don t know sheep. They re the goods. If they 
 don t jump up the sheep game of Idaho . . . well, 
 then Forrest s no breeder and I m no buyer, that s 
 all." 
 
 As the warning gong for lunch rang out a huge 
 bronze gong from Korea that was never struck until 
 it was first indubitably ascertained that Paula was 
 awake Dick joined the young people at the gold 
 fish fountain in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, 
 variously advised and commanded by his sister, Rita, 
 and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and Ernestine, 
 was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly 
 gorgeous flower of a fish whose size and color and 
 multiplicity of fins and tails had led Paula to decide 
 to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the 
 fountain of her own secret patio. 
 
 Amid high excitement, and much squealing and 
 laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish 
 deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting 
 Italian gardener. 
 
 " And what have you to say for yourself? " Ernes 
 tine challenged, as Dick joined them. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 91 
 
 " Nothing," he answered sadly. " The ranch is 
 depleted. Three hundred beautiful young bulls de 
 part to-morrow for South America, and Thayer 
 you met him last night is taking twenty carloads 
 of rams. All I can say is that my congratulations 
 are extended to Idaho and Chile." 
 
 " Plant more acorns," Paula laughed, her arms 
 about her sisters, the three of them smilingly expec 
 tant of an inevitable antic. 
 
 " Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song," Lute begged. 
 
 He shook his head solemnly. 
 
 " I ve got a better one. It s purest orthodoxy. 
 It s got Red Cloud and his acorn song skinned to 
 death. Listen ! This is the song of the little East- 
 sider, on her first trip to the country under the au 
 spices of her Sunday School. She s quite young. 
 Pay particular attention to her lisp." 
 
 And then Dick chanted, lisping: 
 
 " The goldfish thwimmeth in the bowl, 
 The robin thiths upon the tree ; 
 What maketh them thit so eathily? 
 Who stuckth the fur upon their breasths? 
 God! God! He done it!" 
 
 " Cribbed," was Ernestine s judgment, as the 
 laughter died away. 
 
 " Sure," Dick agreed. " I got it from the 
 Rancher and Stockman, that got it from the Swine 
 Breeders 9 Journal, that got it from the Western Ad 
 vocate, that got it from Public Opinion, that got it, 
 undoubtedly, from the little girl herself, or, rather 
 from her Sunday School teacher. For that matter 
 I am convinced it was first printed in Our Dumb 
 Animals" 
 
92 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 The bronze gong rang out its second call, and 
 Paula, one arm around Dick, the other around Rita, 
 led the way into the house, while, bringing up the 
 rear, Bert Wainwright showed Lute Ernestine a new 
 tango step. 
 
 " One thing, Thayer," Dick said in an aside, after 
 releasing himself from the girls, as they jostled in 
 confusion where they met Thayer and Naismith at 
 the head of the stairway leading down to the dining 
 room. " Before you leave us, cast your eyes over 
 those Merinos. I really have to brag about them, 
 and American sheepmen will have to come to them. 
 Of course, started with imported stock, but I ve made 
 a California strain that will make the French breeders 
 sit up. See Wardman and take your pick. Get 
 Naismith to look them over with you. Stick half 
 a dozen of them in your train-load, with my compli 
 ments, and let your Idaho sheepmen get a line on 
 them." 
 
 They seated at a table, capable of indefinite ex 
 tension, in a long, low dining room that was a replica 
 of the hacienda dining rooms of the Mexican land- 
 kings of old California. The floor was of large 
 brown tiles, the beamed ceiling and the walls were 
 whitewashed, and the huge, undecorated, cement fire- 
 plare was an achievement in massiveness and sim 
 plicity. Greenery and blooms nodded from without 
 the deep-embrasured windows, and the room ex 
 pressed the sense of cleanness, chastity, and coolness. 
 
 On the walls, but not crowded, were a number of 
 canvases most ambitious of all, in the setting of 
 honor, all in sad grays, a twilight Mexican scene by 
 Xavier Martinez, of a peon, with a crooked-stick 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 93 
 
 plow and two bullocks, turning a melancholy furrow 
 across the foreground of a sad, illimitable, Mexican 
 plain. There were brighter pictures, of early Mexi- 
 can-Californian life, a pastel of twilight eucalyptus 
 with a sunset-tipped mountain beyond, by Reimers, 
 a moonlight by Peters, and a Griffin stubble-field 
 across which gleamed and smoldered California 
 summer hills of tawny brown and purple-misted, 
 wooded canyons. 
 
 " Say," Thayer muttered in an undertone across to 
 Naismith, while Dick and the girls were in the thick 
 of exclamatory and giggling banter, " here s some 
 stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the 
 Big House. I ve seen the servants dining room. 
 Forty head sit down to it every meal, including gar 
 deners, chauffeurs, and outside help. It s a boarding 
 house in itself. Some head, some system, take it 
 from me. That Chiney boy, Oh Joy, is a wooz. 
 He s housekeeper, or manager, of the whole she 
 bang, or whatever you want to call his job and, 
 
 say, it runs that smooth you can t hear it." 
 
 " Forrest s the real wooz," Naismith nodded. 
 " He s the brains that picks brains. He could run 
 an army, a campaign, a government, or even a three- 
 ring circus." 
 
 " Which last is some compliment," Thayer con 
 curred heartily. 
 
 " Oh, Paula," Dick said across to his wife. " I 
 just got word that Graham arrives to-morrow morn 
 ing. Better tell Oh Joy to put him in the watch- 
 tower. It s man-size quarters, and it s possible he 
 may carry out his threat and work on his book." 
 
94 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 "Graham? Graham?" Paula queried aloud 
 of her memory. " Do I know him? " 
 
 1 You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, 
 at the Cafe Venus. He had dinner with us." 
 
 " Oh, one of those naval officers? " 
 
 Dick shook his head. 
 
 " The civilian. Don t you remember that big 
 blond fellow you talked music with him for half 
 an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads off 
 to prove that the United States should clean Mexico 
 up and out with the mailed fist." 
 
 " Oh, to be sure," Paula vaguely recollected. 
 " He d met you somewhere before . . . South 
 Africa, wasn t it? Or the Philippines? " 
 
 1 That s the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan 
 Graham. Next time we met was on the Times dis 
 patch boat on the Yellow Sea. And we crossed trails 
 a dozen times after that, without meeting, until that 
 night in the Cafe Venus. 
 
 "Heavens he left Bora-Bora, going east, two 
 days before I dropped anchor bound west on my way 
 to Samoa. I came out of Apia, with letters for him 
 from the American consul, the day before he came in. 
 We missed each other by three days at Levuka I 
 was sailing the Wild Duck then. He pulled out of 
 Suva as guest on a British cruiser. Sir Everard Im 
 Thurm, British High Commissioner of the South 
 Seas, gave me more letters for Graham. I missed 
 him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the New 
 Hebrides. The cruiser was junketing, you see. I 
 beat her in and out of the Santa Cruz Group. It 
 was the same thing in the Solomons. The cruiser, 
 after shelling the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 95 
 
 steamed out in the morning. I sailed in that after 
 noon. I never did deliver those letters in person, 
 and the next time I laid eyes on him was at the Cafe 
 Venus two years ago. * 
 
 " But who about him, and what about him?" 
 Paula queried. "And what s the book?" 
 
 " Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he s broke 
 that is, for him, he s broke. He s got an income 
 of several thousand a year left, but all that his fa 
 ther left him is gone. No; he didn t blow it. He 
 got in deep, and the silent panic several years ago 
 just about cleaned him. But he doesn t whimper. 
 
 " He s good stuff, old American stock, a Yale man. 
 The book he expects to make a bit on it covers 
 last year s trip across South America, west coast to 
 east coast. It was largely new ground. The Bra 
 zilian government voluntarily voted him a honora 
 rium of ten thousand dollars for the information he 
 brought out concerning unexplored portions of Brazil. 
 Oh, he s a man, all man. He delivers the goods. 
 You know the type clean, big, strong, simple ; been 
 everywhere, seen everything, knows most of a lot of 
 things, straight, square, looks you in the eyes well, 
 in short, a man s man." 
 
 Ernestine clapped her hands, flung a tantalizing, 
 man-challenging, man-conquering glance at Bert 
 Wainwright, and exclaimed: " And he comes to 
 morrow! " 
 
 Dick shook his head reprovingly. 
 
 " Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine. Just 
 as nice girls as you have tried to hook Evan Graham 
 before now. And, between ourselves, I couldn t 
 blame them. But he s had good wind and fast legs, 
 
96 THE LITTLE LADY * 
 
 and they ve always failed to run him down or get 
 him into a corner, where, dazed and breathless, he s 
 mechanically muttered Yes to certain interrogato 
 ries and come out of the trance to find himself, roped, 
 thrown, branded, and married. Forget him, Ernes 
 tine. Stick by golden youth and let it drop its golden 
 apples. Pick them up, and golden youth with them, 
 making a noise like stupid failure all the time you 
 are snaring swift-legged youth. But Graham s out 
 of the running. He s old like me just about the 
 same age and, like me, he s run a lot of those 
 queer races. He knows how to make a get-away. 
 He s been cut by barbed wire, nose-twitched, neck- 
 burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, and he remains sub 
 dued but uncatchable. He doesn t care for young 
 things. In fact, you may charge him with being 
 wobbly, but I plead guilty, by proxy, that he is merely 
 old, hard bitten, and very wise." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 "TT THERE S my Boy in Breeches? " Dick 
 
 V/V/ shouted, stamping with jingling spurs 
 through the Big House in quest of its 
 Little Lady. 
 
 He came to the door that gave entrance to her 
 long wing. It was a door without a knob, a huge 
 panel of wood in a wood-paneled wall. But Dick 
 shared the secret of the hidden spring with his wife, 
 pressed the spring, and the door swung wide. 
 
 "Where s my Boy in Breeches?" he called and 
 stamped down the length of her quarters. 
 
 A glance into the bathroom, with its sunken Roman 
 bath and descending marble steps, was fruitless, as 
 were the glances he sent into Paula s wardrobe room 
 and dressing room. He passed the short, broad 
 stairway that led to her empty window-seat divan in 
 what she called her Juliet Tower, and thrilled at 
 sight of an orderly disarray of filmy, pretty, lacy 
 woman s things that he knew she had spread out 
 for her own sensuous delight of contemplation. He 
 fetched up for a moment at a drawing easel, his re- 
 iterant cry checked on his lips, and threw a laugh 
 of recognition and appreciation at the sketch, just 
 outlined, of an awkward, big-boned, knobby, wean 
 ling colt caught in the act of madly whinneying for 
 its mother. 
 
 97 
 
98 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Where s my Boy in Breeches? " he shouted be 
 fore him, out to the sleeping porch; and found only 
 a demure, brow-troubled Chinese woman of thirty, 
 who smiled self-effacing embarrassment into his eyes. 
 
 This was Paula s maid, Oh Dear, so named by 
 Dick, many years before, because of a certain so 
 licitous contraction of her delicate brows that made 
 her appear as if ever on the verge of saying, " Oh 
 dear! " In fact, Dick had taken her, as a child 
 almost, for Paula s service, from a fishing village on 
 the Yellow Sea where her widow-mother earned as 
 much as four dollars in a prosperous year at making 
 nets for the fishermen. Oh Dear s first service for 
 Paula had been aboard the three-topmast schooner, 
 All Away, at the same time that Oh Joy, cabin-boy, 
 had begun to demonstrate the efficiency that enabled 
 him, through the years, to rise to the majordomoship 
 of the Big House. 
 
 " Where is your mistress, Oh Dear? " Dick asked. 
 
 Oh Dear shrank away in an agony of bashfulness. 
 
 Dick waited. 
 
 " She maybe with m young ladies I don t 
 know," Oh Dear stammered; and Dick, in very 
 mercy, swung away on his heel. 
 
 "Where s my Boy in Breeches?" he shouted, as 
 he stamped out under the porte cochere just as a 
 ranch limousine swung around the curve among the 
 lilacs. 
 
 " I ll be hanged if I know," a tall, blond man in 
 a light summer suit responded from the car ; and the 
 next moment Dick Forrest and Evan Graham were 
 shaking hands. 
 
 Oh My and Oh Ho carried in the hand baggage, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 99 
 
 and Dick accompanied his guest to the watch tower 
 quarters. 
 
 " You ll have to get used to us, old man," Dick 
 was explaining. * We run the ranch like clockwork, 
 and the servants are wonders ; but we allow ourselves 
 all sorts of loosenesses. If you d arrived two min 
 utes later there d have been no one to welcome you 
 but the Chinese boys. I was just going for a ride, 
 and Paula Mrs. Forrest has disappeared." 
 
 The two men were almost of a size, Graham top 
 ping his host by perhaps an inch, but losing that inch 
 in the comparative breadth of shoulders and depth 
 of chest. Graham was, if anything, a clearer blond 
 than Forrest, although both were equally gray of 
 eye, equally clear in the whites of the eyes, and 
 equally and precisely similarly bronzed by sun and 
 weather-beat. Graham s features were in a slightly 
 larger mold; his eyes were a trifle longer, although 
 this was lost again by a heavier droop of lids. His 
 nose hinted that it was a shade straighter as well as 
 larger than Dick s, and his lips were a shade thicker, 
 a shade redder, a shade more bowed with fulsome- 
 ness. 
 
 Forrest s hair was light brown to chestnut, while 
 Graham s carried a whispering advertisement that 
 it would have been almost golden in its silk had 
 it not been burned almost to sandiness by the sun. 
 The cheeks of both were high-boned, although the 
 hollows under Forrest s cheek-bones were more pro 
 nounced. Both noses were large-nostriled and sen 
 sitive. And both mouths, while generously propor 
 tioned, carried the impression of girlish sweetness 
 and chastity along with the muscles that could draw 
 
ioo THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 the lips to the firmness and harshness that would not 
 give the lie to the square, uncleft chins beneath. 
 
 But the inch more in height and the inch less in 
 chest-girth gave Evan Graham a grace of body and 
 carriage that Dick Forrest did not possess. In this 
 particular of build, each served well as a foil to the 
 other. Graham was all light and delight, with a 
 hint - but the slightest of hints of Prince Charm 
 ing. Forrest s seemed a more efficient and formid 
 able organism, more dangerous to other life, stouter- 
 gripped on its own life. 
 
 Forrest threw a glance at his wrist watch as he 
 talked, but in that glance, without pause or fumble 
 of focus, with swift certainty of correlation, he read 
 the dial. 
 
 " Eleven-thirty," he said. " Come along at once, 
 Graham. We don t eat till twelve-thirty. I am 
 sending out a shipment of bulls, three hundred of 
 them, and I m downright proud of them. You sim 
 ply must see them. Never mind your riding togs. 
 Oh Ho fetch a pair of my leggings. You, Oh Joy, 
 order Altadena saddled. What saddle do you pre 
 fer, Graham? " 
 
 " Oh, anything, old man." 
 
 "English? Australian? McClellan? 
 Mexican? " Dick insisted. 
 
 " McClellan, if it s no trouble," Graham surren 
 dered. 
 
 They sat their horses by the side of the road and 
 watched the last of the herd beginning its long jour 
 ney to Chili disappear around the bend. 
 
 "I see what you re doing it s great," Graham 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 101 
 
 said with sparkling eyes. " I ve fooled some myself 
 with the critters, when I was a youngster, down in 
 the Argentine. If I d had beef-blood like that 
 to build on, I mightn t have taken the cropper I 
 did." 
 
 " But that was before alfalfa and artesian wells," 
 Dick smoothed for him. " The time wasn t ripe 
 for the Shorthorn. Only scrubs could survive the 
 droughts. They were strong in staying powers but 
 light on the scales. And refrigerator steamships 
 hadn t been invented. That s what revolutionized 
 the game down there." 
 
 " Besides, I was a mere youngster," Graham 
 added. " Though that meant nothing much. There 
 was a young German tackled it at the same time I 
 did, with a tenth of my capital. He hung it out, lean 
 years, dry years, and all. He s rated in seven figures 
 
 now." 
 
 They turned their horses back for the Big House. 
 Dick flirted his wrist to see his watch. 
 
 " Lots of time," he assured his guest. " I m glad 
 you saw those yearlings. There was one reason 
 why that young German stuck it out. He had to. 
 You had your father s money to fall back on, and, I 
 imagine not only that your feet itched, but that your 
 chief weakness lay in that you could afford to solace 
 the itching." 
 
 ," Over there are the fish ponds," Dick said, indi 
 cating with a nod of his head to the right an invisible 
 area beyond the lilacs. * You ll have plenty of op 
 portunity to catch a mess of trout, or bass, or even 
 catfish. You see, I m a miser. I love to make 
 
102 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 things work. There may be a justification for the 
 eight-hour labor day, but I make the work-day of 
 water just twenty-four hours long. The ponds are 
 in series, according to the nature of the fish. But 
 the water starts working up in the mountains. It ir 
 rigates a score of mountain meadows before it makes 
 the plunge and is clarified to crystal clearness in the 
 next few rugged miles; and at the plunge from the 
 highlands it generates half the power and all the 
 lighting used on the ranch. Then it sub-irrigates 
 lower levels, flows in here to the fish ponds, and runs 
 out and irrigates miles of alfalfa farther on. And, 
 believe me, if by that time it hadn t reached the flat 
 of the Sacramento, I d be pumping out the drainage 
 for more irrigation." 
 
 " Man, man," Graham laughed, " you could make 
 a poem on the wonder of water. I ve met fire-wor 
 shipers, but you re the first real water-worshiper 
 I ve ever encountered. And you re no desert- 
 dweller, either. You live in a land of water 
 pardon the bull but, as I was saying . . ." 
 
 Graham never completed his thought. From the 
 right, not far away, came the unmistakable ring of 
 shod hoofs on concrete, followed by a mighty splash 
 and an outburst of women s cries and laughter. 
 Quickly the cries turned to alarm, accompanied by the 
 sounds of a prodigious splashing and floundering as 
 of some huge, drowning beast. Dick bent his head 
 and leaped his horse through the lilacs, Graham, on 
 Altadena, followed at his heels. They emerged in 
 a blaze of sunshine, on an open space among the 
 trees, and Graham came upon as unexpected a picture 
 as he had ever chanced upon in his life. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 103 
 
 Tree-surrounded, the heart of the open space was 
 a tank, four-sided of concrete. The upper end of 
 the tank, full width, was a broad spill-way, sheened 
 with an inch of smooth-slipping water. The sides 
 were perpendicular. The lower end, roughly corru 
 gated, sloped out gently to solid footing. Here, in 
 distress that was consternation, and in fear that was 
 panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in 
 bearskin chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, 
 " Oh God ! Oh God ! " the first division of it ris 
 ing in inflection, the second division inflected fall- 
 ingly with despair. On the edge of the farther side, 
 facing him, in bathing suits, legs dangling toward 
 the water, sat three terrified nymphs. 
 
 And in the tank, the center of the picture, a great 
 horse, bright bay and wet and ruddy satin, vertical in 
 the water, struck upward and outward into the free 
 air with huge fore-hoofs steel-gleaming in the wet 
 and sun, while on its back, slipping and clinging, was 
 the white form of what Graham took at first to be 
 some glorious youth. Not until the stallion, sinking, 
 emerged again by means of the powerful beat of his 
 legs and hoofs, did Graham realize that it was a 
 woman who rode him a woman as white as the 
 white silken slip of a bathing suit that molded to her 
 form like a marble-carven veiling of drapery. As 
 marble was her back, save that the fine delicate 
 muscles moved and crept under the silken suit as she 
 strove to keep her head above water. Her slim 
 round arms were twined in yards of half-drowned 
 stallion-mane, while her white round knees slipped 
 on the sleek, wet, satin pads of the great horse s 
 straining shoulder muscles. The white toes of her 
 
io 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 dug for a grip into the smooth sides of the animal, 
 vainly seeking a hold on the ribs beneath. 
 
 In a breath, or the half of a breath, Graham saw 
 the whole breathless situation, realized that the white 
 wonderful creature was a woman, and sensed the 
 smallness and daintiness of her despite her gladia 
 torial struggles. She reminded him of some Dres 
 den china figure set absurdly small and light and 
 strangely on the drowning back of a titanic beast. 
 So dwarfed was she by the bulk of the stallion that 
 she was a midget, or a tiny fairy from fairyland come 
 true. 
 
 As she pressed her cheek against the great arching 
 neck, her golden-brown hair, wet from being under, 
 flowing and tangled, seemed tangled in the black 
 mane of the stallion. But it was her face that smote 
 Graham most of all. It was a boy s face; it was a 
 woman s face; it was serious and at the same time 
 amused, expressing the pleasure it found woven with 
 the peril. It was a white woman s face and 
 modern; and yet, to Graham, it was all-pagan. 
 This was not a creature and a situation one hap 
 pened upon in the twentieth century. It was straight 
 out of old Greece. It was a Maxfield Parrish 
 reminiscence from the Arabian Nights. Genii might 
 be expected to rise from those troubled depths, or 
 golden princes, astride winged dragons, to swoop 
 down out of the blue to the rescue. 
 
 The stallion, forcing itself higher out of water, 
 missed, by a shade, from turning over backward as 
 it sank. Glorious animal and glorious rider disap 
 peared together beneath the surface, to rise together, 
 a second later, the stallion still pawing the air with 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 105 
 
 fore-hoofs the size of dinner plates, the rider still 
 clinging to the sleek, satin-coated muscles. Gra 
 ham thought, with a gasp, what might have happened 
 had the stallion turned over. A chance blow from 
 any one of those four enormous floundering hoofs 
 could have put out and quenched forever the light and 
 sparkle of that superb, white-bodied, fire-animated 
 woman. 
 
 "Ride his neck!" Dick shouted. "Catch his 
 foretop and get on his neck till he balances out! " 
 
 The woman obeyed, digging her toes into the 
 evasive muscle-pads for the quick effort, and leaping 
 upward, one hand twined in the wet mane, the other 
 hand free and up-stretched, darting between the ears 
 and clutching the foretop. The next moment, as 
 the stallion balanced out horizontally in obedience 
 to her shiftage of weight, she had slipped back to 
 the shoulders. Holding with one hand to the mane, 
 she waved a white arm in the air and flashed a smile 
 of acknowledgment to Forrest; and, as Graham 
 noted, she was cool enough to note him on his horse 
 beside Forrest Also, Graham realized that the 
 turning of her head and the waving of her arm was 
 only partly in bravado, was more in aesthetic wisdom 
 of the picture she composed, and was, most of all, 
 sheer joy of daring and emprise of the blood and the 
 flesh and the life that was she. 
 
 " Not many women d tackle that," Dick said 
 quietly, as Mountain Lad, easily retaining his hori 
 zontal position once it had been attained, swam to 
 the lower end of the tank and floundered up the rough 
 slope to the anxious cowboy. 
 
 The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn 
 
io6 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 of chain between the jaws. But Paula, still astride, 
 leaned forward, imperiously took the lead-part from 
 the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face 
 Forrest, and saluted. 
 
 " Now you will have to go away," she called. 
 * This is our hen party, and the stag public is not 
 admitted." 
 
 Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led 
 the way back through the lilacs to the road. 
 
 Who . . . who was it?" Graham queried. 
 
 " Paula Mrs. Forrest the boy girl, the child 
 that never grew up, the grittiest puff of rose-dust that 
 
 was ever woman." 
 
 " My breath is quite taken away," Graham said. 
 "Do your people do such stunts frequently?" 
 
 " First time she ever did that," Forrest replied. 
 That was Mountain Lad. She rode him straight 
 down the spill-way tobogganed with him, twenty- 
 two hundred and forty pounds of him." 
 
 " Risked his neck and legs as well as her own," 
 was Graham s comment. 
 
 " Thirty-five thousand dollars worth of neck and 
 legs," Dick smiled. " That s what a pool of breed 
 ers offered me for him last year after he d cleaned 
 up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And 
 as for Paula, she could break necks and legs at that 
 price every day in the year until I went broke only 
 she doesn t. She never has accidents." 
 
 " I wouldn t have given tuppence for her chance 
 if he d turned over." 
 
 " But he didn t," Dick answered placidly. 
 " That s Paula s luck. She s tough to kill. Why, 
 I ve had her under shell-fire where she was actually 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 107 
 
 disappointed because she didn t get hit, or killed, or 
 near-killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, 
 at mile-range, and we had to cover half a mile of 
 smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really felt I was jus 
 tified in charging her with holding back. She did 
 admit a trifle. We ve been married ten or a dozen 
 years now, and, d ye know, sometimes it seems to 
 me I don t know her at all, and that nobody knows 
 her, and that she doesn t know herself just the 
 same way as you and I can look at ourselves in a 
 mirror and wonder who the devil we are anyway. 
 Paula and I have one magic formula: Damn the 
 expense when fun is selling. And it doesn t matter 
 whether the price is in dollars, hide, or life. It s 
 our way and our luck. It works. And, d ye know, 
 we ve never been gouged on the price yet." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 IT was a stag lunch. As Forrest explained, the 
 girls were " hen-partying." 
 " I doubt you ll see a soul of them till four 
 o clock, when Ernestine, that s one of Paula s sisters, 
 is going to wallop me at tennis at least so she s 
 threatened and pledged." 
 
 And Graham sat through the lunch, where only 
 men sat, took his part in the conversation on breeds 
 and breeding, learned much, contributed a mite from 
 his own world-experiences, and was unable to shake 
 from his eyes the persistent image of his hostess, the 
 vision of the rounded and delicate white of her 
 against the dark wet background of the swimming 
 stallion. And all the afternoon, looking over prize 
 Merinos and Berkshire gilts, continually that vision 
 burned up under his eyelids. Even at four, in the 
 tennis court, himself playing against Ernestine, he 
 missed more than one stroke because the image of 
 the flying ball would suddenly be eclipsed by the 
 image of a white marble figure of a woman that 
 strove and clung on the back of a great horse. 
 
 Graham, although an outlander, knew his Cali 
 fornia, and, while every girl of the swimming suits 
 was gowned for dinner, was not surprised to find 
 no man similarly accoutered. Nor had he made 
 the mistake of so being himself, despite the Big 
 House and the magnificent scale on when it operated. 
 
 108 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 109 
 
 Between the first and second gongs, all the guests 
 drifted into the long dining room. Sharp after the 
 second gong, Dick Forrest arrived and precipitated 
 cocktails. And Graham impatiently waited the ap 
 pearance of the woman who had worried his eyes 
 since noon. He was prepared for all manner of 
 disappointment. Too many gorgeous stripped 
 athletes had he seen slouched into conventional gar 
 menting, to expect too much of the marvelous crea 
 ture in the white silken swimming suit when it should 
 appear garbed as civilized women garb. 
 
 He caught his breath with an imperceptible gasp 
 when she entered. She paused, naturally, for just 
 the right flash of an instant in the arched doorway, 
 limned against the darkness behind her, the soft glow 
 of the indirect lighting full upon her. Graham s 
 lips gasped apart, and remained apart, his eyes rav 
 ished with the beauty and surprise of her he had 
 deemed so small, so fairy-like. Here was no deli 
 cate midget of a child-woman or boy-girl on a stal 
 lion, but a grand lady, as only a small woman can 
 be grand on occasion. 
 
 Taller in truth was she, as well as in seeming, than 
 he had judged her, and as finely proportioned in her 
 gown as in her swimming suit. He noted her shining 
 gold-brown hair piled high; the healthy tinge of her 
 skin that was clean and clear and white ; the singing 
 throat, full and round, incomparably set on a healthy 
 chest; and the gown, dull blue, a sort of medieval 
 thing with half-fitting, half-clinging body, with flow 
 ing sleeves and trimmings of gold-jeweled bands. 
 
 She smiled an embracing salutation and greeting. 
 Graham recognized it as kin to the one he had seen 
 
no THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 when she smiled from the back of the stallion. 
 When she started forward, he could not fail to see 
 the inimitable way she carried the cling and weight 
 ofJier draperies with her knees round knees, he 
 ,knew, that he had seen press desperately into the 
 ij^ound muscle-pads of Mountain Lad. Graham ob- 
 , also, that she neither wore nor needed cor- 
 
 ting. Nor could he fail, as she crossed the floor, 
 to see two women: one, the grand lady, the mistress 
 of the Big House ; one, the lovely equestrienne statue 
 beneath the dull-blue, golden-trimmed gown, that no 
 gowning could ever make his memory forget. 
 
 She was upon them, among them, and Graham s 
 hand held hers in the formal introduction as he was 
 made welcome to the Big House and all the hacienda 
 in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that 
 could proceed only from a throat that pillared, such 
 as hers, from a chest deep as hers despite her small- 
 ness. 
 
 At table, across the corner from her, he could not 
 help a surreptitious studying of her. While he held 
 his own in the general fun and foolishness, it was his 
 hostess that mostly filled the circle of his eye and 
 the content of his mind. 
 
 It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever 
 sat down to dinner with. The sheep-buyer and the 
 correspondent for the Breeders Gazette were still 
 guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and 
 girls, totaling fourteen, had arrived shortly before 
 the first gong and had remained to ride home in the 
 moonlight. Graham could not remember their 
 names; but he made out that they came from some 
 valley town thirty miles away called Wickenberg, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE in 
 
 and that they were of the small-town banking, pro 
 fessional, and wealthy- farmer class. They were full 
 of spirits, laughter, and the latest jokes and catches 
 sprung in the latest slang. 
 
 " I see right now," Graham told Paula, " if your 
 place continues to be the caravanserai which it has 
 been since my arrival, that I might as well give up 
 trying to remember names and people." 
 
 " I don t blame you," she laughed concurrence. 
 " But these are neighbors. They drop in any time. 
 Mrs. Watson, there, next to Dick, is of the old land- 
 aristocracy. Her grandfather, Wicken, came across 
 the Sierras in 1846. Wickenberg is named after 
 him. And that pretty dark-eyed girl is her daugh 
 ter. . . ." 
 
 And while Paula gave him a running sketch of the 
 chance guests, Graham heard scarce half she said, 
 so occupied was he in trying to sense his way to an 
 understanding of her. Naturalness was her key 
 note, was his first judgment. In not many moments 
 he had decided that her key-note was joy. But he 
 was dissatisfied with both conclusions, and knew he 
 had not put his finger on her. And then it came to 
 him pride. That was it! It was in her eye, in 
 the poise of her head, in the curling tendrils of her 
 hair, in her sensitive nostrils, in the mobile lips, in 
 the very pitch and angle of the rounded chin, in her 
 hands, small, muscular and veined, that he knew at 
 sight to be the hard-worked hands of one who had 
 spent long hours at the piano. Pride it was, in every 
 muscle, nerve, and quiver of her conscious, sen 
 tient, stinging pride. 
 
 She might be joyous and natural* boy arid woman, 
 
ii2 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 fun and frolic; but always the pride was there, vi 
 brant, tense, intrinsic, the basic stuff of which she was 
 milded. She was a woman, frank, outspoken, 
 straight-looking, plastic, democratic; but toy she was 
 not. At times, to him^jshe seemed to glint an i 
 --pression^pf^steeT thmT^ew^l-like steel, 
 seerftttTstrength in its most delicate tera&s andj^rftri 
 He fondled the impression of her as oFsilverspun 
 wire, of fine leather, of twisted hair-sennit from the 
 heads of maidens such as the Marquesans make, of 
 carven pearl-shell for the lure of the bonita, and of 
 barbed ivory at the heads of sea-spears such as the 
 Eskimos throw. 
 
 " All right, Aaron," they heard Dick Forrest s 
 voice rising, in a lull, from the other end of the 
 table. " Here s something from Phillips Brooks 
 for you to chew on. Brooks said that no man has 
 come to true greatness who has not felt in some de 
 gree that his life belongs to his race, and that what 
 God gives him, he gives him for mankind/ 
 
 "So at last you believe in God?" the man, ad 
 dressed Aaron, genially sneered back. He was a 
 slender, long-faced olive-brunette, with brilliant black 
 eyes and the blackest of long black beards. 
 
 " I m hanged if I know," Dick answered. " Any 
 way, I quoted only figuratively. Call it morality, 
 call it good, call it evolution." 
 
 " A man doesn t have to be intellectually correct 
 in order to be great," intruded a quiet, long-faced 
 Irishman, whose sleeves were threadbare and frayed. 
 " And by the same token many men who are most 
 correct in sizing up the universe have been least 
 great." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 113 
 
 " True for you, Terrence," Dick applauded. 
 
 " It s a matter of definition/ languidly spoke up 
 an unmistakable Hindoo, crumbling his bread with 
 exquisitely slender and small-boned fingers. What 
 shall we mean as great? " 
 
 "Shall we say beauty?" softly queried a tragic- 
 faced youth, sensitive and shrinking, crowned with 
 an abominably trimmed head of long hair. 
 
 Ernestine rose suddenly at her place, hands on 
 table, leaning forward with a fine simulation of in 
 tensity. 
 
 " They re off ! " she cried. " They re off ! Now 
 we ll have the universe settled all over again for the 
 thousandth time. Theodore " to the youthful 
 poet " it s a poor start. Get into the running. 
 Ride your father ion and your mother ion, and you ll 
 finish three lengths ahead." 
 
 A roar of laughter was her reward, and the poet 
 blushed and receded into his sensitive shell. 
 
 Ernestine turned on the black-bearded one: 
 
 " Now, Aaron. He s not in form. You start 
 it. You know how. Begin: As Bergson so well 
 has said, with the utmost refinement of philosophic 
 speech allied with the most comprehensive intellectual 
 outlook that . . . " 
 
 More laughter roared down the table, drowning 
 Ernestine s conclusion as well as the laughing retort 
 of the black-bearded one. 
 
 " Our philosophers won t have a chance to-night," 
 Paula stole in an aside to Graham. 
 
 "Philosophers?" he questioned back. "They 
 didn t come with the Wickenberg crowd. Who and 
 what are they? I m all at sea." 
 
V 
 
 n 4 - \/ THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 "They" Paula hesitated. "They live here. 
 They call themselves the jungle-birds. They have 
 a camp in the woods a couple of miles away, where 
 they never do anything except read and talk. I ll 
 wager, right now, you ll find fifty of Dick ^ latest, 
 uncatalogued books in their cabins, They ha ve the 
 run of the library, as well, and you ll see them drift 
 ing in and out, any time of the day or night, with 
 their arms full of books also, the latest maga 
 zines. Dick says they are responsible for his pos 
 sessing the most exhaustive and up-to-date library 
 on philosophy on the Pacific Coast. In a way, they 
 sort of digest such things for him. It s great fun 
 for Dick, and, besides, it saves him time. He s a 
 dreadfully hard worker, you know." 
 
 " I understand that they . . . that Dick takes care 
 of them? " Graham asked, the while he pleasured in 
 looking straight into the blue eyes that looked so 
 straight into his. 
 
 As she answered, he was occupied with noting the 
 faintest hint of bronze perhaps a trick of the light 
 in her long, brown lashes. Perforce*, he lifted 
 his gaze to her eyebrows, brown> delicately stenciled, 
 and made sure that the hint of bronze wa* there. 
 Still lifting his gaze to her high-piled hair, he again 
 saw, but more pronounced, the bronze note gifting 
 from the brown-golden hair. Nor did he fail to 
 startle and thrill to a dazzlement of smile and teeth 
 and eye that frequently lived its life in her face. 
 Hers was no thin smile of restraint, he judged. 
 When she smiled she smiled all of herself, gener 
 ously, joyously, throwing the largess of all her being 
 into the natural expression of what was herself and 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 115 
 
 which domiciled somewhere within that pretty head 
 of hers. 
 
 u Yes, 1 she was saying. u They have never to 
 worry, as long as they live, over mere bread and 
 butter. Dick is most generous, and, rather immoral, 
 in his encouragement of idleness on the part of men 
 like them. It s a funny place, as you ll find out until 
 you come to understand us. They . . . they are 
 appurtenances, and and hereditaments, and such 
 things. They will be with us always until we bury 
 them or they bury us. Once in a while one or an 
 other of them drifts away for a time. Like the 
 cat, you know. Then it costs Dick real money to 
 get them back. Terrence, there Terrence Mc- 
 Fane he s an epicurean anarchist, if you know 
 what that means. He wouldn t kill a flea. He has 
 a pet cat I gave him, a Persian of the bluest blue, and 
 he carefully picks her fleas, not injuring them, stores 
 them in a vial, and turns them loose in the forest on 
 his long walks when he tires of human companionship 
 and communes with nature. 
 
 " Well, only last year, he got a bee in his bonnet 
 the alphabet. He started for Egypt without 
 a cent, of course to run the alphabet down in the 
 home of its origin and thereby to win the formula 
 that would explain the cosmos. He got as far as 
 Denver, traveling as tramps travel, when he mixed 
 up in some I. W. W. riot for free speech or some 
 thing. Dick had to hire lawyers, pay fines, and do 
 just about everything to get him safe home again. 
 
 " And the one with a beard Aaron Hancock. 
 Like Terrence, he won t work. Aaron s a South 
 erner. Says none of his people ever did work, and 
 
n6 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 that there have always been peasants and fools who 
 just couldn t be restrained from working. That s 
 why he wears a beard. To shave, he holds, is un 
 necessary work, and, therefore, immoral. I remem 
 ber, at Melbourne, when he broke in upon Dick and 
 me, a sunburnt wild man from out the Australian 
 bush. It seems he d been making original researches 
 in anthropology, or folk-lore-ology, or something like 
 that. Dick had known him years before in Paris, 
 and Dick assured him, if he ever drifted back to 
 America, of food and shelter. So here he is." 
 
 u And the poet?" Graham asked, glad that she 
 must still talk for a while, enabling him to study the 
 quick dazzlement of smile that played upon her face. 
 
 " Oh, Theo Theodore Malken, though we 
 call him Leo. He won t work, either. His peo 
 ple are old Californian stock and dreadfully wealthy; 
 but they disowned him and he disowned them when 
 he was fifteen. They say he is lunatic, and he says 
 they are merely maddening. He really writes some 
 remarkable verse . . . when he does write; but he 
 prefers to dream and live in the jungle with Terrence 
 and Aaron. He was tutoring immigrant Jews in San 
 Francisco, when Terrence and Aaron rescued him, 
 or captured him, I don t know which. He s been 
 with us two years now, and he s actually filling out, 
 despite the facts that Dick is absurdly generous in 
 furnishing supplies and that they d rather talk and 
 read and dream than cook. The only good meals 
 they get is when they descend upon us, like to-night." 
 
 "And the Hindoo, there who s he?" 
 
 " That s Dar Hyal. He s their guest. The three 
 of them invited him up, just as Aaron first invited 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 117 
 
 T errence, and as Aaron and Terrence invited Leo. 
 Dick says, in time, three more are bound to appear, 
 and then he ll have his Seven Sages of the Madrono 
 Grove. Their jungle camp is in a madrono grove, 
 you know. It s a most beautiful spot, with living 
 springs, a canyon but I was telling you about Dar 
 Hyal. 
 
 " He s a revolutionist, of sorts. He s dabbled in 
 our universities, studied in France, Italy, Switzer 
 land, is a political refugee from India, and he s 
 hitched his wagon to two stars : one, a new synthetic 
 system of philosophy; the other, rebellion against 
 the tyranny of British rule in India. He advocates 
 individual terrorism and direct mass action. That s 
 why his paper, Kadar, or Badar, or something like 
 that, was suppressed here in California, and why he 
 narrowly escaped being deported; and that s why he s 
 up here just now, devoting himself to formulating 
 his philosophy. 
 
 " He and Aaron quarrel tremendously that is, 
 on philosophical matters. And now " Paula 
 sighed and erased the sigh with her smile " and 
 now, I m done. Consider yourself acquainted. 
 And, oh, if you encounter our sages more intimately, 
 a word of warning, especially if the encounter be in 
 the stag room: Dar Hyal is a total abstainer; Theo 
 dore Malken can get poetically drunk, and usually 
 does, on one cocktail; Aaron Hancock is an expert 
 wine-bibber; and Terrence McFane, knowing little 
 of one drink from another, and caring less, can put 
 ninety-nine men out of a hundred under the table and 
 go right on lucidly expounding epicurean anarchy." 
 
 One thing Graham noted as the dinner proceeded. 
 
n8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 The sages called Dick Forrest by his first name ; but 
 they always addressed Paula as " Mrs. Forrest," 
 although she called them by their first names. There 
 was nothing affected about it. Quite unconsciously 
 did they, who respected few things under the sun, 
 and among such few things not even work quite 
 unconsciously, and invariably, did they recognize the 
 certain definite aloofness in Dick Forrest s wife so 
 that her given name was alien to their lips. By such 
 >kens Evan Graham was not slow in learning that 
 >ick Forrest s wife had a way with her, compounded 
 )f sheerest democracy and equally sheer royalty. 
 \It was the same thing, after dinner, in the big 
 living room. She dared as she pleased, but nobody 
 assumed. Before the company settled down, Paula 
 seemed everywhere, bubbling over with more out 
 rageous spirits than any of them. From this group 
 or that, from one corner or another, her laugh rang 
 out. And her laugh fascinated Graham. There 
 was a fibrous thrill in it, most sweet to the ear, that 
 differentiated it from any laugh he had ever heard. 
 It caused Graham to lose the thread of young Mr. 
 Wombold s contention that what California needed 
 was not a Japanese exclusion law but at least two hun 
 dred thousand Japanese coolies to do the farm labor 
 of California and knock in the head the threatened 
 eight-hour day for agricultural laborers. Young 
 Mr. Wombold, Graham gleaned, was an hereditary 
 large land-owner in the vicinity of Wickenberg who 
 prided himself on not yielding to the trend of the 
 times by becoming an absentee landlord. 
 
 From the piano, where Eddie Mason was the 
 center of a group of girls, came much noise of rag- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 119 
 
 time music and slangtime song. Terrence McFane 
 and Aaron Hancock fell into a heated argument over 
 the music of futurism. And Graham was saved 
 from the Japanese situation with Mr. Wombold by 
 Dar Hyal, who proceeded to proclaim Asia for the 
 Asiatics and California for the Californians. 
 
 Paula, catching up her skirts for speed, fled down 
 the room in some romp, pursued by Dick, who cap 
 tured her as she strove to dodge around the Wom 
 bold group. 
 
 " Wicked woman," Dick reproved her in mock 
 wrath; and, the next moment, joined her in persuad 
 ing Dar Hyal to dance. 
 
 And Dar Hyal succumbed, flinging Asia and the 
 Asiatics to the winds, along with his arms and legs, 
 as he weirdly parodied the tango in what he declared 
 to be the " blastic " culmination of modern dancing. 
 
 " And now, Red Cloud, sing Mr. Graham your 
 Acorn Song," Paula commanded Dick. 
 
 Forrest, his arm still about her, detaining her for 
 the threatened punishment not yet inflicted, shook 
 his head somberly. 
 
 " The Acorn Song!" Ernestine called from the 
 piano; and the cry was taken up by Eddie Mason 
 and the girls. 
 
 " Oh, do, Dick," Paula pleaded. " Mr. Graham 
 is the only one who hasn t heard it." 
 
 Dick shook his head. 
 
 "* Then sing him your Goldfish Song." 
 
 " I ll sing him Mountain Lad s song," Dick bull 
 ied, a whimsical sparkle in his eyes. He stamped his 
 feet, pranced, nickered a not bad imitation of Moun 
 tain Lad, tossed an imaginary mane, and cried : 
 
120 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Hear me ! I am Eros I I stamp upon the hills ! " 
 
 The Acorn Song," Paula interrupted quickly and 
 quietly, with just the hint of steel in her voice. 
 
 Dick obediently ceased his chant of Mountain Lad, 
 but shook his head like a stubborn colt. 
 
 " I have a new song," he said solemnly. " It is about 
 you and me, Paula. I got it from the Nishinam." 
 
 4 The Nishinam are the extinct aborigines of this 
 part of California," Paula shot in a swift aside of 
 explanation to Graham. 
 
 Dick danced half a dozen steps, stiff-legged, as 
 Indians dance, slapped his thighs with his palms, and 
 began a new chant, still retaining his hold on his wife. 
 
 " Me, I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. 
 Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and my 
 mother were the coyote and the moon. And this is 
 Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. She is the first woman of the 
 Nishinam. Her father and her mother were the 
 grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat. They were the 
 best father and mother left after my father and 
 mother. The coyote is very wise, the moon is very 
 old; but who ever heard much of anything of credit 
 to the grasshopper and the ring-tailed cat? The 
 Nishinam are always right. The mother of all 
 women had to be a cat, a little, wizened, sad-faced, 
 shrewd ring-tailed cat." 
 
 Whereupon the song of the first man and woman 
 was interrupted by protests from the women and ac 
 clamations from the men. 
 
 " This is Yo-to-to-wi, which is the short for Eve," 
 Dick chanted on, drawing Paula bruskly closer to 
 his side with a semblance of savage roughness. 
 " Yo-to-to-wi is not much to look at. But be not 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 121 
 
 hard upon her. The fault is with the grasshopper 
 and the ring-tailed cat. Me, I am Ai-kut, the first 
 man; but question not my taste. I was the first 
 man, and this, I saw, was the first woman. Where 
 there is but one choice, there is not much to choose. 
 Adam was so circumstanced. He chose Eve. Yo- 
 to-to-wi was the one woman in all the world for me, 
 so I chose Yo-to-to-wi." 
 
 And Evan Graham, listening, his eyes on that 
 possessive, encircling arm of all his hostess s fairness, 
 felt an awareness of hurt, and arose unsummoned the 
 thought, to be dismissed angrily, " Dick Forrest is 
 lucky too lucky." 
 
 " Me, I am Ai-kut," Dick chanted on. " This 
 is my dew of woman. She is my honey-dew of 
 woman. I have lied to you. Her father and her 
 mother were neither hopper nor cat. They were the 
 Sierra dawn and the summer east wind of the moun 
 tains. Together they conspired, and from the air 
 and earth they sweated all sweetness till in a mist 
 of their own love the leaves of the chaparral and 
 the manzanita were dewed with the honey-dew. 
 
 " Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear me ! 
 I am Ai-kut. Yo-to-to-wi is my quail woman, my 
 deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and fat 
 soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the 
 brittle dawn-light before the sun . . . 
 
 " And," Forrest concluded, relapsing into his nat 
 ural voice and enunciation, having reached the limit 
 of extemporization, " and if you think old, sweet, 
 blue-eyed Solomon has anything on me in singing the 
 Song of Songs, just put your names down for the sub 
 scription edition of my Song of Songs." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 IT was Mrs. Mason who first asked that Paula 
 play; but it was Terrence McFane and Aaron 
 Hancock who evicted the rag-time group from 
 the piano and sent Theodore Malken, a blushing am 
 bassador, to escort Paula. 
 
 Tis for the confounding of this pagan that I m 
 askin you to play Reflections on the Water, 
 Graham heard Terrence say to her. 
 
 " And The Girl with Flaxen Hair/ after, please," 
 begged Hancock, the indicted pagan. " It will aptly 
 prove my disputation. This wild Celt has a bog- 
 theory of music that predates the cave-man and 
 he has the unadulterated stupidity to call himself 
 ultra-modern." 
 
 u Oh, Debussy!" Paula laughed. "Still wran 
 gling over him, eh? I ll try and get around to him. 
 But I don t know with what I ll begin." 
 
 Dar Hyal joined the three sages in seating Paula 
 at the concert grand which, Graham decided, was 
 none too great for the great room. But no sooner 
 was she seated than the three sages slipped away to 
 what were evidently their chosen listening places. 
 The young poet stretched himself prone on a deep 
 bearskin forty feet from the piano, his hands buried 
 in his hair. Terrence and Aaron lolled into a cush 
 ioned embrasure of a window seat, sufficiently near 
 
 122 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 123 
 
 to each other to nudge the points of their respective 
 contentions as Paula might expound them. The 
 girls were huddled in colored groups on wide couches 
 or garlanded in twos and threes on and in the big 
 koa-wood chairs. 
 
 Evan Graham half-started forward to take the 
 honor of turning Paula s music, but saw in time that 
 Dar Hyal had already elected to himself that office. 
 Graham glimpsed the scene with quiet curious 
 glances. The grand piano, under a low arch at 
 the far-end of the room, was cunningly raised 
 and placed as on and in a sounding board. All 
 jollity and banter had ceased. Evidently, he 
 thought, the Little Lady had a way with her and 
 was accepted as a player of parts. And from this 
 he was perversely prepared for disappointment. 
 
 Ernestine leaned across from a chair to whis 
 per to him: 
 
 " She can do anything she wants to do. And she 
 doesn t work . . . much. She studied under 
 Leschetizky and Madame Carrefio, you know, and 
 she abides by their methods. She doesn t play like 
 a woman, either. Listen to that! " 
 
 Graham knew that he expected disappointment 
 from her confident hands, even as she rippled them 
 over the keys in little chords and runs with which 
 he could not quarrel but which he had heard too 
 often before from technically brilliant but musically 
 mediocre performers. But whatever he might have 
 fancied she would play, he was all unprepared for 
 Rachmaninoff s sheerly masculine Prelude, which he 
 had heard only men play when decently played. 
 
 She took hold of the piano, with the first two ring- 
 
i2 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 ing bars, masterfully, like a man; she seemed to lift 
 it, and its sounding wires, with her two hands, with 
 the strength and certitude of maleness. And then, 
 as only he had heard men do it, she sank, or leaped 
 he could scarcely say which to the sureness and 
 pureness and ineffable softness of the Andante fol 
 lowing. 
 
 She played on, with the calm and power of any 
 thing but the little, almost girlish woman he glimpsed 
 through half-closed lids across the ebony board of 
 the enormous piano, which she commanded, as she 
 commanded herself, as she commanded the composer. 
 Her touch was definite, authoritative, was his judg 
 ment, as the Prelude faded away in dying chords 
 hauntingly reminiscent of its full vigor that seemed 
 still to linger in the air. 
 
 While Aaron and Terrence debated in excited 
 whispers in the window seat, and while Dar Hyal 
 sought other music at Paula s direction, she glanced 
 at Dick, who turned off bowl after bowl of mellow 
 light till Paula sat in an oasis of soft glow that 
 brought out the dull gold lights in her dress and hair. 
 
 Graham watched the lofty room grow loftier in 
 the increasing shadows. Eighty feet in length, rising 
 two stories and a half from masonry walls to tree- 
 trunked roof, flung across with a flying gallery from 
 the rail of which hung skins of wild animals, hand- 
 woven blankets of Oaxaca and Ecuador, and tapas, 
 woman-pounded and vegetable-dyed, from the islands 
 of the South Pacific, Graham knew it for what it was 
 a feast-hall of some medieval castle ; and almost 
 he felt a poignant sense of lack of the long spread 
 table, with pewter below the salt and silver above the 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 125 
 
 salt, and with huge hound-dogs scuffling beneath for 
 bones. 
 
 Later, when Paula had played sufficient Debussy 
 to equip Terrence and Aaron for fresh war, Graham 
 talked with her about music for a few vivid moments. 
 So well did she prove herself aware of the philoso 
 phy of music, that, ere he knew it, he was seduced 
 into voicing his own pet theory. 
 
 " And so," he concluded, " the true psychic factor 
 of music took nearly three thousand years to impress 
 itself on the Western mind. Debussy more nearly 
 attains the idea-engendering and suggestive serenity 
 say of the time of Pythagoras than any of his 
 fore-runners " 
 
 Here, Paula put a pause in his summary by beckon 
 ing over Terrence and Aaron from their battlefield 
 in the windowseat. 
 
 " Yes, and what of it? " Terrence was demand 
 ing, as they came up side by side. ;< I defy you, 
 Aaron, I defy you, to get one thought out of Berg- 
 son on music that is more lucid than any thought he 
 ever uttered in his Philosophy of Laughter, which 
 is not lucid at all." 
 
 " Oh ! listen ! " Paula cried, with sparkling 
 eyes. " We have a new prophet. Hear Mr. Gra 
 ham. He s worthy of your steel, of both your steel. 
 He agrees with you that music is the refuge from 
 blood and iron and the pounding of the table. That 
 weak souls, and sensitive souls, and high-pitched souls 
 flee from the crassness and the rawness of the world 
 to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and 
 vibration " 
 
 " Atavistic! " Aaron Hancock snorted. " The 
 
126 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 cave-men, the monkey-folk, and the ancestral bog- 
 men of Terrence did that sort of thing " 
 
 " But wait," Paula urged. u It s his conclusions 
 and methods and processes. Also, there he dis 
 agrees with you, Aaron, fundamentally. He quoted 
 Pater s that all art aspires toward music " 
 
 u Pure prehuman and micro-organic chemistry," 
 Aaron broke in. " The reactions of cell-elements to 
 the doggerel punch of the wave-lengths of sunlight, 
 the foundation of all folk-songs and rag-times. 
 Terrence completes his circle right there and stultifies 
 all his windiness. Now listen to me, and I will pre 
 sent " 
 
 " But wait," Paula pleaded. " Mr. Graham ar 
 gues that English puritanism barred music, real 
 music, for centuries. . . ." 
 
 True," said Terrence. 
 
 " And that England had to win to its sensuous de 
 light in rhythm through Milton and Shelley " 
 
 Who was a metaphysician," Aaron broke in. 
 
 " A lyrical metaphysician," Terrence defined in 
 stantly. " That you must acknowledge, Aaron." 
 
 " And Swinburne? " Aaron demanded, with a sig 
 nificance that tokened former arguments. 
 
 " He says Offenbach was the fore-runner of Ar 
 thur Sullivan," Paula cried challengingly. " And 
 that Auber was before Offenbach. And as for Wag 
 ner, ask him, just ask him " 
 
 And she slipped away, leaving Graham to his fate. 
 He watched her, watched the perfect knee-lift of her 
 draperies as she crossed to Mrs. Mason and set about 
 arranging bridge quartets, while dimly he could hear 
 Terrence beginning: 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 127 
 
 " It is agreed that music was the basis of inspira 
 tion of all the arts of the Greeks. . . ." 
 
 Later, when the two sages were obliviously en 
 grossed in a heated battle as to whether Berlioz or 
 Beethoven had exposited in their compositions the 
 deeper intellect, Graham managed his escape. 
 Clearly, his goal was to find his hostess again. But 
 she had joined two of the girls in the whispering, 
 giggling seclusiveness of one of the big chairs, and, 
 most of the company being deep in bridge, Graham 
 found himself drifted into a group composed of Dick 
 Forrest, Mr. Wombold, Dar Hyal, and the cor 
 respondent of the Breeders Gazette. 
 
 " I m sorry you won t be able to run over with 
 me," Dick was saying to the correspondent. " It 
 would mean only one more day. I ll take you to 
 
 morrow." 
 
 " Sorry," was the reply. " But I must make Santa 
 Rosa. Burbank has promised me practically a whole 
 morning, and you know what that means. Yet I 
 know the Gazette would be glad for an account of 
 the experiment. Can t you outline it? -- briefly, just 
 briefly? Here s Mr. Graham. It will interest 
 him, I am sure." 
 
 " More water-works?" Graham queried. 
 
 "No; an asinine attempt to make good farmers 
 out of hopelessly poor ones," Mr. Wombold an 
 swered. " I contend that any farmer to-day who 
 has no land of his own, proves by his lack of it that 
 he is an inefficient farmer." 
 
 " On the contrary," spoke up Dar Hyal, weaving 
 his slender Asiatic fingers in the air to emphasize 
 his remarks. " Quite on the contrary. Times have 
 
128 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 changed. Efficiency no longer implies the posses 
 sion of capital. It is a splendid experiment, an 
 heroic experiment. And it will succeed." 
 
 "What is it, Dick?" Graham urged. "Tell 
 
 us." 
 
 " Oh, nothing, just a white chip on the table," For 
 rest answered lightly. " Most likely it will never 
 come to anything, although just the same I have my 
 hopes " 
 
 " A white chip ! " Wombold broke in. " Five 
 thousand acres of prime valley land, all for a lot of 
 failures to batten on, to farm, if you please, on salary, 
 with food thrown in! " 
 
 " The food that is grown on the land only," Dick 
 corrected. " Now I will have to put it straight. 
 I ve set aside five thousand acres midway between 
 here and the Sacramento River." 
 
 u Think of the alfalfa it grew, and that you need," 
 Wombold again interrupted. 
 
 " My dredgers redeemed twice that acreage from 
 the marshes in the past year," Dick replied. " The 
 thing is, I believe the West and the world must come 
 to intensive farming. I want to do my share toward 
 blazing the way. I ve divided the five thousand 
 acres into twenty-acre holdings. I believe each 
 twenty acres should support, comfortably, not only a 
 family, but pay at least six per cent." 
 
 " When it is all allotted it will mean two hundred 
 and fifty families," the Gazette man calculated; 
 " and, say five to the family, it will mean twelve 
 hundred and fifty souls." 
 
 u Not quite," Dick corrected. " The last holding 
 is occupied, and we have only a little over eleven 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 129 
 
 hundred on the land." He smiled whimsically. 
 " But they promise, they promise. Several fat years 
 and they ll average six to the family." 
 
 " Who is we?" Graham inquired. 
 
 " Oh, I have a committee of farm experts on it- 
 my own men, with the exception of Professor Lieb, 
 whom the Federal Government has loaned me. The 
 thing is : they must farm, with individual responsibil 
 ity, according to the scientific methods embodied in 
 our instructions. The land is uniform. Every 
 holding is like a pea in the pod to every other hold 
 ing. The results of each holding will speak in no 
 uncertain terms. The failure of any farmer, 
 through laziness or stupidity, measured by the aver 
 age result of the entire two hundred and fifty farm 
 ers, will not be tolerated. Out the failures must go, 
 convicted by the average of their fellows. 
 
 " It s a fair deal. No farmer risks anything. 
 With the food he may grow and he and his family 
 may consume, plus a cash salary of a thousand a year, 
 he is certain, good seasons and bad, stupid or intelli 
 gent, of at least a hundred dollars a month. The 
 stupid and the inefficient will be bound to be elimi 
 nated by the intelligent and the efficient. That s all. 
 It will demonstrate intensive farming with a ven 
 geance. And there is more than the certain salary 
 guaranty. After the salary is paid, the adventure 
 must yield six per cent, to me. If more than this is 
 achieved, then the entire hundred per cent, of the ad 
 ditional achievement goes to the farmer." 
 
 " Which means that each farmer with go in him 
 will work nights to make good-- I see," said the 
 Gazette man. "And why not? Hundred-dollar 
 
130 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 jobs aren t picked up for the asking. The average 
 farmer in the United States doesn t net fifty a month 
 on his own land, especially when his wages of super 
 intendence and of direct personal labor are sub 
 tracted. Of course able men will work their heads 
 off to hold to such a proposition, and they ll see to it 
 that every member of the family does the same." 
 
 Tis the one objection I have to this place," 
 Terrence McFane, who had just joined the group, 
 announced. " Ever one hears but the one thing 
 work. Tis repulsive, the thought of the work, each 
 on his twenty acres, toilin and moilin , daylight till 
 dark, and after dark an for what? A bit of 
 meat, a bit of bread, and, maybe, a bit of jam on the 
 bread. An to what end? Is meat an bread an 
 jam the end of it all, the meaning of life, the goal 
 of existence? Surely the man will die, like a work 
 horse dies, after a life of toil. And what end has 
 been accomplished? Bread an meat an jam? Is 
 that it? A full belly and shelter from the cold till 
 one s body drops apart in the dark moldiness of the 
 grave? " 
 
 " But, Terrence, you, too, will die," Dick Forrest 
 retorted. 
 
 " But, oh, my glorious life of loafing," came the 
 instant answer. " The hours with the stars and the 
 flowers, under the green trees with the whisperings 
 of breezes in the grass. My books, my thinkers 
 and their thoughts. Beauty, music, all the solaces of 
 all the arts. What? When I fade into the dark 
 I shall have well lived and received my wage for liv 
 ing. But these twenty-acre work-animals of two- 
 legged men of yours! Daylight till dark, toil and 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 131 
 
 moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of them that 
 dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, 
 roofs that don t leak, a brood of youngsters to live 
 after them, to live the same beast-lives of toil, to fill 
 their bellies with the same meat and bread, to scratch 
 their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go 
 into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, 
 mayhap, a bit of jam." 
 
 " But somebody must do the work that enables 
 you to loaf," Mr. Wombold spoke up indignantly. 
 
 " Tis true, tis sad tis true," Terrence replied 
 lugubriously. Then his face beamed. " And I 
 thank the good Lord for it, for the work-beasties 
 that drag and drive the plows up and down the fields, 
 for the bat-eyed miner-beasties that dig the coal and 
 gold, for all the stupid peasant-beasties that keep my 
 hands soft, and give power to fine fellows like Dick 
 there, who smiles on me and shares the loot with me, 
 and buys the latest books for me, and gives me a place 
 at his board that is plenished by the two-legged work- 
 beasties, and a place at his fire that is builded by the 
 same beasties, and a shack and a bed in the jungle 
 under the madrono trees where never work intrudes 
 its monstrous head." 
 
 Evan Graham was slow in getting ready for bed 
 that night. He was unwontedly stirred both by the 
 Big House and by the Little Lady who was its mis 
 tress. As he sat on the edge of the bed, half-un 
 dressed, and smoked out a pipe, he kept seeing her 
 in memory, as he had seen her in the flesh the past 
 twelve hours, in her varied moods and guises the 
 woman who had talked music with him, and who had 
 
132 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 expounded music to him to his delight; who had en 
 ticed the sages into the discussion and abandoned him 
 to arrange the bridge tables for her guests ; who had 
 nestled in the big chair as girlish as the two girls 
 with her; who had, with a hint of steel, quelled her 
 husband s obstreperousness when he had threatened 
 to sing Mountain Lad s song; who, unafraid, had 
 bestridden the half-drowning stallion in the swim 
 ming tank; and who, a few hours later, had dreamed 
 into the dining room, distinctive in dress and person, 
 to meet her many guests. 
 
 The Big House, with all its worthy marvels and 
 bizarre novelties, competed with the figure of Paula 
 Forrest in filling the content of his imagination. 
 Once again, and yet again, many times, he saw the 
 slender fingers of Dar Hyal weaving argument in 
 the air, the black whiskers of Aaron Hancock enun 
 ciating Bergsonian dogmas, the frayed coat-cuffs of 
 Terrence McFane articulating thanks to God for the 
 two-legged work-beasties that enabled him to loaf 
 at Dick Forrest s board and under Dick Forrest s 
 madrono trees. 
 
 Graham knocked out his pipe, took a final sweep 
 ing survey of the strange room which was the last 
 word in comfort, pressed off the lights, and found 
 himself between cool sheets in the wakeful dark. 
 Again he heard Paula Forrest laugh ; again he sensed 
 her in terms of silver and steel and strength; again, 
 against the dark, he saw that inimitable knee-lift of 
 her gown. The bright vision of it was almost an irk 
 to him, so impossible was it for him to shaTce it from 
 his eyes. Ever it returned and burned before him, 
 a moving image of light and color that he knew to be 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 133 
 
 subjective but that continually asserted the illusion of 
 reality. 
 
 He saw stallion and rider sink beneath the water, 
 and rise again, a flurry of foam and floundering of 
 hoofs, and a woman s face that laughed while she 
 drowned her hair in the drowning mane of the beast. 
 And the first ringing bars of the Prelude sounded in 
 his ears as again he saw the same hands that had 
 guided the stallion lift the piano to all Rachmani 
 noff s pure splendor of sound. 
 
 And when Graham finally fell asleep, it was in the 
 thick of marveling over the processes of evolution 
 that could produce from primeval mire and dust the 
 glowing, glorious flesh and spirit of woman. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE next morning Graham learned further 
 the ways of the Big House. Oh My had 
 partly initiated him in particular things the 
 preceding day and had learned that, after the wak 
 ing cup of coffee, he preferred to breakfast at table, 
 rather than in bed. Also, Oh My had warned him 
 that breakfast at table was an irregular affair, any 
 where between seven and nine, and that the break- 
 fasters merely drifted in at their convenience. If he 
 wanted a horse, or if he wanted a swim or a motor 
 car, or any ranch medium or utility he desired, Oh 
 My informed him, all he had to do was to call for 
 it. 
 
 Arriving in the breakfast room at half past seven, 
 Graham found himself just in time to say good-by 
 to the Gazette man and the Idaho buyer, who, fin 
 ishing, were just ready to catch the ranch machine 
 that connected at Eldorado with the morning train 
 for San Francisco. He sat alone, being perfectly in 
 vited by a perfect Chinese servant to order as he 
 pleased, and found himself served with his first de 
 sire an ice-cold, sherried grapefruit, which, the 
 table-boy proudly informed him, was " grown on the 
 ranch." Declining variously suggested breakfast 
 foods, mushes, and porridges, Graham had just or 
 dered his soft-boiled eggs and bacon, when Bert 
 Wainwright drifted in with a casualness that Graham 
 recognized as histrionic, when, five minutes later, in 
 
 134 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 135 
 
 boudoir cap and delectable negligee, Ernestine Des- 
 ten drifted in and expressed surprise at finding such 
 a multitude of early risers. 
 
 Later, as the three of them were rising from table, 
 they greeted Lute Desten and Rita Wainwright ar 
 riving. Over the billiard table with Bert, Graham 
 learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for break 
 fast, that he worked in bed from terribly wee small 
 hours, had coffee at six, and only on unusual occasions 
 appeared to his guests before the twelve-thirty 
 lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she 
 was a poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door 
 without a knob in a spacious wing with a rare and 
 secret patio that even he had seen but once, and only 
 on infrequent occasion was she known to appear be 
 fore twelve-thirty, and often not then. 
 
 " You see, she s healthy and strong and all that," 
 he explained, " but she was born with insomnia. She 
 never could sleep. She couldn t sleep as a little baby 
 even. But it s never hurt her any, because she s got 
 a will, and won t let it get on her nerves. She s just 
 about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of 
 going wild when she can t sleep, she just wills to re 
 lax, and she does relax. She calls them her white 
 nights, when she gets them. Maybe she ll fall 
 asleep at daybreak, or at nine^pr ten in the morning; 
 and then she ll sleep the rest of the clock around and 
 get down to dinner as chipper as you please." . 
 
 " It s constitutional, I fancy," Graham suggested. * 
 
 Bert nodded. 
 
 " It would be a handicap to nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine women out of a thousand. But not to 
 her. She puts up with it, and if she can t sleep one 
 
136 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 time she should worry she just sleeps some 
 other time and makes it up." 
 
 More and other things Bert Wainwright told of 
 his hostess, and Graham was not slow in gathering 
 that the young man, despite the privileges of long 
 acquaintance, stood a good deal in awe of her. 
 
 " 1 never saw anybody whose goat she couldn t 
 get if she went after it," he confided. " Man or 
 woman or servant, age, sex, and previous condition 
 of servitude it s all one when she gets on the high 
 and mighty. And I don t see how she does it. 
 Maybe it s just a kind of light that comes into her 
 eyes, or some kind of an expression on her lips, or, 
 I don t know what anyway, she puts it across and 
 nobody makes any, mistake about it." 
 
 " She has a ... a way with her," Graham vol 
 unteered. 
 
 " That s it ! " Bert s face beamed. " It s a way 
 she has. She just puts it over. Kind of gives you 
 a chilly feeling, you don t know why. Maybe she s 
 learned to be so quiet about it because of the control 
 she s learned by passing sleepless nights without 
 squealing out or getting sour. The chances are she 
 didn t bat an eye all last night excitement, you 
 know, the crowd, swimming Mountain Lad and such 
 things. Now ordinary things that d keep most 
 women awake, like danger, or storm at sea, and such 
 things, Dick says don t faze her. She can sleep like 
 a baby, he says, when the town she s in is being bom 
 barded or when the ship she s in is trying to claw 
 off a lee shore. She s a wonder, and no mistake. 
 You ought to play billiards with her the English 
 game. She ll go some." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 137 
 
 A little later, Graham, along with Bert, encoun 
 tered the girls in the morning room, where, despite 
 an hour of rag-time song and dancing and chatter, 
 he was scarcely for a moment unaware of a loneli 
 ness, a lack, and a desire to see his hostess, in some 
 fresh and unguessed mood and way, come in upon 
 them through the open door. 
 
 Still later, mounted on Altadena and accompanied 
 by Bert on a thoroughbred mare called Mollie, 
 Graham made a two hours exploration of the dairy 
 center of the ranch, and arrived back barely in time 
 to keep an engagement with Ernestine in the tennis 
 court. 
 
 He came to lunch with an eagerness for which his 
 keen appetite could not entirely account; and he knew 
 definite disappointment when his hostess did not ap 
 pear. 
 
 u A white night," Dick Forrest surmised for his 
 guest s benefit, and went into details additional to 
 Bert s of her constitutional inaptitude for normal 
 sleep. " Do you know, we were married years be 
 fore I ever saw her sleep. I knew she did sleep, 
 but I never saw her. I ve seen her go three days 
 and nights without closing an eye and keep sweet 
 and cheerful all the time, and when she did sleep, 
 it was out of exhaustion. That was when the All 
 Away went ashore in the Carolines and the whole 
 population worked to get us off. It wasn t the dan 
 ger, for there wasn t any. It was the noise. Also, 
 it was the excitement. She was too busy living. 
 And when it was almost all over, I actually saw her 
 asleep for the first time in my life." 
 
 A new guest had arrived that morning, a Donald 
 
138 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Ware, whom Graham met at lunch. He seemed 
 well acquainted with all, as if he had visited much in 
 the Big House; and Graham gathered that, despite 
 his youth, he was a violinist of note on the Pacific 
 Coast. 
 
 " He has conceived a grand passion for Paula," 
 Ernestine told Graham as they passed out from the 
 dining room. 
 
 Graham raised his eyebrows. 
 
 " Oh, but she doesn t mind," Ernestine laughed. 
 " Every man that comes along does the same thing. 
 She s used to it. She has just a charming way of 
 disregarding all their symptoms, and enjoys them, 
 and gets the best out of them in consequence. It s 
 lots of fun to Dick. You ll be doing the same be 
 fore you re here a week. If you don t, we ll all be 
 surprised mightily. And if you don t, most likely 
 you ll hurt Dick s feelings. He s come to expect it 
 as a matter of course. And when a fond, proud 
 huband gets a habit like that, it must hurt terribly 
 to see his wife not appreciated." 
 
 u Oh, well, if I am expected to, I suppose I must," 
 Graham sighed. " But just the same I hate to do 
 whatever everybody does just because everybody 
 does it. But if it s the custom well, it s the cus 
 tom, that s all. But it s mighty hard on one with 
 so many other nice girls around." 
 
 There was a quizzical light in his long gray eyes 
 that affected Ernestine so profoundly that she gazed 
 into his eyes over long, became conscious of what 
 she was doing, dropped her own eyes away, and 
 flushed. 
 
 " Little Leo the boy poet you remember last 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 139 
 
 night," she rattled on in a patent attempt to escape 
 from her confusion. " He s madly in love with 
 Paula, too. I ve heard Aaron Hancock chaffing him 
 about some sonnet cycle, and it isn t difficult to guess 
 the inspiration. And Terrence the Irishman, you 
 know he s mildly in love with her. They can t 
 help it, you see; and can you blame them? " 
 
 " She surely deserves it all," Graham murmured, 
 although vaguely hurt in that the addle-pated, alpha 
 bet-obsessed, epicurean anarchist of an Irishman who 
 gloried in being a loafer and a pensioner should even 
 mildly be in love with the Little Lady. " She is 
 most deserving of all men s admiration," he con 
 tinued smoothly. " From the little I ve seen of her 
 she s quite remarkable and most charming." 
 
 " She s my half-sister," Ernestine vouchsafed, " al 
 though you wouldn t dream a drop of the same blood 
 ran in our veins. She s so different. She s different 
 from all the Destens, from any girl I ever knew - 
 though she isn t exactly a girl. She s thirty-eight, 
 you know " 
 
 " Pussy, pussy," Graham whispered. 
 
 The pretty young blonde looked at him in surprise 
 and bewilderment, taken aback by the apparent ir 
 relevance of his interruption. 
 
 " Cat," he censured in mock reproof. 
 
 " Oh! " she cried. " I never meant it that way. 
 " You will find we are very frank here. Everybody 
 knows Paula s age. She tells it herself. I m 
 eighteen so, there. And now, just for your mean 
 ness, how old are you?" 
 
 " As old as Dick," he replied promptly. 
 
 " And he s forty," she laughed triumphantly. 
 
140 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 "Are you coming swimming? the water will be 
 dreadfully cold." 
 
 Graham shook his head. " I m going riding with 
 Dick." 
 
 Her face fell with all the ingenuousness of eight 
 een. 
 
 " Oh," she protested, " some of his eternal green 
 manures, or hillside terracing, or water-pocketing." 
 
 " But he said something about swimming at 
 five." 
 
 Her face brightened joyously. 
 Then we ll meet at the tank. It must be the 
 same party. Paula said swimming at five." 
 
 As they parted under a long arcade, where his 
 way led to the tower room for a change into riding 
 clothes, she stopped suddenly and called: 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Graham." 
 
 He turned obediently. 
 
 You really are not compelled to fall in love 
 with Paula, you know. It was just my way of put 
 ting it." 
 
 " I shall be very, very careful," he said solemnly, 
 although there was a twinkle in his eye as he con 
 cluded. 
 
 Nevertheless, as he went on to his room, he could 
 not but admit to himself that the Paula Forrest 
 charm, or the far fairy tentacles of it, had already 
 reached him and were wrapping around him. He 
 knew, right there, that he would prefer the engage 
 ment to ride to have been with her than with his 
 old-time friend, Dick. 
 
 As he emerged from the house to the long hitch- 
 ing-rails under the ancient oaks, he looked eagerly 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 141 
 
 for his hostess. Only Dick was there, and the 
 stable-man, although the many saddled horses that 
 stamped in the shade promised possibilities. But 
 Dick and he rode away alone. Dick pointed out her 
 horse, an alert bay thoroughbred, stallion at that, 
 under a small Australian saddle with steel stirrups, 
 and double-reined and single-bitted. 
 
 " I don t know her plans," he said. " She hasn t 
 shown up yet, but at any rate she ll be swimming 
 later. We ll meet her then." 
 
 Graham appreciated and enjoyed the ride, al 
 though more than once he found himself glancing 
 at his wrist-watch to ascertain how far away five 
 o clock might yet be. Lambing time was at hand, 
 and through home field after home field he rode with 
 his host, now one and now the other dismounting 
 to turn over onto its feet rotund and glorious Shrop 
 shire and Ramboullet-Merino ewes so hopelessly the 
 product of man s selection as to be unable to get off, 
 of themselves, from their own broad backs, once 
 they were down with their four legs helplessly sky- 
 aspiring. 
 
 " I ve really worked to make the American 
 Merino," Dick was saying; " to give it the developed 
 leg, the strong back, the well-sprung rib, and the 
 stamina. The old-country breed lacked the stamina. 
 It was too much hand-reared and manicured." 
 
 " You re doing things, big things," Graham as 
 sured him. " Think of shipping rams to Idaho ! 
 That speaks for itself." 
 
 Dick Forrest s eyes were sparkling, as he replied: 
 
 u Better than Idaho. Incredible as it may sound, 
 and asking forgiveness for bragging, the great flocks 
 
H2 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 to-day of Michigan and Ohio can trace back to my 
 California-bred Ramboullet rams. Take Australia. 
 Twelve years ago I sold three rams for three hun 
 dred each to a visiting squatter. After he took them 
 back and demonstrated them he sold them for as 
 many thousand each and ordered a shipload more 
 from me. Australia will never be the worse for my 
 having been. Down there they say that lucerne, ar 
 tesian wells, refrigerator ships, and Forrest s rams 
 have tripled the wool and mutton production." 
 
 Quite by chance, on the way back, meeting Men- 
 denhall, the horse manager, they were deflected by 
 him to a wide pasture, broken by wooded canyons 
 and studded with oaks, to look over a herd of year 
 ling Shires that was to be dispatched next morn 
 ing to the upland pastures and feeding sheds of the 
 Miramar Hills. There were nearly two hundred 
 of them, rough-coated, beginning to shed, large- 
 boned and large for their age. 
 
 We don t exactly crowd them," Dick Forrest ex 
 plained, " but Mr. Mendenhall sees to it that they 
 never lack full nutrition from the time they are 
 foaled. Up there in the hills, where they are going, 
 they ll balance their grass with grain. This makes 
 them assemble every night at the feeding places and 
 enables the feeders to keep track of them with a 
 minimum of effort. I ve shipped fifty stallions, two- 
 year-olds, every year for the past five years, to 
 Oregon alone. They re sort of standardized, you 
 know. The people up there know what they re get 
 ting. They know my standard so well that they ll 
 buy unsight and unseen." 
 
 " You must cull a lot, then," Graham ventured. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 143 
 
 " And you ll see the culls draying on the streets 
 of San Francisco," Dick answered. 
 
 " Yes, and on the streets of Denver," Mr. Men- 
 denhall amplified, " and of Los Angeles, and why, 
 two years ago, in the horse-famine, we shipped 
 twenty carloads of four-year geldings to Chicago, 
 that averaged seventeen hundred each. The light 
 est were sixteen, and there were matched pairs up 
 to nineteen hundred. Lord, Lord, that was a year 
 for horse-prices blue sky, and then some." 
 
 As Mr. Mendenhall rode away, a man, on a slen 
 der-legged, head-tossing Palomina, rode up to them 
 and was introduced to Graham as Mr. Hennessy, the 
 ranch veterinary. 
 
 " I heard Mrs. Forrest was looking over the 
 colts," he explained to his employer, " and I rode 
 across to give her a glance at The Fawn here. She ll 
 be riding her in less than a week. What horse is 
 she on to-day? " 
 
 " The Fop," Dick replied, as if expecting the com 
 ment that was prompt as the disapproving shake of 
 Mr. Hennessy s head. 
 
 " I can never become converted to women riding 
 stallions," muttered the veterinary. " The Fop is 
 dangerous. Worse though I take my fiat off to 
 his record he s malicious and vicious. She 
 Mrs. Forrest ought to ride him with a muzzle but 
 he s a striker as well, and I don t see how she can 
 put cushions on his hoofs." 
 
 " Oh, well," Dick placated, " she has a bit that is 
 a bit in his mouth, and she s not afraid to use it " 
 
 " If he doesn t fall over on her some day," Mr. 
 Hennessy grumbled. " Anyway, I ll breathe easier 
 
144 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 when she takes to The Fawn here. Now she s a 
 lady s mount all the spirit in the world, but noth 
 ing vicious. She s a sweet mare, a sweet mare, and 
 she ll steady down from her friskiness. But she ll 
 always be a gay handful no riding academy propo 
 
 sition." 
 
 " Let s ride over," Dick suggested. " Mrs. For- 
 rest ll have a gay handful in The Fop if she s ridden 
 him into that bunch of younglings. It s her terri 
 tory, you know," he elucidated to Graham. - All 
 the house horses and lighter stock is her affair. And 
 she gets grand results. I can t understand it, myself. 
 It s like a little girl straying into an experimental lab 
 oratory of high explosives and mixing the stuff 
 around any old way and getting more powerful com 
 binations than the graybeard chemists." 
 
 The three men took a cross-ranch road for half a 
 mile, turned up a wooded canyon where ran a spring- 
 trickle of stream, and emerged on a wide rolling ter 
 race rich in pasture. Graham s first glimpse was of 
 a background of many curious yearling and two-year- 
 old colts, against which, in the middleground, he 
 saw his hostess, on the back of the bright bay thor 
 oughbred, The Fop, who, on hind legs, was striking 
 his forefeet in the air and squealing shrilly. They 
 reined in their mounts and watched. 
 
 " He ll get her yet," the veterinary muttered mo 
 rosely. " That Fop isn t safe." 
 
 But at that moment Paula Forrest, unaware of her 
 audience, with a sharp cry of command and a cavalier 
 thrust of sharp spurs into The Fop s silken sides, 
 checked him down to four-footedness on the ground 
 and a restless, champing quietness. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 145 
 
 " Taking chances? " Dick mildly reproached her, 
 as the three rode up. 
 
 " Oh, I can manage him," she breathed between 
 tight teeth, as, with ears back and vicious-gleaming 
 eyes, The Fop bared his teeth in a bite that would 
 have been perilously near to Graham s leg had she 
 not reined the brute abruptly away across the neck 
 and driven both spurs solidly into his sides. 
 
 The Fop quivered, squealed, and for the moment 
 stood still. 
 
 " It s the old game, the white man s game," Dick 
 laughed. " She s not afraid of him, and he knows 
 it. She outgames him, out-savages him, teaches him 
 what savagery is in its intimate mood and tense." 
 
 Three times, while they looked on, ready to whirl 
 their own steeds away if he got out of hand, The 
 Fop attempted to burst into rampage, and three 
 times, solidly, with careful, delicate hand on the bit 
 ter bit, Paula Forrest dealt him double spurs in the 
 ribs, till he stood, sweating, frothing, fretting, beaten, 
 and in hand. 
 
 " It s the way the white man has always done," 
 Dick moralized, while Graham suffered a fluttery, 
 shivery sensation of admiration of the beast-conquer 
 ing Little Lady. " He s out-savaged the savage the 
 world around," Dick went on. " He s out-endured 
 him, out-filthed him, out-scalped him, out-tortured 
 him, out-eaten him yes, out-eaten him. It s a fair 
 wager that the white man, in extremis, has eaten 
 more of the genus homo, than the savage, in extre 
 mis, has eaten." 
 
 " Good afternoon," Paula greeted her guest, the 
 ranch veterinary, and her husband. " I think I ve 
 
146 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 got him now. Let s look over the colts. Just keep 
 an eye, Mr. Graham, on his mouth. He s a dread 
 ful snapper. Ride free from him, and you ll save 
 your leg for old age." 
 
 Now that The Fop s demonstration was over, the 
 colts, startled into flight by some impish spirit 
 amongst them, galloped and frisked away over the 
 green turf, until, curious again, they circled back, 
 halted at gaze, and then, led by one particularly 
 saucy chestnut filly, drew up in half a circle before the 
 riders, with alert pricking ears. 
 
 Graham scarcely saw the colts at first. He was 
 seeing his protean hostess in a new role. Would her 
 proteanness never end? he wondered, as he glanced 
 over the magnificent, sweating, mastered creature she 
 bestrode. Mountain Lad, despite his hugeness, was 
 a mild-mannered pet beside this squealing, biting, 
 striking Fop who advertised all the spirited vicious- 
 ness of the most spirited vicious thoroughbred. 
 
 " Look at her," Paula whispered to Dick, in order 
 not to alarm the saucy chestnut filly. " Isn t she 
 wonderful! That s what I ve been working for." 
 Paula turned to Evan. " Always they have some 
 fault, some miss, at the best an approximation rather 
 than an achievement. But she s an achievement. 
 Look at her. She s as near right as I shall probably 
 ever get. Her sire is Big Chief, if you know our 
 racing register. He sold for sixty thousand when 
 he was a cripple. We borrowed the use of him. 
 She was his only get of the season. But look at her ! 
 She s got his chest and lungs. I had my choices 
 mares eligible for the register. Her dam wasn t 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 147 
 
 eligible, but I chose her. She was an obstinate old 
 maid, but she was the one mare for Big Chief. This 
 is her first foal and she was eighteen years old when 
 she bred. But I knew it was there. All I had to 
 do was to look at Big Chief and her, and it just had 
 to be there. 1 
 
 " The dam was only half thoroughbred," Dick 
 explained. 
 
 " But with a lot of Morgan on the other side," 
 Paula added instantly, " and a streak along the back 
 of mustang. This shall be called Nymph, even if 
 she has no place in the books. She ll be my first un 
 impeachable perfect saddle horse I know it the 
 kind I like my dream come true at last." 
 
 " A hoss has four legs, one on each corner," Mr. 
 Hennessy uttered profoundly. 
 
 " And from five to seven gaits," Graham took up 
 lightly. 
 
 " And yet I don t care for those many-gaited Ken- 
 tuckians," Paula said quickly, " except for park 
 work. But for California, rough roads, mountain 
 trails, and all the rest, give me the fast walk, the fox 
 trot, the long trot that covers the ground, and the 
 not too-long, ground-covering gallop. Of course, 
 the close-coupled, easy canter ; but I scarcely call that 
 a gait it s no more than the long lope reduced to 
 the adjustment of wind or rough ground." 
 
 " She s a beauty," Dick admired, his eyes warm 
 in contemplation of the saucy chestnut filly, who was 
 daringly close and alertly sniffing of the subdued 
 Fop s tremulous and nostril-dilated muzzle. 
 
 " I prefer my own horses to be near thoroughbred 
 
148 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 rather than all thoroughbred," Paula proclaimed. 
 " The running horse has its place on the track, but 
 it s too specialized for mere human use." 
 
 " Nicely coupled," Mr. Hennessy said, indicating 
 the Nymph. " Short enough for good running and 
 long enough for the long trot. I ll admit I didn t 
 have any faith in the combination; but youVe got a 
 grand animal out of it just the same." 
 
 " I didn t have horses when I was a young girl," 
 Paula said to Graham; " and the fact that I can how 
 not only have them but breed them and mold them 
 to my heart s desire is always too good to be true. 
 Sometimes I can t believe it myself, and have to ride 
 out and look them over to make sure." 
 
 She turned her head and raised her eyes grate 
 fully to Forrest; and Graham watched them look 
 into each other s eyes for a long half-minute. For 
 rest s pleasure in his wife s pleasure, in her young 
 enthusiasm and joy of life, was clear to Gra 
 ham s observation. " Lucky devil," was Graham s 
 thought, not because of his host s vast ranch and the 
 success and achievement of it, but because of the 
 possession of a wonder-woman who could look un 
 abashed and appreciative into his eyes as the Little 
 Lady had looked. 
 
 Graham was meditating, with skepticism, Ernes 
 tine s information that Paula Forrest was thirty- 
 eight, when she turned to the colts and pointed her 
 riding whip at a black yearling nibbling at the spring 
 green. 
 
 " Look at that level rump, Dick," she said, " and 
 those trotting feet and pasterns." And, to Graham : 
 " Rather different from Nymph s long wrists, aren t 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 149 
 
 they? But they re just what I was after." She 
 laughed a little, with just a shade of annoyance. 
 " The dam was a bright sorrel almost like a fresh- 
 minted twenty-dollar piece and I did so want a 
 pair out of her, of the same color, for my own trap. 
 Well, I can t say that I exactly got them, although 
 I bred her to a splendid, sorrel trotting horse. And 
 this is my reward, this black and, wait till we get 
 to the brood mares and you ll see the other, a full 
 brother and mahogany brown. I m so disap 
 pointed." 
 
 She singled out a pair of dark bays, feeding to 
 gether : " Those are two of Guy Dillon s get 
 brother, you know, to Lou Dillon. They re out of 
 different mares, not quite the same bay, but aren t 
 they splendidly matched ? And they both have Guy 
 Dillon s coat." 
 
 She moved her subdued steed on, skirting the flank 
 of the herd quietly in order not to alarm it; but a 
 number of colts took flight. 
 
 " Look at them ! " she cried. " Five, there, are 
 hackneys. Look at the lift of their fore-legs as 
 they run." 
 
 " I ll be terribly disappointed if you don t get a 
 prize-winning four-in-hand out of them," Dick 
 praised, and brought again the flash of grateful eyes 
 that hurt Graham as he noted it. 
 
 " Two are out of heavier mares see that one in 
 the middle and the one on the far left and there s 
 the other three to pick from for the leaders. Same 
 sire, five different dams, and a matched and balanced 
 four, out of five choices, all in the same season, is a 
 stroke of luck, isn t it? " 
 
i5o THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 She turned quickly to Mr. Hennessy : " I can be 
 gin to see the ones that will have to sell for polo 
 ponies among the two-year-olds. You can pick 
 them." 
 
 " If Mr. Mendenhall doesn t sell that strawberry 
 roan for a clean fifteen hundred, it ll be because polo 
 has gone out of fashion," the veterinary approved, 
 with waxing enthusiasm. " I ve had my eye on 
 them. That pale sorrel, there. You remember his 
 set-back. Give him an extra year and he ll look 
 at his coupling ! watch him turn ! a cow-skin ? 
 he ll turn on a silver dollar ! Give him a year to 
 make up, and he ll stand a show for the international. 
 Listen to me. I ve had my faith in him from the 
 beginning. Cut out that Burlingame crowd. When 
 he s ripe, ship him straight East." 
 
 Paula nodded and listened to Mr. Hennessy s 
 judgment, her eyes kindling with his in the warmth 
 of the sight of the abounding young life for which 
 she was responsible. 
 
 " It always hurts, though," she confessed to Gra 
 ham, u selling such beauties to have them knocked 
 out on the field so quickly." 
 
 Her sheer absorption in the animals robbed her 
 speech of any hint of affectation or show so much 
 so, that Dick was impelled to praise her judgment 
 to Evan. 
 
 " I can dig through a whole library of horse prac 
 tice, and muddle and mull over the Mendelian Law 
 ijrftil I m dizzy, like the clod that I am; but she is 
 /the genius. She doesn t have to study law. She just 
 / knows it in some witch-like, intuitional way. All 
 | she has to do is size up a bunch of mares with her 
 
 \* 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 151 
 
 eyes, and feel them over a little with her hands, and 
 hunt around till she finds the right sires, and get 
 pretty nearly what she wants in the result except 
 color, eh, Paul? " he teased. 
 
 She showed her laughing teeth in the laugh at her 
 expense, in which Mr. Hennessy joined, and Dick 
 continued : " Look at that filly there. We all knew 
 Paula was wrong. But look at it! She bred a 
 rickety old thoroughbred, that we wanted to put out 
 of her old age, to a standard stallion; got a filly; 
 bred it back with a thoroughbred ; bred its filly foal 
 with the same standard again; knocked all our prog 
 nostications into a cocked hat, and well, look at it, 
 a world-beater polo pony. There is one thing we 
 have to take off our hats to her for: she doesn t let 
 any woman sentimentality interfere with her culling. 
 Oh, she s cold-blooded enough. She s as remorse 
 less as any man when it comes to throwing out the 
 undesirables and selecting for what she wants. But 
 she hasn t mastered color yet. There s where her 
 genius falls down, eh, Paul? You ll have to put up 
 with Duddy and Fuddy for a while longer for your 
 trap. By the way, how is Duddy? " 
 
 " He s come around," she answered, " thanks to 
 Mr. Hennessy." 
 
 " Nothing serious," the veterinarian added. " He 
 was just off his feed a trifle. It was more a scare of 
 the stableman than anything else." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FROM the colt pasture to the swimming tank 
 Graham talked with his hostess and rode as 
 nearly beside her as The Fop s wickedness per 
 mitted, while Dick and Hennessy, on ahead, were 
 deep in ranch business. 
 
 " Insomnia has been a handicap all my life," she 
 said, while she tickled The Fop with a spur in order 
 to check a threatened belligerence. " But I early 
 learned to keep the irritation of it off rny nerves and 
 the weight of it off my mind. In fact, I early came 
 to make a function of it and actually to derive en 
 joyment from it. It was the only way to master a 
 thing I knew would persist as long as I persisted. 
 Have you of course you have learned to win 
 through an undertow? " 
 
 " Yes, by never fighting it," Graham answered, his 
 eyes on the spray of color in her cheeks and the tiny 
 beads of sweat that arose from her continuous 
 struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. 
 Thirty-eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. 
 Paula Forrest did not look twenty-eight. Her skin 
 was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored 
 and thin transparency of the skin of a girl. 
 
 " Exactly," she went on. " By not fighting the 
 undertow. By yielding to its down-drag and out- 
 drag, and working with it to reach air again. Dick 
 taught me that trick. So with my insomnia. If it 
 
 152 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 153 
 
 is excitement from immediate events that holds me 
 back from the City of Sleep, I yield to it and come 
 quicker to unconsciousness from out the entangling 
 currents. I invite my soul to live over again, from 
 the same and different angles, the things that keep 
 me from unconsciousness. 
 
 " Take the swimming of Mountain Lad yesterday. 
 I lived it over last night as I had lived it in reality. 
 Then I lived it as a spectator as the girls saw it, 
 as you saw it, as the cowboy saw it, and, most of all, 
 as my husband saw it. Then I made up a picture of 
 it, many pictures of it, from all angles, and painted 
 them, and framed them, and hung them, and then, a 
 spectator, looked at them as if for the first time. 
 And I made myself many kinds of spectators, from 
 crabbed old maids and lean pantaloons to girls in 
 boarding school and Greek boys of thousands of 
 years ago. 
 
 " After that I put it to music. I played it on the 
 piano, and guessed the playing of it on full orchestras 
 and blaring bands. I chanted it, I sang it epic, 
 lyric, comic; and, after a weary long while, of course 
 I slept in the midst of it, and knew not that I slept 
 until I awoke at twelve to-day. The last time I had 
 heard the clock strike was six. Six unbroken hours 
 is a capital prize for me in the sleep lottery." 
 
 As she finished, Mr. Hennessy rode away on a 
 cross path, and Dick Forrest dropped back to squire 
 his wife on the other side. 
 
 " Will you sport a bet, Evan? " he queried. 
 
 " I d like to hear the terms of it first," was the 
 answer. 
 
 " Cigars against cigars that you can t catch Paula 
 
i 5 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 in the tank inside ten minutes no, inside five, for 
 I remember you re some swimmer." 
 
 " Oh, give him a chance, Dick," Paula cried gen 
 erously. " Ten minutes will worry him." 
 
 " But you don t know him," Dicked argued. 
 " And you don t value my cigars. I tell you he is a 
 swimmer. He s drowned kanakas, and you know 
 what that means." 
 
 " Perhaps I should reconsider. Maybe he ll slash 
 a killing crawl-stroke at me before I ve really started. 
 Tell me his history and prizes." 
 
 " I ll just tell you one thing. They still talk of it 
 in the Marquesas. It was the big hurricane of 1 892. 
 He did forty miles in forty-five hours, and only he 
 and one other landed on the land. And they were 
 all kanakas. He was the only white man; yet he 
 out-endured and drowned the last kanaka of 
 them " 
 
 " I thought you said there was one other? " Paula 
 interrupted. 
 
 " She was a woman," Dick answered. " He 
 drowned the last kanaka." 
 
 "And the woman was then a white woman?" 
 Paula insisted. 
 
 Graham looked quickly at her, and although she 
 had asked the question of her husband, her head 
 turned to the turn of his head, so that he found her 
 eyes meeting his straightly and squarely in interroga 
 tion. Graham held her gaze with equal straightness 
 as he answered: " She was a kanaka." 
 
 " A queen, if you please," Dick took up. " A 
 queen out of the ancient chief stock. She was Queen 
 of Huahoa." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 155 
 
 " Was it the chief stock that enabled her to out- 
 endure the native men?" Paula asked. " Or did 
 you help her? " 
 
 " I rather think we helped each other toward the 
 end," Graham replied. We were both out of our 
 heads for short spells and long spells. Sometimes 
 it was one, sometimes the other, that was all in. We 
 made the land at sunset that is, a wall of iron 
 coast, with the surf bursting sky-high. She took hold 
 of me and clawed me in the water to get some sense 
 in me. You see, I wanted to go in, which would 
 have meant finish. 
 
 " She got me to understand that she knew where 
 she was; that the current set westerly along shore 
 and in two hours would drift us abreast of a spot 
 where we could land. I swear I either slept or was 
 unconscious most of those two hours; and I swear 
 she was in one state or the other when I chanced to 
 come to and noted the absence of the roar of the 
 surf. Then it was my turn to claw and maul her 
 back to consciousness. It was three hours more be 
 fore we made the sand. We slept where we crawled 
 out of the water. Next morning s sun burnt us 
 awake, and we crept into the shade of some wild 
 bananas, found fresh water, and went to sleep again. 
 Next I awoke it was night. I took another drink, 
 and slept through till morning. She was still asleep 
 when the bunch of kanakas, hunting wild goats from 
 the next valley, found us." 
 
 " I ll wager, for a man who drowned a whole 
 kanaka crew, it was you who did the helping," Dick 
 commented. 
 
 " She must have been forever grateful," Paula 
 
156 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 challenged, her eyes directly on Graham s. " Don t 
 tell me she wasn t young, wasn t beautiful, wasn t a 
 golden brown young goddess." 
 
 " Her mother was the Queen of Huahoa," Gra 
 ham answered. " Her father was a Greek scholar 
 and an English gentleman. They were dead at the 
 time of the swim, and Nomare was queen herself. 
 She was young. She was beautiful as any woman 
 anywhere in the world may be beautiful. Thanks 
 to her father s skin, she as not golden brown. She 
 was tawny golden. But you ve heard the story un 
 doubtedly " 
 
 He broke off with a look of question to Dick, who 
 shook his head. 
 
 Calls and cries and splashings of water from be 
 yond a screen of trees warned them that they were 
 near the tank. 
 
 1 You ll have to tell me the rest of the story some 
 time," Paula said. 
 
 " Dick knows it. I can t see why he hasn t told 
 you." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " Perhaps because he s never had the time or the 
 provocation." 
 
 " God wot, it s had wide circulation," Graham 
 laughed. " For know that I was once morganatic 
 or whatever you call it king of the cannibal 
 isles, or of a paradise of a Polynesian isle at any rate. 
 * By a purple wave on an opal beach in the hush of 
 the Mahim woods, " he hummed carelessly, in con 
 clusion, and swung off from his horse. 
 
 " * The white moth to the closing vine, the bee to 
 the opening clover, " she hummed another line of 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 157 
 
 the song, while The Fop nearly got his teeth into her 
 leg and she straightened him out with the spur, and 
 waited for Dick to help her off and tie him. 
 
 "Cigars! I m in on that! you can t catch 
 her! " Bert Wainwright called from the top of the 
 high dive forty feet above. " Wait a minute ! I m 
 coming! " 
 
 And come he did, in a swan dive that was almost 
 professional and that brought handclapping approval 
 from the girls. 
 
 " A sweet dive, balanced beautifully," Graham 
 told him as he emerged from the tank. 
 
 Bert tried to appear unconscious of the praise, 
 failed, and, to pass it off, plunged into the wager. 
 
 " I don t know what kind of a swimmer you are, 
 Graham," he said, " but I just want in with Dick on 
 the cigars." 
 
 "Me, too; me, too!" chorused Ernestine, and 
 Lute, and Rita. 
 
 " Boxes of candy, gloves, or any truck you care to 
 risk," Ernestine added. 
 
 " But I don t know Mrs. Forrest s records, either," 
 Graham protested, after having taken on the bets. 
 " However, if in five minutes " 
 
 " Ten minutes," Paula said, " and to start from 
 opposite ends of the tank. Is that fair? Any touch 
 is a catch." 
 
 Graham looked his hostess over with secret ap 
 proval. She was clad, not in the single white silk 
 slip she evidently wore only for girl parties, but in a 
 coquettish imitation of the prevailing fashion mode, 
 a suit of changeable light blue and green silk al- 
 
1 58 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 most the color of the pool; the skirt slightly above 
 the knees whose roundedness he recognized; with 
 long stockings to match, and tiny bathing shoes 
 bound on with crossed ribbons. On her head was a 
 jaunty swimming cap no jauntier than herself when 
 she urged the ten minutes in place of five. 
 
 Rita Wainwright held the watch, while Graham 
 walked down to the other end of the hundred-and- 
 fifty-foot tank. 
 
 " Paula, you ll be caught if you take any chances," 
 Dick warned. " Evan Graham is a real fish man." 
 
 " I guess Paula ll show him a few, even without 
 the pipe," Bert bragged loyally. " And I ll bet she 
 can out-dive him." 
 
 u There you lose," Dick answered. " I saw the 
 rock he c cd from at Huahoa. That was after his 
 time, and after the death of Queen Nomare. He 
 was only a youngster twenty-two ; he had to be to 
 do it. It was off the peak of the Pau-wi Rock one 
 hundred and twenty-eight feet by triangulation. 
 A" ^ he couldn t do it legitimately or technically with 
 a swan-dive, because he had to clear two lower ledges 
 while he was in the air. The upper ledge of the two, 
 by their own traditions, was the highest the best of 
 the kanakas had ever dared since their traditions be 
 gan. Well, he did it. He became tradition. As 
 long as the kanakas of Huahoa survive he will remain 
 tradition Get ready, Rita. Start on the full 
 
 minute." 
 
 14 It s almost a shame to play tricks on so reputable 
 a swimmer," Paula confided to them, as she faced 
 her guest down the length of the tank and while both 
 waited the signal. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 159 
 
 " He may get you before you can turn the trick," 
 Dick warned again. And then, to Bert, with just a 
 shade of anxiety: "Is it working all right? Be 
 cause if it isn t, Paula will have a bad five seconds 
 getting out of it." 
 
 " All O.K.," Bert assured. " I went in myself. 
 The pipe is working. There s plenty of air." 
 
 "Ready I" Rita called. "Go!" 
 
 Graham ran toward their end like a foot-racer, 
 while Paula darted up the high dive. By the time 
 she had gained the top platform, his hands and feet 
 were on the lower rungs. When he was half-way 
 up she threatened a dive, compelling him to cease 
 from climbing and to get out on the twenty-foot plat 
 form ready to follow her to the water. Whereupon 
 she laughed down at him and did not dive. 
 
 * Time is passing the precious seconds are tick 
 ing off," Ernestine chanted. 
 
 When he started to climb, Paula again chased him 
 to the half-way platform with a threat to dive. But 
 not many seconds did Graham waste. His next start 
 was determined, and Paula, poised for her dive, 
 could not send him scuttling back. He raced up 
 ward to gain the thirty-foot platform before she 
 should dive, and she was too wise to linger. Out 
 into space she launched, head back, arms bent, hands 
 close to chest, legs straight and close together, her 
 body balanced horizontally on the air as it fell out 
 ward and downward. 
 
 " Oh you Annette Kellerman ! " Bert Wainwright s 
 admiring cry floated up. 
 
 Graham ceased pursuit to watch the completion 
 of the dive, and saw his hostess, a few feet above 
 
160 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 the water, bend her head forward, straighten out her 
 arms and lock the hands to form the arch before 
 her head, and, so shifting the balance of her body, 
 change it from the horizontal to the perfect, water- 
 cleaving angle. 
 
 The moment she entered the water, he swung out 
 on the thirty-foot platform and waited. From this 
 height he could make out her body beneath the sur 
 face swimming a full stroke straight for the far end 
 of the tank. Not till then did he dive. He was 
 confident that he could outspeed her, and his dive, 
 far and flat, entered him in the water twenty feet 
 beyond her entrance. 
 
 But at the instant he was in, Dick dipped two 
 flat rocks into the water and struck them together. 
 This was the signal for Paula to change her course. 
 Graham heard the concussion and wondered. He 
 broke surface in the full swing of the crawl and 
 went down the tank to the far end at a killing pace. 
 He pulled himself out and watched the surface of 
 the tank. A burst of handclapping from the girls 
 drew his eyes to the Little Lady drawing herself out 
 of the tank at the other end. 
 
 Again he ran down the side of the tank, and again 
 she climbed the scaffold. But this time his wind 
 and endurance enabled him to cut down her lead, 
 so that she was driven to the twenty-foot platform. 
 She took no time for posturing or swanning, but 
 tilted immediately off in a stiff dive, angling toward 
 the west side of the tank. Almost they were in 
 the air at the same time. In the water and under 
 it, he could feel against his face and arms the agi 
 tation left by her progress; but she led into the deep 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 161 
 
 shadow thrown by the low afternoon sun, where the 
 water was so dark he could see nothing. 
 
 When he touched the side of the tank he came 
 up. She was not in sight. He drew himself out, 
 panting, and stood ready to dive in at the first sign 
 of her. But there were no signs. 
 
 " Seven minutes!" Rita called. "And a half! 
 . . . Eight! ... And a half!" 
 
 And no Paula Forrest broke surface. Gra 
 ham refused to be alarmed because he could see no 
 alarm on the faces of the others. 
 
 " I lose," he announced at Rita s " Nine minutes ! " 
 
 u She s been under over two minutes, and you re 
 all too blessed calm about it to get me excited," he 
 said. " I ve still a minute maybe I don t lose," 
 he added quickly, as he stepped off feet first into the 
 tank. 
 
 As he went down he turned over and explored the 
 cement wall of tank with his hands. Midway, pos 
 sibly ten feet under the surface he estimated, his 
 hands encountered an opening in the wall. He 
 felt about, learned it was unscreened, and boldly en 
 tered. Almost before he was in, he found he could 
 come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface 
 in pitchy blackness and feeling about him without 
 splashing. 
 
 His fingers touched a cool smooth arm that shrank 
 convulsively at contact while the possessor of it cried 
 sharply with the startle of fright. He held on 
 tightly and began to laugh, and Paula laughed with 
 him. A line from " The First Chanty " flashed into 
 his consciousness " Hearing her laugh in the gloom 
 greatly I loved her." 
 
1 62 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " You did frighten me when you touched me," 
 she said. " You came without a sound, and I was 
 a thousand miles away, dreaming . . ." 
 
 < What?" Graham asked. 
 
 ;< Well, honestly, I had just got an idea for a 
 gown a dusty, musty, mulberry-wine velvet, with 
 long, close lines, and heavy, tarnished gold borders 
 and cords and things. And the only jewelery a 
 ring one enormous pigeon-blood ruby that Dick 
 gave me years ago when we sailed the All Away" 
 
 " Is there anything you don t do ? " he laughed. 
 
 She joined with him, and their mirth sounded 
 strangely hollow in the pent and echoing dark. 
 
 4 Who told you? " she next asked. 
 
 " No one. After you had been under two min 
 utes I knew it had to be something like this, and I 
 came exploring." 
 
 " It was Dick s idea. He had it built into the 
 tank afterward. You will find him full of whimsies. 
 He delighted in scaring old ladies into fits by stepping 
 off into the tank with their sons or grandsons and 
 hiding away in here. But after one or two nearly 
 died of shock old ladies, I mean he put me up, 
 as to-day, to fooling hardier persons like yourself. 
 Oh, he had another accident. There was a Miss 
 Coghlan, friend of Ernestine, a little seminary girl. 
 They artfully stood her right beside the pipe that 
 leads out, and Dick went off the high dive and swam 
 in here to the inside end of the pipe. After several 
 minutes, by the time she was in collapse over his 
 drowning, he spoke up the pipe to her in most hor 
 rible, sepulchral tones. And right there Miss 
 Coghlan fainted dead away." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 163 
 
 " She must have been a weak sister," Graham com 
 mented; while he struggled with a wanton desire 
 for a match so that he could strike it and see how 
 Paula Forrest looked paddling there beside him to 
 keep afloat. 
 
 " She had a fair measure of excuse," Paula an 
 swered. u She was a young thing eighteen; and 
 she had a sort of school-girl infatuation for Dick. 
 They all get it. You see, he s such a boy when he s 
 playing that they can t realize that he s a hard-bitten, 
 hard-working, deep-thinking, mature, elderly bene 
 dict. The embarrassing thing was that the little 
 girl, when she was first revived and before she could 
 gather her wits, exposed all her secret heart. Dick s 
 face was a study while she babbled her - 
 
 " Well? going to stay there all night? " Bert 
 Wainwright s voice came down the pipe, sounding 
 megaphonically close. 
 
 " Heavens! " Graham sighed with relief; for he 
 had startled and clutched Paula s arm. * That s the 
 time I got my fright. The little maiden is avenged. 
 Also, at last, I know what a lead-pipe cinch is." 
 
 " And it s time we started for the outer world," 
 she suggested. " It s not the coziest gossiping place 
 in the world. Shall I go first? " 
 
 " By all means and I ll be right behind; al 
 though it s a pity the water isn t phosphorescent. 
 Then I could follow your incandescent heel like that 
 chap Byron wrote about don t you remember? 1 
 
 He heard her appreciative gurgle in the dark, and 
 then her: "Well, I m going now." 
 
 Unable to see the slightest glimmer, nevertheless, 
 from the few sounds she made he knew she had 
 
1 64 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 turned over and gone down head first, and he was 
 not beyond visioning with inner sight the graceful 
 way in which she had done it an anything but 
 graceful feat as the average swimming woman ac 
 complishes it. 
 
 " Somebody gave it away to you," was Bert s 
 prompt accusal, when Graham rose to the surface 
 of the tank and climbed out. 
 
 " And you were the scoundrel who rapped stone 
 under water," Graham challenged. " If I d lost I d 
 have protested the bet. It was a crooked game, a 
 conspiracy, and competent counsel, I am confident, 
 would declare it a felony. It s a case for the district 
 attorney." 
 
 " But you won," Ernestine cried. 
 
 " I certainly did, and, therefore, I shall not prose 
 cute you, nor any one of your crooked gang if the 
 bets are paid promptly. Let me see you owe me 
 a box of cigars " 
 
 " One cigar, sir ! " 
 
 "A box! A box!" 
 
 "Cross tag!" Paula cried. " Let s play cross- 
 tag! You re IT!" 
 
 Suiting action to word, she tagged Graham on the 
 shoulder and plunged into the tank. Before he could 
 follow, Bert seized him, whirled him in a circle, was 
 himself tagged, and tagged Dick before he could es 
 cape. And while Dick pursued his wife through the 
 tank and Bert and Graham sought a chance to cross, 
 the girls fled up the scaffold and stood in an enticing 
 row on the fifteen-foot diving platform. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AN indifferent swimmer, Donald Ware had 
 avoided the afternoon sport in the tank; but 
 after dinner, somewhat to the irritation of 
 Graham, the violinist monopolized Paula at the pi 
 ano. New guests, with the casual expectedness of 
 the Big House, had drifted in a lawyer, by name 
 Adolph Weil, who had come to confer with Dick 
 over some big water-right suit; Jeremy Braxton, 
 straight from Mexico, Dick s general superintendent 
 of the Harvest Group, which bonanza, according to 
 Jeremy Braxton, was as " unpetering " as ever; Ed 
 win O Hay, a red-headed Irish musical and dramatic 
 critic; and Chauncey Bishop, editor and owner of 
 the San Francisco Dispatch, and a member of Dick s 
 class and frat, as Graham gleaned. 
 
 Dick had started a boisterous gambling game 
 which he called " Horrible Fives," wherein, although 
 excitement ran high and players plunged, the limit 
 was ten cents, and, on a lucky coup, the transient 
 banker might win or lose as high as ninety cents, 
 such coup requiring at least ten minutes to play out. 
 This game went on at a big table at the far end of 
 the room, accompanied by much owing and borrow 
 ing of small sums and an incessant clamor for change. 
 
 With nine players, the game was crowded, and 
 Graham, rather than draw cards, casually and oc 
 casionally backed Ernestine s cards, the while he 
 
 165 
 
1 66 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 glanced down the long room at the violinist and 
 Paula Forrest absorbed in Beethoven Symphonies 
 and Delibes Ballets. Jeremy Braxton was demand 
 ing raising the limit to twenty cents, and Dick, the 
 heaviest loser, as he averred, to the tune of four dol 
 lars and sixty cents, was plaintively suggesting the 
 starting of a " kitty " in order that some one should 
 pay for the lights and the sweeping out of the place 
 in the morning, when Graham, with a profound sigh 
 at the loss of his last bet a nickel which he had 
 had to pay double announced to Ernestine that 
 he was going to take a turn around the room to 
 change his luck. 
 
 " I prophesied you would," she told him under her 
 breath. 
 
 "What? "he asked. 
 
 She glanced significantly in Paula s direction. 
 
 Just for that I simply must go down there now," 
 he retorted. 
 
 " Can t dast decline a dare," she taunted. 
 
 ;< If it were a dare I wouldn t dare do it." 
 
 ;t In which case I dare you," she took up. 
 
 He shook his head: " I had already made up 
 my mind to go right down there to that one spot and 
 cut that fiddler out of the running. You can t dare 
 me out of it at this late stage. Besides, there s Mr. 
 O Hay waiting for you to make your bet." 
 
 Ernestine rashly laid ten cents, and scarcely 
 knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on 
 watching Graham go down the room, although she 
 did know that Bert Wainwright had not been un 
 observant of her gaze and its direction. On the 
 other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 167 
 
 table, knew that Dick s quick-glancing eyes, sparkling 
 with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that 
 made them all laugh, had missed no portion of the 
 side play. 
 
 Ernestine, but little taller than Paula, although 
 hinting of a plus roundness to come, w*as a sun- 
 healthy, clear blonde, her skin sprayed with the al 
 most transparent flush of maidenhood at eighteen. 
 To the eye, it seemed almost that one could see 
 through the pink daintiness of fingers, hand, wris 
 and forearm, neck and cheek. And to this delicious 
 transparency of rose and pink, was added a warmth 
 of tone that did not escape Dick s eyes as he glimpsed 
 her watch Evan Graham move down the length of 
 room. Dick knew and classified her wild imagined 
 dream or guess, though the terms of it were beyond 
 his divination. 
 
 What she saw was what she imagined was the 
 princely walk of Graham, the high, light, blooded 
 carriage of his head, the delightful carelessness of 
 the gold-burnt, sun-sanded hair that made her fingers 
 ache to be into with caresses she for the first time 
 knew were possible of her fingers. 
 
 Nor did Paula, during an interval of discussion 
 with the violinist in which she did not desist from 
 stating her criticism of O Hay s latest criticism of 
 Harold Bauer, fail to see and keep her eyes on 
 Graham s progress. She, too, noted with pleasure 
 his grace of movement, the high, light poise of head, 
 the careless hair, the clear bronze of the smooth 
 cheeks, the splendid forehead, the long gray eyes 
 with the hint of drooping lids and boyish sullenness 
 that fled before the smile with which he greeted her. 
 
1 68 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 She had observed that smile often since her first 
 meeting with him. It was an irresistible smile, a 
 smile that lighted the eyes with the radiance of good 
 fellowship and that crinkled the corners into tiny, 
 genial lines. It was provocative of smiles, for she 
 found herself smiling a silent greeting in return as 
 she continued stating to Ware her grievance against 
 O Hay s too-complacent praise of Bauer. 
 
 But her engagement was tacitly with Donald Ware 
 at the piano, and with no more than passing speech, 
 she was off and away in a series of Hungarian dances 
 that made Graham marvel anew as he loafed and 
 smoked in a window-seat. 
 
 He marveled at the proteanness of her, at visions 
 of those nimble fingers guiding and checking The 
 Fop, swimming and paddling in submarine crypts, 
 and, falling in swan-like flight through forty feet of 
 air, locking just above the water to make the diver s 
 head-protecting arch of arm. 
 
 In decency, he lingered but few minutes, returned 
 to the gamblers, and put the entire table in a roar 
 with a well-acted Yiddisher s chagrin and passion at 
 losing entire nickels every few minutes to the for 
 tunate and chesty mine superintendent from Mexico. 
 
 Later, when the game of Horrible Fives broke up, 
 Bert and Lute Desten spoiled the Adagio from 
 Beethoven s Sonata Pathetique by exaggeratedly rag 
 ging to it in what Dick immediately named " The 
 Loving Slow-Drag," till Paula broke down in a 
 gale of laughter and ceased from playing. 
 
 New groupings occurred. A bridge table formed 
 with Weil, Rita, Bishop, and Dick. Donald Ware 
 was driven from his monopoly of Paula by the young 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 169 
 
 people under the leadership of Jeremy Braxton; 
 while Graham and O Hay paired off in a window-seat 
 and O Hay talked shop. 
 
 After a time, in which all at the piano had sung 
 Hawaiian hulas, Paula sang alone to her own ac 
 companiment. She sang several German love-songs 
 in succession, although it was merely for the group 
 about her and not for the room ; and Evan Graham^ 
 almost to his delight, decided that at last he had" 
 found a weakness in her. She might be a magnifi 
 cent pianist, horsewoman, diver, and swimmer, but it 
 was patent, despite her singing throat, that she was 
 not a magnificent singer. This conclusion he was 
 quickly compelled to modify. A singer she was, a 
 consummate singer. Weakness was only compara 
 tive after all. She lacked the magnificent voice. It \ 
 was a sweet voice, a rich voice, with the same warm- 
 fibered thrill of her laugh; but the volume so essen 
 tial to the great voice was not there. Ear and voice 
 seemed effortlessly true, and in her singing were 
 feeling, artistry, training, intelligence. But volume 
 it was scarcely a fair average, was his judgment. 
 
 But quality there he halted. It was a woman s 
 voice. It was haunted with richness of sex. In it 
 resided all the temperament in the world with all 
 the restraint of discipline, was the next step of his 
 analysis. He had to admire the way she refused 
 to exceed the limitations of her voice. In this she 
 achieved triumphs. 
 
 And, while he nodded absently to O Hay s 
 lecturette on the state of the opera, Graham fell to 
 wondering if Paula Forrest, thus so completely the 
 mistress of her temperament, might not be equally 
 
1 70 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 mistress of her temperament in the deeper, passional 
 ways. There was a challenge there based on 
 curiosity, he conceded, but only partly so based ; and, 
 over and beyond, and, deeper and far beneath, a 
 challenge to a man made in the immemorial image 
 of man. 
 
 It was a challenge that bade him pause, and even 
 look up and down the great room and to the tree- 
 trunked roof far above, and to the flying gallery 
 hung with the spoils of the world, and to Dick For 
 rest, master of all this material achievement and 
 husband of the woman, playing bridge, just as he 
 worked, with all his heart, his laughter ringing loud 
 as he caught Rita in renig. For Graham had the 
 courage not to shun the ultimate connotations. Be- 
 kind the challenge in his speculations lurked 
 Oman. Paula Forrest was splendidly, deliciously 
 woman, all woman, unusually woman. From 
 blow between the eyes of his first striking sjght of her, 
 swimming the great stallion in the pool, she had 
 :ontinued to witch-ride his man s imagination. He 
 anything but unused to women; and his general 
 ittitude was that of being tired of the mediocre 
 jameness of them. To chance upon the unusual 
 woman was like finding the great pearl in a lagoon 
 fished out by a generation of divers. 
 
 " Glad to see you re still alive," Paula laughed to 
 him, a little later. 
 
 She was prepared to depart with Lute for bed. A 
 second bridge quartet had been arranged Ernes 
 tine, Bert, Jeremy Braxton, and Graham; while 
 O Hay and Bishop were already deep in a bout of 
 two-handed pinochle. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 171 
 
 " He s really a charming Irishman when he keeps 
 off his one string," Paula went on. 
 
 "Which, I think I am fair, is music/ Graham 
 said. 
 
 " And on music he is insufferable," Lute observed. 
 " It s the only thing he doesn t know the least thing 
 about. He drives one frantic." 
 
 " Never mind," Paula soothed, in gurgling tones. 
 " You will all be avenged. Dick just whispered to 
 me to get the philosophers up to-morrow night. 
 You know how they talk music. A musical critic 
 is their awful prey." 
 
 " Terrence said the other night that there was 
 no closed season on musical critics," Lute con 
 tributed. 
 
 " Terrence and Aaron will drive him to drink," 
 Paula laughed her joy of anticipation. " And Dar 
 Hyal, alone, with his blastic theory of art, can 
 specially apply it to music to the confutation of all 
 the first words and the last. He doesn t believe a 
 thing he says about blastism, any more than was he 
 serious when he danced the other evening. It s his 
 bit of fun. He s such a deep philosopher that he 
 has to get his fun somehow." 
 
 " And if O Hay ever locks horns with Terrence," 
 Lute prophesied, " I can see Terrence tucking arm 
 in arm with him, leading him down to the stag room, 
 and heating the argument with the absentest-minded 
 variety of drinks that ever O Hay accomplished." 
 
 " Which means a very sick O Hay next day," 
 Paula continued her gurgles of anticipation. 
 
 " I ll tell him to do it ! " exclaimed Lute. 
 
 " You mustn t think we re all bad," Paula pro- 
 
172 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 tested to Graham. " It s just the spirit of the house. 
 Dick likes it. He s always playing jokes himself. 
 He relaxes that way. I ll wager, right now, it was 
 Dick s suggestion, to Lute, and for Lute to carry 
 out, for Terrence to get O Hay into the stag room. 
 Now, fess up, Lute." 
 
 " Well, I will say," Lute answered with meticulous 
 circumspection, " that the idea was not entirely 
 original with me." 
 
 At this point, Ernestine joined them and appro 
 priated Graham with : 
 
 We re all waiting for you. We ve cut, and you 
 and I are partners. Besides, Paula s making her 
 sleep noise. So say good night, and let her go." 
 
 Paula had left for bed at ten o clock. Not till 
 one did the bridge break up. Dick, his arm about 
 Ernestine in brotherly fashion, said good night to 
 Graham where one of the divided ways led to the 
 watch tower, and continued on with his pretty sis 
 ter-in-law toward her quarters. 
 
 " Just a tip, Ernestine," he said at parting, his 
 gray eyes frankly and genially on hers, bnt his voice 
 sufficiently serious to warn her. 
 
 "What have I been doing now?" she pouted 
 laughingly. 
 
 u Nothing ... as yet. But don t get started, or 
 you ll be laying up a sore heart for yourself. You re 
 only a kid yet eighteen ; and a darned nice, likable 
 kid at that. Enough to make most any man sit up 
 and take notice. But Evan Graham is not most 
 any man " 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 173 
 
 " Oh, I can take care of myself," she blurted out 
 in a fling of quick resentment 
 
 " But listen to me just the same. There comes a 
 time in the affairs of a girl when the love-bee gets a 
 buzzing with a very loud hum in her pretty noddle. 
 Then is the time she mustn t make a mistake and 
 start in loving the wrong man. You haven t fallen 
 in love with Evan Graham yet, and all you have to 
 do is just not to fall in love with him. He s not 
 for you, nor for any young thing. He s an oldster, 
 an ancient, and possibly has forgotten more about 
 love, romantic love, and young things, than you ll 
 ever learn in a dozen lives. If he ever marries 
 again " 
 
 u Again ! " Ernestine broke in. 
 
 " Why, he s been a widower, my dear, for over 
 fifteen years." 
 
 Then what of it? " she demanded defiantly. 
 
 " Just this," Dick continued quietly. " He s lived 
 the young-thing romance, and lived it wonderfully; 
 and, from the fact that in fifteen years he has" not 
 married again, means " 
 
 "That he s never recovered from his loss? r 
 Ernestine interpolated. " But that s no proof " 
 
 11 Means that he s got over his apprenticeship 
 to wild young romance," Dick held on steadily. 
 " All you have to do is look at him and realize that 
 he has not lacked opportunities, and that, on oc 
 casion, some very fine women, real wise women, 
 mature women, have given him foot-races that tested 
 his wind and endurance. But so far they ve not suc 
 ceeded in catching him. And as for young things, 
 
i 7 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 you know how filled the world is with them for a 
 man like him. Think it over, and just keep your 
 heart-thoughts away from him. If you don t let 
 your heart start to warm toward him, it will save 
 your heart from a grievous chill later on." 
 
 He took one of her hands in his, and drew her 
 against him, an arm soothingly about her shoulder. 
 For several minutes of silence Dick idly speculated 
 on what her thoughts might be. 
 
 " You know, we hard-bitten old fellows " he be 
 gan half-apologetically, half-humorously. 
 
 But she made a restless movement of distaste, and 
 cried out: 
 
 " Are the only ones worth while ! The young 
 men are all youngsters, and that s what s the matter 
 with them. They re full of life, and coltish spirits, 
 and dance, and song. But they re -not serious. 
 They re not big. They re not oh, they don t give 
 a girl that sense of all-wiseness, of proven strength, 
 of, of ... well, of manhood." 
 
 " I understand," Dick murmured. " But please 
 do not forget to glance at the other side of the shield. 
 You glowing young creatures of women must affect 
 the old fellows in precisely similar ways. They may 
 look on you as toys, playthings, delightful things to 
 whom to teach a few fine foolishnesses, but not as 
 comrades, not as equals, not as sharers full 
 sharers. Life is something to be learned. They 
 have learned it ... some of it. But young things 
 like you, Ernestine, have you learned any of it yet? " 
 
 " Tell me," she asked abruptly, almost tragically, 
 " about this wild young romance, about this young 
 thing when he was young, fifteen years ago." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 175 
 
 " Fifteen? " Dick replied promptly. " Eighteen. 
 They were married three years before she died. In 
 fact figure it out for yourself they were 
 actually married, by a Church of England dominie, 
 and living in wedlock, about the same moment that 
 you were squalling your first post-birth squalls in this 
 world." 
 
 " Yes, yes go on," she urged nervously. 
 " What was she like?" 
 
 " She was a resplendent, golden-brown, or tan- 
 golden half-caste, a Polynesian queen whose mother 
 had been a queen before her, whose father was an 
 Oxford man, an English gentleman, and a real 
 scholar. Her name was Nomare. She was Queen 
 of Huahoa. She was barbaric. He was young 
 enough to out-barbaric her. There was nothing sor 
 did in their marriage. He was no penniless adven 
 turer. She brought him her island kingdom and 
 forty thousand subjects. He brought to that island 
 his fortune and it was no inconsiderable fortune. 
 He built a palace that no South Sea island ever 
 possessed before or will ever possess again. It was 
 the real thing, grass-thatched, hand-hewn beams that 
 were lashed with cocoanut sennit, and all the rest. 
 It was rooted in the island; it sprouted out of the 
 island; it belonged, although he fetched Hopkins out 
 from New York to plan it. 
 
 " Heavens ! they had their own royal yacht, their 
 mountain house, their canoe house the last a 
 veritable palace in itself. I know. I have been at 
 great feasts in it though it was after their time. 
 Nomare was dead, and no one knew where Graham 
 was, and a king of collateral line was the ruler. 
 
i 7 6 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " I told you he out-barb a ricked her. Their din 
 ner service was gold. Oh, what s the use in tell 
 ing any more. He was only a boy. She was half- 
 English, half-Polynesian, and a really and truly 
 queen. They were flowers of their races. They 
 were a pair of wonderful children. They lived a 
 fairy tale. And . . . well, Ernestine, the years 
 have passed, and Evan Graham has passed from the 
 realm of the young thing. It will be a remarkable 
 woman that will ever infatuate him now. Besides, 
 he s practically broke. Though he didn t wastrel 
 his money. As much misfortune, and more, than 
 anything else." 
 
 " Paula would be more his kind," Ernestine said 
 meditatively. 
 
 " Yes, indeed," Dick agreed. " Paula, or any 
 woman as remarkable as Paula, would attract him a 
 thousand times more than all the sweet, young, lovely 
 things like you in the world. We oldsters have our 
 standards, you know." 
 
 " And I ll have to put up with the youngsters," 
 Ernestine sighed. 
 
 " In the meantime, yes," he chuckled. " Remem 
 bering, always, that you, too, in time, may grow into 
 the remarkable, mature woman, who can outfoot a 
 man like Evan in a foot-race of love for possession." 
 
 " But I shall be married long before that," she 
 pouted. 
 
 " Which will be your good fortune, my dear. 
 And, now, good night. And you are not angry with 
 me?" 
 
 c he smiled pathetically and shook her head, put 
 lips to be kissed, then said as they parted: 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 177 
 
 " I promise not to be angry if you will only show 
 me the way that in the end will lead me to ancient 
 graybeards like you and Graham." 
 
 Dick Forrest, turning off lights as he went, pene 
 trated the library, and, while selecting half a dozen 
 reference volumes on mechanics and physics, smiled 
 as if pleased with himself at recollection of the inter 
 view with his sister-in-law. He was confident that 
 he had spoken in time and not a moment too soon. 
 But, half way up the book-concealed spiral staircase 
 that led to his work room, a remark of Ernestine, 
 echoing in his consciousness, made him stop from 
 very suddenness to lean his shoulder against the 
 wall. "Paula would be more his kind." 
 
 " Silly ass! " he laughed aloud, continuing on his 
 way. u And married a dozen years ! " 
 
 Nor did he think again about it, until, in bed, on 
 his sleeping porch, he took a glance at his barometers 
 and thermometers, and prepared to settle down to 
 the solution of the electrical speculation that had 
 been puzzling him. Then it was, as he peered across 
 the great court to his wife s dark wing and dark 
 sleeping porch to see if she were still waking, that 
 Ernestine s remark again echoed. He dismissed it 
 with a " Silly ass! " of scorn, lighted a cigarette, and 
 began running, with trained eye, the indexes of the 
 books and marking the pages sought with matches. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 IT was long after ten in the morning, when 
 Graham, straying about restlessly and won 
 dering if Paula Forrest ever appeared before 
 the middle of the day, wandered into the music room. 
 Despite the fact that he was a several days guest 
 in the Big House, so big was it that the music room 
 was new territory. It was an exquisite room, pos 
 sibly thirty-five by sixty and rising to a lofty trussed 
 ceiling where a warm golden light was diffused from 
 a skylight of yellow glass. Red tones entered 
 largely into the walls and furnishing, and the place, 
 to him, seemed to hold the hush of music. 
 
 Graham was lazily contemplating a Keith with its 
 inevitable triumph of sun-gloried atmosphere and 
 twilight-shadowed sheep, when, from the tail of his 
 eye, he saw his hostess come in from the far en 
 trance. Again, the sight of her, that was a picture, 
 gave him the little catch-breath of gasp. She was 
 clad entirely in white, and looked very young and 
 quite tall in the sweeping folds of a holoku of elab 
 orate simplicity and apparent shapelessness. He 
 knew the holoku in the home of its origin, where, 
 on the lanais of Hawaii, it gave charm to a plain 
 woman and double-folded the charm of a charming 
 woman. 
 
 While they smiled greeting across the room, he 
 was noting the set of her body, the poise of head 
 
 178 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 179 
 
 and frankness of eyes all of which seemed articu 
 late with a friendly, comradely, " Hello, friends." 
 At least such was the form Graham s fancy took as 
 she came toward him. 
 
 " You made a mistake with this room," he said 
 gravely. 
 
 " No, don t say that ! But how ? " 
 
 " It should have been longer, much longer, twice 
 as long at least." 
 
 "Why?" she demanded, with a disapproving 
 shake of head, while he delighted in the girlish color 
 in her cheeks that gave the lie to her thirty-eight 
 years. 
 
 " Because, then," he answered, " you should have 
 had to walk twice as far this morning and my pleas 
 ure of watching you would have been correspond 
 ingly increased. I ve always insisted that the holoku 
 is the most charming garment ever invented for 
 
 women." 
 
 Then it was my holoku and not I," she retorted. 
 " I see you are like Dick always with a string on 
 your compliments, and lo, when we poor sillies start 
 to nibble, back goes the compliment dragging at the 
 end of the string. 
 
 " Now I want to show you the room," she hurried 
 on, closing his disclaimer. " Dick gave me a free 
 hand with it. It s all mine, you see, even to its 
 proportions." 
 
 " And the pictures?" 
 
 " I selected them," she nodded, " every one of 
 them, and loved them onto the walls myself. Al 
 though Dick did quarrel with me over that Verescha- 
 gin. He agreed on the two Millets and the Corot 
 
i8o THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 over there, and on that Isabey; and even conceded 
 that some Vereschagins might do in a music room, 
 but not that particular Vereschagin. He s jealous 
 for our local artists, you see. He wanted more of 
 them, wanted to show his appreciation of home 
 talent." 
 
 " I don t know your Pacific Coast men s work very 
 well," Graham said. " Tell me about them. Show 
 me that Of course, that s a Keith, there ; but 
 whose is that next one? It s beautiful." 
 
 " A McComas " she was answering; and 
 Graham, with a pleasant satisfaction, was settling 
 himself to a half-hour s talk on pictures, when Don 
 ald Ware entered with questing eyes that lighted up 
 at sight of the Little Lady. 
 
 His violin was under his arm, and he crossed to 
 the piano in a brisk, business-like way and proceeded 
 to lay out music. 
 
 " We re going to work till lunch," Paula explained 
 to Graham. " He swears I m getting abominably 
 rusty, and I think he s half right. We ll see you at 
 lunch. You can stay if you care, of course; but I 
 warn you it s really going to be work. And we re 
 going swimming this afternoon. Four o clock at the 
 tank, Dick says. Also, he says he s got a new song 
 he s going to sing then. What time is it, Mr. 
 Ware?" 
 
 " Ten minutes to eleven," the musician answered 
 briefly, with a touch of sharpness. 
 
 " You re ahead of time the engagement was for 
 eleven. And till eleven you ll have to wait, sir. I 
 must run and see Dick, first. I haven t said good 
 morning to him yet." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 181 
 
 Well Paula knew her husband s hours. Scribbled 
 secretly in the back of the note-book that lay always 
 on the reading stand by her couch were hieroglyphic 
 notes that reminded her that he had coffee at six- 
 thirty; might possibly be caught in bed with proof- 
 sheets or books till eight- forty-five, if not out riding; 
 was inaccessible between nine and ten, dictating cor 
 respondence to Blake; was inaccessible between ten 
 and eleven, conferring with managers and foremen, 
 while Bonbright, the assistant secretary, took down, 
 like any court reporter, every word uttered by all 
 parties in the rapid-fire interviews. 
 
 At eleven, unless there were unexpected telegrams 
 or business, she could usually count on finding Dick 
 alone for a space, although invariably busy. Pass 
 ing the secretaries room, the click of a typewriter 
 informed her that one obstacle was removed. In 
 the library, the sight of Mr. Bonbright hunting a 
 book for Mr. Manson, the Shorthorn manager, told 
 her that Dick s hour with his head men was over. 
 
 She pressed the button that swung aside a section 
 of filled book-shelves and revealed the tiny spiral of 
 steel steps that led up to Dick s work room. At the 
 top, a similar pivoting section of shelves swung 
 obediently to her press of button and let her noise 
 lessly into his room. A shade of vexation passed 
 across her face as she recognized Jeremy Braxton s 
 voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor 
 being seen. 
 
 " If we flood we flood/ the mine superintendent 
 was saying. " It will cost a mint yes, half a 
 dozen mints to pump out again. And it s a 
 damned shame to drown the old Harvest that way." 
 
1 82 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " But for this last year the books show that we ve 
 worked at a positive loss," Paula heard Dick take 
 up. " Every petty bandit from Huerta down to the 
 last peon who s stolen a horse has gouged us. It s 
 getting too stiff taxes extraordinary bandits, 
 revolutionists, and federals. We could survive it, 
 if only the end were in sight; but we have no guar 
 antee that this disorder may not last a dozen or 
 twenty years." 
 
 " Just the same, the old Harvest think of flood 
 ing her ! " the superintendent protested. 
 
 " And think of Villa," Dick replied, with a sharp 
 laugh the bitterness of which did not escape Paula. 
 " If he wins he says he s going to divide all the land 
 among the peons. The next logical step will be the 
 mines. How much do you think we ve coughed up 
 to the constitutionalists in the past twelvemonth? " 
 
 " Over a hundred and twenty thousand," Braxton 
 answered promptly. " Not counting that fifty 
 thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he retreated. 
 He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for 
 Europe with it I wrote you all that." 
 
 11 If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they ll 
 go on gouging, gouge without end, Amen. I think 
 we d better flood. If we can make wealth more 
 efficiently than those rapscallions, let us show them 
 that we can destroy wealth with the same facility." 
 
 " That s what I tell them. And they smile and 
 repeat that such and such a free will offering, under 
 exigent circumstances, would be very acceptable to 
 the revolutionary chiefs meaning themselves. 
 The big chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. 
 Good Lord! I show them what we ve done. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 183 
 
 Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages raised 
 from ten centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I 
 show them peons ten-centavo men when we took 
 them, and five-peso men when I showed them. And 
 the same old smile and the same old itching palm, 
 and the same old acceptability of a free will offering 
 from us to the sacred cause of the revolution. By 
 God ! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent 
 robber. I said to Arranzo: If we shut down, 
 here s five thousand Mexicans out of a job - 
 what ll you do with them ? And Arranzo smiled 
 and answered me pat. Do with them? he said. 
 Why, put guns in their hands and march em down 
 to take Mexico City. 
 
 In imagination Paula could see Dick s disgusted 
 shrug of shoulders as she heard him say: 
 
 " The curse of it is. that the stuff is there, and 
 that we re the only fellows that can get it out. The 
 Mexicans can t do it. They haven t the brains. All 
 they ve got is the guns, and they re making us shell 
 out more than we make. There s only one thing for 
 us, Jeremy. We ll forget profits for a year or so, 
 lay off the men, and just keep the engineer force on 
 and the pumping going." 
 
 " I threw that into Arranzo," Jeremy Braxton s 
 voice boomed. "And what was his comeback? 
 That if we laid off the peons, he d see to it that the 
 engineers laid off, too, and the mine could flood and 
 be damned to us. No, he didn t say that last. 
 He just smiled, but the smile meant the same thing. 
 For two cents I d a-wrung his yellow neck, except 
 that there d have been another patriot in his boots 
 and in my office next day proposing a stiffer gouge. 
 
1 84 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 So Arranzo got his bit, and, on top of it, before he 
 went across to join the main bunch around Juarez, 
 he let his men run off three hundred of our mules 
 thirty thousand dollars worth of mule-flesh right 
 there, after I d sweetened him, too. The yellow 
 skunk!" 
 
 4 Who is revolutionary chief in our diggings right 
 now? " Paula heard her husband ask with one of his 
 abrupt shifts that she knew of old time tokened his 
 drawing together the many threads of a situation 
 and proceeding to action. 
 
 " Raoul Bena." 
 
 "What s his rank?" 
 
 " Colonel he s got about seventy ragamuffins." 
 
 " What did he do before he quit work? " 
 
 " Sheep-herder." 
 
 " Very well." Dick s utterance was quick and 
 sharp. " You ve got to play-act. Become a pa 
 triot. Hike back as fast as God will let you. 
 Sweeten this Raoul Bena. He ll see through your 
 play, or he s no Mexican. Sweeten him and tell him 
 you ll make him a general a second Villa." 
 
 u Lord, Lord, yes, but how?" Jeremy Braxton 
 demanded. 
 
 " By putting him at the head of an army of five 
 thousand. Lay off the men. Make him make them 
 volunteer. We re safe, because Huerta is doomed. 
 Tell him you re a real patriot. Give each man a 
 rifle. We ll stand that for a last gouge, and it will 
 prove you a patriot. Promise every man his job 
 back when the war is over. Let them and Raoul 
 Bena depart with your blessing. Keep on the pump 
 ing force only. And if we cut out profits for a year 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 185 
 
 or so, at the same time we are cutting down losses. 
 And perhaps we won t have to flood old Harvest 
 after all." 
 
 Paula smiled to herself at Dick s solution as she 
 stole back down the spiral on her way to the music 
 room. She was depressed, but not by the Harvest 
 Group situation. Ever since her marriage there had 
 always been trouble in the working of the Mexican 
 mines Dick had inherited. Her depression was due 
 to her having missed her morning greeting to him. 
 But this depression vanished at meeting Graham, 
 who had lingered with Ware at the piano and who, 
 at her coming, was evidencing signs of departure. 
 
 " Don t run away," she urged. " Stay and wit 
 ness a spectacle of industry that should nerve you up 
 to starting on that book Dick has been telling me 
 about." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ON Dick s face, at lunch, there was no sign 
 of trouble over the Harvest Group ; nor could 
 anybody have guessed that Jeremy Braxton s 
 visit had boded anything less gratifying than a re 
 port of unfailing earnings. Although Adolph Weil 
 had gone on the early morning train, which adver 
 tised that the business which had brought him had 
 been transacted with Dick at some unheard of hour, 
 Graham discovered a greater company than ever at 
 the table. Besides a Mrs. Tully, who seemed a 
 stout and elderly society matron, and whom Graham 
 could not make out, there were three new men, of 
 whose identity he gleaned a little: a Mr. Gulhuss, 
 State Veterinary; a Mr. Deacon, a portrait painter 
 of evident note on the Coast; and a Captain Lester, 
 then captain of a Pacific Mail liner, who had sailed 
 skipper for Dick nearly twenty years before and 
 who had helped Dick to his navigation. 
 
 The meal was at its close, and the superintendent 
 was glancing at his watch, when Dick said: 
 
 " Jeremy, I want to show you what I ve been up 
 to. We ll go right now. You ll have time on your 
 way to the train." 
 
 " Let us all go," Paula suggested, " and make a 
 party of it. I m dying to see it myself, Dick s been 
 so obscure about it." 
 
 Sanctioned by Dick s nod, she was ordering ma 
 chines and saddle horses the next moment. 
 
 186 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 187 
 
 "What is it?" Graham queried, when she had 
 finished. 
 
 " Oh, one of Dick s stunts. He s always after 
 something new. This is an invention. He swears 
 it will revolutionize farming that it, small farm 
 ing. I have the general idea of it, but I haven t 
 seen it set up yet. It was ready a week ago, but 
 there was some delay about a cable or something 
 concerning an adjustment." 
 
 " There s billions in it ... if it works," Dick 
 smiled over the table. " Billions for the farmers 
 of the world, and perhaps a trifle of royalty for 
 me ... if it works." 
 
 " But what is it? " O Hay asked. " Music in the 
 dairy barns to make- the cows give down their milk 
 more placidly? " 
 
 " Every farmer his own plowman while sitting 
 on his front porch," Dick baffled back. !< In fact, 
 the labor-eliminating intermediate stage between soil 
 production and sheer laboratory production of food. 
 But wait till you see it. Gulhuss, this is where I kill 
 my own business, if it works, for it will do away 
 with the one horse of every ten-acre farmer between 
 here and Jericho." 
 
 In ranch machines and on saddle animals, the 
 company was taken a mile beyond the dairy center, 
 where a level field was fenced squarely off and con 
 tained, as Dick announced, just precisely ten acres. 
 
 " Behold," he said, " the one-man and no-horse 
 farm where the farmer sits on the porch. Please im 
 agine the porch." 
 
 In the center of the field was a stout steel pole, at 
 least twenty feet in height and guyed very low. 
 
1 88 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 From a drum on top of the pole a thin wire cable ran 
 to the extreme edge of the field and was attached 
 to the steering lever of a small gasoline tractor. 
 About the tractor two mechanics fluttered. At com 
 mand from Dick they cranked the motor and started 
 it on its way. 
 
 " This is the porch," Dick said. " Just imagine 
 we re all that future farmer sitting in the shade and 
 reading the morning paper while the manless, horse 
 less plowing goes on." 
 
 Alone, unguided, the drum on the head of the pole 
 in the center winding up the cable, the tractor, at the 
 circumference permitted by the cable, turned a single 
 furrow as it described a circle, or, rather, an inward 
 trending spiral about the field. 
 
 " No horse, no driver, no plowman, nothing but 
 the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its 
 way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned 
 up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever 
 spiraling toward the field s center. " Plow, harrow, 
 roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest all from the 
 front porch. And where the farmer can buy juice 
 from a power company, all he, or his wife, will have 
 to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, 
 and she to her pie-crust." 
 
 " All you need, now, to make it absolutely per 
 fect," Graham praised, " is to square the circle." 
 
 " Yes," Mr. Gulhuss agreed. " As it is, a circle 
 in a square field loses some acreage." 
 
 Graham s face advertised a mental arithmetic 
 trance for a minute, when he announced : " Loses, 
 roughly, three acres out of every ten." 
 
 " Sure," Dick concurred. " But the farmer has 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 189 
 
 to have his front porch somewhere on his ten acres. 
 And the front porch represents the house, the barn, 
 the chicken yard and the various outbuildings. 
 Very well. Let him get tradition out of his mind, 
 and, instead of building these things in the center 
 of his ten acres, let him build them on the three acres 
 of fringe. And let him plant his fruit and shade 
 trees and berry bushes on the fringe. When you 
 come to consider it, the traditionary method of erect 
 ing the buildings in the center of a rectangular ten 
 acres compels him to plow around the center in 
 broken rectangles. 7 
 
 Gulhuss nodded enthusiastically. " Sure. And 
 there s always the roadway from the center out to 
 the county road or right of way. That breaks the 
 efficiency of his plowing. Break ten acres into the 
 consequent smaller rectangles, and it s expensive cul 
 tivation." 
 
 " Wish navigation was as automatic," was Captain 
 Lester s contribution. 
 
 " Or portrait painting," laughed Rita Wainwright 
 with a significant glance at Mr. Deacon. 
 
 " Or musical criticism," Lute remarked, with no 
 glance at all, but with a pointedness of present com 
 pany that brought from O Hay : 
 
 " Or just being a charming young woman." 
 
 "What price for the outfit?" Jeremy Braxton 
 asked. 
 
 " Right now, we could manufacture and lay down, 
 at a proper profit, for five hundred. If the thing 
 came into general use, with up to date, large-scale 
 factory methods, three hundred. But say five hun 
 dred. And write off fifteen per cent, for interest 
 
1 90 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 and constant, it would cost the farmer seventy dol 
 lars a year. What ten-acre farmer, on two-hun 
 dred-dollar land, who keeps books, can keep a horse 
 for seventy dollars a year? And on top of that, 
 it would save him, in labor, personal or hired, at 
 the abjectest minimum, two hundred dollars a year." 
 
 " But what guides it? " Rita asked. 
 
 " The drum on the post. The drum is graduated 
 for the complete radius which took some tall 
 figuring, I assure you and the cable, winding 
 around the drum and shortening, draws the tractor 
 in toward the center." 
 
 There are lots of objections to its general in 
 troduction, even among small farmers," Gulhuss 
 said. 
 
 Dick nodded affirmation. 
 
 " Sure," he replied. " I have over forty noted 
 down and classified. And I ve as many more for the 
 machine itself. If the thing is a success, it will take 
 a long time to perfect it and introduce it." 
 
 Graham found himself divided between watching 
 the circling tractor and casting glances at the picture 
 Paula Forrest was on her mount. It was her first 
 day on The Fawn, which was the Palomina mare 
 Hennessy had trained for her. Graham smiled with 
 secret approval of her femininity; for Paula, whether 
 she had designed her habit for the mare, or had 
 selected one most peculiarly appropriate, had 
 achieved a triumph. 
 
 In place of a riding coat, for the afternoon was 
 warm, she wore a tan linen blouse with white turn 
 back collar. A short skirt, made like the lower 
 part of a riding coat, reached the knees, and from 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 191 
 
 knees to entrancing little bespurred champagne boots 
 tight riding trousers showed. Skirt and trousers 
 were of fawn-colored silk corduroy. Soft white 
 gauntlets on her hands matched with the collar in 
 the one emphasis of color. Her head was bare, the 
 hair done tight and low around her ears and nape 
 of neck. 
 
 u I don t see how you can keep such a skin and 
 expose yourself to the sun this way," Graham ven 
 tured, in mild criticism. 
 
 " I don t," she smiled with a dazzle of white teeth. 
 
 That is, I don t expose my face this way more than 
 
 a few times a year. I d like to, because I love the 
 
 sun-gold burn in my hair; but I don t dare a thorough 
 
 tanning." 
 
 The mare frisked, and a breeze of air blew back 
 a flap of skirt, showing an articulate knee where the 
 trouser leg narrowed tightly over it. Again Graham 
 visioned the white round of knee pressed into the 
 round muscles of the swimming Mountain Lad, as 
 he noted the firm knee-grip on her pigskin English 
 saddle, quite new and fawn-colored to match costume 
 and horse. 
 
 When the magneto on the tractor went wrong, 
 and the mechanics busied themselves with it in the 
 midst of the partly plowed field, the company, under 
 Paula s guidance, leaving Dick behind with his in 
 vention, resolved itself into a pilgrimage among the 
 brood-centers on the way to the swimming tank. 
 Mr. Crellin, the hog-manager, showed them Lady 
 Isleton, who, with her prodigious, fat, recent 
 progeny of eleven, won various naive encomiums, 
 while Mr. Crellin warmly proclaimed at least four 
 
1 92 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 times, " And not a runt, not a runt, in the bunch." 
 Other glorious brood-sows, of Berkshire, Duroc- 
 Jersey, and O. I. C. blood, they saw till they were 
 wearied, and new-born kids and lambs, and rotund 
 does and ewes. From center to center, Paula kept 
 the telephones warning ahead of the party s coming, 
 so that Mr. Manson waited to exhibit the great King 
 Polo, and his broad-backed Shorthorn harem, and 
 the Shorthorn harems of bulls that were only little 
 less than King Polo in magnificence and record; and 
 Parkman, the Jersey manager, was on hand, with 
 staffed assistants, to parade Sensational Drake, 
 Golden Jolly, Fontaine Royal, Oxford Master, and 
 Karnak s Fairy Boy blue ribbon bulls, all, and 
 founders and scions of noble houses of butter-fat re 
 nown, and Rosaire Queen, Standby s Dam, Golden 
 Jolly s Lass, Olga s Pride, and Gertie of Maitlands 
 equally blue-ribboned and blue-blooded Jersey 
 matrons in the royal realm of butter-fat; and Mr. 
 Mendenhall, who had charge of the Shires, proudly 
 exhibited a string of mighty stallions, led by the 
 mighty Mountain Lad, and a longer string of 
 matrons, headed by the Fotherington Princess of the 
 silver whinny. Even old Alden Bessie, the Prin 
 cess s dam, retired to but part-day s work, he sent 
 for that they might render due honor to so notable 
 a dam. 
 
 As four o clock approached, Donald Ware, not 
 keen on swimming, returned in one of the machines 
 to the Big House, and Mr. Gulhuss remained to dis 
 cuss Shires with Mr. Mendenhall. Dick was at the 
 tank when the party arrived, and the girls were im 
 mediately insistent for the new song. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 193 
 
 " It isn t exactly a new song," Dick explained, his 
 gray eyes twinkling roguery, " and it s not my song. 
 It was sung in Japan before I was born, and, I doubt 
 not, before Columbus discovered America. Also, it 
 is a duet a competitive duet with forfeit penalties 
 attached. Paula will have to sing it with me. I ll 
 teach you. Sit down there, that s right. Now 
 all the rest of you gather around and sit down." 
 
 Still in her riding habit, Paula sat down on the 
 concrete, facing her husband, in the center of the 
 sitting audience. Under his direction, timing her 
 movements to his, she slapped her hands on her 
 knees, slapped her palms together, and slapped her 
 palms against his palms much in the fashion of the 
 nursery game of " Bean Porridge Hot." Then he 
 sang the song, which was short and which she quickly 
 picked up, singing it with him and clapping the ac 
 cent. While the air of it was orientally catchy, it 
 was chanted slowly, almost monotonously, but it was 
 quickly provocative of excitement to the spectators: 
 
 " Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, 
 Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, 
 Yo-ko-ham-a,, Nag-a-sak-i, 
 Kobe-mar-o hoy! ! ! " 
 
 The last syllable, hoy, was uttered suddenly, ex 
 plosively, and an octave and more higher than the 
 pitch of the melody. At the same moment that it 
 was uttered, Paula s and Dick s hands were abruptly 
 shot toward each other s, either clenched or open. 
 The point of the game was that Paula s hands, 
 open or closed, at the instant of uttering hoy, 
 should match Dick s. Thus, the first time, she did 
 
194 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 match him, both his and her hands being closed, 
 whereupon he took off his hat and tossed it into 
 Lute s lap. 
 
 " My forfeit," he explained. " Come on, Paul, 
 again." And again they sang and clapped: 
 
 rt Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena, 
 Jong-Jong, Keena-Keena, 
 Yo-ko-ham-a, Nag-a-sak-i, 
 Kobe-mar-o hoy! ! ! " 
 
 This time, with the hoy, her hands were closed and 
 his were open. 
 
 " Forfeit ! forfeit ! " the girls cried. 
 
 She looked her costume over with alarm, asking, 
 "What can I give?" 
 
 " A hair pin," Dick advised; and one of her tur- 
 tleshell hair pins joined his hat in Lute s lap. 
 
 " Bother it ! " she exclaimed, when the last of her 
 hair pins had gone the same way, she having failed 
 seven times to Dick s once. " I can t see why I 
 should be so slow and stupid. Besides, Dick, you re 
 too clever. I never could out-guess you or out-an 
 ticipate you." 
 
 Again they sang the song. She lost, and, to Mrs. 
 Tully s shocked " Paula ! " she forfeited a spur and 
 threatened a boot when the remaining spur should be 
 gone. A winning streak of three compelled Dick 
 to give up his wrist watch and both spurs. Then 
 she lost her wrist watch and the remaining spur. 
 
 " Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," they began again, 
 while Mrs. Tully remonstrated, " Now, Paula, you 
 simply must stop this. Dick, you ought to be 
 ashamed of yourself." 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 195 
 
 But Dick, emitting a triumphant "Hoy!" won, 
 and joined in the laughter as Paula took off one of 
 her little champagne boots and added it to the heap 
 in Lute s lap. 
 
 " It s all right, Aunt Martha," Paula assured Mrs. 
 Tully. " Mr. Ware s not here, and he s the only 
 one who would be shocked. Come on, Dick. 
 You can t win every time." 
 
 " Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," she chanted on with 
 her husband. 
 
 The repetition, at first slow, had accelerated 
 steadily, so that now they fairly rippled through with 
 it, while their slapping, striking palms made a con 
 tinuous patter. The exercise and excitement had 
 added to the sun s action on her skin, so that her 
 laughing face was all a rosy glow. 
 
 Evan Graham, a silent spectator, was aware of 
 hurt and indignity. He knew the " Jong-Keena " of 
 old time from the geishas of the tea houses of Nip 
 pon, and, despite the unconventionally that ruled 
 the Forrests and the Big House, he experienced 
 shock in that Paula should take part in such a game. 
 It did not enter his head at the moment that he 
 would have been merely curious to see how far the 
 madness would go had the player been Lute, or 
 Ernestine, or Rita. Not till afterward did he realize 
 that his concern and sense of outrage were due to the 
 fact that the player was Paula, and that, therefore, 
 she was bulking bigger in his imagination than he 
 was conscious of. What he was conscious of at the 
 moment was that he was growing angry and that he 
 had deliberately to check himself from protesting. 
 
 By this time Dick s cigarette case and matches 
 
196 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 and Paula s second boot, belt, skirt-pin, and wedding 
 ring had joined the mound of forfeits. Mrs. Tully, 
 her face set in stoic resignation, was silent. 
 
 " Jong-Keena, Jong-Keena," Paula laughed and 
 sang on, and Graham heard Ernestine laugh to Bert, 
 " I don t see what she can spare next." 
 
 ; * Well, you know her," he heard Bert answer. 
 " She s game once she gets started, and it certainly 
 looks like she s started." 
 
 "Hoy!" Paula and Dick cried simultaneously, as 
 they thrust out their hands. 
 
 But Dick s were closed, and hers were open. 
 Graham watched her vainly quest her person for the 
 consequent forfeit. 
 
 " Come on, Lady Godiva," Dick commanded. 
 You hae sung, you hae danced; now pay the piper." 
 
 ;< Was the man a fool? " was Graham s thought. 
 " And a man with a wife like that." 
 
 " Well," Paula sighed, her fingers playing with 
 the fastenings of her blouse, " if I must, I must." 
 
 Raging inwardly, Graham averted his gaze, and 
 kept it averted. There was a pause, in which he 
 knew everybody must be hanging on what she would 
 do next. Then came a giggle from Ernestine, a 
 burst of laughter from all, and, " A frame-up ! " 
 from Bert, that overcame Graham s resoluteness. 
 He looked quickly. The Little Lady s blouse was 
 off, and, from the waist up, she appeared in her swim 
 ming suit. It was evident that she had dressed over 
 it for the ride. 
 
 " Come on, Lute you next," Dick was chal 
 lenging. 
 
 But Lute, not similarly prepared for Jong-Keena, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 197 
 
 blushingly led the retreat of the girls to the dress 
 ing rooms. 
 
 Graham watched Paula poise at the forty-foot top 
 of the diving scaffold and swan-dive beautifully into 
 the tank; heard Bert s admiring " Oh, you Annette 
 Kellerman! " and, still chagrined by the trick that 
 had threatened to outrage him, fell to wondering 
 about the wonder woman, the Little Lady of the 
 Big House, and how she had happened so wonder 
 fully to be. As he fetched down the length of tank, 
 under water, moving with leisurely strokes and with 
 open eyes watching the shoaling bottom, it came to 
 him that he did not know anything about her. She 
 was Dick Forrest s wife. That was all he knew. 
 How she had been born, how she had lived, how and 
 where her past had been of all this he knew noth 
 ing. 
 
 Ernestine had told him that Lute and she were half 
 sisters of Paula. That was one bit of data, at any 
 rate. (Warned by the increasing brightness of the 
 bottom that he had nearly reached the end of the 
 tank, and recognizing Dick s and Bert s legs inter 
 twined in what must be a wrestling bout, Graham 
 turned about, still under water, and swam back a 
 score or so of feet.) There was that Mrs. Tully 
 whom Paula had addressed as Aunt Martha. Was 
 she truly an aunt? Or was she a courtesy Aunt 
 through sisterhood with the mother of Lute and 
 Ernestine ? 
 
 He broke surface, was hailed by the others to 
 join in bull-in-the-ring; in which strenuous sport, for 
 the next half hour, he was compelled more than once 
 to marvel at the litheness and agility, as well as 
 
198 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 strategy, of Paula in her successful efforts at escap 
 ing through the ring. Concluding the game through 
 weariness, breathing hard, the entire party raced the 
 length of the tank and crawled out to rest in the 
 sunshine in a circle about Mrs, Tully. 
 
 Soon there was more fun afoot, and Paula was 
 contending impossible things with Mrs. Tully. 
 
 " Now, Aunt Martha, just because you never 
 learned to swim is no reason for you to take such a 
 position. I am a real swimmer, and I tell you I can 
 dive right into the tank here, and stay under for ten 
 minutes." 
 
 " Nonsense, child," Mrs. Tully beamed. " Your 
 father, when he was young, a great deal younger than 
 you, my dear, could stay under water longer than any 
 other man; and his record, as I know, was three 
 minutes and forty seconds, as I very well know, for 
 I held the watch myself and kept the time when he 
 won against Harry Selby on a wager." 
 
 " Oh, I know my father was some man in his 
 time," Paula swaggered; "but times have changed. 
 If I had the old dear here right now, in all his youth 
 ful excellence, I d drown him if he tried to stay under 
 water with me. Ten minutes ? Of course I can do 
 ten minutes. And I will. You hold the watch, 
 Aunt Martha, and time me. Why, it s as easy 
 as" 
 
 " Shooting fish in a bucket," Dick completed for 
 her. 
 
 Paula climbed to the platform above the spring 
 board. 
 
 * Time me when I m in the air," she said. 
 
 " Make your turn and a half," Dick called. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 199 
 
 She nodded, smiled, and simulated a prodigious 
 effort at filling her lungs to their utmost capacity. 
 Graham watched enchanted. A diver himself, he 
 had rarely seen the turn and a half attempted by 
 women other than professionals. Her wet suit of 
 light blue and green silk clung closely to her, show 
 ing the lines of her justly proportioned body. With 
 what appeared to be an agonized gulp for the last 
 cubic inch of air her lungs could contain, she sprang 
 up, out, and down, her body vertical and stiff, her 
 legs straight, her feet close together as they impacted 
 on the springboard end. Flung into the air by the 
 board, she doubled her body into a ball, made a com 
 plete revolution, then straightened out in perfect 
 diver s form, and in a perfect dive, with scarcely a 
 ripple, entered the water. 
 
 " A Toledo blade would have made more splash," 
 was Graham s verdict. 
 
 " If only I could dive like that," Ernestine 
 breathed her admiration. " But I never shall. 
 Dick says diving is a matter of timing, and that s 
 why Paula does it so terribly well. She s got the 
 sense of time " 
 
 " And of abandon," Graham added. 
 
 " Of willed abandon," Dick qualified. 
 
 " Of relaxation by effort," Graham agreed. 
 " I ve never seen a professional do so perfect a turn 
 and a half." 
 
 " And I m prouder of it than she is," Dick pro 
 claimed. " You see, I taught her, though I confess 
 it was an easy task. She coordinates almost effort 
 lessly. And that, along with her will and sense of 
 time why her first attempt was better than fair." 
 
200 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Paula is a remarkable woman," Mrs. Tully said 
 proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second hand 
 of the watch and the unbroken surface of the pool. 
 Women never swim so well as men. But she 
 does. Three minutes and forty seconds ! She s 
 beaten her father! " 
 
 u But she won t stay under any five minutes, much 
 less ten," Dick solemnly stated. " She ll burst her 
 lungs first." 
 
 At four minutes, Mrs. Tully began to show excite 
 ment and to look anxiously from face to face. Cap 
 tain Lester, not in the secret, scrambled to his feet 
 with an oath and dived into the tank. 
 
 " Something has happened," Mrs. Tully said with 
 controlled quietness. " She hurt herself on that 
 dive. Go in after her, you men." 
 
 But Graham and Bert and Dick, meeting under 
 water, gleefully grinned and squeezed hands. Dick 
 made signs for them to follow, and led the way 
 through the dark-shadowed water into the crypt, 
 where, treading water, they joined Paula in subdued 
 whisperings and gigglings. 
 
 " Just came to make sure you were all right," Dick 
 explained. " And now we ve got to beat it. You 
 first, Bert. I ll follow Evan." 
 
 And, one by one, they went down through the dark 
 water and came up on the surface of the pool. By 
 this time Mrs. Tully was on her feet and standing 
 by the edge of the tank. 
 
 " If I thought this was one of your tricks, Dick 
 Forrest," she began. 
 
 But Dick, paying no attention, acting preter- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 201 
 
 naturally calmly, was directing the men loudly 
 enough for her to hear. 
 
 " We ve got to make this systematic, fellows. 
 You, Bert, and you, Evan, join with me. We start 
 at this end, five feet apart, and search the bottom 
 across. Then move along and repeat it back." 
 
 " Don t exert yourselves, gentlemen," Mrs. Tully 
 called, beginning to laugh. " As for you, Dick, you 
 come right out. I want to box your ears." 
 
 " Take care of her, you girls," Dick shouted. 
 " She s got hysterics." 
 
 " I haven t, but I will have," she laughed. 
 
 " But damn it all, madam, this is no laughing mat 
 ter! " Captain Lester spluttered breathlessly, as he 
 prepared for another trip to explore the bottom. 
 
 " Are you on, Aunt Martha, really and truly on? " 
 Dick asked, after the valiant mariner had gone 
 down. 
 
 Mrs. Tully nodded. " But keep it up, Dick, 
 youVe got one dupe. Elsie Coghlan s mother told 
 me about it in Honolulu last year." 
 
 Not until eleven minutes had elapsed did the smil 
 ing face of Paula break the surface. Simulating ex 
 haustion, she slowly crawled out and sank down 
 1 panting near her aunt. Captain Lester, really ex 
 hausted by his strenuous exertions at rescue, studied 
 Paula keenly, then marched to the nearest pillar 
 and meekly bumped his head three times against the 
 concrete. 
 
 " I m afraid I didn t stay down ten minutes," 
 Paula said. u But I wasn t much under that, was I, 
 Aunt Martha?" 
 
202 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " You weren t much under at all," Mrs. Tully re 
 plied, " if it s my opinion you were asking. I m sur 
 prised that you are even wet There, there, 
 breathe naturally, child. The play-acting is unneces 
 sary. I remember, when I was a young girl, trav 
 eling in India, there was a school of fakirs who 
 leaped into deep wells and stayed down much longer 
 than you, child, much longer indeed." 
 
 " You knew ! " Paula charged. 
 
 " But you didn t know I did," her Aunt retorted. 
 " And therefore your conduct was criminal. When 
 you consider a woman of my age, with my heart " 
 
 " And with your blessed, brass-tack head," Paula 
 cried. 
 
 " For two apples I d box your ears." 
 
 " And for one apple I d hug you, wet as I am," 
 Paula laughed back. " Anyway, we did fool Cap 
 tain Lester. Didn t we, Captain?" 
 
 " Don t speak to me," that doughty mariner mut 
 tered darkly. " I m busy with myself, meditating 
 what form my vengeance shall take. As for you, 
 Mr. Dick Forrest, I m divided between blowing 
 up your dairy, or hamstringing Mountain Lad.| 
 Maybe I ll do both. In the meantime I am going 
 out to kick that mare you ride." 
 
 Dick on The Outlaw, and Paula on The Fawn, 
 rode back side by side to the Big House. 
 
 " How do you like Graham? " he asked. 
 
 " Splendid," was her reply. " He s your type, 
 Dick. He s universal, like you, and he s got the 
 same world-marks branded on him the Seven 
 Seas, the books, and all the rest. He s an artist, 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 203 
 
 too, and pretty well all-around. And he s good fun. 
 Have you noticed his smile? It s irresistible. It 
 makes one want to smile with him." 
 
 " And he s got his serious scars, as well," Dick 
 nodded concurrence. 
 
 " Yes right in the corners of the eyes, just after 
 he has smiled, you ll see them come. They re not 
 tired marks exactly, but rather the old eternal ques 
 tions: Why? What for? What s it worth? 
 % What s it all about?" 
 
 And bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, Ernes 
 tine and Graham talked. 
 
 u Dick s deep," she was saying. You don t 
 know him any too well. He s dreadfully deep. I 
 know him a little. Paula knows him a lot. But 
 very few others ever get under the surface of him. 
 He s a real philosopher, and he has the control of a 
 stoic or an Englishman, and he can play-act to fool 
 the world." 
 
 At the long hitching rails under the oaks, where 
 the dismounting party gathered, Paula was in gales 
 of laughter. 
 
 " Go on, go on," she urged Dick, " more, more." 
 
 " She s been accusing me of exhausting my vocabu 
 lary in naming the house-boys by my system," he ex 
 plained. 
 
 " And he s given me at least forty more names in 
 a minute and a half. Go on, Dick, more." 
 
 " Then," he said, striking a chant, " we can have 
 Oh Sin and Oh Pshaw, Oh Sing and Oh Song, Oh 
 Sung and Oh Sang, Oh Last and Oh Least, Oh Ping 
 
204 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 and Oh Pong, Oh Some, Oh More, and Oh Most, 
 Oh Naught and Oh Nit . . ." 
 
 And Dick jingled away into the house still chant 
 ing his extemporized directory. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A WEEK of dissatisfaction and restlessness en 
 sued for Graham. Torn between belief that 
 his business was to leave the Big House on 
 the first train, and desire to see, and see more of 
 Paula, to be with her, and to be more with her 
 he succeeded in neither leaving nor in seeing as much 
 of her as during the first days of his visit. 
 
 At first, and for the five days that he lingered, 
 the young violinist monopolized nearly her entire 
 time of visibility. Often Graham strayed into the 
 music room, and, quite neglected by the pair, sat 
 for moody half-hours listening to their u work." 
 They were oblivious of his presence, either flushed 
 and absorbed with the passion of their music, or wip 
 ing their foreheads and chatting and laughing com- 
 panionably in pauses to rest. That the young 
 musician loved her with an ardency that was almost 
 painful, was patent to Graham; but what hurt him 
 was the abandon of devotion with which she some 
 times looked at Ware after he had done something 
 exceptionally fine. In vain Graham tried to tell 
 himself that all this was mental on her part purely 
 delighted appreciation of the other s artistry. Nev 
 ertheless, being man, it hurt, and continued to hurt, 
 until he could no longer suffer himself to remain. 
 
 Once, chancing into the room at the end of a 
 205 
 
206 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Schumann song and just after Ware had departed, 
 Graham found Paula still seated at the piano, an 
 expression of rapt dreaming on her face. She re 
 garded him almost unrecognizingly, gathered her 
 self mechanically together, uttered an absent-minded 
 commonplace or so, and left the room. Despite his 
 vexation and hurt, Graham tried to think it mere ar 
 tist-dreaming on her part, a listening to the echo of 
 the just-played music in her soul. But women were 
 curious creatures, he could not help moralizing, and 
 were prone to lose their hearts most strangely and 
 inconsequentially. Might it not be that by his very 
 music this youngster of a man was charming the 
 woman of her? 
 
 With the departure of Ware, Paula Forrest re 
 tired almost completely into her private wing behind 
 the door without a knob. Nor did this seem un 
 usual, Graham gleaned from the household. 
 
 " Paula is a woman who finds herself very good 
 company," Ernestine explained, " and she often goes 
 in for periods of aloneness, when Dick is the only 
 person who sees her." 
 
 " Which is not flattering to the rest of the com 
 pany," Graham smiled. 
 
 " Which makes her such good company whenever 
 she is in company," Ernestine retorted. 
 
 The driftage through the Big House was decreas 
 ing. A few guests, on business or friendship, con 
 tinued to come, but more departed. Under Oh Joy 
 and his Chinese staff the Big House ran so friction- 
 lessly and so perfectly, that entertainment of guests 
 seemed little part of the host s duties. The guests 
 largely entertained themselves and one another. 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 207 
 
 Dick rarely appeared, even for a moment, until 
 lunch, and Paula, now carrying out her seclusion pro 
 gram, never appeared before dinner. 
 
 " Rest cure," Dick laughed one noon, and chal 
 lenged Graham to a tournament with boxing gloves, 
 single-sticks, and foils. 
 
 " And now s the time," he told Graham, as they 
 breathed between bouts, " for you to tackle your 
 book. I m only one of the many who are looking 
 forward to reading it, and I m looking forward 
 hard. Got a letter from Havely yesterday he 
 mentioned it, and wondered how far along you 
 
 were." 
 
 So Graham, in his tower room, arranged his notes 
 and photographs, schemed out the work, and plunged 
 into the opening chapters. So immersed did he be 
 come that his nascent interest in Paula might have 
 languished, had it not been for meeting her each 
 evening at dinner. Then, too, until Ernestine and 
 Lute left for Santa Barbara, there were afternoon 
 swims and rides and motor trips to the pastures of 
 the Miramar Hills and the upland ranges of the 
 Anselmo Mountains. Other trips they made, some 
 times accompanied by Dick, to his great dredgers 
 working in the Sacramento basin, or his dam-build 
 ing on the Little Coyote and Los Cuatos creeks, or 
 to his five-thousand-acre colony of twenty-acre 
 farmers, where he was trying to enable two hun 
 dred and fifty heads of families, along with their 
 families, to make good on the soil. 
 
 That Paula sometimes went for long solitary rides, 
 Graham knew, and, once, he caught her dismounting 
 from the Fawn at the hitching rails. 
 
 
208 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Don t you think you are spoiling that mare for 
 riding in company? " he twitted. 
 
 Paula laughed and shook her head. 
 
 ;t Well, then," he asserted stoutly, " I m spoiling 
 for a ride with you." 
 
 "There s Lute, and Ernestine, and Bert, and all 
 the rest." 
 
 " This is new country," he contended. " And one 
 learns country through the people who know it. 
 I ve seen it through the eyes of Lute, and Ernestine 
 and all the rest; but there is a lot I haven t seen and 
 wjikh I can see only through your eyes." 
 
 " A pleasant theory," she evaded. "A a sort 
 bf landscape vampirism." 
 
 But without the ill effects of vampirism," he 
 ged quickly. 
 
 Her answer was slow in coming. Her look into 
 his eyes was frank and straight, and he could guess 
 her words were weighed and gauged. 
 
 " I don t know about that," was all she said 
 finally; but his fancy leaped at the several words, 
 ranging and conjecturing their possible connota 
 tions, 
 
 " But we have so much we might be saying to each 
 other," he tried again. " So much we ... ought 
 to be saying to each other." 
 
 " So I apprehend," she answered quietly; and 
 again that frank, straight look accompanied her 
 speech. 
 
 So she did apprehend the thought of it was 
 flame to him, but his tongue was not quick enough to 
 serve him to escape the cool, provoking laugh as she 
 turned into the house. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 209 
 
 Still the company of the Big House thinned. 
 Paula s aunt, Mrs. Tully, much to Graham s dis 
 appointment (for he had expected to learn from her 
 much that he wanted to know of Paula), had gone 
 after only a several days stay. There was vague 
 talk of her return for a longer stay; but, just back 
 from Europe, she declared herself burdened with a 
 round of duty visits which must be performed be 
 fore her pleasure visiting began. 
 
 O Hay, the critic, had been compelled to linger 
 several days in order to live down the disastrous cul 
 mination of the musical raid made upon him by the 
 philosophers. The idea and the trick had been 
 Dick s. Combat had joined early in the evening, 
 when a seeming chance remark of Ernestine had 
 enabled Aaron Hancock to fling the first bomb into 
 the thick of O Hay s deepest convictions. Dar 
 Hyal, a willing and eager ally, had charged around 
 the flank with his blastic theory of music and taken 
 O Hay in reverse. And the battle had raged until 
 the hot-headed Irishman, beside himself with the 
 grueling the pair of skilled logomachists were giving 
 him, accepted with huge relief the kindly invitation 
 of Terrence McFane to retire with him to the tran 
 quillity and repose of the stag room, where, over a 
 soothing highball and far from the barbarians, the 
 two of them could have a heart to heart talk on real 
 music. At two in the morning, wild-eyed and be 
 fuddled, O Hay had been led to bed by the upright- 
 walking and unshakably steady Terrence. 
 
 " Never mind," Ernestine had told O Hay later, 
 with a twinkle in her eye that made him guess the 
 plot. " It was only to be expected. Those rattle- 
 
210 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 brained philosophers would drive even a saint to 
 drink." 
 
 " I thought you were safe in Terrence s hands," 
 had been Dick s mock apology. " A pair of Irish 
 men, you know. I d forgot Terrence was case-hard 
 ened. Do you know, after he said good night to 
 you, he came up to me for a yarn. And he was 
 steady as a rock. He mentioned casually of having 
 had several sips, so I ... I ... never dreamed 
 ... er ... that he had indisposed you." 
 
 When Lute and Ernestine departed for Santa Bar 
 bara, Bert Wainwright and his sister remembered 
 their long-neglected home in Sacramento. A pair of 
 painters, proteges of Paula, arrived the same day. 
 But they were little in evidence, spending long days 
 in the hills with a trap and driver and smoking long 
 pipes in the stag room. 
 
 The free and easy life of the Big House went on 
 in its frictionless way. Dick worked. Graham 
 worked. Paula maintained her seclusion. The 
 sages from the madrono grove strayed in for wordy 
 dinners and wordy evenings, except when Paula 
 played for them. Automobile parties, from Sacra 
 mento, Wickenberg, and other valley towns, con 
 tinued to drop in unexpectedly, but never to the con 
 fusion of Oh Joy and the house boys, whom Graham 
 saw, on occasion, with twenty minutes warning, seat 
 a score of unexpected guests to a perfect dinner. 
 And there were even nights rare ones when 
 only Dick and Graham and Paula sat at dinner, and 
 when, afterward, the two men yarned for an hour 
 before an early bed, while she played soft things 
 to herself or disappeared earlier than they. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 211 
 
 But one moonlight evening, when the Watsons 
 and Masons and Wombolds arrived in force, 
 Graham found himself out, when every bridge table 
 was made up. Paula was at the piano. As he ap 
 proached he caught the quick expression of pleasure 
 in her eyes at sight of him, which as quickly vanished. 
 She made a slight movement as if to rise, which did 
 not escape his notice any more than did her quiet 
 mastery of the impulse that left her seated. 
 
 She was immediately herself as he had always seen 
 her although it was little enough he had seen of 
 her, he thought, as he talked whatever came into his 
 head, and rummaged among her songs with her. 
 Now one and now another song he tried with her, 
 subduing his high baritone to her light soprano with 
 such success as to win cries of more from the bridge 
 players. 
 
 4 Yes, I am positively aching to be out again over 
 the world with Dick," she told him in a pause. "If 
 we could only start to-morrow ! But Dick can t start 
 yet. He s in too deep with too many experiments 
 and adventures on the ranch here. Why, what do 
 you think he s up to now? As if he did not have 
 enough on his hands, he s going to revolutionize the 
 sales end, or, at least, the California and Pacific 
 Coast portion of it, by making the buyers come to the 
 ranch." 
 
 " But they do do that," Graham said. " The first 
 man I met here was a buyer from Idaho." 
 
 " Oh, but Dick means as an institution, you know 
 to make them come en masse at a stated time. 
 Not simple auction sales, either, though he says he 
 will bait them with a bit of that to excite interest. 
 
2i2 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 It will be an annual fair, to last three days, in which 
 he will be the only exhibitor. He s spending half 
 his mornings now in conference with Mr. Agar and 
 Mr. Pitts. Mr. Agar is his sales manager, and Mr. 
 Pitts his showman." 
 
 She sighed and rippled her fingers along the key 
 board. 
 
 " But, oh, if only we could get away Timbuctoo, 
 Mokpo, or Jericho." 
 
 " Don t tell me you ve ever been to Mokpo," 
 Graham laughed. 
 
 She nodded. "Cross my heart, solemnly, hope to 
 die. It was with Dick in the All Away and in the 
 long ago. It might almost be said we honeymooned 
 in Mokpo." 
 
 And while Graham exchanged reminiscences of 
 Mokpo with her, he cudgeled his brain to try and 
 decide whether her continual reference to her hus 
 band was deliberate. 
 
 " I should imagine you found it such a paradise 
 here," he was saying. 
 
 " I do, I do," she assured him with what seemed 
 unnecessary vehemence. " But I don t know what s 
 come over me lately. I feel it imperative to be up 
 and away. The spring fret, I suppose; the Red 
 Gods and their medicine. And if only Dick didn t 
 insist on working his head off and getting tied down 
 with projects ! Do you know, in all the years of our 
 marriage, the only really serious rival I have ever 
 had has been this ranch. He s pretty faithful, and 
 the ranch is his first love. He had it all planned 
 and started before he ever met me or knew I ex 
 isted." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 213 
 
 " Here, let us try this together," Graham said 
 abruptly, placing the song on the rack before her. 
 
 " Oh, but it s the Gypsy Trail, " she protested. 
 " It will only make my mood worse." And she 
 hummed : 
 
 Follow the Romany patteran 
 
 West to the sinking sun, 
 
 Till the junk sails lift through the homeless drift, 
 And the East and the West are one. 
 
 " What is the Romany patteran? " she broke off 
 to ask. " I ve always thought of it as patter, or 
 patois, the Gypsy patois, and somehow it strikes me 
 as absurd to follow a language over the world > 
 a sort of philological excursion." 
 
 " In a way the patteran is speech," he answered. 
 " But it always says one thing: This way I have 
 passed. Two sprigs, crossed in certain ways and 
 left upon the trail, compose the patteran. But they 
 must always be of different trees or shrubs. Thus, 
 on the ranch here, a patteran could be made of 
 manzanita and madrono, of oak and spruce, of buck 
 eye and alder, of redwood and laurel, of huckle 
 berry and lilac. It is a sign of Gypsy comrade to 
 Gypsy comrade, of Gypsy lover to Gypsy lover." 
 And he hummed : 
 
 " * Back to the road again, again, 
 
 Out of a clear sea track; 
 Follow the cross of the Gypsy trail, 
 Over the world and back. " 
 
 She nodded comprehension, looked for a moment 
 with troubled eyes down the long room to the card- 
 
2i 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 players, caught herself in her momentary absentness, 
 and said quickly: 
 
 " Heaven knows there s a lot of Gypsy in some 
 of us. I have more than full share. In spite of his 
 bucolic proclivities, Dick is a born Gypsy. And 
 from what he has told of you, you are hopelessly 
 one." 
 
 / " After all, the white man is the real Gypsy, the 
 dng Gypsy," Graham propounded. " He has 
 wandered wider, wilder, and with less equipment, 
 than any Gypsy. The Gypsy has followed in his 
 trails, but never made trail for him. Come ; let us 
 \try it." 
 
 And as they sang the reckless words to their 
 merry, careless lilt, he looked down at her and won 
 dered wondered at her at himself. This was 
 no place for him by this woman s side, under her hus 
 band s roof-tree. Yet here he was, and he should 
 have gone days before. After the years he was 
 just getting acquainted with himself. This was en 
 chantment, madness. He should tear himself away 
 at once. He had known enchantments and mad 
 nesses before, and had torn himself away. Had he 
 softened with the years ? he questioned himself. Or 
 was this a profounder madness than he had expe 
 rienced? This meant the violation of dear things 
 things so dear, so jealously cherished and guarded 
 in his secret life, that never yet had they suffered vio 
 lation. 
 
 And still he did not tear himself away. He stood 
 there beside her, looking down on her brown crown 
 of hair glinting gold and bronze and bewitchingly 
 curling into tendrils above her ears, singing a song 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 215 
 
 that was fire to him that must be fire to her, she 
 being what she was and feeling what she had al 
 ready, in flashes, half-unwittingly, hinted to him. 
 
 She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her 
 witchery, he thought, as her voice, so richly a 
 woman s voice, so essentially her voice in contra 
 distinction to all women s voices in the world, sang 
 and throbbed in his ear. And he knew, beyond 
 shade of doubt, that she felt some touch of this 
 madness that afflicted him; that she sensed, as he 
 sensed, that the man and the woman were met. 
 
 They thrilled together as they sang, and the 
 thought and the sure knowledge of it added fuel to 
 his own madness till his voice warmed unconsciously 
 to the daring of the last lines, as, voices and thrills 
 blending, they sang: 
 
 The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky, 
 
 The deer to the wholesome wold, 
 And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid 
 
 As it was in the days of old 
 The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, 
 
 Light of my tents be fleet, 
 Morning waits at the end of the world, 
 
 And the world is all at our feet/ ): 
 
 He looked for her to look up as the last notes died 
 away, but she remained quiet a moment, her eyes 
 bent on the keys. And then the face that was turned 
 to his was the face of the Little Lady of the Big 
 House, the mouth smiling mischievously, the eyes 
 filled with roguery, as she said : 
 
 " Let us go and devil Dick he s losing. I ve 
 never seen him lose his temper at cards, but he gets 
 ridiculously blue after a long siege of losing. 
 
216 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " And he does love gambling," she continued, as 
 she led the way to the tables. " It s one of his modes 
 of relaxing. It does him good. About once or 
 twice a year, if it s a good poker game, he ll sit In 
 all night to it and play to the blue sky if they take 
 off the limit." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ALMOST immediately after the singing of the 
 " Gypsy Trail," Paula emerged from her se 
 clusion, and Graham found himself hard put, 
 in the tower room, to keep resolutely to his work 
 when all the morning he could hear snatches of song 
 and opera from her wing, or laughter and scolding 
 of dogs from the great patio, or the continuous pulse 
 for hours of the piano from the distant music room. 
 But Graham, patterning after Dick, devoted his 
 mornings to work, so that he rarely encountered 
 Paula before lunch. 
 
 She made announcement that her spell of insomnia 
 was over and that she was ripe for all gaieties and 
 excursions Dick had to offer her. Further, she 
 threatened, in case Dick grudged these personal 
 diversions, to fill the house with guests and teach 
 him what liveliness was. It was at this time that her 
 Aunt Martha Mrs. Tully returned for a sev 
 eral days visit, and that Paula resumed the driving 
 of Duddy and Fuddy in the high, one-seated Stude- 
 baker trap. Duddy and Fuddy were spirited trot 
 ters, but Mrs. Tully, despite her elderliness and 
 avoirdupois, was without timidity when Paula held 
 the reins. 
 
 As Mrs. Tully told Graham : "And that is a con 
 cession I make to no woman save Paula. She is the 
 only woman I can trust myself to with horses. She 
 has the horse-way about her. When she was a child 
 
 217 
 
2 1 8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 she was wild over horses. It s a wonder she didn t 
 become a circus rider." 
 
 More, much more, Graham learned about Paula 
 in various chats with her aunt. Of Philip Desten, 
 Paula s father, Mrs. Tully could never say enough. 
 Her eldest brother, and older by many years, he had 
 been her childhood prince. His ways had been big 
 ways, princely ways ways that to commoner folk 
 had betokened a streak of madness. He was con 
 tinually guilty of the wildest things and the most 
 chivalrous things. It was this streak that had 
 enabled him to win various fortunes, and with equal 
 facility to lose them, in the great gold adventure 
 of Forty-nine. Himself of old New England stock, 
 he had had for great grandfather a Frenchman 
 a trifle of flotsam from a mid-ocean wreck and landed 
 to grow up among the farmer-sailormen of the coast 
 of Maine. 
 
 " And once, and once only, in each generation, 
 that French Desten crops out," Mrs. Tully assured 
 Graham. " Philip was that Frenchman in his gen 
 eration, and who but Paula, and in full measure, re 
 ceived that same inheritance in her generation. 
 Though Lute and Ernestine are her half-sisters, no 
 one would imagine one drop of the common blood 
 was shared. That s why Paula, instead of going 
 circus-riding, drifted inevitably to France. It was 
 that old original Desten that drew her over." 
 
 And of the adventure in France, Graham learned 
 much. Philip Desten s luck had been to die when 
 the wheel of his fortune had turned over and down. 
 Ernestine and Lute, little tots, had been easy enough 
 for Desten s sisters to manage. But Paula, who had 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 219 
 
 fallen to Mrs. Tully, had been the problem be 
 cause of that Frenchman." 
 
 " Oh, she is rigid New England," .Mrs. Tully in 
 sisted, " the solidest of creatures as to honor and 
 rectitude, dependableness and faithfulness. As a 
 girl she really couldn t bring herself to lie, except to 
 save others. In which case all her New England 
 anpestry took flight and she would lie as magnificently 
 as her father before her. And he had the same 
 charm of manner, the same daring, the same ready 
 laughter, the same vivacity. But what is lightsome 
 and blithe in her, was debonaire in him. He won 
 men s hearts always, or, failing that, their bitterest 
 enmity. No one was left cold by him in passing. 
 Contact with him quickened them to love or hate. 
 Therein Paula differs, being a woman, I suppose, 
 and not enjoying man s prerogative of tilting at 
 windmills. I don t know that she has an enemy in 
 the world. All love her, unless, it may well be, there 
 are cat-women who envy her her nice husband." 
 
 And as Graham listened, Paula s singing came 
 through the open window from somewhere down the 
 long arcades, and there was that ever-haunting 
 thrill in her voice that he could not escape remem 
 bering afterward. She burst into laughter, and 
 Mrs. Tully beamed to him and nodded at the sound. 
 
 There laughs Philip Desten," she murmured, 
 " and all the Frenchwomen behind the original 
 Frenchman who was brought into Penobscot, dressed 
 in homespun, and sent to meeting. Have you no 
 ticed how Paula s laugh invariably makes everybody 
 look up and smile? Philip s laugh did the same 
 thing." 
 
220 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Paula had always been passionately fond of mu 
 sic, painting, drawing. As a little girl she could be 
 traced around the house and grounds by the trail 
 she left behind her of images and shapes, made in 
 whatever medium she chanced upon drawn on 
 scraps of paper, scratched on bits of wood, modeled 
 in mud and sand. 
 
 " She loved everything, and everything loved 
 her," said Mrs. Tully. " She was never timid of 
 , animals. And yet she always stood in awe of them ; 
 but she was born sense-struck, and her awe was 
 44 beauty-awe. Yes, she was an incorrigible hero-wor 
 shiper, whether the person was merely beautiful or 
 did things. And she never will outgrow that beauty- 
 awe of anything she loves, whether it is a grand 
 piano, a great painting, a beautiful mare, or a bit 
 of landscape. 
 
 " And Paula had wanted to do, to make beauty 
 herself. But she was sorely puzzled whether she 
 should devote herself to music or painting. In the 
 full swing of work under the best masters in Boston, 
 she could not refrain from straying back to her 
 drawing. From her easel she was lured to model- 
 
 " And so, with her love of the best, her soul and 
 / Heart full of beauty, she grew c}dite puzzled and 
 \ worried over herself, as to which talent was the 
 \ greater and if she had genius at all. I suggested a 
 Complete rest from work and took her abroad for a 
 year. And of all things, she developed a talent for 
 dancing. But always she harked back to her music 
 and painting. No, she was not flighty. Her 
 trouble was that she was too talented " 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 221 
 
 " Too diversely talented," Graham amplified. 
 
 " Yes, that is better," Mrs. Tully nodded. " But 
 from talent to genius is a far cry, and to save my 
 life, at this late day, I don t know whether the child 
 ever had a trace of genius in her. She has certainly 
 not done anything big in any of her chosen things." 
 
 " Except to be herself," Graham added. 
 
 " Which is the big thing," Mrs. Tully accepted 
 with a smile of enthusiasm. " She is a splendi^ s 
 
 sual woman, very unspoiled, very natural. An) 
 fter all, what does doing things amount to? 
 give more for one of Paula s madcap escapades 
 oh, I heard all about swimming the big stallion 1 
 than for all her pictures if every one was a master- j 
 piece. But she was hard for me to understand at) 
 rst. Dick often calls her the girl that never 
 p. But gracious, she can put on the grand 
 hen she needs to. I call her the most mature child 
 I have ever seen. Dick was the finest thing that 
 ever happened to her. It was then that she really 
 seemed for the first time to find herself. It was this 
 way." 
 
 And Mrs. Tully went on to sketch the year of 
 travel in Europe, the resumption of Paula s paint 
 ing in Paris, and the conviction she finally reached 
 that success could be achieved only by struggle and 
 that her aunt s money was a handicap. 
 
 " And she had her way," Mrs. Tully sighed. 
 " She why, she dismissed me, sent me home. She 
 would accept no more than the meagerest allowance, 
 and went down into the Latin Quarter on her own, 
 batching with two other American girls. And she 
 met Dick. Dick was a rare one. You couldn t 
 
222 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 guess what he was doing then. Running a cabaret 
 oh, not these modern cabarets, but a real students 
 cabaret of sorts. It was very select. They were 
 a lot of madmen. You see, he was just back from 
 some of his wild adventuring at the ends of the earth, 
 and, as he stated it, he wanted to stop living life for 
 a while and to talk about life instead. 
 
 " Paula took me there once. Oh, they were en 
 gaged the day before, and he had called on me 
 and all that. I had known Lucky Richard For 
 rest, and I knew all about his son. From a worldly 
 standpoint, Paula couldn t have made a finer mar 
 riage. It was quite a romance. Paula had seen him 
 captain the University of California eleven to vic 
 tory over Stanford. And the next time she saw him 
 was in the studio she shared with the two girls. 
 She didn t know whether Dick was worth millions 
 or whether he was running a cabaret because he was 
 hard up, and she cared less. She always followed 
 her heart. Fancy the situation : Dick the uncatch- 
 able, and Paula who never flirted. They must have 
 sprung forthright into each other s arms, for inside 
 the week it was all arranged, and Dick made his call 
 on me, as if my decision meant anything one way or 
 the other. 
 
 " But Dick s cabaret. It was the Cabaret of the 
 Philosophers a small pokey place, down in a cel 
 lar, in the heart of the Quarter, and it had only one 
 table. Fancy that for a cabaret! But such a table ! 
 A big round one, of plain boards, without even an 
 oil-cloth, the wood stained with the countless drinks 
 spilled by the table-pounding of the philosophers, and" 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 223 
 
 it could seat thirty. Women were not permitted. 
 An exception was made for Paula and me. 
 
 " You ve met Aaron Hancock here. He was one 
 of the philosophers, and to this day he swaggers that 
 he owed Dick a bigger bill that never was paid than 
 any of his customers. And there they used to meet, 
 all those wild young thinkers, and pound the fableX 
 and talk philosophy in all the tongues of Europe.,/ 
 Dick always had a penchant for philosophers. 
 
 " But Paula spoiled that little adventure. No 
 sooner were they married than Dick fitted out his 
 schooner, the All Away, and away the blessed pair 
 of them went, honeymooning from Bordeaux to 
 Hongkong." 
 
 " And the cabaret was closed, and the philosophers 
 left homeless and discussionless," Graham remarked. 
 
 Mrs. Tully laughed heartily and shook her head. 
 
 " He endowed it for them," she gasped, her haaid 
 to her side. " Or partially endowed it, or some 
 thing. I don t know what the arrangement was. 
 And within the month it was raided by the police for 
 an anarchist club." 
 
 After having learned the wide scope of her in 
 terests and talents, Graham was nevertheless sur 
 prised one day at finding Paula all by herself in a 
 corner of a window-seat, completely absorbed in her 
 work on a piece of fine embroidery. 
 
 " I love it," she explained. " All the costly nee 
 dlework of the shops means nothing to me alongside 
 of my own work on my own designs. Dick used to 
 fret at my sewing. He s all for efficiency, you know, 
 
224 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 elimination of waste energy and such things. He 
 thought sewing was a wasting of time. Peasants 
 could be hired for a song to do what I was doing. 
 But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear to 
 him. 
 
 " It s like the music one makes oneself. Of 
 Bourse I can buy better music than I make ; but to sit 
 /down at an instrument and evoke the music oneself, 
 with one s own fingers and brain, is an entirely dif 
 ferent and dearer satisfaction. Whether one tries 
 to emulate another s performance, or infuses the per 
 formance with one s own personality and interpreta 
 tion, it s all the same. It is soul-joy and fulfilment. 
 Take this little embroidered crust of lilies on the 
 edge of this flounce there is nothing like it in the 
 world. Mine the idea, all mine, and mine the de 
 light of giving form and being to the idea. There 
 are better ideas and better workmanship in the shops ; 
 but this is different. It is mine. I visioned it, and 
 I made it. And who is to say that embroidery is 
 not art?" 
 
 She ceased speaking and with her eyes laughed 
 the insistence of her question. 
 
 " And who is to say," Graham agreed, " that the 
 adorning of beautiful womankind is not the worthiest 
 of all the arts as well as the sweetest?" 
 
 " I rather stand in awe of a good milliner or 
 modiste," she nodded gravely. They really are 
 artists, and important ones, as Dick would phrase it, 
 in the world s economy." 
 
 Another time, seeking the library for Andean 
 reference, Graham came upon Paula, sprawled 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 225 
 
 gracefully over a sheet of paper on a big table and 
 flanked by ponderous architectural portfolios, en 
 gaged in drawing plans of a log bungalow or camp 
 for the sages of the madrono grove. 
 
 " It s a problem," she sighed. " Dick says that if 
 I build it I must build it for seven. We ve got four 
 sages now, and his heart is set on seven. He says 
 never mind showers and such things, because what 
 philosopher ever bathes? And he has suggested 
 seriously seven stoves and seven kitchens, because it 
 is just over such mundane things that philosophers 
 always quarrel." 
 
 " Wasn t it Voltaire who quarreled with a king 
 over candle-ends?" Graham queried, pleasuring in 
 the sight of her graceful abandon. Thirty-eight! 
 It was impossible. She seemed almost a girl, petu 
 lant and flushed over some school task. Then he 
 remembered Mrs. Tully s remark that Paula was the 
 most mature child she had ever known. 
 
 It made him wonder. Was she the one, who, un 
 der the oaks at the hitching rails, with two brief sen 
 tences had cut to the heart of an impending situa 
 tion? " So I apprehend," she had said. What had 
 she apprehended? Had she used the phrase glibly, 
 without meaning? Yet she it was who had thrilled 
 and fluttered to him and with him when they had 
 sung the " Gypsy Trail." That he knew. But 
 again, had he not seen her warm and glow to the 
 playing of Donald Ware? But here Graham s ego 
 had its will of him, for he told himself that with 
 Donald Ware it was different. And he smiled to 
 himself and at himself at the thought. 
 
 What amuses you?" Paula was asking. 
 
226 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Heaven knows I am no architect. And I challenge 
 you to house seven philosophers according to all the 
 absurd stipulations laid down by Dick." 
 
 Back in his tower room with his Andean books 
 unopened before him, Graham gnawed his lip and 
 meditated. The woman was no woman. She was 
 the veriest child. Or and he hesitated at the 
 thought was this naturalness that was overdone ? 
 Did she in truth apprehend? It must be. It had 
 to be. She was of the world. She knew the world. 
 if She was very wise. No remembered look of her 
 jj/ gray eyes but gave the impression of poise and 
 power. That was it strength ! He recalled her 
 that first night when she had seemed at times to glint 
 an impression of steel, of thin and jewel-like steel. 
 In his fancy, at the time, he remembered likening her 
 strength to ivory, to carven pearl shell, to sennit 
 twisted of maidens hair. 
 
 And he knew, now, ever since the brief words at 
 the hitching rails and the singing of the " Gypsy 
 Trail," that whenever their eyes looked into each 
 other s it was with a mutual knowledge of unsaid 
 things. 
 
 In vain he turned the pages of the books for the 
 information he sought. He tried to continue his 
 chapter without the information, but no words 
 flowed from his pen. A maddening restlessness was 
 upon him. He seized a time table and pondered the 
 departure of trains, changed his mind, switched the 
 room telephone to the house barn, and asked to 
 have Altadena saddled. 
 
 It was a perfect morning of California early sum 
 mer. No breath of wind stirred over the drowsing 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 227 
 
 fields, from which arose the calls of quail and the 
 notes of meadowlarks. The air was heavy with 
 lilac fragrance, and from the distance, as he rode 
 between the lilac hedges, Graham heard the throaty 
 nicker of Mountain Lad and the silvery answerinj 
 whinney of the Fotherington Princess. 
 
 Why was he here astride Dick Forrest s horse? 
 Graham asked himself. Why was he not even tEel 
 on the way to the station to catch that first train he 
 had noted on the time table? This unaccustomed 
 weakness of decision and action was a new role for 
 him, he considered bitterly. But and he was on 
 fire with the thought of it this was his one life, and 
 this was the one woman in the world. 
 
 He reined aside to let a herd of Angora goats go 
 by. Each was a doe, and there were several hun 
 dred of them; and they were moved slowly by the 
 Basque herdsmen, with frequent pauses, for each doe 
 was accompanied by a young kid. In the paddock 
 were many mares with new-born colts ; and once, re 
 ceiving warning in time, Graham raced into a cross 
 road to escape a drove of thirty yearling stallions 
 being moved somewhere across the ranch. Their 
 excitement was communicated to that entire portion 
 of the ranch, so that the air was filled with shrill 
 nickerings and squealings and answering whinneys, 
 while Mountain Lad, beside himself at sight and 
 sound of so many rivals, raged up and down his 
 paddock, and again and again trumpeted his chal 
 lenging conviction that he was the most amazing 
 and mightiest thing that had ever occurred on earth 
 in the way of horse flesh. 
 
 Dick Forrest pranced and sidled into the cross 
 
228 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 road on the Outlaw, his face beaming with delight 
 at the little tempest among his many creatures. 
 
 "Fecundity! Fecundity!" he chanted in 
 greeting, as he reined in to a halt, if halt it might be 
 called, with his tan-golden sorrel mare a-fret and 
 a-froth, wickedly reaching with her teeth now for 
 his leg and next for Graham s, one moment pawing 
 the roadway, the next moment, in sheer impotence 
 of resentfulness, kicking the empty air with one hind 
 leg and kicking the air repeatedly, a dozen times. 
 
 * Those youngsters certainly put Mountain Lad 
 on his mettle," Dick laughed. " Listen to his song: 
 4 Hear me ! I am Eros. I stamp upon the 
 hills. I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, 
 and startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. 
 The land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the 
 trees. It is the spring. The spring is mine. I am 
 monarch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares 
 ^emember my voice. They knew me aforetime 
 /through their mothers before them. Hear me ! I 
 / am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide val- 
 I leys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my ap 
 proach. " 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 AFTER Mrs. Tully s departure, Paula, true to 
 her threat, filled the house with guests. She 
 seemed to have remembered all who had been 
 waiting an invitation, and the limousine that met 
 the trains eight miles away was rarely empty com 
 ing or going. There were more singers and mu 
 sicians and artist folk, and bevies of young girls with 
 their inevitable followings of young men, while 
 mammas and aunts and chaperons seemed to clutter 
 all the ways of the Big House and to fill a couple 
 of motor cars when picnics took place. 
 
 And Graham wondered if this surrounding of her 
 self by many people was not deliberate on Paula s 
 part. As for himself, he definitely abandoned work 
 on his book, and joined in the before-breakfast swims 
 of the hardier younger folk, in the morning rides 
 over the ranch, and in whatever fun was afoot in 
 doors and out. 
 
 Late hours and early were kept; and one night, 
 Dick, who adhered to his routine and never appeared 
 to his guests before midday, made a night of it at 
 poker in the stag-room. Graham had sat in, and 
 felt well repaid when, at dawn, the players received 
 an unexpected visit from Paula herself past one 
 of her white nights, she said, although no sign of it 
 showed on her fresh skin and color. Graham had 
 
 229 
 
230 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 to struggle to keep his eyes from straying too fre 
 quently to her as she mixed golden fizzes to rejuven 
 ate the wan-eyed, jaded players. Then she made 
 them start the round of " jacks " that closed the 
 game, and sent them off for a cold swim before 
 breakfast and the day s work or frolic. 
 
 Never was Paula alone. Graham could only join 
 in the groups that were always about her. Although 
 the young people ragged and tangoed incessantly, 
 she rarely danced, and then it was with the young 
 men. Once, however, she favored him with an old- 
 fashioned waltz. u Your ancestors in an antedilu 
 vian dance, " she mocked the young people, as she 
 stepped out; for she and Graham had the floor to 
 themselves. 
 
 Once down the length of the room, the two were 
 in full accord. Paula, with the sympathy Graham 
 recognized that made her the exceptional accom 
 panist or rider, subdued herself to the masterful art 
 of the man, until the two were as parts of a sentient 
 machine that operated without jar or friction. 
 After several minutes, finding their perfect mutual 
 step and pace, and Graham feeling the absolute giv 
 ing of Paula to the dance, they essayed rhythmical 
 pauses and dips, their feet never leaving the floor, 
 yet affecting the onlookers in the way Dick voiced 
 it when he cried outr^ <r TKey float! They float! " 
 The music was the \Waltz of Salome^ and w ith 
 its slow-fading end they postured slower and slower 
 to a perfect close. 
 
 There was no need to speak. In silence, without 
 a glance at each other, they returned to the company 
 where Dick was proclaiming: 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 231 
 
 " Well, younglings, codlings, and other fry, that s 
 the way we old folks used to dance. I m not saying 
 anything against the new dances, mind you. 
 They re all right and dandy fine. But just the same 
 it wouldn t injure you much to learn to waltz prop 
 erly. The way you waltz, when you do attempt it, 
 is a scream. We old folks do know a thing or two 
 that is worth while." 
 
 " For instance?" queried one of the girls. 
 
 " I ll tell you. I don t mind the young genera 
 tion smelling of gasoline the way it does " 
 
 Cries and protests drowned Dick out for a mo 
 ment. 
 
 " I know I smell of it myself," he went on. " But 
 you ve all failed to learn the good old modes of loco 
 motion. There isn t a girl of you that Paula can t 
 walk into the ground. There isn t a fellow of you 
 that Graham and I can t walk into a receiving hos 
 pital. Oh, I know you can all crank engines and 
 shift gears to the queen s taste. But there isn t one 
 of you that can properly ride a horse a real horse, 
 in the only way, I mean. As for driving a smart 
 pair of roadsters, it s a screech. And how many of 
 you husky lads, hell-scooting on the bay in your 
 speed-boats, can take the wheel of an old-time sloop 
 or schooner, without an auxiliary, and get out of 
 your own way in her? " 
 
 " But we get there just the same," the same girl 
 retorted. 
 
 " And I don t deny it," Dick answered. " But 
 you are not always pretty. I ll tell you a pretty 
 sight that no one of you can ever present Paula, 
 there, with the reins of four slashing horses in her 
 
232 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 hands, her foot on the brake, swinging tally-ho along 
 a mountain road." 
 
 On a warm morning, in the cool arcade of the 
 great patio, a chance group of four or five, among 
 whom was Paula, formed about Graham, who had 
 been reading alone. After a time he returned to 
 his magazine with such absorption that he forgot 
 those about him until an awareness of silence pene 
 trated to his consciousness. He looked up. All the 
 others save Paula had strayed off. He could hear 
 their distant laughter from across the patio. But 
 Paula ! He surprised the look on her face, in her 
 eyes. It was a look bent on him, concerning him. * 
 Doubt, speculation, almost fear, were in her eyes; 
 and yet, in that swift instant, he had time to note that 
 it was a look deep and searching almost, his quick 
 fancy prompted, the look of one peering into the 
 just-opened book of fate. Her eyes fluttered and 
 fell, and the color increased in her cheeks in an un 
 mistakable blush. Twice her lips moved to the 
 verge of speech; yet, caught so arrantly in the act, she 
 was unable to phrase any passing thought. Graham 
 saved the painful situation by saying casually: 
 
 u Do you know, I ve just been reading De Vries 
 eulogy of Luther Burbank s work, and it seems to 
 me that Dick is to the domestic animal world what 
 Burbank is to the domestic vegetable world. You 
 are life-makers here thumbing the stuff into new 
 forms of utility and beauty." 4 
 
 Paula, by this time herself again, laughed and ac 
 cepted the compliment. 
 
 " I fear me," Graham continued with easy serious- 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 233 
 
 ness, " as I watch your achievements, that I can only 
 look back on a misspent life. Why didn t I get in 
 and make things? I m horribly envious of both of 
 you." 
 
 u We are responsible for a dreadful lot of crea 
 tures being born," she said. " It makes one breath 
 less to think of the responsibility." 
 
 " The ranch certainly spells fecundity," Graham 
 smiled. ;< I never before was so impressed with the 
 flowering and fruiting of life. Everything here 
 prospers and multiplies 
 
 "Oh!" Paula cried, breaking in with a sudden 
 thought. " Some day I ll show you my goldfish. I 
 breed them, too yea, and commercially. I supply 
 the San Francisco dealers with their rarest strains, 
 and I even ship to New York. And, best of all, I 
 actually make money profits, I mean. Dick s 
 books show it, and he is the most rigid of bookkeep 
 ers. There isn t a tack-hammer on the place that 
 isn t inventoried; nor a horse-shoe nail unaccounted 
 for. That s why he has such a staff of bookkeepers. 
 Why, do you know, calculating every last least item 
 of expense, including average loss of time for colic 
 and lameness, out of fearfully endless columns of 
 figures he has worked the cost of an hour s labor for 
 a draught horse to the third decimal place." 
 
 " But your goldfish," Graham suggested, irritated 
 by her constant dwelling on her husband. 
 
 " Well, Dick makes his bookkeepers keep track of 
 my goldfish in the same way. I m charged every 
 hour of any of the ranch or house labor I use on the 
 fish postage stamps and stationery, too, if you 
 please. I have to pay interest on the plant. He 
 
234 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 even charges me for the water, just as if he were a 
 city water company and I a householder. And still 
 I net ten per cent., and have netted as high as thirty. 
 But Dick laughs and says when I ve deducted the 
 wages of superintendence my superintendence, he 
 means that I ll find I am poorly paid or else am 
 operating at a loss ; that with my net I couldn t hire 
 so capable a superintendent. 
 
 " Just the same, that s why Dick succeeds in his 
 undertakings. Unless it s sheer experiment, he 
 never does anything without knowing precisely, to 
 the last microscopic detail, what it is he is doing." 
 ^ He is very sure," Graham observed. 
 / " I never knew a man to be so sure of himself," 
 /Paula replied warmly; " and I never knew a man 
 with half the warrant. I know him. He is a 
 genius but only in the most paradoxical sense. 
 He is a genius because he is so balanced and normal 
 that he hasn t the slightest particle of genius in him. 
 Such men are rarer and greater than geniuses. I 
 like to think of Abraham Lincoln as such a type." 
 
 " I must admit I don t quite get you," Graham 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, I don t dare to say that Dick is as good, 
 as cosmically good, as Lincoln," she hurried on. 
 " Dick is good, but it is not that. It is in their ex 
 cessive balance, normality, lack of flare, that they are 
 of the same type. Now I am a genius. For, see, I 
 do things without knowing how I do them. I just 
 do them. I get effects in my music that way. Take 
 my diving. To save my life I couldn t tell how I 
 swan-dive, or jump, or do the turn and a half. 
 
 " Dick, on the other hand, can t do anything un- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 
 
 less he clearly knows in advance how he is going 
 to do it. He does everything with balance and fore 
 sight. He s a general, all-around wonder, without 
 ever having been a particular wonder at any one 
 thing. Oh, I know him. He s never been a cham 
 pion or a record-breaker in any line of athletics. 
 Nor has he been mediocre in any line. And so with 
 everything else, mentally, intellectually. He is an 
 evenly forged chain. He has no massive links, no 
 weak links. " 
 
 " I m afraid I m like you," Graham said, " that 
 commoner and lesser creature, a genius. For I, too, 
 on occasion, flare and do the most unintentional 
 things. And I am not above falling on my knees 
 before mystery." 
 
 " And Dick hates mystery or it would seem he 
 does. Not content with knowing how he is 
 eternally seeking the why of the how. Mystery is a \ 
 challenge to him. It excites him like a red rag does 
 a bull. At once he is for ripping the husks and 
 the heart from mystery, so that he will know the 
 how and the why, when it will be no longer mystery 
 but a generalization and a scientifically demonstrable 
 fact" 
 
 Much of the growing situation was veiled to the 
 three figures of it. Graham did not know of Paula s 
 desperate efforts to cling close to her husband, who, 
 himself desperately busy with his thousand plans 
 and projects, was seeing less and less of his com 
 pany. He always appeared at lunch, but it was a 
 rare afternoon when he could go out with his guests. 
 Paula did know, from the multiplicity of long, code 
 
236 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 telegrams from Mexico, that things were in a parlous 
 state with the Harvest Group. Also, she saw the 
 agents and emissaries of foreign investors in Mexico, 
 always in haste and often inopportune, arriving at 
 the ranch to confer with Dick. Beyond his com 
 plaint that they ate the heart out of his time, he gave 
 her no clew to the matters discussed. 
 
 " My ! I wish you weren t so busy," she sighed 
 in his arms, on his knees, one fortunate morning, 
 when, at eleven o clock, she had caught him alone. 
 
 It was true, she had interrupted the dictation of 
 a letter into the phonograph; and the sigh had been 
 evoked by the warning cough of Bonbright, whom 
 she saw entering with more telegrams in his hand. 
 
 ;< Won t you let me drive you this afternoon, be 
 hind Duddy and Fuddy, just you and me, and cut the 
 crowd? " she begged. 
 
 He shook his head and smiled. 
 
 1 You ll meet at lunch a weird combination," he 
 explained. " Nobody else needs to know, but I ll 
 tell you." He lowered his voice, while Bonbright 
 discreetly occupied himself at the filing cabinets. 
 They re Tampico oil folk. Samuels himself, 
 President of the Nacisco; and Wishaar, the big in 
 side man of the Pearson-Brooks crowd the chap 
 that engineered the purchase of the East Coast rail 
 road and the Tiuana Central when they tried to put 
 the Nacisco out of business ; and Matthewson he s 
 the hi-yu-skookum big chief this side the Atlantic of 
 the Palmerston interests you know, the English 
 crowd that fought the Nacisco and the Pearson- 
 Brooks bunch so hard; and, oh, there ll be several 
 others. It shows you that things are rickety down 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 237 
 
 Mexico way when such a bunch stops scrapping and 
 gets together. 
 
 " You see, they are oil, and I m important in my 
 way down there, and they want me to swing the 
 mining interests in with the oil. Truly, big things 
 arc in the air, and we ve got to hang together and 
 do something or get out of Mexico. And I ll admit, 
 after they gave me the turn-down in the trouble three 
 years ago, that I ve sulked in my tent and made them 
 come to see me." 
 
 He caressed her and called her his armful of dear 
 est woman, although she detected his eye roving im 
 patiently to the phonograph with its unfinished let 
 ter. 
 
 " And so," he concluded, with a pressure of his 
 arms about her that seemed to hint that her moment 
 with him was over and she must go, " that means the 
 afternoon. None will stop over. And they ll be 
 off and away before dinner." 
 
 She slipped off his knees and out of his arms with 
 unusual abruptness, and stood straight up before 
 him, her eyes flashing, her cheeks white, her face set 
 with determination, as if about to say something of 
 grave importance. But a bell tinkled softly, and he 
 reached for the desk telephone. 
 
 Paula drooped, and sighed inaudibly, and, as she 
 went down the room and out the door, and as Bon- 
 bright stepped eagerly forward with the telegrams, 
 she could hear the beginning of her husband s con 
 versation : 
 
 " No. It is impossible. He s got to come 
 through, or I ll put him out of business. That gen 
 tleman s agreement is all poppycock. If it were 
 
2 3 8 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 only that, of course he could break it. But I ve got 
 some mighty interesting correspondence that he s 
 forgotten about. . . . Yes, yes; it will clinch it in 
 any court of law. I ll have the file in your office 
 by five this afternoon. And tell him, for me, that if 
 he tries to put through this trick, I ll break him. 
 I ll put a competing line on, and his steamboats will 
 be in the receiver s hands inside a year. . , . And 
 . . . hello, are you there? . . . And just look up 
 that point I suggested. I am rather convinced you ll 
 find the Interstate Commerce has got him on two 
 counts . . ." 
 
 Nor did Graham, nor even Paula, imagine that 
 Dick the keen one, the deep one, who could see 
 and sense things yet to occur and out of intangible 
 nuances and glimmerings build shrewd speculations 
 and hypotheses that subsequent events often proved 
 correct was already sensing what had not hap 
 pened but what might happen. He had not heard 
 Paula s brief significant words at the hitching post; 
 nor had he seen Graham catch her in that deep scrut 
 iny of him under the arcade. Dick had heard 
 nothing, seen little, but sensed much; and, even in 
 advance of Paula, had he apprehended in vague ways 
 what she afterward had come to apprehend. 
 
 The most tangible thing he had to build on was 
 the night, immersed in bridge, when he had not been 
 unaware of the abrupt leaving of the piano after 
 the singing of the " Gypsy Trail " ; nor when, in care 
 less smiling greeting of them when they came down 
 the room to devil him over his losing, had he failed 
 to receive a hint or feeling of something unusual in 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 239 
 
 Paula s roguish teasing face. On the moment, 
 laughing retorts, giving as good as she sent, Dick s 
 own laughing eyes had swept over Graham beside 
 her and likewise detected the unusual. The man 
 was overstrung, had been Dick s mental note at the 
 time. But why should he be overstrung? Was 
 there any connection between his overstrungness and 
 the sudden desertion by Paula of the piano? And 
 all the while these questions were slipping through 
 his thoughts, he had laughed at their sallies, dealt, 
 sorted his hand, and won the bid on no trumps. 
 
 Yet to himself he had continued to discount as 
 absurd and preposterous the possibility of his vague 
 apprehension ever being realized. It was a chance 
 guess, a silly speculation, based upon the most trivial 
 data, he sagely concluded. It merely connoted the 
 attractiveness of his wife and of his friend. But 
 and on occasional moments he could not will the 
 thought from coming uppermost in his mind why 
 had they broken off from singing that evening? 
 Why had he received the feeling that there was 
 something unusual about it? Why had Graham 
 been overstrung? 
 
 Nor did Bonbright, one morning, taking dicta 
 tion of a telegram in the last hour before noon, 
 know that Dick s casual sauntering to the window, 
 still dictating, had been caused by the faint sound 
 of hoofs on the driveway. It was not the first of 
 recent mornings that Dick had so sauntered to the 
 window, to glance out with apparent absentness at 
 the rush of the morning riding party in the last dash 
 home to the hitching rails. But he knew, on this 
 
2 4 o THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 morning, before the first figures came in sight whose 
 those figures would be. 
 
 " Braxton is safe," he went on with the dictation 
 without change of tone, his eyes on the road where 
 the riders must first come into view. " If things 
 break he can get out across the mountains into Ari 
 zona. See Connors immediately. Braxton left 
 Connors complete instructions. Connors to-morrow 
 in Washington. Give me fullest details any move 
 signed." 
 
 Up the driveway the Fawn and Altadena clattered 
 neck and neck. Dick had not been disappointed in 
 the figures he expected to see. From the rear, cries 
 and laughter and the sound of many hoofs tokened 
 that the rest of the party was close behind. 
 
 " And the next one, Mr. Bonbright, please put 
 in the Harvest code," Dick went on steadily, while 
 to himself he was commenting that Graham was a 
 passable rider but not an excellent one, and that it 
 would have to be seen to that he was given a heavier 
 horse than Altadena. " It is to Jeremy Braxton. 
 Send it both ways. There is a chance one or the 
 other may get through . . ." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 ONCE again the tide of guests ebbed from the 
 Big House, and more than one lunch and 
 dinner found only the two men and Paula 
 at the table. On such evenings, while Graham and 
 Dick yarned for their hour before bed, Paula no 
 longer played soft things to herself at the piano, but 
 sat with them doing fine embroidery and listening 
 to the talk. 
 
 Both men had much in common, had lived life in 
 somewhat similar ways, and regarded life from the 
 same angles. Their philosophy was harsh rather 
 than sentimental, and both were realists. Paula 
 made a practice of calling them the pair of " Brass 
 Tacks." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she laughed to them, " I understand 
 your attitude. You are successes, the pair of you 
 physical successes, I mean. You have health. 
 You are resistant. You can stand things. You 
 have survived where men less resistant have gone 
 down. You pull through African fevers and bury 
 the other fellows. This poor chap gets pneumonia 
 in Cripple Creek and cashes in before you can get 
 him to sea level. Now why didn t you get pneu 
 monia? Because you were more deserving? Be 
 cause you had lived more virtuously? Because you 
 were more careful of risks and took more precau 
 tions?" 
 
 241 
 
242 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No. Because you were luckier I mean by 
 birth, by possession of constitution and stamina. 
 Why, Dick buried his three mates and two engineers 
 at Guayaquil. Yellow fever. Why didn t the yel 
 low fever germ, or whatever it is, kill Dick? And 
 the same with you, Mr. Broad-shouldered Deep- 
 chested Graham. In this last trip of yours, why 
 didn t you die in the swamps instead of your photog 
 rapher? Come. Confess. How heavy was he? 
 How broad were his shoulders? How deep his 
 chest ? wide his nostrils ? tough his resistance ? " 
 
 " He weighed a hundred and thirty-five," Graham 
 admitted ruefully. " But he looked all right and fit 
 at the start. I think I was more surprised than he 
 when he turned up his toes." Graham shook his 
 head. " It wasn t because he was a light weight 
 and small. The small men are usually the tough 
 est, other things being equal. But you ve put your 
 finger on the reason just the same. He didn t have 
 the physical stamina, the resistance. You know 
 what I mean, Dick? " 
 
 " In a way it s like the quality of muscle and heart 
 that enables some prizefighters to go the distance 
 twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say," Dick concurred. 
 " Right now, in San Francisco, there are several hun 
 dred youngsters dreaming of success in the ring. 
 I ve watched them trying out. All look good, fine- 
 bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and young. And their 
 spirits are most willing. And not one in ten of them 
 can last ten rounds. I don t mean they get knocked 
 out. I mean they blow up. Their muscles and 
 their hearts are not made out of first-grade fiber. 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 243 
 
 They simply are not made to move at high speed and 
 tension for ten rounds. And some of them blow 
 up in four or five rounds. And not one in forty can 
 go the twenty-round route, give and take, hammer 
 and tongs, one minute of rest to three of fight, for a 
 full hour of fighting. And the lad who can last forty 
 rounds is one in ten thousand lads like Nelson, 
 Cans, and Wolgast. 
 
 " You understand the point I am making," Paula 
 took up. " Here are the pair of you. Neither will 
 see forty again. You re a pair of hard-bitten sin 
 ners. You ve gone through hardship and exposure 
 that dropped others all along the way. You ve had 
 your fun and folly. You ve roughed and rowdied 
 over the world " 
 
 u Played the wild ass," Graham laughed in. 
 
 " And drunk deep," Paula added. Why, even 
 alcohol hasn t burned you. You were too tough. 
 You put the other fellows under the table, or into 
 the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous 
 way, a song on your lips, with tissues uncorroded, 
 and without even the morning-after headache. And 
 the point is that you are successes. Your muscles 
 are blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond- 
 beast organs. And from all this emanates your 
 blond-beast philosophy. That s why you are brass 
 tacks, and preach realism, and practice realism, 
 shouldering and shoving and walking over lesser and 
 unluckier creatures, who don t dare talk back, who, 
 like Dick s prizefighting boys, would blow up in the 
 first round if they resorted to the arbitrament of 
 force." 
 
 Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay. 
 
244 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 u And that s why you preach the gospel of the 
 strong," Paula went on. " If you had been weak 
 lings, you d have preached the gospel of the weak 
 and turned the other cheek. But you you pair of 
 big-muscled giants when you are struck, being 
 what you are, you don t turn the other cheek " 
 
 " No," Dick interrupted quietly. " We imme 
 diately roar, * Knock his block off ! and then do 
 it. She s got us, Evan, hip and thigh. Philosophy, 
 like religion, is what the man is, and is by him made 
 in his own image." 
 
 And while the talk led over the world, Paula 
 sewed on, her eyes filled with the picture of the two 
 big men, admiring, wondering, pondering, without 
 the surety of self that was theirs, aware of a slipping 
 and giving of convictions so long accepted that they 
 had seemed part of her. 
 
 Later in the evening she gave voice to her trouble. 
 
 " The strangest part of it," she said, taking up a 
 remark Dick had just made, " is that too much 
 philosophizing about life gets one worse than no 
 where. A philosophic atmosphere is confusing 
 at least to a woman. One hears so much about 
 everything, and against everything, that nothing is 
 sure. For instance, Mendenhall s wife is a Lu 
 theran. She hasn t a doubt about anything. All is 
 fixed, ordained, immovable. Star-drifts and ice-ages 
 she knows nothing about, and if she did they would 
 not alter in the least her rules of conduct for men 
 and women in this world and in relation to the next. 
 
 " But here, with us, you two pound your brass 
 tacks, Terrence does a Greek dance of epicurean 
 anarchism, Hancock waves the glittering veils of 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 245 
 
 Bergsonian metaphysics, Leo makes solemn obeis 
 ance at the altar of Beauty, and Dar Hyal juggles 
 his sophistic blastism to no end save all your applause 
 for his cleverness. Don t you see? The effect is r \ 
 that there is nothing solid in any human judgment. \jj 
 Nothing is right. Nothing is wrong. One is left j 
 compassless, rudderless, chartless on a sea of ideas. 
 Shall I do this ? Must I refrain from that ? Will it 
 be wrong? Is there any virtue in it? Mrs. Men- 
 denhall has her instant answer for every such ques 
 tion. But do the philosophers ?" 
 
 Paula shook her head. 
 
 " No. All they have is ideas. They immediately 
 proceed to talk about it, and talk and talk and talk, 
 and with all their erudition reach no conclusion what 
 ever. And I am just as bad. I listen and listen, 
 and talk and talk, as I am talking now, and remain 
 convictionless. There is no test " 
 
 " But there is," Dick said. " The old, eternal 
 test of truth Will it work?" 
 
 " Ah, now you are pounding your favorite brass 
 tack," Paula smiled. " And Dar Hyal, with a few 
 arm-wavings and word-whirrings, will show that all 
 brass tacks are illusions; and Terrence, that brass 
 tacks are sordid, irrelevant and non-essential things 
 at best; and Hancock, that the overhanging heaven 
 of Bergson is paved with brass tacks, only that they 
 are a much superior article to yours; and Leo, that 
 there is only one brass tack in the universe, and that 
 it is Beauty, and that it isn t brass at all but gold." 
 
 " Come on, Red Cloud, go riding this afternoon," 
 Paula asked her husband. u Get the cobwebs out 
 
246 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 of your brain, and let lawyers and mines and live 
 stock go hang." 
 
 " I d like to, Paul," he answered. " But I can t. 
 I ve got to rush in a machine all the way to the Buck 
 eye. Word came in just before lunch. They re in 
 trouble at the dam. There must have been a fault 
 in the under-strata, and too-heavy dynamiting has 
 opened it. In short, what s the good of a good 
 dam when the bottom of the reservoir won t hold 
 water?" 
 
 Three hours later, returning from the Buckeye, 
 Dick noted that for the first time Paula and Graham 
 had gone riding together alone. 
 
 The Wainwrights and the Coghlans, in two ma 
 chines, out for a week s trip to the Russian River, 
 rested over for a day at the Big House, and were 
 the cause of Paula s taking out the tally-ho for a 
 picnic into the Los Banos Hills. Starting in the 
 morning, it was impossible for Dick to accompany 
 them, although he left Blake in the thick of dictation 
 to go out and see them off. He assured himself that 
 no detail was amiss in the harnessing and hitching, 
 and reseated the party, insisting on Graham coming 
 forward into the box-seat beside Paula. 
 
 " Just must have a reserve of man s strength 
 alongside of Paula in case of need," Dick explained. 
 " I ve known a brake-rod to carry away on a down 
 grade somewhat to the inconvenience of the passen 
 gers. Some of them broke their necks. And now, 
 to reassure you, with Paula at the helm, I ll sing you 
 a song: 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 247 
 
 "What can little Paula do? 
 Why, drive a phaeton and two. 
 Can little Paula do no more? 
 Yes, drive a tally-ho and four." 
 
 All were in laughter as Paula nodded to the 
 grooms to release the horses heads, took the feel 
 of the four mouths on her hands, and shortened and 
 slipped the reins to adjustment of four horses into 
 the collars and taut on the traces. 
 
 In the babel of parting gibes to Dick, none of the 
 guests was aware of aught else than a bright morn 
 ing, the promise of a happy day, and a genial host 
 bidding them a merry going. But Paula, despite the 
 keen exhilaration that should have arisen with the 
 handling of four such horses, was oppressed by a 
 vague sadness in which, somehow, Dick s being 
 behind figured. Through Graham s mind Dick s 
 merry face had flashed a regret of conscience that^ 
 instead of being seated there beside this one woman, 
 he should be on train and steamer fleeing to the other 
 side of the world. 
 
 But the merriness died on Dick s face the moment 
 he turned on his heel to enter the house. It was a 
 few minutes later than ten when he finished his dic 
 tation and Mr. Blake rose to go. He hesitated, then 
 said a trifle apologetically: 
 
 1 You told me, Mr. Forrest, to remind you of 
 the proofs of your Shorthorn book. They wired 
 their second hurry-up yesterday." 
 
 " I won t be able to tackle it myself," Dick re 
 plied. * Will you please correct the typographical, 
 submit the proofs to Mr. Manson for correction of 
 
248 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 fact tell him be sure to verify that pedigree of 
 King of Devon and ship them off." 
 
 Until eleven Dick received his managers and fore 
 men. But not for a quarter of an hour after that 
 did he get rid of his show manager, Mr. Pitts, with 
 the tentative make-up of the catalogue for the first 
 annual stock-sale on the ranch. By that time Mr. 
 Bonbright was on hand with his sheaf of telegrams, 
 and the lunch-hour was at hand ere they were 
 cleaned up. 
 
 For the first time alone since he had seen the 
 tally-ho off, Dick stepped out on his sleeping porch 
 to the row of barometers and thermometers on the 
 wall. But he had come to consult, not them, but the 
 girl s face that laughed from the round wooden 
 frame beneath them. 
 
 " Paula, Paula," he said aloud, " are you surpris 
 ing yourself and me after all these years? Are you 
 turning madcap at sober middle age? " 
 
 He put on leggings and spurs to be ready for rid 
 ing after lunch, and what his thoughts had been 
 while buckling on the gear he epitomized to the girl 
 in the frame. 
 
 " Play the game," he muttered. And then, after 
 a pause, as he turned to go : "A free field and no 
 favor . . . and no favor." 
 
 \ i - 
 
 " Really, if I don t go soon, I ll have to become a 
 pensioner and join the philosophers of the madrono 
 grove," Graham said laughingly to Dick. 
 
 It was the time of cocktail assembling, and 
 Paula, in addition to Graham, was the only one of 
 the driving party as yet to put in an appearance. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 249 
 
 " If all the philosophers together would just make 
 one book!" Dick demurred. "Good Lord, man, 
 you ve just got to complete your book here. I got 
 you started and I ve got to see you through with it." 
 
 Paula s encouragement to Graham to stay on - 
 mere stereotyped, uninterested phrases was music 
 to Dick. His heart leapt. After all, might he not 
 be entirely mistaken? For two such mature, wise, 
 middle-aged individuals as Paula and Graham any 
 such foolishness was preposterous and unthinkable. 
 They were not young things with their hearts on 
 their sleeves. 
 
 "To the book!" he toasted. He turned to 
 Paula. " A good cocktail," he praised. " Paul, 
 you excel yourself, and you fail to teach Oh Joy the 
 art. His never quite touch yours. Yes, another, 
 please." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 GRAHAM, riding solitary through the redwood 
 canyons among the hills that overlooked the 
 ranch center, was getting acquainted with 
 Selim, the eleven-hundred-pound, coal-black gelding 
 which Dick had furnished him in place of the 
 lighter Altadena. As he rode along, learning the 
 good nature, the roguishness and the dependable- 
 ness of the animal, Graham hummed the words of 
 the " Gypsy Trail " and allowed them to lead his 
 thoughts. Quite carelessly, foolishly, thinking of 
 bucolic lovers carving their initials on forest trees, 
 he broke a spray of laurel and another of red 
 wood. He had to stand in the stirrups to pluck a 
 long-stemmed, five-fingered fern with which to bind 
 the sprays into a cross. When the patteran was 
 fashioned, he tossed it on the trail before him and 
 noted that Selim passed over without treading upon 
 it. Glancing back, Graham watched it to the next 
 turn of the trail. A good omen, was his thought, 
 that it had not been trampled. 
 
 More five-fingered ferns to be had for the reach 
 ing, more branches of redwood and laurel brushing 
 his face as he rode, invited him to continue the manu 
 facture of patterans, which he dropped as he fash 
 ioned them. An hour later, at the head of the can 
 yon, where he knew the trail over the divide was 
 difficult and stiff, he debated his course and turned 
 back. 
 
 250 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 251 
 
 Selim warned him by nickering. Came an an 
 swering nicker from close at hand. The trail was 
 wide and easy, and Graham put his mount into a 
 fox trot, swung a wide bend, and overtook Paula on 
 the Fawn. 
 
 " Hello ! " he called. " Hello ! Hello ! " 
 
 She reined in till he was alongside. 
 
 " I was just turning back," she said. " Why did 
 you turn back? I thought you were going over the 
 divide to Little Grizzly." 
 
 " You knew I was ahead of you? " he asked, ad 
 miring the frank, boyish way of her eyes straight- 
 gazing into his. 
 
 " Why shouldn t I? I had no doubt at the sec 
 ond patteran." 
 
 " Oh, I d forgotten about them," he laughed 
 guiltily. " Why did you turn back? " 
 
 She waited until the Fawn and Selim had stepped 
 over a fallen alder across the trail, so that she could 
 look into Graham s eyes when she answered: 
 
 " Because I did not care to follow your trail. 
 To follow anybody s trail," she quickly amended. 
 " I turned back at the second one." 
 
 He failed of a ready answer, and an awkward si 
 lence was between them. Both were aware of this 
 awkwardness, due to the known but unspoken things. 
 
 " Do you make a practice of dropping pat- 
 terans?" Paula asked. 
 
 " The first I ever left," he replied, with a shake 
 of the head. " But there was such a generous sup 
 ply of materials it seemed a pity, and, besides, the 
 song was haunting me." 
 
 " It was haunting me this morning when I woke 
 
252 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 up," she said, this time her face straight ahead so 
 that she might avoid a rope of wild grapevine that 
 hung close to her side of the trail. 
 
 And Graham, gazing at her face in profile, at her 
 crown of gold-brown hair, at her singing throat, 
 felt the old ache at the heart, the hunger and the 
 yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation. 
 The sight of her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, 
 tormented him with a rush of visions of that form 
 of hers swimming Mountain Lad, swan-diving 
 through forty feet of air, moving down the long 
 room in the dull-blue dress of medieval fashion with 
 the maddening knee-lift of the clinging draperies. 
 
 " A penny for them," she interrupted his vision- 
 ing. His answer was prompt. 
 
 "Praise to the Lord for one thing: you haven t 
 once mentioned Dick." 
 
 " Do you so dislike him? " 
 
 " Be fair," he commanded, almost sternly. u It 
 is because I like him. Otherwise . . ." 
 
 "What?" she queried. 
 
 Her voice was brave, although she looked straight 
 before her at the Fawn s pricking ears. 
 
 " I can t understand why I remain. I should have 
 been gone long ago." 
 
 "Why?" she asked, her gaze still on the prick 
 ing ears. 
 
 "Be fair, be fair," he warned. "You and I 
 scarcely need speech for understanding." 
 
 She turned full upon him, her cheeks warming 
 with color, and, without speech, looked at him. 
 Her whip-hand rose quickly, half way, as if to press 
 her breast, and half way paused irresolutely, then 
 

 OF THE BIG HOUSE 253 
 
 dropped down to her side. But her eyes, he saw, 
 were glad and startled. There was no mistake? , 
 The startle lay in them, and also the gladness. And/ 
 he, knowing as it is given some men to know, 7 
 changed the bridle rein to his other hand, reined 
 close to her, put his arm around her, drew her till 
 the horses rocked, and, knee to knee and lips on lips, 
 kissed his desire to hers. There was no mistake 
 pressure to pressure, warmth to warmth, and with 
 an elate thrill he felt her breathe against him. 
 
 The next moment she had torn herself loose. 
 The blood had left her face. Her eyes were blaz 
 ing. Her riding-whip rose as if to strike him, then 
 fell on the startled Fawn. Simultaneously she 
 drove in both spurs with such suddenness and force 
 as to fetch a groan and a leap from the mare. 
 
 He listened to the soft thuds of hoofs die away 
 along the forest path, himself dizzy in the saddle 
 from the pounding of his blood. When the last 
 hoof-beat had ceased, he half-slipped, half-sank 
 from his saddle to the ground, and sat on a mossy 
 boulder. He was hard hit harder than he had 
 deemed possible until that one great moment when 
 he had held her in his arms. Well, the die was cast. 
 
 He straightened up so abruptly as to alarm Selim, 
 who sprang back the length of his bridle rein and 
 snorted. 
 
 What had just occurred had been unpremeditated. 
 It was one of those inevitable things. It had to 
 happen. He had not planned it, although he knew, 
 now, that had he not procrastinated his going, had 
 he not drifted, he could have foreseen it. And 
 now, going could not mend matters. The madness 
 
254 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 of it, the hell of it and the joy of it, was that no 
 longer was there any doubt. Speech beyond speech, 
 his lips still tingling with the memory of hers, she 
 had told him. He dwelt over that kiss returned, his 
 senses swimming deliciously in the sea of remem 
 brance. 
 
 He laid his hand caressingly on the knee that had 
 touched hers, and was grateful with the humility 
 of the true lover. Wonderful it was that so won 
 derful a woman should love him. This was no girl. 
 This was a woman, knowing her own will and wis 
 dom. And she had breathed quickly in his arms, 
 and her lips had been live to his. He had evoked 
 what he had given, and he had not dreamed, after 
 the years, that he had had so much to give. 
 
 He stood up, made as if to mount Selim, who noz- 
 zled his shoulder, then paused to debate. 
 
 It was no longer a question of going. That was 
 definitely settled. Dick had certain rights, true. 
 But Paula had her rights, and did he have the right 
 to go, after what had happened, unless . . . unless 
 she went with him ? To go now was to kiss and ride 
 away. Surely, since the world of sex decreed that 
 often the same men should love the one woman, and 
 therefore that perfidy should immediately enter into 
 such a triangle surely, it was the lesser evil to be 
 perfidious to the man than to the woman. 
 
 It was a real world, he pondered as he rode 
 slowly along; and Paula, and Dick, and he were 
 real persons in it, were themselves conscious real- 
 
 s who looked the facts of life squarely in the face. 
 This was no affair of priest and code, of other wis 
 doms and decisions. Of themselves must it be set- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 25. 
 
 tied. Some one would be hurt. But life was hurt. 
 Success in living was the minimizing of pain. Dick 
 believed that himself, thanks be. The three of 
 them believed it. And it was nothing new under the 
 sun. The countless triangles of the countless genera 
 tions had all been somehow solved. This, then, 
 would be solved. All human affairs reached some 
 solution. 
 
 He shook sober thought from his brain and re 
 turned to the bliss of memory, reaching his hand to 
 another caress of his knee, his lips breathing again 
 to the breathing of hers against them. He even 
 reined Selim to a halt in order to gaze at the hollow 
 resting place of his bent arm which she had filled. 
 
 Not until dinner did Graham see Paula again, 
 and he found her the very usual Paula. Not even 
 his eye, keen with knowledge, could detect any sign 
 of the day s great happening, nor of the anger that 
 had whitened her face and blazed in her eyes when 
 she half-lifted her whip to strike him. In every 
 thing she was the same Little Lady of the Big House. 
 Even when it chanced that her eyes met his, they 
 were serene, untroubled, with no hint of any secret 
 in them. What made the situation easier was the 
 presence of several new guests, women, friends of 
 Dick and her, come for a couple of days. 
 
 Next morning, in the music room, he encountered 
 them and Paula at the piano. 
 
 " Don t you sing, Mr. Graham?" a Miss Hoff 
 man asked. 
 
 She was the editor of a woman s magazine pub 
 lished in San Francisco, Graham had learned. 
 
256 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 u Oh, adorably," he assured her. "Don t I, 
 Mrs. Forrest? " he appealed. 
 
 " It is quite true," Paula smiled, u if for no other 
 reason that he is kind enough not to drown me 
 quite." 
 
 " And nothing remains but to prove our words," 
 he volunteered. " There s a duet we sang the other 
 evening " He glanced at Paula for a sign. 
 " Which is particularly good for my kind of sing 
 ing." Again he gave her a passing glance and re 
 ceived no cue to her will or wish. u The music is 
 in the living room. I ll go and get it." 
 
 " It s the Gypsy Trail, a bright, catchy thing," 
 he heard her saying to the others as he passed out. 
 
 They did not sing it so recklessly as on that first 
 occasion, and much of the thrill and some of the 
 fire they kept out of their voices; but they sang it 
 more richly, more as the composer had intended it 
 and with less of their own particular interpretation. 
 But Graham was thinking as he sang, and he knew, 
 too, that Paula was thinking, that in their hearts 
 another duet was pulsing all unguessed by the sev 
 eral women who applauded the song s close. 
 
 " You never sang it better, I ll wager," he told 
 ^atrla. 
 
 / For he had heard a new note in her voice. It 
 /had been fuller, rounder, with a generousness of 
 I volume that had vindicated that singing throat. 
 V_ " And now, because I know you don t know, I ll 
 tell you what a patteran is," she was saying. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 boy, your position is distinctly Car- 
 lylean," Terrence McFane said in fatherly 
 tones. 
 
 The sages of the madrono grove were at table, 
 and, with Paula, Dick and Graham, made up the din 
 ner party of seven. 
 
 " Mere naming of one s position does not settle 
 it, Terrence," Dick replied. " I know my point is 
 Carlylean, but that does not invalidate it. Hero- 
 worship is a very good thing. I am talking, not as 
 a mere scholastic, but as a practical breeder with 
 whom the application of Mendelian methods is a 
 every-day commonplace." 
 
 " And I am to conclude," Hancock broke in, " that 
 a Hottentot is as good as a white man? " 
 
 " Now the South speaks, Aaron," Dick retorted^ 
 with a smile. " Prejudice, not of birth, but of early 
 environment, is too strong for all your philosophy 
 to shake. It is as bad as Herbert Spencer s handi 
 cap of the early influence of the Manchester School." 
 
 " And Spencer is on a par with the Hottentot? " 
 Dar Hyal challenged. \ *.. 
 
 Dick shook his head. 
 
 " Let me say this, Hyal. I think I can make it 
 clear. The average Hottentot, or the averag 
 Melanesian, is pretty close to being on a par with 
 the average white man. The difference lies in th 
 
 257 
 
258 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 there are proportionately so many more Hottentots 
 and negroes who are merely average, while there is 
 such a heavy percentage of white men who are not 
 average, who are above average. These are what 
 I called the pace-makers that bring up the speed 
 of their own race average-men. Note that they do 
 not change the nature or develop the intelligence of 
 the average-men. But they give them better equip 
 ment, better facilities, enable them to travel a faster 
 collective pace. 
 
 " Give an Indian a modern rifle in place of his 
 bow and arrows and he will become a vastly more 
 efficient game-getter. The Indian hunter himself 
 has not changed in the slightest. But his entire In 
 dian race sported so few of the above-average men, 
 that all of them, in ten thousand generations, were 
 unable to equip him with a rifle." 
 
 " Go on, Dick, develop the idea," Terrence en 
 couraged. " I begin to glimpse your drive, and 
 you ll soon have Aaron on the run with his race 
 prejudices and silly vanities of superiority." 
 
 " These above-average men," Dick continued, 
 u these pace-makers, are the inventors, the discover 
 ers, the constructionists, the sporting dominants. A 
 race that sports few such dominants is classified as 
 a lower race, as an inferior race. It still hunts with 
 bows and arrows. It is not equipped. Now the 
 average white man, per se, is just as bestial, just as 
 stupid, just as inelastic, just as stagnative, just as 
 retrogressive, as the average savage. But the aver 
 age white man has a faster pace. The large num 
 ber of sporting dominants in his society give him 
 .the equipment, the organization, and impose the law. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 259 
 
 "What great man, what hero and by that I 
 mean what sporting dominant has the Hottentot 
 race produced? The Hawaiian race produced only 
 one Kamehameha. The negro race in America, 
 at the outside only two, Booker T. Washington 
 and Du Bois and both with white blood in 
 them. . . ." 
 
 Paula feigned a cheerful interest while the exposi 
 tion went on. She did not appear bored, but to 
 Graham s sympathetic eyes she seemed inwardly to 
 droop. And in an interval of tilt between Terrence 
 and Hancock, she said in a low voice to Graham : 
 
 " Words, words, words, so much and so many of 
 them ! I suppose Dick is right he so nearly al 
 ways is; but I confess to my old weakness of inabil 
 ity to apply all these floods of words to life to 
 my life, I mean, to my living, to what I should do, 
 to what I must do." Her eyes were unfalteringly 
 fixed on his while she spoke, leaving no doubt in 
 his mind to what she referred. " I don t know what 
 bearing sporting dominants and race-paces have on 
 my life. They show me no right or wrong or way 
 for my particular feet. And now that they ve 
 started they are liable to talk the rest of the even 
 ing. . . . 
 
 " Oh, I do understand what they say," she has 
 tily assured him; " but it doesn t mean anything to 
 me. Words, words, words and I want to know 
 what to do, what to do with myself, what to do with 
 you, what to do with Dick." 
 
 But the devil of speech was in Dick Forrest s 
 tongue, and before Graham could murmur a reply 
 to Paula, Dick was challenging him for data on the 
 
260 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 subject from the South American tribes among which 
 he had traveled. To look at Dick s face it would 
 have been unguessed that he was aught but a care 
 free, happy arguer. Nor did Graham, nor did 
 Paula, Dick s dozen years wife, dream that his 
 casual careless glances were missing no movement of 
 a hand, no change of position on a chair, no shade 
 of expression on their faces. 
 
 What s up?, was Dick s secret interrogation. 
 Paula s not herself. She s positively nervous, and 
 all the discussion is responsible. And Graham s off 
 color. His brain isn t working up to mark. He s 
 thinking about something else, rather than about 
 what he is saying. What is that something else? 
 
 And the devil of speech behind which Dick hid his 
 secret thoughts impelled him to urge the talk wider 
 and wilder. 
 
 " For once I could almost hate the four sages," 
 Paula broke out in an undertone to Graham, who 
 had finished furnishing the required data. 
 
 Dick, himself talking, in cool sentences amplify 
 ing his thesis, apparently engrossed in his subject, 
 saw Paula make the aside, although no word of it 
 reached his ears, saw her increasing nervousness, 
 saw the silent sympathy of Graham, and wondered 
 what had been the few words she uttered, while to 
 the listening table he was saying: 
 
 " Fischer and Speiser are both agreed on the 
 paucity of unit-characters that circulate in the hered 
 ity of the lesser races as compared with the immense 
 variety of unit-characters in say the French, or Ger 
 man, or English. ..." 
 
 No one at the table suspected that Dick deliber- 
 
 
Cr\ 
 
 OF THE BIG HOUSE 261 
 
 ^ S 
 
 ately dangled the bait of a new trend to the conver 
 sation, nor did Leo dream afterward that it was 
 the master-craft and deviltry of Dick rather than his 
 own question that changed the subject when he de 
 manded to know what part the female sporting 
 dominants played in the race. 
 
 " Females don t sport, Leo, my lad," Terrence, 
 with a wink to the others, answered him. 14 Fe 
 males are conservative. They keep the type true. 
 They fix it and hold it, and are the everlasting clog 
 on the chariot of progress. If it wasn t for the fe 
 males every blessed mother s son of us would be a 
 sporting dominant. I refer to our distinguished 
 breeder and practical Mendelian whom we have 
 with us this evening to verify my random state 
 ments." 
 
 " Let us get down first of all to bedrock and find 
 out what we are talking about," Dick was prompt 
 on the uptake. " What is woman?" he demanded 
 with an air of earnestness. 
 
 u The ancient Greeks said woman was nature s 
 failure to make a man," Dar Hyal answered, the 
 while the imp of mockery laughed in the corners of 
 his mouth and curled his thin cynical lips deri 
 sively. 
 
 Leo was shocked. His face flushed. There was 
 pain in his eyes and his lips were trembling as he 
 looked wistful appeal to Dick. 
 
 "The half-sex," Hancock gibed. " As if the 
 hand of God had been withdrawn midway in the 
 making, leaving her but a half-soul, a groping soul 
 at best." 
 
 " No ! no ! " the boy cried out. " You must not 
 
262 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 say such things ! Dick, you know. Tell them, 
 tell them." 
 
 " I wish I could," Dick replied. " But this soul 
 discussion is vague as souls themselves. We all 
 know, of our selves, that we often grope, are often 
 lost, and are never so much lost as when we think 
 where we are and all about ourselves, 
 is the personality of a lunatic but a personality 
 a little less, or very much less, coherent than ours? 
 tat is the personality of a moron? Of an idiot? 
 Of a feeble-minded child? Of a horse? A dog? 
 A mosquito? A bullfrog? A woodtick? A gar 
 den snail? And, Leo, what is your own personality 
 when you sleep and dream? When you are seasick? 
 When you are in love? When you have colic? 
 When you have a cramp in the leg? When you are 
 smitten abruptly with the fear of death? When you 
 are angry? When you are exalted with the sense of 
 the beauty of the world and think you think all inex 
 pressible unutterable thoughts? 
 
 " I say think you think intentionally. Did you 
 really think, then your sense of the beauty of the 
 world would not be inexpressible, unutterable. It 
 would be clear, sharp, definite. You could put it 
 into words. Your personality would be clear, sharp, 
 and definite as your thoughts and words. Ergo, 
 Leo, when you deem, in exalted moods, that you 
 sire at the summit of existence, in truth you are thrill 
 ing, vibrating, dancing a mad orgy of the senses and 
 /not knowing a step of the dance or the meaning of 
 / the orgy. You don t know yourself. Your soul, 
 / your personality, at that moment, is a vague and 
 groping thing. Possibly the bullfrog, inflating him- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 263 
 
 self on the edge of a pond and uttering hoarse 
 croaks through the darkness to a warty mate, pos 
 sesses also, at that moment, a vague and groping 
 personality. 
 
 " No, Leo, personality is too vague for any of 
 our vague personalities to grasp. There are seem 
 ing men with the personalities of women. There 
 are plural personalities. There are two-legged hu 
 man creatures that are neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. 
 We, as personalities, float like fog-wisps through 
 glooms and, darknesses and light-flashings. It is 
 all fog and mist, and we are all foggy and misty in 
 the thick of the mystery." 
 
 " Maybe it s mystification instead of mystery 
 man-made mystification," Paula said. 
 
 " There talks the true woman that Leo thinks 
 is not a half-soul," Dick retorted. " The point is, 
 Leo, sex and soul are all interwoven and tangled to 
 gether, and we know little of one and less of the 
 other." 
 
 " But women are beautiful," the boy stammered. 
 
 " Oh, ho ! " Hancock broke in, his black eyes 
 gleaming wickedly. " So, Leo, you identify woman 
 with beauty? " 
 
 The young poet s lips moved, but he could only 
 nod. 
 
 Very well, then, let us take the testimony of 
 painting, during the last thousand years, as a reflex 
 of economic conditions and political institutions, and 
 by it see how man has molded and daubed woman 
 into the image of his desire, and how she has pef- 
 mitted him " 
 
 You must stop baiting Leo," Paula 
 
 , 
 
264 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " and be truthful, all of you, and say what you do 
 know or do believe/ 
 
 " Woman is a very sacred subject," Dar Hyal 
 enunciated solemnly. 
 
 " There is the Madonna," Graham suggested, 
 stepping into the breach to Paula s aid. 
 
 "And the cerebrale," Terrence added, winning 
 a nod of approval from Dar Hyal. 
 
 " One at a time," Hancock said. " Let us con 
 sider the Madonna-worship, which was a particular 
 woman-worship in relation to the general woman- 
 worship of all women to-day and to which Leo sub 
 scribes. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He dis 
 likes to be pestered. He likes tranquillity, repose. 
 And he finds himself, ever since man began, saddled 
 to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling 
 companion, and her name is woman. She has 
 moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsi 
 bilities. He couldn t destroy her. He had to have 
 her, although she was always spoiling his peace. 
 What was he to do?" 
 
 " Trust him to find a way the cunning rascal," 
 Terrence interjected. 
 
 " He made a heavenly image of her," Hancock 
 kept on. " He idealized her good qualities, and put 
 her so far away that her bad qualities couldn t get 
 on his nerves and prevent him from smoking his 
 quiet lazy pipe of peace and meditating upon the 
 stars. And when the ordinary every-day woman 
 tried to pester, he brushed her aside from his 
 thoughts and remembered his heaven-woman, the 
 perfect woman, the bearer of life and custodian of 
 immortality. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 265 
 
 " Then came the Reformation. Down went the 
 worship of the Mother. And there was man still 
 saddled to his repose-destroyer. What did he do 
 then?" 
 
 " Ah, the rascal," Terrence grinned. 
 
 "He said: I will make of .you a dream and 
 an illusion. And he did. The Madonna was his 
 heavenly woman, his highest conception of woman. 
 He transferred all his idealized qualities of her to 
 the earthly woman, to every woman, and he has 
 fooled himself into believing in them and in her 
 ever since . . . like Leo does." 
 
 u For an unmarried man you betray an amazing 
 intimacy with the pestiferousness of woman," Dick 
 commented. " Or is it all purely theoretical? " 
 
 Terrence began to laugh. 
 
 " Dick, boy, it s Laura Marholm Aaron s been 
 just reading. He can spout her chapter and verse." 
 
 "And with all this talk about woman we have 
 not yet touched the hem of her garment," Graham 
 said, winning a grateful look from Paula and Leo. 
 
 " There is love," Leo breathed. " No one has 
 said one word about love." 
 
 " And marriage laws, and divorces, and polyg 
 amy, and monogamy, and free love," Hancock rat- 
 tld off. 
 
 " And why, Leo," Dar Hyal queried, " is woman, 
 in the game of love, always the pursuer, the hunt 
 ress?" 
 
 " Oh, but she isn t," the boy answered quietly, 
 with an air of superior knowledge. That is just 
 some of your Shaw nonsense." 
 
 " Bravo, Leo," Paula applauded. 
 
266 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Then V7ilde was wrong when he said woman 
 attacks by sudden and strange surrenders?" Dar 
 Hyal asjced. 
 
 ut don t you see," protested Leo, " all such 
 talk makes woman a monster, a creature of prey." 
 As he turned to Dick, he stole a side glance at Paula 
 and love welled in his eyes. " Is she a creature of 
 prey, Dick?" 
 
 " No," Dick answered slowly, with a shake of 
 head, and gentleness was in his voice for sake 
 of what he had just seen in the boy s eyes. " I 
 cannot say that woman is a creature of prey. Nor 
 can I say she is a creature preyed upon. Nor will 
 I say she is a creature of unfaltering joy to man. 
 But I will say that she is a creature of much joy to 
 man " 
 
 " And of much foolishness," Hancock added. 
 
 " Of much fine foolishness," Dick gravely 
 amended. 
 
 " Let me ask Leo something," Dar Hyal said. 
 " Leo, why is it that a woman loves the man who 
 beats her?" 
 
 " And doesn t love the man who doesn t beat 
 her?" Leo countered. 
 
 " Precisely." 
 
 " Well, Dar, you are partly right and mostly 
 wrong. Oh, I have learned about definitions 
 from you fellows. You ve cunningly left them out 
 of your two propositions. Now I ll put them in for 
 you. A man who beats a woman he loves is a low 
 type man. A woman who loves the man who beats 
 her is a low type woman. No high type man beats 
 the woman he loves. No high type woman," and 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 267 
 
 all unconsciously Leo s eyes roved to Paula, " could 
 love a man who beats her." 
 
 " No, Leo," Dick said, " I assure you I have 
 never, never beaten Paula." 
 
 " So you see, Dar," Leo went on with flushing 
 cheeks, u you are wrong. Paula loves Dick with 
 out being beaten." 
 
 With what seemed pleased amusement beaming on 
 his face, Dick turned to Paula as if to ask her silent 
 approval of the lad s words; but what Dick sought 
 was the effect of the impact of such words under 
 the circumstances he apprehended. In Paula s eyes 
 he thought he detected a flicker of something he 
 knew not what. Graham s face he found expres 
 sionless insofar as there was no apparent change 
 of the expression of interest that had been there. 
 
 " Woman has certainly found her St. George to 
 night," Graham complimented. u Leo, you shame 
 me. Here I sit quietly by while you fight three drag 
 
 ons." 
 
 " And such dragons," Paula joined in. ;t If they 
 drove O Hay to drink, what will they do to you, 
 Leo?" 
 
 " No knight of love can ever be discomfited by all 
 the dragons in the world," Dick said. " And the 
 best of it, Leo, is in this case the dragons are more 
 right than you think, and you are more right than 
 they just the same." 
 
 " Here s a dragon that s a good dragon, Leo, 
 lad," Terrence spoke up. This dragon is going to 
 desert his disreputable companions and come over 
 on your side and be a Saint Terrence. And this 
 Saint Terrence has a lovely question to ask you." 
 
268 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Let this dragon roar first," Hancock inter 
 posed. " Leo, by all in love that is sweet and lovely, 
 I ask you: why do lovers, out of jealousy, so often 
 kill the woman they love? " 
 
 " Because they are hurt, because they are insane," 
 came the answer, " and because they have been un 
 fortunate enough to love a woman so low in type 
 that she could be guilty of making them jealous." 
 
 " But, Leo, love will stray," Dick prompted. 
 1 You must give a more sufficient answer." 
 
 4 True for Dick," Terrence supplemented. 
 " And it s helping you I am to the full stroke of your 
 sword. Love will stray among the highest types, 
 and when it does in steps the green-eyed monster. 
 Suppose the most perfect woman you can imagine 
 should cease to love the man who does not beat her 
 and come to love another man who loves her and 
 will not beat her what then? All highest types, 
 mind you. Now up with your sword and slash into 
 the dragons." 
 
 " The first man will not kill her nor injure her in 
 any way," Leo asserted stoutly. " Because if he 
 did he would not be the man you describe. He 
 would not be high type, but low type." 
 
 " You mean, he would get out of the way? " Dick 
 asked, at the same time busying himself with a cigar 
 ette so that he might glance at no one s face. 
 
 Leo nodded gravely. 
 
 " He would get out of the way, and he would 
 make the way easy for her, and he would be very 
 gentle with her." 
 
 " Let us bring the argument right home," Han 
 cock said. " We ll suppose you re in love with Mrs. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 269 
 
 Forrest, and Mrs. Forrest is in love with you, and 
 you run away together in the big limousine 
 
 " Oh, but I wouldn t," the boy blurted out, his 
 cheeks burning. 
 
 " Leo, you are not complimentary," Paula en 
 couraged. 
 
 " It s just supposing, Leo," Hancock urged. 
 
 The boy s embarrassment was pitiful, and his 
 voice quivered, but he turned bravely to Dick and 
 said: 
 
 " That is for Dick to answer." 
 
 " And I ll answer," Dick said. " I wouldn t kill 
 Paula. Nor would I kill you, Leo. That wouldn t 
 be playing the game. No matter what I felt at 
 heart, I d say, i Bless you, my children. But just 
 the same " He paused, and the laughter signals 
 in the corners of his eyes advertised a whimsey - 
 " I d say to myself that Leo was making a sad mis 
 take. You see, he doesn t know Paula." 
 
 " She would be for interrupting his meditations 
 on the stars," Terrence smiled. 
 
 " Never, never, Leo, I promise you," Paula ex 
 claimed. 
 
 " There do you belie yourself, Mrs. Forrest," 
 Terrence assured her. :< In the first place, you 
 couldn t help doing it. Besides, it d be your bounden 
 duty to do it. And, finally, if I may say so, as some 
 what of an authority, when I was a mad young lover 
 of a man, with my heart full of a woman and my 
 eyes full of the stars, twas ever the dearest delight 
 to be loved away from them by the woman out of my 
 heart." 
 
 " Terrence, if you keep on saying such lovely 
 
2 7 o THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 things, " cried Paula, " I ll run away with both you 
 and Leo in the limousine." 
 
 " Hurry the day," said Terrence gallantly. " But 
 leave space among your fripperies for a few books 
 on the stars that Leo and I may be studying in odd 
 
 moments." 
 
 The combat ebbed away from Leo, and Dar 
 Hyal and Hancock beset Dick. 
 
 " What do you mean by playing the game ? " 
 Dar Hyal asked. 
 
 " Just what I said, just what Leo said," Dick 
 answered; and he knew that Paula s boredom and 
 nervousness had been banished for some time and 
 that she was listening with an interest almost eager. 
 " In my way of thinking, and in accord with my tem 
 perament, the most horrible spiritual suffering I can 
 imagine would be to kiss a woman who endured my 
 kiss." 
 
 " Suppose she fooled you, say for old sake s sake, 
 or through desire not to hurt you, or pity for you? " 
 Hancock propounded. 
 
 " It would be, to me, the unforgivable sin," came 
 Dick s reply. " It would not be playing the game 
 for her. I cannot conceive the fairness, nor the sat 
 isfaction, of holding the woman one loves a moment 
 longer than she loves to be held. Leo is very right. 
 The drunken artisan, with his fists, may arouse and 
 keep love alive in the breast of his stupid mate. But 
 the higher human males, the males with some shadow 
 of rationality, some glimmer of spirituality, cannot 
 lay rough hands on love. With Leo, I would make 
 the way easy for the woman, and I would be very 
 gentle with her." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 271 
 
 " Then what becomes of your boasted monogamic 
 marriage institution of Western civilization?" Dar 
 Hyal asked. 
 
 And Hancock: " You argue for free love, then? " 
 
 " I can only answer with a hackneyed truism," 
 Dick said. " There can be no love that is not free. 
 Always, please, remember the point of view is that 
 of the higher types. And the point of view answers 
 you, Dar. The vast majority of individuals must 
 be held to law and labor by the monogamic institu 
 tion, or by a stern, rigid marriage institution of some 
 sort. They are unfit for marriage freedom or love 
 freedom. Freedom of love, for them, would be 
 merely license of promiscuity. Only such nations 
 have risen and endured where God and the State have 
 kept the people s instincts in discipline and order." 
 
 Then you don t believe in the marriage laws for 
 say yourself," Dar Hyal inquired, " while you do 
 believe in them for other men?" 
 
 " I believe in them for all men. Children, family, 
 career, society, the State all these things make t 
 marriage, legal marriage, imperative. And by the 
 same token that is why I believe in divorce. Men, 
 all men, and women, all women, are capable of lov 
 ing more than once, of having the old love die and 
 of finding a new love born. The State cannot con 
 trol love any more than can a man or a woman. 
 When one falls in love one falls in love, and that s 
 all he knows about it. There it is throbbing, < 
 sighing, singing, thrilling love. But the State can / 
 control license." 
 
 " It is a complicated free love that you stand for," 
 Hancock criticised. 
 
272 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " True, and for the reason that man, living in so 
 ciety, is a most complicated animal." 
 
 " But there are men, lovers, who would die at 
 the loss of their loved one," Leo surprised the table 
 by his initiative. They would die if she died, they 
 would die oh so more quickly if she lived and 
 loved another." 
 
 Well, they ll have to keep on dying as they have 
 always died in the past," Dick answered grimly. 
 u And no blame attaches anywhere for their deaths. 
 We are so made that our hearts sometimes stray." 
 
 " My heart would never stray," Leo asserted 
 proudly, unaware that all at the table knew his secret. 
 " I could never love twice, I know." 
 
 1 True for you, lad," Terrence approved. " The 
 voice of all true lovers is in your throat. Tis the 
 absoluteness of love that is its joy how did 
 Shelley put it? or was it Keats? All a wonder 
 and a wild delight. Sure, a miserable skinflint of 
 a half-baked lover would it be that could dream 
 there was aught in woman form one-thousandth part 
 as sweet, as ravishing and enticing, as glorious and 
 wonderful as his own woman that he could ever love 
 again." 
 
 And as they passed out from the dining room, 
 Dick, continuing the conversation with Dar Hyal, 
 was wondering whether Paula would kiss him good 
 night or slip off to bed from the piano. And Paula, 
 talking to Leo about his latest sonnet which he had 
 shown her, was wondering if she could kiss Dick, 
 and was suddenly greatly desirous to kiss him, she 
 knew not why. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THERE was little talk that same evening after 
 dinner. Paula, singing at the piano, discon 
 certed Terrence in the midst of an apostrophe 
 on love. He quit a phrase midmost to listen to 
 the something new he heard in her voice, then slid 
 noiselessly across the room to join Leo at full length 
 on the bearskin. Dar Hyal and Hancock likewise 
 abandoned the discussion, each isolating himself in a 
 capacious chair. Graham, seeming least attracted, 
 browsed in a current magazine, but Dick observed 
 that he quickly ceased turning the pages. Nor did 
 Dick fail to catch the new note in Paula s voice and 
 to endeavor to sense its meaning. 
 
 When she finished the song the three sages strove 
 to tell her all at the same time that for once she had 
 forgotten herself and sung out as they had always 
 claimed she could. Leo lay without movement or 
 speech, his chin on his two hands, his face trans 
 figured. 
 
 " It s all this talk on love," Paula laughed, " and 
 all the lovely thoughts Leo and Terrence . . . and 
 Dick have put into my head." 
 
 Terrence shook his long mop of iron-gray hair. 
 
 " Into your heart you d be meaning," he corrected. 
 " Tis the very heart and throat of love that are 
 yours this night. And for the first time, dear lady, 
 
 273 
 
274 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 have I heard the full fair volume that is yours. 
 Never again plaint that your voice is thin. Thick 
 it is, and round it is, as a great rope, a great golden 
 rope for the mooring of argosies in the harbors of 
 the Happy Isles." 
 
 " And for that I shall sing you the Gloria" she 
 answered, " to celebrate the slaying of the dragons 
 by Saint Leo, by Saint Terrence . . . and, of course, 
 by Saint Richard." 
 
 Dick, missing nothing of the talk, saved himself 
 from speech by crossing to the concealed sideboard 
 and mixing for himself a Scotch and soda. 
 
 While Paula sang the Gloria, he sat on one of the 
 couches, sipping his drink and remembering keenly. 
 Once before he had heard her sing like that in 
 Paris, during their swift courtship, and directly after 
 ward, during their honeymoon on the All Away. 
 
 A little later, using his empty glass in silent in 
 vitation to Graham, he mixed highballs for both of 
 them, and, when Graham had finished his, suggested 
 to Paula that she and Graham sing the " Gypsy 
 Trail." 
 
 She shook her head and began Das Kraut Ver- 
 gessenheit. 
 
 " She was not a true woman, she was a terrible 
 woman," the song s close wrung from Leo. " And 
 he was a true lover. She broke his heart, but still 
 he loved her. He cannot love again because he can 
 not forget his love for her." 
 
 " And now, Red Cloud, the Song of the Acorn," 
 Paula said, smiling over to her husband. " Put 
 down your glass, and be good, and plant the acorns." 
 
 Dick lazily hauled himself off the couch and stood 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 275 
 
 up, shaking his head mutinously, as if tossing a mane, 
 and stamping ponderously with his feet in simulation 
 of Mountain Lad. 
 
 " I ll have Leo know that he is not the only poet 
 and love-knight on the ranch. Listen to Mountain 
 Lad s song, all wonder and wild delight, Terrence, 
 and more. Mountain Lad doesn t moon about the 
 loved one. He doesn t moon at all. He incarnates 
 love, and rears right up in meeting and tells them 
 so. Listen to him! " 
 
 Dick filled the room and shook the air with wild, 
 glad, stallion nickering; and then, with mane-tossing 
 and foot-pawing, chanted: 
 
 " Hear me ! I am Eros ! I stamp upon the hills. 
 I fill the wide valleys. The mares hear me, and 
 startle, in quiet pastures; for they know me. The 
 land is filled with fatness, and the sap is in the trees. 
 It is the spring. The spring is mine. I am mon 
 arch of my kingdom of the spring. The mares re 
 member my voice. They knew me aforetimes 
 through their mothers before them. Hear me ! I 
 am Eros. I stamp upon the hills, and the wide val 
 leys are my heralds, echoing the sound of my ap 
 proach." 
 
 It was the first time the sages of the madrono 
 grove had h&ard Dick s song, and they were loud in 
 applause. Hancock took it for a fresh start in the 
 discussion, and was beginning to elaborate a biologic 
 Bergsonian definition of love, when he was stopped 
 by Terrence, who had noticed the pain that swept 
 across Leo s face. 
 
 " Go on, please, dear lady," Terrence begged. 
 ** And sing of love, only of love; for it is my expe- 
 
276 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 rience that I meditate best upon the stars to the ac 
 companiment of a woman s voice." 
 
 A little later, Oh Joy, entering the room, waited 
 till Paula finished a song, then moved noiselessly to 
 Graham and handed him a telegram. Dick scowled 
 at the interruption. 
 
 "Very important I think," the Chinese ex 
 plained to him. 
 
 ;t Who took it?" Dick demanded. 
 
 " Me I took it," was the answer. " Night 
 clerk at Eldorado call on telephone. He say im 
 portant. I take it." 
 
 " It is, fairly so," Graham spoke up, having 
 finished reading the message. " Can I get a train 
 out to-night for San Francisco, Dick?" 
 
 " Oh Joy, come back a moment," Dick called, 
 looking at his watch. What train for San Fran 
 cisco stops at Eldorado?" 
 
 " Eleven-ten," came the instant information. 
 " Plenty time. Not too much. I call chauffeur? " 
 
 Dick nodded. 
 
 " You really must jump out to-night?" he asked 
 Graham. 
 
 " Really. It is quite important. Will I have 
 time to pack? " 
 
 Dick gave a confirmatory nod to Oh Joy, and said 
 to Graham: 
 
 " Just time to throw the needful into a grip." He 
 turned to Oh Joy. " Is Oh My up yet? " 
 
 " Yessr." 
 
 " Send him to Mr. Graham s room to help, and 
 let me know as soon as the machine is ready. No 
 limousine. Tell Saunders to take the racer." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 277 
 
 " One fine big strapping man, that," Terrence 
 commented, after Graham had left the room. 
 
 They had gathered about Dick, with the exception 
 of Paula, who remained at the piano, listening. 
 
 " One of the few men I d care to go along with, 
 hell for leather, on a forlorn hope or anything of 
 that sort, 7 Dick said. " He was on the Nethermere 
 when she went ashore at Pango in the 97 hurricane. 
 Pango is just a strip of sand, twelve feet above high 
 water mark, a lot of cocoanuts, and uninhabited. 
 Forty women among the passengers, English officers 
 wives and such. Graham had a bad arm, big as a 
 leg snake bite. 
 
 " It was a thundering sea. Boats couldn t live. 
 They smashed two and lost both crews. Four sail 
 ors volunteered in succession to carry a light line 
 ashore. And each man, in turn, dead at the end of 
 it, was hauled back on board. While they were un 
 tying the last one, Graham, with an arm like a leg, 
 stripped for it and went to it. And he did it, al 
 though the pounding he got on the sand broke his 
 bad arm and staved in three ribs. But he made the 
 line fast before he quit. In order to haul the haw 
 ser ashore, six more volunteered to go in on Evan s 
 line to the beach. Four of them arrived. And only 
 one woman of the forty was lost she died of heart 
 disease and fright. 
 
 " I asked him about it once. He was as bad as an 
 Englishman. All I could get out of the beggar was 
 that the recovery was uneventful. Thought that the 
 salt water, the exercise, and the breaking of the 
 bone had served as counter-irritants and done the 
 arm good." 
 
278 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Oh Joy and Graham entered the room from op 
 posite ends. Dick saw that Graham s first questing 
 glance was for Paula. 
 
 " All ready, sir," Oh Joy announced. 
 
 Dick prepared to accompany his guest outside to 
 the car ; but Paula evidenced her intention of remain 
 ing in the house. Graham started over to her to 
 murmur perfunctory regrets and good-by. 
 
 And she, warm with what Dick had just told of 
 him, pleasured at the goodly sight of him, dwelling 
 with her eyes on the light, high poise of head, the 
 careless, sun-sanded hair, and the lightness, almost 
 debonaireness, of his carriage despite his weight of 
 body and breadth of shoulders. As he drew near 
 to her, she centered her gaze on the long gray eyes 
 whose hint of drooping lids hinted of boyish sullen- 
 ness. She waited for the expression of sullenness 
 to vanish as the eyes lighted with the smile she had 
 come to know so well. 
 
 What he said was ordinary enough, as were her 
 regrets; but in his eyes, as he held her hand a mo 
 ment, was the significance which she had uncon 
 sciously expected and to which she replied with her 
 own eyes. The same significance was in the pressure 
 of the momentary handclasp. All unpremeditated, 
 she responded to that quick pressure. As he had 
 said, there was little need for speech between them. 
 
 As their hands fell apart, she glanced swiftly at 
 Dick; for she had learned much, in their dozen years 
 together, of his flashes of observance, and had come 
 to stand in awe of his almost uncanny powers of 
 guessing facts from nuances, and of linking nuances 
 into conclusions often startling in their thorough- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 279 
 
 ness and correctness. But Dick, his shoulder to 
 ward her, laughing over some quip of Hancock, was 
 just turning his laughter-crinkled eyes toward her as 
 he started to accompany Graham. 
 
 No, was her thought; surely Dick had seen noth 
 ing of the secret little that had been exchanged be 
 tween them. It had been very little, very quick a 
 light in the eyes, a muscular quiver of the fingers, 
 and no lingering. How could Dick have seen or 
 sensed? Their eyes had certainly been hidden from 
 Dick, likewise their clasped hands, for Graham s 
 back had been toward him. 
 
 Just the same, she wished she had not made that 
 swift glance at Dick. She was conscious of a feel 
 ing of guilt, and the thought of it hurt her as she 
 watched the two big men, of a size and blondness, 
 go down the room side by side. Of what had she 
 been guilty? she asked herself. Why should she 
 have anything to hide ? Yet she was honest enough 
 to face the fact and accept, without quibble, that she 
 had something to hide. And her cheeks burned at the 
 thought that she was being drifted into deception. 
 
 " I won t be but a couple of days," Graham was 
 saying as he shook hands with Dick at the car. 
 
 Dick saw the square, straight look of his eyes, 
 and recognized the firmness and heartiness of his 
 gripping hand. Graham half began to say some 
 thing, tbten did not; and Dick knew he had changed 
 his mind when he said: 
 
 " I think, when I get back, that I ll have to pack." 
 
 " But the book," Dick protested, inwardly curs 
 ing himself for the leap of joy which had been his at 
 the other s words. 
 
280 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " That s just why," Graham answered. " I ve 
 got to get it finished. It doesn t seem I can work 
 like you do. The ranch is too alluring. I can t get 
 down to the book. I sit over it, and sit over it, but 
 the confounded meadowlarks keep echoing in my 
 ears, and I begin to see the fields, and the redwood 
 canyons, and Selim. And after I waste an hour, I 
 give up and ring for Selim. And if it isn t that, it s 
 any one of a thousand other enchantments." 
 
 He put his foot on the running-board of the puls 
 ing car and said, " Well, so long, old man." 
 
 " Come back and make a stab at it," urged Dick. 
 " If necessary, we ll frame up a respectable daily 
 grind, and I ll lock you in every morning until you ve 
 done it. And if you don t do your work all day, all 
 day you ll stay locked in. I ll make you work. 
 Got cigarettes? matches? " 
 
 " Right O." 
 
 " Let her go, Saunders," Dick ordered the chauf 
 feur; and the car seemed to leap out into the dark 
 ness from the brilliantly lighted porte cochere. 
 
 Back in the house, Dick found Paula playing to 
 the madrono sages, and ensconced himself on the 
 couch to wait and wonder if she would kiss him good 
 night when bedtime came. It was not, he recog 
 nized, as if they made a regular schedule of kissing. 
 It had never been like that. Often and often he 
 did not see her until midday, and then in the pres 
 ence of guests. And often and often, she slipped 
 away to bed early, disturbing no one with a good 
 night kiss to her husband which might well hint to 
 them that their bedtime had come. 
 
 No, Dick concluded, whether or not she kissed him 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 281 
 
 on this particular night it would be equally without 
 significance. But still he wondered. 
 
 She played on and sang on interminably, until at 
 last he fell asleep. When he awoke he was alone in 
 the room. Paula and the sages had gone out 
 quietly. He looked at his watch. It marked one 
 o clock. She had played unusually late, he knew; 
 for he knew she had just gone. It was the cessa 
 tion of music and movement that had awakened him. 
 
 And still he wondered. Often he napped there to 
 her playing, and always, when she had finished, she 
 kissed him awake and sent him to bed. But this 
 night she had not. Perhaps, after all, she was com 
 ing back. He lay and drowsed and waited. The 
 next time he looked at his watch, it was two o clock. 
 She had not come back. 
 
 He turned off the lights, and as he crossed the 
 house, pressed off the hall lights as he went, while 
 the many unimportant little nothings, almost of 
 themselves, ranged themselves into an ordered text 
 of doubt and conjecture that he could not refrain 
 from reading. 
 
 On his sleeping porch, glancing at his barometers 
 and thermometers, her laughing face in the round 
 frame caught his eyes, and, standing before it, even 
 bending closer to it, he studied her long. 
 
 " Oh, well," he muttered, as he drew up the bed 
 covers, propped the pillows behind him and reached 
 for a stack of proof sheets, " whatever it is I ll have 
 to play it." 
 
 He looked sidewise at her picture. 
 
 " But, oh, Little Woman, I wish you wouldn t," 
 was the sighed good night. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 AS luck would have it, beyond chance guests for 
 lunch or dinner, the Big House was empty. 
 In vain, on the first and second days, did Dick 
 lay out his work, or defer it, so as to be ready for 
 any suggestion from Paula to go for an afternoon 
 swim or drive. 
 
 He noted that she managed always to avoid the 
 possibility of being kissed. From her sleeping 
 porch she called good night to him across the wide 
 patio. In the morning he prepared himself for her 
 eleven o clock greeting. Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts, 
 with important matters concerning the forthcoming 
 ranch sale of stock still unsettled, Dick promptly 
 cleared out at the stroke of eleven. Up she was, 
 he knew, for he had heard her singing. As he 
 waited, seated at his desk, for once he was idle. A 
 tray of letters before him continued to need his sig 
 nature. He remembered this morning pilgrimage 
 of hers had been originated by her, and by her, 
 somewhat persistently, had been kept up. And an 
 adorable thing it was, he decided that soft call of 
 " Good morning, merry gentleman," and the folding 
 of her kimono-clad figure in his arms. 
 
 He remembered, further, that he had often cut 
 that little visit short, conveying the impression to 
 her, even while he clasped her, of how busy he was. 
 And he remembered, more than once, the certain 
 
 282 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 283 
 
 little wistful shadow on her face as she slipped away. 
 
 Quarter past eleven, and she had not come. He 
 took down the receiver to telephone the dairy, and 
 in the swift rush of women s conversation, ere he 
 hung up, he caught Paula s voice : 
 
 " Bother Mr. Wade. Bring all the little 
 Wades and come, if only for a couple of days " 
 
 Which was very strange of Paula. She had in 
 variably welcomed the intervals of no guests, when 
 she and he were left alone with each other for a 
 day or for several days. And now she was trying 
 to persuade Mrs. Wade to come down from Sacra 
 mento. It would seem that Paula did not wish to 
 be alone with him, and was seeking to protect her 
 self with company. 
 
 He smiled as he realized that that morning em 
 brace, now that it was not tendered him, had become 
 suddenly desirable. The thought came to him of 
 taking her away with him on one of their travel- 
 jaunts. That would solve the problem, perhaps. 
 And he would hold her very close to him and draw 
 her closer. Why not an Alaskan hunting trip ? She 
 had always wanted to go. Or back to their old sail 
 ing grounds in the days of the All Away the South 
 Seas. Steamers ran direct between San Francisco 
 and Tahiti. In twelve days they could be ashore 
 in Papeete. He wondered if Lavaina still ran her 
 boarding house, and his quick vision caught a picture 
 of Paula and himself at breakfast on Lavaina s 
 porch In the shade of the mango trees. 
 
 He brought his fist down on the desk. No, by 
 God, he was no coward to run away with his wife 
 for fear of any man. And would it be fair to her 
 
2 8 4 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 to take her away possibly from where her desire 
 lay? True, he did not know where her desire lay, 
 nor how far it had gone between her and Graham. 
 Might it not be a spring madness with her that would 
 vanish with the spring? Unfortunately, he decided, 
 in the dozen years of their marriage she had never 
 evidenced any predisposition toward spring madness. 
 She had never given his heart a moment s doubt. 
 Herself tremendously attractive to men, seeing much 
 of them, receiving their admiration and even court, 
 she had remained always her equable and serene self, 
 Dick Forrest s wife 
 
 " Good morning, merry gentleman." 
 
 She was peeping in on him, quite naturally from 
 the hall, her eyes and lips smiling to him, blowing 
 him a kiss from her finger tips. 
 
 " And good morning, my little haughty moon," he 
 called back, himself equally his natural self. 
 
 And now she would come in, he thought; and he 
 would fold her in his arms, and put her to the test 
 of the kiss. 
 
 He opened his arms in invitation. But she did 
 not enter. Instead, she startled, with one hand 
 gathered her kimono at her breast, with the 
 other picked up the trailing skirt as if for flight, 
 at the same time looking apprehensively down the 
 hall. Yet his keen ears had caught no sound. She 
 smiled back at him, blew him another kiss, and was 
 gone. 
 
 Ten minutes later he had no ears for Bonbright, 
 who, telegrams in hand, startled him as he sat mo 
 tionless at his desk, as he had sat, without move 
 ment, for ten minutes. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 285 
 
 And yet she was happy. Dick knew her too long 
 in all the expressions of her moods not to realize the 
 significance of her singing over the house, in the 
 arcades, and out in the patio. He did not leave his 
 workroom till the stroke of lunch ; nor did she, as she 
 sometimes did, come to gather him up on the way. 
 At the lunch gong, from across the patio, he heard 
 her trilling die away into the house in the direction 
 of the dining room. 
 
 A Colonel Harrison Stoddard colonel from 
 younger service in the National Guard, himself a 
 retired merchant prince whose hobby was industrial 
 relations and social unrest held the table most of 
 the meal upon the extension of the Employers Lia 
 bility Act so as to include agricultural laborers. But 
 Paula found a space in which casually to give the 
 news to Dick that she was running away for the 
 afternoon on a jaunt up to Wickenberg to the 
 Masons. 
 
 " Of course I don t know when I ll be back 
 you know what the Masons are. And I don t dare 
 ask you to come, though I d like you along." 
 
 Dick shook his head. 
 
 " And so," she continued, " if you re not using 
 Saunders " 
 
 Dick nodded acquiescence. 
 
 " I m using Callahan this afternoon," he ex 
 plained, on the instant planning his own time now 
 that Paula was out of the question. " I never can 
 make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Calla 
 han is the better driver, and of course the safest." 
 
 " Perhaps that s why," she said with a smile. 
 " Safety first means slowest most." 
 
286 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Just the same I d back Callahan against Saunders 
 on a speed-track," Dick championed. 
 
 " Where are you bound? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and 
 no-horse farm you know, the automatically cul 
 tivated ten-acre stunt I ve been frivoling with. A lot 
 of changes have been made that have been waiting a 
 week for me to see tried out. I ve been too busy. 
 And after that, I m going to take him over the colony 
 what do you think? five additions the last 
 week." 
 
 " I thought the membership was full," Paula said. 
 
 " It was, and still is," Dick beamed. "But these 
 are babies. And the least hopeful of the families 
 had the rashness to have twins." 
 
 " A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over 
 that experiment of yours, and I make free to say 
 that I am merely holding my judgment you ve got 
 to show me by bookkeeping," Colonel Stoddard was 
 saying, immensely pleased at the invitation to be 
 shown over in person. 
 
 Dick scarcely heard him, such was the rush of 
 other thoughts. Paula had not mentioned whether 
 Mrs. Wade and the little Wades were coming, much 
 less mentioned that she had invited them. Yet this 
 Dick tried to consider no lapse on her part, for often 
 and often, like himself, she had guests whose arrival 
 was the first he knew of their coming. 
 
 It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not 
 coming that day, else Paula would not be running 
 away thirty miles up the valley. That was it, and 
 there was no bliking it. She was running away, and 
 from him. She could not face being alone with 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 287 
 
 him with the consequent perils of intimacy and 
 perilous, in such circumstances, could have but the 
 significance he feared. And further, she was making 
 the evening sure. She would not be back for dinner, 
 or till long after dinner, it was a safe wager, unless 
 she brought the whole Wickenberg crowd with her. 
 She would be back late enough to expect him to 
 be in bed. Well, he would not disappoint her, 
 he decided grimly, as he replied to Colonel Stod- 
 dard: 
 
 The experiment works out splendidly on paper, 
 with decently wide margins for human nature. And 
 there I admit is the doubt and the danger the 
 human nature. But the only way to test it is to test 
 it, which is what I am doing." 
 
 " It won t be the first Dick has charged to profit 
 and loss," Paula said. 
 
 " But five thousand acres, all the working capital 
 for two hundred and fifty farmers, and a cash salary 
 of a thousand dollars each a year! " Colonel Stod- 
 dard protested. " A few such failures if it fails 
 would put a heavy drain on the Harvest." 
 
 " That s what the Harvest needs," Dick answered 
 lightly. 
 
 Colonel Stoddard looked blank. 
 
 " Precisely," Dick confirmed. " Drainage, you 
 know. The mines are flooded the Mexican situa 
 
 tion." 
 
 It was during the morning of the second day 
 the day of Graham s expected return that Dick, 
 who, by being on horseback at eleven, had avoided a 
 repetition of the hurt of the previous day s " Good 
 
288 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 morning, merry gentleman " across the distance of 
 his workroom, encountered Ah Ha in a hall with an 
 armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy s way led 
 toward the tower room, but Dick made sure. 
 
 Where are you taking them, Ah Ha ? " he asked. 
 
 " Mr. Graham s room he come to-day." 
 
 Now whose thought was that? Dick pondered. 
 Ah Ha s ? Oh Joy s or Paula s ? He remem 
 bered having heard Graham more than once express 
 his fancy for their lilacs. 
 
 He deflected his course from the library and 
 strolled out through the flowers near the tower room. 
 Through the open windows of it came Paula s happy 
 humming. Dick pressed his lower lip with tight 
 quickness between his teeth and strolled on. 
 
 Some great, as well as many admirable, men and 
 women had occupied that room, and for them Paula 
 had never supervised the flower arrangement, Dick 
 meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, 
 usually attended to that, or had his house-staff ably 
 drilled to do it. 
 
 Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was 
 one from Graham, which Dick read twice, although 
 it was simple and unmomentous, being merely a post 
 ponement of his return. 
 
 Contrary to custom, Dick did not wait for the sec 
 ond lunch-gong. At the sound of the first he started, 
 for he felt the desire for one of Oh Joy s cocktails 
 the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to 
 meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found 
 her who rarely drank, and never alone just 
 placing an empty cocktail glass back on the tray. 
 
 So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 289 
 
 his deduction, as he nodded to Oh Joy and held up 
 one finger. 
 
 " Caught you at it! " he reproved gaily. " Secret 
 tippling. The gravest of symptoms. Little I 
 thought, the day I stood up with you, that the wife 
 I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic s 
 grave." 
 
 Before she could retort, a young man strolled in 
 whom she and Dick greeted as Mr. Winters, and 
 who also must have a cocktail. Dick tried to believe 
 that it was not relief he sensed in Paula s manner 
 as she greeted the newcomer. He had never seen 
 her quite so cordial to him before, although often 
 enough she had met him. At any rate, there would 
 be three at lunch. 
 
 Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and 
 special writer for the Pacific Rural Press, as well 
 as a sort of protege of Dick, had come for data 
 for an article on California fish-ponds, and Dick 
 mentally arranged his afternoon s program for him. 
 
 " Got a telegram from Evan," he told Paula. 
 " Won t be back till the four o clock day after to 
 
 morrow." 
 
 " And after all my trouble ! " she exclaimed. 
 " Now the lilacs will be wilted and spoiled." 
 
 Dick felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke 
 his frank, straightforward Paula. No matter what 
 the game was, or its outcome, at least she would play 
 it without the petty deceptions. She had always 
 been that way too transparent to make a success 
 of deceit. 
 
 Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance 
 of scarcely interested interrogation. 
 
290 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Why, in Graham s room," she explained. " I 
 had the boys bring a big armful and I arranged them 
 all myself. He s so fond of them, you know." 
 
 Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention 
 of Mrs. Wade s coming, and Dick knew definitely 
 she was not coming when Paula queried casually: 
 
 " Expecting anybody? " 
 
 He shook his head, and asked, " Are you doing 
 anything this afternoon?" 
 
 " Haven t thought about anything," she answered. 
 " And now I suppose I can t plan upon you with Mr. 
 Winters to be told all about fish." 
 
 " But you can," Dick assured her. " I m turning 
 him over to Mr. Hanley, who s got the trout counted 
 down to the last egg hatched and who knows all the 
 grandfather bass by name. I ll tell you what " 
 He paused and considered. Then his face lighted 
 as with a sudden idea. " It s a loafing afternoon. 
 Let s take the rifles and go potting squirrels. I no 
 ticed the other day they ve become populous on that 
 hill above the Little Meadow." 
 
 But he had not failed to observe the flutter of 
 alarm that shadowed her eyes so swiftly, and that 
 so swiftly was gone as she clapped her hands and 
 was herself. 
 
 " But don t take a rifle for me," she said. 
 
 " If you d rather not " he began gently. 
 
 " Oh, I want to go, but I don t feel up to shoot 
 ing. I ll take Le Gallienne s last book along it 
 just came in and read to you in betweenwhiles. 
 Remember, the last time I did that when we went 
 squirreling it was his Quest of the Golden Girl 
 I read to you." 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 PAULA on the Fawn, and Dick on the Outlaw, 
 rode out from the Big House as nearly side 
 by side as the Outlaw s wicked perversity per 
 mitted. The conversation she permitted was frag 
 mentary. With tiny ears laid back and teeth ex 
 posed, she would attempt to evade Dick s restraint 
 of rein and spur and win to a bite of Paula s leg or 
 the Fawn s sleek flank, and with every defeat the 
 pink flushed and faded in the whites of her eyes. 
 Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts to 
 rear (thwarted by the martingale) never ceased, 
 save when she pranced and sidled and tried to whirl. 
 
 " This is the last year of her," Dick announced. 
 " She s indomitable. I ve worked two years on her 
 without the slightest improvement. She knows me, 
 knows my ways, knows I am her master, knows 
 when she has to give in, but is never satisfied. She 
 nourishes the perennial hope that some time she ll 
 catch me napping, and for fear she ll miss that time 
 she never lets any time go by." 
 
 " And some time she may catch you," Paula said. 
 
 " That s why I m giving her up. It isn t exactly 
 a strain on me, but soon or late she s bound to get me 
 if there s anything in the law of probability. It may 
 be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows 
 where in the series of the million that fatal one is go 
 ing to pop up." 
 
 291 
 
292 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " You re a wonder, Red Cloud," Paula smiled. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 * You think in statistics and percentages, averages 
 and exceptions. I wonder, when we first met, what 
 particular formula you measured me up by." 
 
 "I ll be darned if I did," he laughed back. 
 1 There was where all signs failed. I didn t have a 
 statistic that applied to you. I merely acknowledged 
 to myself that here was the most wonderful female 
 woman ever born with two good legs, and I knew 
 that I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any 
 thing. I just had to have her " 
 
 " And got her," Paula completed for him. " But 
 since, Red Cloud, since. Surely you ve accumulated 
 enough statistics on me." 
 
 " A few, quite a few," he admitted. " But I 
 hope never to get the last one " 
 
 He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker 
 of Mountain Lad. The stallion appeared, the cow 
 boy on his back, and Dick gazed for a moment at the 
 perfect action of the beast s great swinging trot. 
 
 " We ve got to get out of this," he warned, as 
 Mountain Lad, at sight of them, broke into a gallop. 
 
 Together they pricked their mares, whirled them 
 about, and fled, while from behind they heard the 
 soothing " Whoas " of the rider, the thuds of the 
 heavy hoofs on the roadway, and a wild imperative 
 neigh. The Outlaw answered, and the Fawn was 
 but a moment behind her. From the commotion 
 they knew Mountain Lad was getting tempestuous. 
 
 Leaning to the curve, they swept into a cross-road 
 and in fifty paces pulled up, where they waited till 
 the danger was past. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 293 
 
 " He s never really injured anybody yet," Paula 
 said, as they started back. 
 
 " Except when he casually stepped on Cowley s 
 toes. You remember he was laid up in bed for a 
 month," Dick reminded her, straightening out the 
 Outlaw from a sidle and with a flicker of glance 
 catching the strange look with which Paula was re 
 garding him. 
 
 There was question in it, he could see, and love in 
 it, and fear yes, almost fear, or at least appre 
 hension that bordered on dismay; but, most of all, 
 a seeking, a searching, a questioning. Not entirely 
 ungermane to her mood, was his thought, had been 
 that remark of his thinking in statistics. 
 
 But he made that he had not seen, whipping out 
 his pad, and, with an interested glance at a culvert 
 they were passing, making a note. 
 
 " They missed it," he said. " It should have been 
 repaired a month ago." 
 
 " What has become of all those Nevada mus 
 tangs?" Paula inquired. 
 
 This was a flyer Dick had taken, when a bad sea 
 son for Nevada pasture had caused mustangs to sell 
 for a song with the alternative of starving to death. 
 He had shipped a trainload down and ranged them 
 in his wilder mountain pastures to the west. 
 
 " It s time to break them," he answered. " And 
 I m thinking of a real old-fashioned rodeo next week. 
 What do you say? Have a barbecue and all the 
 rest, and invite the country side? 
 
 " And then you won t be there," Paula objected. 
 
 " I ll take a day off. Is it a go?" 
 
 They reined to one side of the road, as she agreed, 
 
294 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 to pass three farm tractors, all with their trailage 
 of ganged discs and harrows. 
 
 " Moving them across to the Rolling Meadows," 
 he explained. " They pay over horses on the right 
 ground." 
 
 Rising from the home valley, passing through cul 
 tivated fields and wooded knolls, they took a road 
 busy with many wagons hauling road-dressing from 
 the rock-crusher they could hear growling and 
 crunching higher up. 
 
 " Needs more exercise than I ve been giving her," 
 Dick remarked, jerking the Outlaw s bared teeth 
 away from dangerous proximity to the Fawn s flank. 
 
 " And it s disgraceful the way I ve neglected 
 Duddy and Fuddy," Paula said. "I ve kept their 
 feed down like a miser, but they re a lively handful 
 just the same." 
 
 Dick heard her idly, but within forty-eight hours 
 he was to remember with hurt what she had said. 
 
 They continued on till the crunch of the rock- 
 crusher died away, penetrated a belt of woodland, 
 crossed a tiny divide where the afternoon sunshine 
 was wine-colored by the manzanita and rose-colored 
 by madronos, and dipped down through a young 
 planting of eucalyptus to the Little Meadow. But 
 before they reached it, they dismounted and tied 
 their horses. Dick took the .22 automatic rifle from 
 his saddle-holster, and with Paula advanced softly 
 to a clump of redwoods on the edge of the meadow. 
 They disposed themselves in the shade and gazed 
 out across the meadow to the steep slope of hill that 
 came down to it a hundred and fifty yards away. 
 
 " There they are three four of them," 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 295 
 
 Paula whispered, as her keen eyes picked the squir 
 rels out amongst the young grain. 
 
 These were the wary ones, the sports in the direc 
 tion of infinite caution who had shunned the poisoned 
 grain and steel traps of Dick s vermin catchers. 
 They were the survivors, each of a score of their 
 fellows not so cautious, themselves fit to repopulate 
 the hillside. 
 
 Dick filled the chamber and magazine with tiny 
 cartridges, examined the silencer, and, lying at full 
 length, leaning on his elbow, sighted across the 
 meadow. There was no sound of explosion when 
 he fired, only the click of the mechanism as the 
 bullet was sped, the empty cartridge ejected, a fresh 
 cartridge flipped into the chamber, and the trigger 
 re-cocked. A big, dun-colored squirrel leaped in the 
 air, fell over, and disappeared in the grain. Dick 
 waited, his eye along the rifle and directed toward 
 several holes around which the dry earth showed 
 widely as evidence of the grain which had been de 
 stroyed. When the wounded squirrel appeared, 
 scrambling across the exposed ground to safety, the 
 rifle clicked again and he rolled over on his side 
 and lay still. 
 
 At the first click, every squirrel but the stricken 
 one, had made into its burrow. Remained nothing 
 to do but wait for their curiosity to master caution. 
 This was the interval Dick had looked forward to. 
 As he lay and scanned the hillside for curious heads 
 to appear, he wondered if Paula would have some 
 thing to say to him. In trouble she was, but would 
 she keep this trouble to herself? It had never been 
 her way. Always, soon or late, she brought her 
 
296 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 troubles to him. But, then, he reflected, she had 
 never had a trouble of this nature before. It was 
 just the one thing that she would be least prone to 
 discuss with him. On the other hand, he reasoned, 
 there was her everlasting frankness. He had mar 
 veled at it, and joyed in it, all their years together. 
 Was it to fail her now? 
 
 So he lay and pondered. She did not speak. She 
 was not restless. He could hear no movement. 
 When he glanced to the side at her he saw her lying 
 on her back, eyes closed, arms outstretched, as if 
 tired. 
 
 A small head, the color of the dry soil of its home, 
 peeped from a hole. Dick waited long minutes, un 
 til, assured that no danger lurked, the owner of the 
 head stood full up on its hind legs to seek the cause 
 of the previous click that had startled it. Again the 
 rifle clicked. 
 
 " Did you get him? " Paula queried, without open 
 ing her eyes. 
 
 " Yea, and a fat one," Dick answered. " I 
 stopped a line of generations right there. 11 
 
 An hour passed. The afternoon sun beat down 
 but was not uncomfortable in the shade. A gentle 
 breeze fanned the young grain into lazy wavelets at 
 times, and stirred the redwood boughs above them. 
 Dick added a third squirrel to the score. Paula s 
 book lay beside her, but she had not offered to read. 
 
 "Anything the matter?" he finally nerved him 
 self to ask. 
 
 " No ; headache a beastly little neuralgic hurt 
 across the eyes, that s all." 
 
 " Too much embroidery," he teased. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 297 
 
 " Not guilty," was her reply. 
 
 All was natural enough in all seeming; but Dick, 
 as he permitted an unusually big squirrel to leave its 
 burrow and crawl a score of feet across the bare 
 earth toward the grain, thought to himself: No, 
 there will be no talk between us this day. Nor will 
 we nestle and kiss lying here in the grass. 
 
 His victim was now at the edge of the grain. He 
 pulled trigger. The creature fell over, lay still a 
 moment, then ran in quick awkward fashion toward 
 its hole. Click, click, click, went the mechanism. 
 Puffs of dust leaped from the earth close about the 
 fleeing squirrel, showing the closeness of the misses. 
 Dick fired as rapidly as he could twitch his fore 
 finger on the trigger, so that it was as if he played 
 a stream of lead from a hose. 
 
 He had nearly finished refilling the magazine when 
 Paula spoke. 
 
 " My! What a fusillade. Get him? " 
 
 " Yea, grandfather of all squirrels, a mighty grain- 
 cater and destroyer of sustenance for young calves. 
 But nine long smokeless cartridges on one squirrel 
 doesn t pay. I ll have to do better." 
 
 The sun dropped lower. The breeze died out. 
 Dick managed another squirrel and sadly watched 
 the hillside for more. He had arranged the time 
 and made his bid for confidence. The situation was 
 as grave as he had feared. Graver it might be, for 
 all he knew, for his world was crumbling about him. 
 Old landmarks were shifting their places. He was 
 bewildered, shaken. Had it been any other woman 
 than Paula ! He had been so sure. There had 
 been their dozen years to vindicate his surety. . . . 
 
298 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Five o clock, sun he get low," he announced, ris 
 ing to his feet and preparing to help her up. 
 
 "It did me so much good just resting," she 
 said, as they started for the horses. " My eyes feel 
 much better. It s just as well I didn t try to read to 
 you." 
 
 " And don t be piggy," Dick warned, as lightly 
 as if nothing were amiss with him. " Don t dare 
 steal the tiniest peek into Le Gallienne. You ve got 
 to share him with me later on. Hold up your 
 hand. Now, honest to God, Paul." 
 
 " Honest to God," she obeyed. 
 
 " And may jackasses dance on your grandmother s 
 grave " 
 
 " And may jackasses dance on my grandmother s 
 grave," she solemnly repeated. 
 
 The third morning of Graham s absence, Dick saw 
 to it that he was occupied with his dairy manager 
 when Paula made her eleven o clock pilgrimage, 
 peeped in upon him, and called her " Good morning, 
 merry gentleman," from the door. The Masons, 
 arriving in several machines with their boisterous 
 crowd of young people, saved Paula for lunch and 
 the afternoon; and, on her urging, Dick noted, she 
 made the evening safe by holding them over for 
 bridge and dancing. 
 
 But the fourth morning, the day of Graham s 
 expected return, Dick was alone in his workroom at 
 eleven. Bending over his desk, signing letters, he 
 heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look 
 up, but while he continued writing his signature he 
 listened with all his soul to the faint, silken swish of 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 299 
 
 her kimono. He knew when she was bending over 
 him, and all but held his breath. But when she had 
 softly kissed his hair and called her " Good morning, 
 merry gentleman," she evaded the hungry sweep of 
 his arm and laughed her way out. What affected 
 him as strongly as the disappointment was the hap 
 piness he had seen in her face. She, who so poorly 
 masked her moods, was bright-eyed and eager as a 
 child. And it was on this afternoon that Graham 
 was expected, Dick could not escape making the con 
 nection. 
 
 He did not care to ascertain if she had replenished 
 the lilacs in the tower room, and, at lunch, which 
 was shared with three farm college students from 
 Davis, he found himself forced to extemporize a busy 
 afternoon for himself when Paula tentatively sug 
 gested that she would drive Graham up from El 
 dorado. 
 
 " Drive?" Dick asked. 
 
 " Duddy and Fuddy," she explained. They re 
 all on edge, and I just feel like exercising them and 
 myself. Of course, if you ll share the exercise, we ll 
 drive anywhere you say, and let him come up in the 
 machine." 
 
 Dick strove not to think there was anxiety in her 
 manner while she waited for him to accept or decline 
 her invitation. 
 
 " Poor Duddy and Fuddy would be in the happy 
 hunting grounds if they had to cover my ground this 
 afternoon," he laughed, at the same time mapping 
 his program. " Between now and dinner I ve got 
 to do a hundred and twenty miles. I m taking the 
 racer, and it s going to be some dust and bump and 
 
300 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 only an occasional low place. I haven t the heart to 
 ask you along. You go on and take it out of Duddy 
 and Fuddy." 
 
 Paula sighed, but so poor an actress was she that 
 in the sigh, intended for him as a customary reluct 
 ant yielding of his company, he could not fail to de 
 tect the relief at his decision. 
 
 "Whither away?" she asked brightly, and again 
 he noticed the color in her face, the happiness, and 
 the brilliance of her eyes. 
 
 " Oh, I m shooting away down the river to the 
 dredging work Carlson insists I must advise him 
 and then up in to Sacramento, running over the 
 Teal Slough land on the way, to see Wing Fo 
 Wong." 
 
 " And in heaven s name who is this Wing Fo 
 Wong?" she laughingly queried, " that you must 
 trot and see him? " 
 
 " A very important personage, my dear. Worth 
 all of two millions made in potatoes and aspar 
 agus down in the Delta country. I m leasing three 
 hundred acres of the Teal Slough land to him." 
 Dick addressed himself to the farm students. 
 " That land lies just out of Sacramento on the west 
 side of the river. It s a good example of the land 
 famine that is surely coming. It was tule swamp 
 when I bought it, and I was well laughed at by the 
 old-timers. I even had to buy out a dozen hunting 
 preserves. It averaged me eighteen dollars an acre, 
 and not so many years ago either. 
 
 " You know the tule swamps. Worthless, save 
 for ducks and low-water pasturage. It cost over 
 three hundred an acre to dredge and drain and to 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 301 
 
 pay my quota of the river reclamation work. And 
 on what basis of value do you think I am making a 
 ten years* lease to old Wing Fo Wong? Two thou 
 sand an acre. I couldn t net more than that if I 
 truck-farmed it myself. Those Chinese are wizards 
 with vegetables, and gluttons for work. No eight 
 hours for them. It s eighteen hours. The last coolie 
 is a partner with a microscopic share. That s the way 
 Wing Fo Wong gets around the eight hour law." 
 
 Twice warned and once arrested, was Dick 
 through the long afternoon. He drove alone, and 
 though he drove with speed he drove with safety. 
 Accidents, for which he personally might be respon 
 sible, were things he did not tolerate. And they 
 never occurred. That same sureness and definite- 
 ness of adjustment with which, without fumbling or 
 approximating, he picked up a pencil or reached for 
 a door-knob, was his in the more complicated adjust 
 ments, with which, as instance, he drove a high-pow 
 ered machine at high speed over busy country roads. 
 
 But drive as he would, transact business as he 
 would, at high pressure with Carlson and Wing Fo 
 Wong, continually, in the middle ground of his con 
 sciousness, persisted the thought that Paula had gone 
 out of her way and done the most unusual in driv 
 ing Graham the long eight miles from Eldorado to 
 the ranch. 
 
 " Phew ! " he started to mutter a thought aloud, 
 then suspended utterance and thought as he jumped 
 the racer from forty-five to seventy miles an hour, 
 swept past to the left of a horse and buggy going 
 in the same direction, and slanted back to the right 
 
302 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 side of the road with margin to spare but seemingly 
 under the nose of a run-about coming from the op 
 posite direction. He reduced his speed to fifty and 
 took up his thought: 
 
 " Phew ! Imagine little Paul s thoughts if I dared 
 that drive with some charming girl! " 
 
 He laughed at the fancy as he pictured it, for, 
 most early in their marriage, he had gauged Paula s 
 capacity for quiet jealousy. Never had she made a 
 scene, or dropped a direct remark, or raised a ques 
 tion; but from the first, quietly but unmistakably, she 
 had conveyed the impression of hurt that was hers 
 if he at all unduly attended upon any woman. 
 
 He grinned with remembrance of Mrs. De- 
 hameny, the pretty little brunette widow Paula s 
 friend, not his who had visited in the long ago in 
 the Big House. Paula had announced that she was 
 not riding that afternoon and, at lunch, had heard 
 him and Mrs. Dehameny arrange to ride into the 
 redwood canyons beyond the grove of the philoso 
 phers. And who but Paula, not long after their 
 start, should overtake them and make the party 
 three ! He had smiled to himself at the time, and 
 felt immensely tickled with Paula, for neither Mrs. 
 Dehameny nor the ride with her had meant anything 
 to him. 
 
 So it was, from the beginning, that he had re 
 stricted his attentions to other women. Ever since 
 he had been far more circumspect than Paula. He 
 had even encouraged her, given her a free hand al 
 ways, had been proud that his wife did attract fine 
 fellows, had been glad that she was glad to be 
 amused or entertained by them. And with reason, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 303 
 
 \ 
 
 he mused. He had been so safe, so sure of her 
 more so, he acknowledged, than had she any right 
 to be of him. And the dozen years had vindicated 
 his attitude, so that he was as sure of her as he was 
 of the diurnal rotation of the earth. And now, was 
 the form his fancy took, the rotation of the earth 
 was a shaky proposition and old Oom Paul s flat 
 world might be worth considering. 
 
 He lifted the gauntlet from his left wrist to snatch 
 a glimpse at his watch. In five minutes Graham 
 would be getting off the train at Eldorado. Dick, 
 himself homeward bound west from Sacramento, 
 was eating up the miles. In a quarter of an hour 
 the train that he identified as having brought 
 Graham, went by. Not until he was well past 
 Eldorado did he overtake Buddy and Fuddy and 
 the trap. Graham sat beside Paula, who was driv 
 ing. Dick slowed down as he passed, waved a hello 
 to Graham, and, as he jumped into speed again, 
 called cheerily: 
 
 " Sorry I ve got to give you my dust. I ll beat 
 you a game of billiards before dinner, Evan, if you 
 ever get in." 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 "f | iHIS can t go on. We must do something 
 
 T 
 
 at once." 
 
 They were in the music room, Paula at 
 the piano, her face turned up to Graham who stood 
 close to her, almost over her. 
 
 4 You must decide," Graham continued. 
 
 Neither face showed happiness in the great thing 
 that had come upon them, now that they considered 
 what they must do. 
 
 " But I don t want you to go," Paula urged. " I 
 don t know what I want. You must bear with me. 
 I am not considering myself. I am past considering 
 myself. But I must consider Dick. I must consider 
 you. I ... I am so unused to such a situation," 
 she concluded with a wan smile. 
 
 " But it must be settled, dear love. Dick is not 
 blind." 
 
 " What has there been for him to see? " she de 
 manded. " Nothing, except that one kiss in the 
 canyon, and he couldn t have seen that. Do you 
 think of anything else I challenge you, sir." 
 
 1( Would that there were," he met the lighter touch 
 in her mood, then immediately relapsed. " I am 
 mad over you, mad for you. And there I stop. 
 I do not know if you are equally mad. I do not 
 know if you are mad at all." 
 
 304 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 305 
 
 As he spoke, he dropped his hand to hers on the 
 keys, and she gently withdrew it. 
 
 "Don t you see?" he complained. " Yet you 
 wanted me to come back? " 
 
 " I wanted you to come back," she acknowledged, 
 with her straight look into his eyes. " I wanted 
 you to come back," she repeated, more softly, as if 
 musing. 
 
 " And I m all at sea," he exclaimed impatiently. 
 "You do love me?" 
 
 "I do love you, Evan you know that. 
 But . . ." She paused and seemed to be weighing 
 the matter judicially. 
 
 " But what? " he commanded. " Go on." 
 
 " But I love Dick, too. Isn t it ridiculous? " 
 
 He did not respond to her smile, and her eyes 
 delightedly warmed to the boyish sullenness that 
 vexed his own eyes. A thought was hot on his 
 tongue, but he restrained the utterance of it while 
 she wondered what it was, disappointed not to have 
 had it. 
 
 " It will work out," she assured him gravely. " It 
 will have to work out somehow. Dick says all things 
 work out. All is change. What is static is dead, 
 and we re not dead, any of us ... are we? " 
 
 " I don t blame you for loving Dick, for . . . 
 for continuing to love Dick," he answered impa 
 tiently. " And for that matter, I don t see what 
 you find in me compared with him. This is honest. 
 He is a great man to me, and Great Heart is his 
 name " she rewarded him with a smile and nod of 
 approval. " But if you continue to love Dick, how 
 about me ? " 
 
306 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " But I love you, too." 
 
 " It can t be," he cried, tearing himself from the 
 piano to make a hasty march across the room and 
 stand contemplating the Keith on the opposite wall 
 as if he had never seen it before. 
 
 She waited with a quiet smile, pleasuring in his 
 unruly impetuousness. 
 
 t You can t love two men at once," he flung at her. 
 
 " Oh, but I do, Evan. That s what I am trying to 
 work out. Only I don t know which I love more. 
 Dick I have known a long time. You . . . you are 
 a" 
 
 " Recent acquaintance," he broke in, returning to 
 her with the same angry stride. 
 
 " Not that, no, not that, Evan. You have made a 
 revelation to me of myself. I love you as much as 
 Dick. I love you more. I I don t know." 
 
 She broke down and buried her face in her hands, 
 permitting his hand to rest tenderly on her shoulder. 
 
 4 You see it is not easy for me," she went on. 
 
 4 There is so much involved, so much that I cannot 
 
 understand. You say you are all at sea. Then 
 
 think of me all at sea and worse confounded. You 
 
 - oh, why talk about it you are a man with a 
 man s experiences, with a man s nature. It is all 
 very simple to you. She loves me, she loves me 
 not. But I am tangled, confused. I and I 
 wasn t born yesterday have had no experience in 
 loving variously. I have never had affairs. I loved 
 only one man . . . and now you. You, and this 
 love for you, have broken into a perfect marriage, 
 Evan " 
 
 " I know " he said. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 307 
 
 " I don t know," she went on. "I must 
 have time, either to work it out myself or to let it 
 work itself out. If it only weren t for Dick . . ." 
 her voice trailed off pathetically. 
 
 Unconsciously, Graham s hand went farther about 
 her shoulder. 
 
 " No, no not yet," she said softly, as softly she 
 removed it, her own lingering caressingly on his a 
 moment ere she released it. When you touch me, 
 I can t think," she begged. " I - - I can t think." 
 
 " Then I must go," he threatened, without any 
 sense of threatening. She made a gesture of pro 
 test. The present situation is impossible, unbear 
 able. I feel like a cur, and all the time I know I 
 am not a cur. I hate deception oh, I can lie with 
 the Pathan, to the Pathan but I can t deceive a 
 man like Great Heart. I d prefer going right up to 
 him and saying: l Dick, I love your wife. She 
 loves me. What are you going to do about it? 
 
 " Do so," Paula said, fired for the moment. 
 
 Graham straightened up with resolution. 
 
 " I will. And now." 
 
 " No, no," she cried in sudden panic. You 
 must go away." Again her voice trailed off, as she 
 said, " But I can t let you go." 
 
 If Dick had had any reason to doubt his suspicion 
 of the state of Paula s heart, that reason vanished 
 with the return of Graham. He need look nowhere 
 for confirmation save to Paula. She was in a flushed 
 awakening, burgeoning like the full spring all about 
 them, a happier tone in her happy laugh, a richer 
 song in her throat, a warmness of excitement and a 
 
308 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 continuous energy of action animating her. She was 
 up early and to bed late. She did not conserve her 
 self, but seemed to live on the champagne of her 
 spirits, until Dick wondered if it was because she did 
 not dare allow herself time to think. 
 
 He watched her lose flesh, and acknowledged to 
 himself that the one result was to make her look 
 lovelier than ever, to take on an almost spiritual 
 delicacy under her natural vividness of color and 
 charm. 
 
 And the Big House ran on in its frictionless, 
 happy, and remorseless way. Dick sometimes specu 
 lated how long it would continue so to run on, and 
 recoiled from contemplation of a future in which it 
 might not so run on. As yet, he was confident, no 
 one knew, no one guessed, but himself. But how 
 long could that continue ? Not long, he was certain. 
 Paula was not sufficiently the actress. And were she 
 a master at concealment of trivial, sordid detail, yet 
 the new note and flush of her would be beyond the 
 power of any woman to hide. 
 
 He knew his Asiatic servants were marvels of 
 discernment and discretion, he had to add. But 
 there were the women. Women were cats. To the 
 best of them it would be great joy to catch the 
 radiant, unimpeachable Paula as clay as any daugh 
 ter of Eve. And any chance woman in the house, 
 for a day, or an evening, might glimpse the situation 
 Paula s situation, at least, for he could not make 
 out Graham s attitude yet. Trust a woman to catch 
 a woman. 
 
 But Paula, different in other ways, was different in 
 this. He had never seen her display cattishness, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 309 
 
 never known her to be on the lookout for other 
 women on the chance of catching them tripping 
 except in relation to him. And he grinned again 
 at the deliciousness of the affair with Mrs. De- 
 hameney which had been an affair only in Paula s 
 apprehension. 
 
 Among other things of wonderment, Dick specu 
 lated if Paula wondered if he knew. 
 
 And Paula did wonder, and for a time without 
 avail. She could detect no change in his customary 
 ways and moods or treatment of her. He turned 
 off his prodigious amount of work as usual, played 
 as usual, chanted his songs, and was the happy good 
 fellow. She tried to imagine an added sweetness 
 toward her, but vexed herself with the fear that it 
 was imagined. 
 
 But it was not for long that she was in doubt. 
 Sometimes in a crowd, at table, in the living room 
 in the evening, or at cards, she would gaze at him 
 through half-veiled lashes when he was unaware, 
 until she was certain she saw the knowledge in his 
 eyes and face. But no hint of this did she give to 
 Graham. His knowing would not help matters. It 
 might even send him away, which she frankly ad 
 mitted to herself was the last thing she should want 
 to happen. 
 
 But when she came to a realization that she was 
 almost certain Dick knew or guessed, she hardened, 
 deliberately dared to play with the fire. If Dick 
 knew since he knew, she framed it to herself 
 why did he not speak? He was ever a straight 
 talker. She both desired and feared that he might, 
 until the fear faded and her earnest hope was that 
 
3 io THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 he would. He was the one who acted, did things, 
 no matter what they were. She had always de 
 pended upon him as the doer. Graham had called 
 the situation a triangle. Well, Dick could solve it. 
 He could solve anything. Then why didn t he? 
 
 In the meantime, she persisted in her ardent reck 
 lessness, trying not to feel the conscience-pricks of 
 her divided allegiance, refusing to think too deeply, 
 riding the top of the wave of her life as she as 
 sured herself, living, living, living. At times she 
 scarcely knew what she thought, save that she was 
 very proud in having two such men at heel. Pride 
 had always been one of her dominant key-notes 
 ^ \pride of accomplishment, achievement, mastery, as 
 with her music, her appearance, her swimming. It 
 was all one to dance, as she well knew, beauti 
 fully; to dress with distinction and beauty; to swan- 
 dive, all grace and courage, as few women dared; 
 or, all fragility, to avalanche down the spill-way on 
 the back of Mountain Lad and by the will and steel 
 of her swim the huge beast across the tank. 
 
 She was proud, a woman of their own race and 
 type, to watch these two gray-eyed blond men to 
 gether. She was excited, feverish, but not nervous. 
 Quite coldly, sometimes, she compared the two when 
 they were together, and puzzled to know for which 
 of them she made herself more beautiful, more en 
 ticing. Graham she held, and she had held Dick 
 and strove still to hold him. 
 
 There was almost a touch of cruelty in the tingles 
 of pride that were hers at thought of these two royal 
 men suffering for her and because of her; for she did 
 not hide from herself the conviction that if Dick 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 311 
 
 knew, or, rather, since he did know, he, too, must 
 be suffering. She assured herself that she was a 
 woman of imagination and purpose in sex matters, 
 and that no part of her attraction toward Graham 
 lay merely in his freshness, newness, difference. 
 And she denied to herself that passion played more 
 than the most minor part. Deep down she was con 
 scious of her own recklessness and madness, and of an 
 end to it all that could not but be dreadful to some 
 one of them or all of them. But she was content 
 willfully to flutter far above such deeps and to refuse 
 to consider their existence. Alone, looking at her 
 self in her mirror, she would shake her head in mock 
 reproof and cry out, " Oh, you huntress! You 
 huntress!" And when she did permit herself to 
 think a little gravely, it was to admit that Shaw and 
 the sages of the madrono grove might be right in 
 their diatribes on the hunting proclivities of women. 
 She denied Dar Hyal s statement that woman was 
 nature s failure to make a man; but again and again 
 came to her Wilde s, " Woman attacks by sudden 
 and strange surrenders." Had she so attacked 
 Graham? she asked herself. Sudden and strange, 
 to her, were the surrenders she had already made. 
 Were there to be more? He wanted to go. With 
 her, or without her, he wanted to go. But she helo^ 
 him how? Was there a tacit promise of sur-\ 
 renders to come? And she would laugh away fur-\ 
 ther consideration, confine herself to the fleeting \ 
 present, and make her body more beautiful, and 
 mood herself to be more fascinating, and glow with 
 happiness in that she was living, thrilling, as she had 
 never dreamed to live and thrill. 
 
 ; 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 BUT it is not the way for a man and a woman, 
 in propinquity, to maintain a definite, unwav 
 ering distance asunder. Imperceptibly Paula 
 and Graham drew closer. From lingering eye-gaz- 
 ings and hand-touchings the way led to permitted 
 caresses, until there was a second clasping in the 
 arms and a second kiss long on the lips. Nor this 
 time did Paula flame in anger. Instead, she com 
 manded: 
 
 You must not go." 
 
 " I must not stay," Graham reiterated for the 
 thousandth time. " Oh, I have kissed behind doors, 
 and been guilty of all the rest of the silly rubbish," 
 he complained. " But this is you, and this is Dick." 
 
 " It will work out, I tell you, Evan." 
 
 " Come with me then and of ourselves work it 
 out. Come now." 
 
 She recoiled. 
 
 " Remember," Graham encouraged, " what Dick 
 said at dinner the night Leo fought the dragons 
 that if it were you, Paula, his wife, who ran away, 
 he would say Bless you, my children. 
 
 " And that is just why it is so hard, Evan. He 
 is Great Heart. You named him well. Listen 
 you watch him now. He is as gentle as he said he 
 would be that night gentle toward me, I mean. 
 And more. You watch him " 
 
 312 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 313 
 
 "He knows? he has spoken?" Graham 
 broke in. 
 
 " He has not spoken, but I am sure he knows, or 
 guesses. You watch him. He won t compete 
 against you " 
 
 " Compete ! " 
 
 " Just that. He won t compete. Remember at 
 the rodeo yesterday. He was breaking mustangs 
 when our party arrived, but he never mounted 
 again. Now he is a wonderful horse-breaker. You 
 tried your hand. Frankly, while you did fairly well, 
 you couldn t touch him. But he wouldn t show off 
 against you. That alone would make me certain 
 that he guesses. 
 
 " Listen. Of late haven t you noticed that he 
 never questions a statement you make, as he used to 
 question, as he questions every one else. He con 
 tinues to play billiards with you, because there you 
 best him. He fences and singlesticks with you 
 there you are even. But he won t box or wrestle 
 with you." 
 
 " He can out-box and out-wrestle me," Graham 
 muttered ruefully. 
 
 " You watch and you will see what I mean by not 
 competing. He is treating me like a spirited colt, 
 giving me my head to make a mess of things if I 
 want to. Not for the world would he interfere. 
 Oh, trust me, I know him. It is his own code that 
 he is living up to. He could teach the philosophers 
 what applied philosophy is. 
 
 "No, no; listen," she rushed over Graham s at 
 tempt to interrupt. " I want to tell you more. 
 There is a secret staircase that goes up from the 
 
3H THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 library to Dick s work room. Only he and I use 
 it, and his secretaries. When you arrive at the 
 head of it, you are right in his room, surrounded by 
 shelves of books. I have just come from there. I 
 was going in to see him when I heard voices. Of 
 course it was ranch business, I thought, and they 
 would soon be gone. So I waited. It was ranch 
 business, but it was so interesting, so, what Hancock 
 would call, illuminating, that I remained and eaves 
 dropped. It was illuminating of Dick, I mean. 
 
 " It was the wife of one of the workmen Dick 
 had on the carpet. Such things do arise on a large 
 place like this. I wouldn t know the woman if I saw 
 her, and I didn t recognize her name. She was 
 whimpering out her trouble when Dick stopped her. 
 4 Never mind all that/ he said. What I want to 
 know is, did you give Smith any encouragement? 
 
 " Smith isn t his name, but he is one of our fore 
 men and has worked eight years for Dick. 
 
 " * Oh, no, sir, I could hear her answer. * He 
 went out of his way from the first to bother me. 
 I ve tried to keep out of his way, always. Besides, 
 my husband s a violent-tempered man, and I did so 
 want him to hold his job here. He s worked nearly 
 a year for you now, and there aren t any complaints, 
 are there? Before that it was irregular work for 
 a long time, and we had real hard times. It wasn t 
 his fault. He ain t a drinking man. He always 
 
 " That s all right, Dick stopped her. His 
 work and habits have nothing to do with the matter. 
 Now you are sure you have never encouraged Mr. 
 Smith in any way? And she was so sure that she 
 talked for ten minutes, detailing the foreman s per- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 315 
 
 sedition of her. She had a pleasant voice one of 
 those sweet, timid, woman s voices, and undoubtedly 
 is quite attractive. It was all I could do to resist 
 peeping. I wanted to see what she looked like. 
 
 u Now this trouble yesterday morning, Dick 
 said. * Was it general? I mean, outside of your 
 husband, and Mr. Smith, was the scene such that 
 those who live around you knew of it ? 
 
 14 Yes, sir. You see, he had no right to come 
 into my kitchen. My husband doesn t work under 
 him anyway. And he had his arm around me and 
 was trying to kiss me when my husband came in. 
 My husband has a temper, but he ain t overly strong. 
 Mr. Smith would make two of him. So he pulled a 
 knife, and Mr. Smith got him by the arms, and they 
 fought all over the kitchen. I knew there was mur 
 der going to be done and I run out screaming for 
 help. The folks in the other cottages d heard the 
 racket already. They d smashed the window and 
 the cook stove, and the place was filled with smoke 
 and ashes when the neighbors dragged them away 
 from each other. I d done nothing to deserve all 
 that disgrace. You know, sir, the way the women 
 will talk 
 
 " And Dick hushed her up there, and took all of 
 five minutes more in getting rid of her. Her great 
 fear was that her husband would lose his place. 
 From what Dick told her, I waited. He had made 
 no decision, and I knew the foreman was next on the 
 carpet. In he came. I d have given the world to 
 see him. But I could only listen. 
 
 " Dick jumped right into the thick of it. He de 
 scribed the scene and uproar, and Smith acknowl- 
 
316 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 edged that it had been riotous for a while. She 
 says she gave you no encouragement, Dick said 
 next. 
 
 " * Then she lies, said Smith. She has that way 
 of looking with her eyes that s an invitation. She 
 looked at me that way from the first. But it was by 
 word-of-mouth invitation that I was in her kitchen 
 yesterday morning. We didn t expect the husband. 
 But she began to struggle when he hove in sight. 
 When she says she gave me no encouragement 
 
 " Never mind all that, Dick stopped him. It s 
 not essential. But it is, Mr. Forrest, if I am to 
 clear myself, Smith insisted. 
 
 " No; it is not essential to the thing you can t 
 clear yourself of, Dick answered, and I could hear 
 that cold, hard, judicial note come into his voice. 
 Smith could not understand. Dick told him. * The 
 thing you have been guilty of, Mr. Smith, is the 
 scene, the disturbance, the scandal, the wagging of 
 the women s tongues now going on forty to the min 
 ute, the impairment of the discipline and order of 
 the ranch, all of which is boiled down to the one 
 grave thing, the hurt to the ranch efficiency. 
 
 " And still Smith couldn t see. He thought the 
 charge was of violating social morality by pursuing a 
 married woman, and tried to mitigate the offense by 
 showing the woman encouraged him and by plead 
 ing: And after all, Mr. Forrest, a man is only a 
 man, and I admit she made a fool of me and I made 
 a fool of myself. 
 
 " Mr. Smith, Dick said. You ve worked for 
 me eight years. You ve been a foreman six years 
 of that time. I have no complaint against your 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 317 
 
 work. You certainly do know how to handle labor. 
 About your personal morality I don t care a damn. 
 You can be a Mormon or a Turk for all it matters 
 to me. Your private acts are your private acts, 
 and are no concern of mine as long as they do not 
 fe interfere with your work or my ranch. Any one 
 of my drivers can drink his head off Saturday night, 
 and every Saturday night. That s his business. 
 But the minute he shows a hold-over on Monday 
 morning that is taken out on my horses, that excites 
 them, or injures them, or threatens to injure them, 
 or that decreases in the slightest the work they should 
 perform on Monday, that moment it is my business 
 and the driver goes down the hill. 
 
 " * You, you mean, Mr. Forrest, Smith stuttered, 
 that, that I m to go down the hill? That is just 
 what I mean, Mr. Smith. You are to go down the 
 hill, not because you climbed over another man s 
 fence that s your business and his; but because 
 you were guilty of causing a disturbance that is an 
 impairment of ranch efficiency. 
 
 " Do you know, Evan," Paula broke in on her 
 recital, " Dick can nose more human tragedy out 
 of columns of ranch statistics than can the average 
 fiction writer out of the whirl of a great city. Take 
 the milk reports the individual reports of the 
 milkers - so many pounds of milk, morning and 
 night, from cow so-and-so, so many pounds from 
 cow so-and-so. He doesn t have to know the man. 
 But there is a decrease in the weight of milk. c Mr. 
 Parkman, he ll say to the head dairyman, * is Barchi 
 Peratta married? Yes, sir. l Is he having 
 trouble with his wife? Yes, ^ir. 
 
318 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Or it will be : * Mr. Parkman, Simpkins has 
 the best long-time record of any of our milkers. 
 Now he s slumped. What s up? Mr. Parkman 
 doesn t know. * Investigate, says Dick. * There s 
 something on his chest. Talk to him like an uncle 
 and find out. We ve got to get it off his chest. 
 And Mr. Parkman finds out. Simpkins boy, work- 
 ing his way through Stanford University, has elected 
 the joy-ride path and is in jail waiting trial for for 
 gery. Dick put his own lawyers on the case, 
 smoothed it over, got the boy out on probation, and 
 Simpkins milk reports came back to par. And the 
 best of it is, the boy made good, Dick kept an eye 
 on him, saw him through the college of engineering, 
 and he s now working for Dick on the dredging end, 
 earning a hundred and fifty a month, married, with 
 a future before him, and his father still milks." 
 
 1 You are right," Graham murmured sympa 
 thetically. " I well named him when I named him 
 Great Heart." 
 
 " I call him my Rock of Ages," Paula said grate 
 fully. " He is so solid. He stands in any storm. 
 Oh, you don t really know him. He is so sure. 
 He stands right up. He s never taken a cropper in 
 his life. God smiles on him. God has always 
 smiled on him. He s never Leen beaten down to his 
 knees . . . yet. I ... I should not care to see 
 that sight. It would be heartbreaking. And, 
 Evan " Her hand went out to his in a pleading 
 gesture that merged into a half-caress. " I am 
 afraid for him now. That is why I don t know what 
 to do. It is not for myself that I back and fill 
 and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were nar- 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 319 
 
 row, if he were weak or had one tiniest shred of 
 meanness, if he had ever been beaten to his knees 
 before, why, my dear, my dear, I should have been 
 gone with you long ago." 
 
 Her eyes filled with sudden moisture. She stilled 
 him with a pressure of her hand, and, to regain 
 herself, she went back to her recital: 
 
 " Your little finger, Mr. Smith, I consider worth 
 more to me and to the world, Dick told him, than 
 the whole body of this woman s husband. Here s 
 the report on him: willing, eager to please, not 
 bright, not strong, an indifferent workman at best. 
 Yet you have to go down the hill, and I am very, 
 very sorry. 
 
 " Oh, yes, there was more. But I ve given you 
 the main of it. You see Dick s code there. And 
 he lives his code. He accords latitude to the in 
 dividual. Whatever the individual may do, so long 
 as it does not hurt the group of individuals in which 
 he lives, is his own affair. He believed Smith had 
 a perfect right to love the woman, and to be loved by 
 her if it came to that. I have heard him always say 
 that love could not be held nor enforced. Truly, 
 did I go with you, he would say, Bless you, my 
 children. Though it broke his heart he would say 
 it. Past love, he believes, gives no hold over the 
 present. And every hour of love, I have heard him 
 say, pays for itself, on both sides, quittance in full. 
 He claims there can be no such thing as a love-debt, 
 laughs at the absurdity of love-claims." 
 
 " And I agree with him," Graham said. " * You 
 promised to love me always, says the jilted one, 
 and then strives to collect as if it were a promissory 
 
320 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 note for so many dollars. Dollars are dollars, but 
 love lives or dies. When it is dead how can it be 
 collected? We are all agreed, and the way is sim 
 ple. We love. It is enough. Why delay another 
 minute? " 
 
 His fingers strayed along her fingers on the key-1 
 board as he bent to her, first kissing her hair, then 
 slowly turning her face up to his and kissing her will 
 ing lips. 
 
 " Dick does not love me like you," she said; " not 
 madly, I mean. He has had me so long, I think I 
 have become a habit to him. And often and often, 
 before I knew you, I used to puzzle whether he 
 cared more for the ranch or more for me." 
 
 " It is so simple," Graham urged. " All we have 
 to do is to be straightforward. Let us go." 
 
 He drew her to her feet and made as if to start. 
 
 But she drew away from him suddenly, sat down, 
 and buried her flushed face in her hands. 
 
 " You do not understand, Evan. I love Dick. 
 I shall always love him." 
 
 " And me? " Graham demanded sharply. 
 
 " Oh, without saying," she smiled. " You are 
 the only man, besides Dick, that has ever kissed me 
 this . . . way, and that I have kissed this way. 
 But I can t make up my mind. The triangle, as you 
 call it, must be solved for me. I can t solve it my 
 self. I compare the two of you, weigh you, measure 
 you. I remember Dick and all our past years. And 
 I consult my heart for you. And I don t know. I 
 don t know. You are a great man, my great lover. 
 But Dick is a greater man than you. You you 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 321 
 
 are more clay, more-- I grope to describe you 
 more human, I fancy. And that is why I love you 
 more ... or at least I think perhaps I do. 
 
 " But wait," she resisted him, prisoning his eager 
 hand in hers. There is more I want to say. I 
 remember Dick and all our past years. But I re 
 member him to-day, as well, and to-morrow. I can 
 not bear the thought that any man should pity my 
 husband, that you should pity him, and pity him 
 you must when I confess that I love you more. 
 That is why I am not sure. That is why I so quickly 
 take it back and do not know. 
 
 " I d die of shame if through act of mine any man 
 pitied Dick. Truly, I would. Of all things 
 ghastly, I can think of none so ghastly as Dick be 
 ing pitied. He has never been pitied in his life. 
 He has always been top-dog bright, light, strong, 
 unassailable. And more, he doesn t deserve pity. 
 And it s my fault . . . and yours, Evan." 
 
 She abruptly thrust Evan s hand away. 
 
 " And every act, every permitted touch of you, 
 does make him pitiable. Don t you see how tangled 
 it is for me? And then there is my own pride. 
 That you should see me disloyal to him in little 
 things, such as this " (she caught his hand 
 again and caressed it with soft finger-tips) 
 " hurts me in my love for you, diminishes me, 
 must diminish me in your eyes. I shrink from the 
 thought that my disloyalty to him in this I do - 
 (she laid his hand against her cheek) " gives / 
 you reason to pity him and censure me." 
 
 She soothed the impatience of the hand on her 
 
322 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 cheek, and, almost absently, musingly scrutinizing it 
 without consciously seeing it, turned it over and 
 slowly kissed the palm. The next moment she was 
 drawn to her feet and into his arms. 
 
 ;< There, you see," was her reproach as she dis 
 engaged herself. 
 
 "Why do you tell me all this about Dick? 
 Graham demanded another time, as they walked 
 their horses side by side. " To keep me away? 
 To protect yourself from me?" 
 
 Paula nodded, then quickly added, " No, not quite 
 that. Because you know I don t want to keep you 
 away . . . too far. I say it because Dick is so 
 much in my mind. For twelve years, you realize, 
 he filled my mind. I say it because . . . because I 
 think it, I suppose. Think! The situation! You 
 are trespassing on a perfect marriage." 
 
 " I know it," he answered. " And I do not like 
 the role of trespasser. It is your insistence, instead 
 of going away with me, that I should trespass. And 
 I can t help it. I think away from you, try to force 
 my thoughts elsewhere. I did half a chapter this 
 morning, and I know it s rotten and will have to be 
 rewritten. For I can t succeed in thinking away 
 from you. What is South America and its eth 
 nology compared to you? And when I come near 
 you my arms go about you before I know what I am 
 doing. And, by God, you want them there, you 
 want them there, you know it." 
 
 Paula gathered her reins in signal for a gallop, 
 but first, with a roguish smile, she acknowledged. 
 
 " I do want them there, dear trespasser." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 323 
 
 Paula yielded and fought at the same time. 
 
 "I love my husband never forget that," she 
 would warn Graham, and within the minute be in 
 his arms. 
 
 " There are only the three of us for once, thank 
 goodness," Paula cried, seizing Dick and Graham 
 by the hands and leading them toward Dick s fav 
 orite lounging couch in the big room. " Come, let 
 us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the 
 deaths of kings. Come, milords, and lordly per- 
 ishers, and we will talk of Armageddon when the last 
 sun goes down." 
 
 She was in a merry mood, and with surprise Dick 
 observed her light a cigarette. He could count on 
 his fingers the cigarettes she had smoked in a dozen 
 years, and then, only under a hostess s provocation 
 to give countenance to some smoking woman guest. 
 Later, when he mixed a highball for himself and 
 Graham, she again surprised him by asking him to 
 mix her a " wee " one. 
 
 " This is Scotch," he warned. 
 
 " Oh, a very wee one," she insisted, " and then 
 we ll be three good fellows together, winding up 
 the world. And when you ve got it all wound up 
 and ready, I ll sing you the song of the Valkyries." 
 
 She took more part in the talk than usual, and 
 strove to draw her husband out. Nor was Dick 
 unaware of this, although he yielded and permitted 
 himself to let go full tilt on the theme of the blond 
 sun-perishers. 
 
 She is trying to make him compete was 
 Graham s thought. But Paula scarcely thought of 
 
324 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 that phase of it, her pleasure consisting in the spec 
 tacle of two such splendid men who were hers. 
 They talk of big game hunting, she mused once to 
 herself; but did ever one small woman capture bigger 
 game than this? 
 
 She sat cross-legged on the couch, where, by a 
 turn of the head, she could view Graham lounging 
 comfortably in the big chair, or Dick, on his elbow, 
 sprawled among the cushions. And ever, as they 
 talked, her eyes roved from one to the other ; and, as 
 they spoke of struggle and battle, always in the cold 
 iron terms of realists, her own thoughts became so 
 colored, until she could look coolly at Dick with no 
 further urge of the pity that had intermittently ached 
 her heart for days. 
 
 She was proud of him a goodly, eye-filling 
 figure of a man to any woman; but she no longer felt 
 sorry for him. They were right. It was a game. 
 The race was to the swift, the battle to the strong. 
 They had run such races, fought such battles. Then 
 why not she? And as she continued to look, that 
 self-query became reiterant. 
 
 They were not anchorites, these two men. Lib 
 eral-lived they must have been in that past out of 
 which, like mysteries, they had come to her. They 
 had had the days and nights that women were de 
 nied women such as she. As for Dick, beyond all 
 doubt even had she heard whispers there had 
 been other women in that wild career of his over the 
 world. Men were men, and they were two such 
 men. She felt a burn of jealousy against those un- 
 v known women who must have been, and her heart 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 325 
 
 hardened. They had taken their fun where they 
 found it Kipling s line ran through her head. 
 
 Pity? Why should she pity, any more than she 
 should be pitied? The whole thing was too big, too 
 natural, for pity. They were taking a hand in a 
 big game, and all could not be winners. Playing 
 with the fancy, she wandered on to a consideration 
 of the outcome. Always she had avoided such con- N 
 sideration, but the tiny highball had given her dar- / 
 ing. It came to her that she saw doom ahead, doom j 
 vague and formless but terrible. 
 
 She was brought back to herself by Dick s hand 
 before her eyes and apparently plucking from the 
 empty air the something upon which she steadfastly 
 stared. 
 
 " Seeing things? " he teased, as her eyes turned to 
 meet his. 
 
 His were laughing, but she glimpsed in them what, 
 despite herself, made her veil her own with her long 
 lashes. He knew. Beyond all possibility of error 
 she knew now that he knew. That was what she 
 had seen in his eyes and what had made her veil her 
 
 own. 
 
 a < 
 
 Cynthia, Cynthia, I ve been a-thinking, " she 
 gayly hummed to him; and, as he resumed his talk, 
 she reached and took a sip from his part-empty 
 glass. 
 
 Let come what would, she asserted to herself, she 
 would play it out. It was all a madness, but it was 
 life, it was living. She had never so lived before, 
 and it was worth it, no matter what inevitable pay 
 ment must be made in the end. Love ? had she 
 
326 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 ever really loved Dick as she now felt herself capable 
 of loving? Had she mistaken the fondness of affec 
 tion for love all these years? Her eyes warmed as 
 they rested on Graham, and she admitted that he 
 had swept her as Dick never had. 
 
 Unused to alcohol in such strength, her heart 
 was accelerated; and Dick, with casual glances, noted 
 and knew the cause of the added brilliance, the 
 flushed vividness of cheeks and lips. 
 
 He talked less and less, and the discussion of the 
 sun-perishers died of mutual agreement as to its 
 facts. Finally, glancing at his watch, he straight 
 ened up, yawned, stretched his arms and announced : 
 
 " Bed-time he stop. Head belong this fellow 
 white man too much sleepy along him. Night 
 cap, Evan? " 
 
 Graham nodded, for both felt the need of a stif- 
 fener. 
 
 "Mrs. Toper nightcap?" Dick queried of 
 Paula. 
 
 But she shook her head and busied herself at the 
 piano putting away the music, while the men had 
 their drink. 
 
 Graham closed down the piano for her, while 
 Dick waited in the doorway, so that when they left 
 he led them by a dozen feet. As they came along, 
 Graham, under her instructions, turned off the lights 
 in the halls. Dick waited where the ways diverged 
 and where Graham would have to say good night 
 on his way to the tower room. 
 
 The one remaining light was turned off. 
 
 " Oh, not that one, silly," Dick heard Paula cry 
 out. " We keep it on all night." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 327 
 
 Dick heard nothing, but the dark was fervent to 
 him. He cursed himself for his own past embraces 
 in the dark, for so the wisdom was given him to 
 know the quick embrace that had occurred, ere, the 
 next moment, the light flashed on again. 
 
 He found himself lacking the courage to look 
 at their faces as they came toward him. He did not 
 want to see Paula s frank eyes veiled by her lashes, 
 and he fumbled to light a cigarette while he cudgeled 
 his wits for the wording of an ordinary good night. 
 
 " How goes the book? what chapter?" he 
 called after Graham down his hall, as Paula put her 
 hand in his. 
 
 Her hand in his, swinging his, hopping and skip 
 ping and all a-chatter in simulation of a little girl 
 with a grown-up, Paula went on with Dick; while 
 he sadly pondered what ruse she had in mind by 
 which to avoid the long-avoided, good night kiss. 
 
 Evidently she had not found it when they reached 
 the dividing of the ways that led to her quarters and 
 to his. Still swinging his hand, still buoyantly chat 
 tering fun, she continued with him into his work 
 room. Here he surrendered. He had neither 
 heart nor energy to wait for her to develop whatever 
 she contemplated. 
 
 He feigned sudden recollection, deflected her by 
 the hand to his desk, and picked up a letter. 
 
 " Td promised myself to get a reply off on the 
 first machine in the morning," he explained, as he 
 pressed on the phonograph and began dictating. 
 
 For a paragraph she still held his hand. Then 
 he felt the parting pressure of her fingers and her 
 whispered good night 
 
328 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Good night, little woman/ he answered me 
 chanically, and continued dictating as if oblivious to 
 her going. 
 
 Nor did he cease until he knew she was well out 
 of hearing. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 A DOZEN times that morning, dictating to 
 Blake or indicating answers, Dick had been 
 on the verge of saying to let the rest of the 
 correspondence go. 
 
 " Call up Hennessy and Mendenhall," he told 
 Blake, when, at ten, the latter gathered up his notes 
 and rose to go. " You ought to catch them at the 
 stallion barn. Tell them not to come this morning 
 but to-morrow morning." 
 
 Bonbright entered, prepared to shorthand Dick s 
 conversations with his managers for the next hour. 
 
 " And oh, Mr. Blake," Dick called. "Ask 
 Hennessy about Alden Bessie. The old mare was 
 pretty bad last night," he explained to Bonbright. 
 
 " Mr. Hanley must see you right away, Mr. For 
 rest," Bonbright said, and added, at sight of the 
 irritated drawing up of his employer s brows, " It s 
 the piping from Buckeye Dam. Something s wrong 
 with the plans a serious mistake, he says." 
 
 Dick surrendered, and for an hour discussed ranch 
 business with his foremen and managers. 
 
 Once, in the middle of a hot discussion over sheep- 
 dips with Wardman, he left his desk and paced over 
 to the window. The sound of voices and horses, 
 and of Paula s laugh, had attracted him. 
 
 4 Take that Montana report I ll send you a 
 329 
 
330 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 
 copy to-day, he continued, as he gazed out. 
 " They found the formula didn t get down to it. It 
 was more a sedative than a germicide. Therel 
 wasn t enough kick in it . . ." 
 
 Four horses, bunched, crossed his field of vision. 
 Paula, teasing the pair of them, was between 
 Martinez and Froelig, old friends of Dick, a painter 
 and sculptor respectively, who had arrived on an 
 early train. Graham, on Selim, made the fourth, 
 and was slightly edged toward the rear. So the 
 party went by, but Dick reflected that quickly enough 
 it would resolve itself into two and two. 
 
 Shortly after eleven, restless and moody, he wan- ? 
 dered out with a cigarette into the big patio, where j 
 he smiled grim amusement at the various tell-tale 
 signs of Paula s neglect of her goldfish. The sight 
 of them suggested her secret patio in whose fountain > 
 pools she kept her selected and more gorgeous 
 blooms of fish. Thither he went, through doors 
 without knobs, by ways known only to Paula and the 
 servants. 
 
 This had been Dick s one great gift to Paula. It 
 was love-lavish as only a king of fortune could make 
 it. He had given her a free hand with it, and in 
 sisted on her wildest extravagance; and it had been 
 his delight to tease his quondam guardians with the 
 stubs of the checkbook she had used. It bore no 
 relation to the scheme and architecture of the Big 
 House, and, for that matter, so deeply hidden was it 
 that it played no part in jar of line or color. A 
 show-place of show-places, it was not often shown. 
 Outside Paula s sisters and intimates, on rare oc 
 casions some artist was permitted to enter and catch 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 331 
 
 his breath. Graham had heard of its existence, but 
 not even him had she invited to see. 
 
 It was round, and small enough to escape giving 
 any cold hint of spaciousness. The Big House was 
 of sturdy concrete, but here was marble in exquisite 
 delicacy. The arches of the encircling arcade were 
 of fretted white marble that had taken on just 
 enough tender green to prevent any glare of reflected 
 light. Palest of pink roses bloomed up the pillars 
 and over the low flat roof they upheld, where Puck- 
 like, humorous, and happy faces took the place of 
 grinning gargoyles. Dick strolled the rosy marble 
 pavement of the arcade and let the beauty of 
 the place slowly steal in upon him and gentle his 
 mood. 
 
 The heart and key of the fairy patio was the 
 fountain, consisting of three related shallow basins 
 at different levels, of white marble and delicate as 
 shell. Over these basins rollicked and frolicked life- 
 sized babies wrought from pink marble by no mean 
 hand. Some peered over the edges into lower 
 basins, one reached arms covetously toward the gold 
 fish; one, on his back, laughed at the sky, another 
 stood with dimpled legs apart stretching himself, 
 others waded, others were on the ground amongst 
 the roses white and blush, but all were of the foun 
 tain and touched it at some point. So good was the 
 color of the marble, so true had been the sculptor, 
 that the illusion was of life. No cherubs these, but 
 live warm human babies. 
 
 Dick regarded the rosy fellowship pleasantly and 
 long, finishing his cigarette and retaining it dead in 
 his hand. That was what she had needed, he 
 
332 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 mused babies, children. It had been her passicnl 
 Had she realized it ... He sighed, and, stri 
 by a fresh thought, looked to her favorite seat with 
 certitude that he would not see the customary sew 
 ing lying on it in a pretty heap. She did not s( 
 these days. 
 
 He did not enter the tiny gallery behind the 
 cade, which contained her chosen paintings and etci 
 ings, and copies in marble and bronze of her favor 
 ites of the European galleries. Instead he went v 
 the stairway, past the glorious Winged Victory c 
 the landing where the staircase divided, and on ant 
 up into her quarters that occupied the entire uppei 
 wing. But first, pausing by the Victory, he turned 
 and gazed down into the fairy patio. The thing 
 was a cut jewel in its perfectness and color, and he 
 acknowledged, although he had made it possible for 
 her, that it was entirely her own creation her one 
 masterpiece. It had long been her dream, and he 
 had realized it for her. And yet now, he meditated, 
 it meant nothing to her. She was not mercenary, 
 that he knew; and if he could not hold her, mere 
 baubles such as that would weigh nothing in the bal 
 ance against her heart. 
 
 He wandered idly through her rooms, scarcely 
 noting at what he gazed, but gazing with fondness 
 at it all. Like everything else of hers, it was dis 
 tinctive, different, eloquent of her. But when he 
 glanced into the bathroom with its sunken Roman 
 bath, for the life of him he was unable to avoid see 
 ing a tiny drip and making a mental note for the 
 ranch plumber. 
 
 As a matter of course, he looked to her easel with 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 333 
 
 rJ? expectation of finding no new work, but was dis- 
 c jointed; for a portrait of himself confronted him. 
 He knew her trick of copying the pose and lines from 
 photograph and filling in from memory. The par- 
 Ular photograph she was using had been a for- 
 late snapshop of him on horseback. The Out- 
 tf, r or once and for a moment, had been at peace, 
 Jj?d Dick, hat in hand, hair just nicely rumpled, face 
 7, repose, unaware of the impending snap, had at 
 fe instant looked squarely into the camera. No 
 ^rtrait photographer could have caught a better 
 Mceness. The head and shoulders Paula had had 
 nlarged, and it was from this that she was working. 
 3ut the portrait had already gone beyond the photo 
 graph, for Dick could see her own touches. 
 
 With a start he looked more closely. Was that 
 expression of the eyes, of the whole face, his? He 
 glanced at the photograph. It was not there. He 
 walked over to one of the mirrors, relaxed his face, 
 and led his thoughts to Paula and Graham. Slowly 
 the expression came into his eyes and face. Not 
 content, he returned to the easel and verified it. 
 Paula knew. Paula knew that he knew. She had 
 learned it from him, stolen it from him some time 
 when it was unwittingly on his face, and carried it in 
 her memory to the canvas. 
 
 Paula s Chinese maid, Oh Dear, entered from the 
 wardrobe room, and Dick watched her unobserved 
 as she came down the room toward him. Her eyes 
 were down, and she seemed deep in thought. Dick 
 remarked the sadness of her face, and that the little, 
 solicitous contraction of the brows that had led to 
 her naming was gone. She was not solicitous, that 
 
334 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 was patent. But cast down, she was, in heavy de 
 pression. 
 
 It would seem that all our faces are beginning to 
 say things, he commented to himself. 
 
 " Good morning, Oh Dear," he startled her. 
 
 And as she returned the greeting, he saw compas 
 sion in her eyes as they dwelt on him. She knew. 
 The first outside themselves. Trust her, a worn *"?, 
 so much in Paula s company when Paula was alone, 
 to divine Paula s secret. 
 
 Oh Dear s lips trembled, and she wrung her 
 trembling hands, nerving herself, as he could see, to 
 speech. 
 
 " Mister Forrest," she began haltingly, " maybe 
 you think me fool, but I like say something. You 
 very kind man. You very kind my old mother. 
 You very kind me long long time . . ." 
 
 She hesitated, moistening her frightened lips with 
 her tongue, then braved her eyes to his and pro 
 ceeded. 
 
 " Mrs. Forrest, she, I think . . ." 
 
 But so forbidding did Dick s face become that she 
 broke off in confusion and blushed, as Dick sur 
 mised, with shame at the thoughts she had been 
 about to utter. 
 
 " Very nice picture Mrs. Forrest make," he put 
 her at her ease. 
 
 The Chinese girl sighed, and the same compas 
 sion returned into her eyes as she looked long at 
 Dick s portrait. 
 
 She sighed again, but the coldness in her voice 
 was not lost on Dick as she answered : " Yes, very 
 nice picture Mrs. Forrest make." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 335 
 
 She looked at him with sudden sharp scrutiny, 
 studying his face, then turned to the canvas and 
 pointed at the eyes. 
 
 " No good," she condemned. 
 
 Her voice was harsh, touched with anger. 
 
 " No good," she flung over her shoulder, more 
 loudly, still more harshly, as she continued down 
 the room and out of sight on Paula s sleeping porch. 
 
 Dick -stiffened his shoulders, unconsciously brac 
 ing himself to face what was now soon to happen. 
 Well, it was the beginning of the end. Oh Dear 
 knew. Soon more would know, all would know. 
 And in a way he was glad of it, glad that the torment 
 of suspense would endure but little longer. 
 
 But when he started to leave he whistled a merry 
 jingle to advertise to Oh Dear that the world 
 wagged very well with him so far as he knew any 
 thing about it. 
 
 The same afternoon, while Dick was out and away 
 with Froelig and Martinez and Graham, Paula 
 stole a pilgrimage to Dick s quarters. Out on his 
 sleeping porch she looked over his rows of press 
 buttons, his switchboard that from his bed connected 
 him with every part of the ranch and most of the 
 rest of California, his phonograph on the hinged and 
 swinging bracket, the orderly array of books and 
 magazines and agricultural bulletins waiting to be 
 read, the ash tray, cigarettes, scribble pads, and 
 thermos bottle. 
 
 Her photograph, the only picture on the porch, 
 held her attention. It hung under his barometers 
 and thermometers, which, she knew, was where he 
 
336 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 looked oftenest. A fancy came to her, and she 
 turned the laughing face to the wall and glanced 
 from the blankness of the back of the frame to the 
 bed and back again. With a quick panic movement, 
 she turned the laughing face out. It belonged, was 
 her thought; it did belong. 
 
 The big automatic pistol in the holster on the 
 wall, handy to one s hand from the bed, caught her 
 eye. She reached to it and lifted gently at the butt. 
 It was as she had expected loose Dick s way. 
 Trust him, no matter how long unused, never to let 
 a pistol freeze in its holster. 
 
 Back in the work room she wandered solemnly 
 about, glancing now at the prodigious filing system, 
 at the chart and blue-print cabinets, at the revolving 
 shelves of reference books, and at the long rows of 
 stoutly bound herd registers. At last she came to 
 his books a goodly row of pamphlets, bound mag 
 azine articles, and an even dozen ambitious 
 tomes. She read the titles painstakingly: " Corn 
 in California," " Silage Practice," " Farm Organiza 
 tion, " Farm Book-keeping," u The Shire in Amer 
 ica," " Humus Destruction," "Soilage," "Alfalfa 
 in California," " Cover Crops for California," 
 " The Shorthorn in America " at this last she 
 smiled affectionately with memory of the great con 
 troversy he had waged for the beef cow and the 
 milch cow as against the dual purpose cow. 
 
 She caressed the backs of the books with her 
 palm, pressed her cheek against them and leaned 
 with closed eyes. Oh, Dick, Dick a thought be 
 gan that faded to a vagueness of sorrow and died 
 because she did not dare to think it. 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 337 
 
 The desk was so typically Dick. There was no 
 litter. Clean it was of all work save the wire tray 
 with typed letters waiting his signature and an un 
 usual pile of the flat yellow sheets on which his sec 
 retaries typed the telegrams relayed by telephone 
 from Eldorado. Carelessly she ran her eyes over 
 the opening lines of the uppermost sheet and 
 chanced upon a reference that puzzled and interested 
 her. She read closely, with in-drawn brows, then 
 went deeper into the heap till she found confirma 
 tion. Jeremy Braxton was dead big, genial, 
 kindly Jeremy Braxton. A Mexican mob of pulque- 
 crazed peons had killed him in the mountains 
 through which he had been trying to escape from the 
 Harvest into Arizona. The date of the telegram 
 was two days old. Dick had known it for two days 
 and never worried her with it. And it meant more. 
 It meant money. It meant that the affairs of the 
 Harvest Group were going from bad to worse. 
 And it was Dick s way. 
 
 And Jeremy was dead. The room seemed sud 
 denly to have grown cold. She shivered. It was 
 the way of life death always at the end of the 
 road. And her own nameless dread came back upon 
 her. Doom lay ahead. Doom for whom? She 
 did not attempt to guess. Sufficient that it was 
 doom. Her mind was heavy with it, and the quiet 
 room was heavy with it as she passed slowly out. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 "TT1IS a birdlike sensuousness that is all the 
 I Little Lady s own," Terrence was saying, 
 as he helped himself to a cocktail from 
 the tray Ah Ha was passing around. 
 
 It was the hour before dinner, and Graham, Leo 
 and Terrence McFane had chanced together in the 
 stag-room. 
 
 " No, Leo/ the Irishman warned the young poet. 
 " Let the one suffice you. Your cheeks are warm 
 with it. A second one and you ll conflagrate. Tis 
 no right you have to be mixing beauty and strong 
 drink in that lad s head of yours. Leave the drink 
 to your elders. There is such a thing as con 
 sanguinity for drink. You have it not. As for 
 me" 
 
 He emptied the glass and paused to turn the cock 
 tail reminiscently on his tongue. 
 
 " Tis women s drink," he shook his head in con 
 demnation. " It likes me not. It bites me not. 
 And devil a bit of a taste is there to it. Ah Ha, 
 my boy," he called to the Chinese, " mix me a high 
 ball in a long, long glass a stiff one." 
 
 He held up four fingers horizontally to indicate 
 the measure of liquor he would have in the glass, 
 and, to Ah Ha s query as to what kind of whiskey, 
 answered, " Scotch or Irish, bourbon or rye 
 whichever comes nearest to hand." 
 
 Graham shook his head to the Chinese, and 
 
 338 
 
 .. 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 339 
 
 laughed to the Irishman. " You ll never drink me 
 down, Terrence. I ve not forgotten what you did 
 to O Hay." 
 
 " Twas an accident I would have you think," 
 was the reply. They say when a man s not feel 
 ing any too fit a bit of drink will hit him like a club." 
 
 " And you? " Graham questioned. 
 
 " Have never been hit by a club. I am a man of 
 singularly few experiences." 
 
 " But, Terrence, you were saying . . . about 
 Mrs. Forrest?" Leo begged. " It sounded as if it 
 were going to be nice." 
 
 " As if it could be otherwise," Terrence censured. 
 " But as I was saying, tis a bird-like sensuousness 
 oh, not the little, hoppy, wagtail kind, nor yet the 
 sleek and solemn dove, but a merry sort of bird, like 
 the wild canaries you see bathing in the fountains, 
 always twittering and singing, flinging the water in 
 the sun, and glowing the golden hearts of them on 
 their happy breasts. Tis like that the Little Lady 
 is. I have observed her much. 
 
 " Everything on the earth and under the earth 
 and in the sky contributes to the passion of her days 
 the untoward purple of the ground myrtle when 
 it has no right to aught more than pale lavender, a 
 single red rose tossing in the bathing wind, one per 
 fect Duchesse rose bursting from its bush into the 
 sunshine, as she said to me, pink as the dawn, Ter 
 rence, and shaped like a kiss. 
 
 " Tis all one with her the Princess s silver 
 neigh, the sheep bells of a frosty morn, the pretty 
 Angora goats making silky pictures on the hillside 
 all day long, the drifts of purple lupins along the 
 
340 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 fences, the long hot grass on slope and roadside, the 
 summer-burnt hills tawny as crouching lions and 
 even have I seen the sheer sensuous pleasure of the 
 Little Lady with bathing her arms and neck in the 
 blessed sun." 
 
 " She is the soul of beauty," Leo murmured. 
 " One understands how men can die for women 
 such as she." 
 
 " And how men can live for them, and love them, 
 the lovely things," Terrence added. " Listen, Mr. 
 Graham, and I ll tell you a secret. We philosophers 
 of the madrono grove, we wrecks and wastages of 
 life here in the quiet backwater and easement of 
 Dick s munificence, are a brotherhood of lovers. 
 And the lady of our hearts is all the one the Lit 
 tle Lady. We, who merely talk and dream our days 
 away, and who would lift never a hand for God, 
 or country, or the devil, are pledged knights of the 
 Little Lady." 
 
 " We would die for her," Leo affirmed, slowly 
 nodding his head. 
 
 " Nay, lad, we would live for her and fight for 
 her, dying is that easy." 
 
 Graham missed nothing of it. The boy did not 
 understand, but in the blue eyes of the Celt, peering 
 from under the mop of iron-gray hair, there was no 
 mistaking the knowledge of the situation. 
 
 Voices of men were heard coming down the stairs, 
 and, as Martinez and Dar Hyal entered, Terrence 
 was saying: 
 
 " Tis fine weather they say they re having down 
 at Catalina now, and I hear the tunny fish are biting 
 splendid." 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 341 
 
 Ah Ha served cocktails around, and was kept 
 busy, for Hancock and Froelig followed along. 
 Terrence impartially drank stiff highballs of what 
 ever liquor the immobile-faced Chinese elected to 
 serve him, and discoursed fatherly to Leo on the 
 iniquities and abominations of the flowing bowl. 
 
 Oh My entered, a folded note in his hand, and 
 looked about in doubt as to whom to give it. 
 
 " Hither, wing-heeled Celestial," Terrence waved 
 him up. 
 
 " Tis a petition, couched in very proper terms," 
 Terrence explained, after a glance at its contents. 
 " And Ernestine and Lute have arrived, for tis they 
 that petition. Listen." And he read: " * Oh, 
 noble and glorious stags, two poor and lowly meek- 
 eyed does, wandering lonely in the forest, do humbly 
 entreat admission for the brief time before dinner 
 to the stamping ground of the herd. 
 
 The metaphor is mixed," said Terrence. Yet 
 have they acted well. Tis the rule Dick s rule 
 and a good rule it is : no petticoats in the stag- 
 room save by the stags unanimous consent. Is 
 the herd ready for the question? All those in favor 
 will say Aye. Contrary minded? The ayes 
 have it. 
 
 " Oh My, fleet with thy heels and bring in the 
 ladies." 
 
 " With sandals beaten from the crowns of 
 kings, Leo added, murmuring the words rever 
 ently, loving them with his lips as his lips formed 
 them and uttered them. 
 
 " c Shall he tread down the altars of their night, " 
 Terrence completed the passage. * The man who 
 
34* THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 wrote that is a great man. He is Leo s friend, and 
 Dick s friend, and proud am I that he is my friend." 
 
 " And that other line," Leo said. " From the 
 same sonnet," he explained to Graham. " Listen 
 to the sound of it: * To hear what song the star of 
 morning sings oh, listen," the boy went on, his 
 voice hushed low with beauty-love for the words: 
 " With perished beauty in his hands as clay, Shall 
 he restore futurity its dream " 
 
 He broke off as Paula s sisters entered, and rose 
 shyly to greet them. 
 
 Dinner that night was as any dinner at which the 
 madrono sages were present. Dick was as robustly 
 controversial as usual, locking horns with Aaron 
 Hancock on Bergson, attacking the latter s meta 
 physics in sharp realistic fashion. 
 
 Your Bergson is a charlatan philosopher, 
 Aaron," Dick concluded. " He has the same old 
 medicine-man s bag of metaphysical tricks, all decked 
 out and frilled with the latest ascertained facts of 
 
 science." 
 
 Tis true," Terrence agreed. " Bergson is a 
 charlatan thinker. Tis why he is so popular " 
 
 " I deny " Hancock broke in. 
 
 " Wait a wee, Aaron. Tis a thought I have 
 glimmered. Let me catch it before it flutters away 
 into the azure. Dick s caught Bergson with the 
 goods on him, filched straight from the treasure- 
 house of science. His very cocksureness is filched 
 from Darwin s morality of strength based on the sur 
 vival of the fittest. And what did Bergson do with 
 it? Touched it up with a bit of James prag- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 343 
 
 matism, rosied it over with the eternal hope in man s 
 breast that he will live again, and made it all a-shine 
 with Nietzsche s nothing succeeds like excess 
 
 * Wilde s, you mean," corrected Ernestine. 
 
 " Heaven knows I should have filched it for my 
 self had you not been present," Terrence sighed, 
 with a bow to her. " Some day the antiquarians 
 will decide the authorship. Personally I would say 
 it smacked of Methuselah But as I was saying, 
 before I was delightfully interrupted . . ." 
 
 4 Who more cocksure than Dick?" Aaron was 
 challenging a little later ; while Paula glanced signifi 
 cantly to Graham. 
 
 " I was looking at the herd of yearling stallions 
 but yesterday," Terrence replied, " and with the 
 picture of the splendid beasties still in my eyes I ll 
 ask: And who more delivers the goods?" 
 
 " But Hancock s objection is solid," Martinez ven 
 tured. " It would be a mean and profitless world 
 .without mystery. Dick sees no mystery." 
 
 * There you wrong him," Terrence defended. 
 " I know him well. Dick recognizes mystery, but 
 not of the nursery-child variety. No cock-and-bull 
 stories for him, such as you romanticists luxuriate 
 
 in." 
 
 1 Terrence gets me," Dick nodded. The world 
 will always be mystery. To me man s conscious 
 ness is no greater mystery than the reaction of the 
 gases that make a simple drop of water. Grant 
 that mystery, and all the more complicated phenom 
 ena cease to be mysteries. That simple chemical 
 reaction is like one of the axioms on which the edifice 
 of geometry is reared. Matter and force are the 
 
344 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 everlasting mysteries, manifesting themselves in the 
 twin mysteries of space and time. The manifesta 
 tions are not mysteries only the stuff of the mani 
 festations, matter and force; and the theater of the 
 manifestations, space and time." 
 
 Dick ceased and idly watched the expressionless 
 Ah Ha and Ah Me who chanced at the moment to 
 be serving opposite him. Their faces did not talk, 
 was his thought; although ten to one was a fair bet 
 that they were informed with the same knowledge 
 that had perturbed Oh Dear. 
 
 " And there you are," Terrence was triumphing. 
 
 Tis the perfect joy of him never up in the air 
 with dizzy heels. Flat on the good ground he 
 stands, four square to fact and law, set against all 
 airy fancies and bubbly speculations. ..." 
 
 And as at table, so afterward that evening no one 
 could have guessed from Dick that all was not well 
 with him. He seemed bent on celebrating Lute s 
 and Ernestine s return, refused to tolerate the heavy 
 talk of the philosophers, and bubbled over with 
 pranks and tricks. Paula yielded to the contagion, 
 and aided and abetted him in his practical jokes 
 which none escaped. 
 
 Choicest among these was the kiss of welcome. 
 No man escaped it. To Graham was accorded the 
 honor of receiving it first so that he might witness 
 the discomfiture of the others, who, one by one, were 
 ushered in by Dick from the patio. 
 
 Hancock, Dick s arm guiding him, came down the 
 room to confront Paula and her sisters standing in 
 a row on three chairs in the middle of the floor. He 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 345 
 
 scanned them suspiciously, and insisted upon walk 
 ing around behind them. But there seemed noth 
 ing unusual about them save that each wore a man s 
 felt hat. 
 
 " Looks good to me," Hancock announced, as he 
 stood on the floor before them and looked up at 
 them. 
 
 " And it is good," Dick assured him. " As rep 
 resenting the ranch in its fairest aspects, they are to 
 administer the kiss of welcome. Make your choice, 
 Aaron." 
 
 Aaron, with a quick whirl to catch some possible 
 lurking disaster at his back, demanded, " They are 
 all three to kiss me? " 
 
 " No, make your choice which is to give you the 
 kiss." 
 
 " The two I do not choose will not feel that I have 
 discriminated against them?" Aaron insisted. 
 
 " Whiskers no objection? " was his next query. 
 
 " Not in the way at all," Lute told him. " I have 
 always wondered what it would be like to kiss black 
 whiskers." 
 
 " Here s where all the philosophers get kissed to 
 night, so hurry up," Ernestine said. The others 
 are waiting. I, too, have yet to be kissed by an 
 alfalfa field." 
 
 " Whom do you choose? " Dick urged. 
 
 " As if, after that, there were any choice about it," 
 Hancock returned jauntily. " I kiss my lady the 
 Little Lady." 
 
 As he put up his lips, Paula bent her head for 
 ward, and, nicely directed, from the indented crown 
 of her hat canted a glassful of water into his face. 
 
346 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 When Leo s turn came, he bravely made his choice 
 of Paula and nearly spoiled the show by reverently 
 bending and kissing the hem of her gown. 
 
 " It will never do," Ernestine told him. " It 
 must be a real kiss. Put up your lips to be kissed." 
 
 " Let the last be first and kiss me, Leo," Lute 
 begged, to save him from his embarrassment. 
 
 He looked his gratitude, put up his lips, but with 
 out enough tilt of his head, so that he received the 
 water from Lute s hat down the back of his neck. 
 
 " All three shall kiss me and thus shall paradise be 
 thrice multiplied," was Terrence s way out of the 
 difficulty; and simultaneously he received three 
 crowns of water for his gallantry. 
 
 Dick s boisterousness waxed apace. His was the 
 most care-free seeming in the world as he measured 
 Froelig and Martinez against the door to settle the 
 dispute that had arisen as to whether Froelig or 
 Martinez was the taller. 
 
 " Knees straight and together, heads back," Dick 
 commanded. 
 
 And as their heads touched the wood, from the 
 other side came a rousing thump that jarred them. 
 The door swung open, revealing Ernestine with a 
 padded gong-stick in either hand. 
 
 Dick, a high-heeled satin slipper in his hand, was 
 under a sheet with Terrence, teaching him " Brother 
 Bob I m bobbed" to the uproarious joy of the 
 others, when the Masons and Watsons and all their 
 Wickenberg following entered upon the scene. 
 
 Whereupon Dick insisted that the young men of 
 their party receive the kiss of welcome. Nor did he 
 miss, in the hubbub of a dozen persons meeting as 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 347 
 
 many more, Lottie Mason s: " Oh, good evening, 
 Mr. Graham. I thought you had gone." 
 
 And Dick, in the midst of the confusion of set 
 tling such an influx of guests, still maintaining his ex 
 uberant jolly pose, waited for that sharp scrutiny 
 that women have only for women. Not many mo 
 ments later he saw Lottie Mason steal such a look, 
 keen with speculation, at Paula as she chanced face 
 to face with Graham, saying something to him. 
 
 Not yet, was Dick s conclusion. Lottie did not 
 know. But suspicion was rife, and nothing, he was 
 certain, under the circumstances, would gladden her 
 woman s heart more than to discover the unimpeach 
 able Paula as womanly weak as herself. 
 
 Lottie Mason was a tall, striking brunette of 
 twenty-five, undeniably beautiful, and, as Dick had 
 learned, undeniably daring. In the not remote past, 
 attracted by her, and, it must be submitted, subtly in 
 vited by her, he had been guilty of a philandering 
 that he had not allowed to go as far as her wishes. 
 The thing had not been serious on his part. Nor 
 had he permitted it to become serious on her side. 
 Nevertheless, sufficient flirtatious passages had taken 
 place to impel him this night to look to her, rather 
 than to the other Wickenberg women, for the first 
 signals of suspicion. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he s a beautiful dancer," Dick, as he 
 came up to them half an hour later, heard Lottie 
 Mason telling little Miss Maxwell. " Isn t he, 
 Dick?" she appealed to him, with innocent eyes of 
 candor through which disguise he knew she was 
 studying him. 
 
 " Who ? Graham, you must mean," he an- 
 
348 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 swered with untroubled directness. " He certainly 
 is. What do you say we start dancing and let Miss 
 Maxwell see ? Though there s only one woman here 
 who can give him full swing to show his paces." 
 
 " Paula, of course/ said Lottie. 
 
 " Paula, of course. Why, you young chits don t 
 know how to waltz. You never had a chance to 
 learn." Lottie tossed her fine head. " Perhaps 
 you learned a little before the new dancing came in," 
 he amended. " Anyway, I ll get Evan and Paula 
 started, you take me on, and I ll wager we ll be the 
 only couples on the floor." 
 
 Half through the waltz, he broke it off with: 
 " Let them have the floor to themselves. It s worth 
 seeing." 
 
 And, glowing with appreciation, he stood and 
 watched his wife and Graham finish the dance, while 
 he knew that Lottie, beside him, stealing side glances 
 at him, was having her suspicions allayed. 
 
 The dancing became general, and, the evening 
 being warm, the big doors to the patio were thrown 
 open. Now one couple, and now another, danced 
 out and down the long arcades where the moonlight 
 streamed, until it became the general thing. 
 
 " What a boy he is," Paula said to Graham, as 
 they listened to Dick descanting to all and sundry 
 on the virtues of his new night camera. You 
 heard Aaron complaining at table, and Terrence ex 
 plaining, his sureness. Nothing terrible has ever 
 happened to him in his life. He has never been 
 overthrown. His sureness has always been vindi 
 cated. As Terrence said, it has always delivered 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 349 
 
 the goods. He does know, he does know, and yet 
 he is so sure of himself, so sure of me." 
 
 Graham taken away to dance with Miss Max 
 well, Paula continued her train of thought to her 
 self. Dick was not suffering so much after all. 
 And she might have expected it. He was the cool- 
 head, the philosopher. He would take her loss with 
 the same equanimity as he would take the loss of 
 Mountain Lad, as he had taken the death of Jeremy 
 Braxton and the flooding of the Harvest mines. It 
 was difficult, she smiled to herself, aflame as she 
 was toward Graham, to be married to a philosopher 
 who would not lift a hand to hold her. And it 
 came to her afresh that one phase of Graham s 
 charm for her was his humanness, his flamingness. 
 They met on common ground. At any rate, even 
 in the heyday of their coming together in Paris, 
 Dick had not so inflamed her. A wonderful lover 
 he had been, too, with his gift of speech and lover s 
 phrases, with his love-chants that had so delighted 
 her; but somehow it was different from this what she 
 felt for Graham and what Graham must feel for her. 
 Besides, she had been most young in experience of 
 love and lovers in that long ago when Dick had burst 
 so magnificently upon her. 
 
 And so thinking, she hardened toward him and 
 recklessly permitted herself to flame toward Gra 
 ham. The crowd, the gayety, the excitement, the 
 closeness and tenderness of contact in the dancing, 
 the summer-warm of the evening, the streaming 
 moonlight, and the night-scents of flowers all 
 fanned her ardency, and she looked forward eagerly 
 
350 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 to the at least one more dance she might dare with 
 Graham. 
 
 " No flash light is necessary," Dick was explain 
 ing. " It s a German invention. Half a minute ex 
 posure under the ordinary lighting is sufficient. And 
 the best of it is that the plate can be immediately de 
 veloped just like an ordinary blue print. Of course, 
 the drawback is one cannot print from the plate." 
 
 " But if it s good, an ordinary plate can be copied 
 from it from which prints can be made," Ernestine 
 amplified. 
 
 She knew the huge, twenty-foot, spring snake 
 coiled inside the camera and ready to leap out like 
 a jack-in-the-box when Dick squeezed the bulb. 
 And there were others who knew and who urged 
 Dick to get the camera and make an exposure. 
 
 He was gone longer than he expected, for Bon- 
 bright had left on his desk several telegrams con 
 cerning the Mexican situation that needed immediate 
 replies. Trick camera in hand, Dick returned by a 
 short cut across the house and patio. The dancing 
 couples were ebbing down the arcade and disappear 
 ing into the hall, and he leaned against a pillar and 
 watched them go by. Last of all came Paula and 
 Evan, passing so close that he could have reached out 
 and touched them. But, though the moon shone full 
 on him, they did not see him. They saw only each 
 other in the tender sport of gazing. 
 
 The last preceding couple was already inside when 
 the music ceased. Graham and Paula paused, and 
 he was for giving her his arm and leading her inside, 
 but she clung to him in sudden impulse. Man-like, 
 cautious, he slightly resisted for a moment, but with 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 351 
 
 one arm around his neck she drew his head willingly 
 down to the kiss. It was a flash of quick passion. 
 The next instant, Paula on his arm, they were pass 
 ing in and Paula s laugh was ringing merrily and 
 naturally. 
 
 Dick clutched at the pillar and eased himself down 
 abruptly until he sat flat on the pavement. Accom 
 panying violent suffocation, or causing it, his heart 
 seemed rising in his chest. He panted for air. The 
 cursed thing rose and choked and stifled him un 
 til, in the grim turn his fancy took, it seemed to him 
 that he chewed it between his teeth and gulped it 
 back and down his throat along with the reviving air. 
 He felt chilled, and was aware that he was wet with 
 sudden sweat. 
 
 " And who ever heard- of heart disease in the For- 
 rests ? " he muttered, as, still sitting, leaning against 
 the pillar for support, he mopped his face dry. His 
 hand was shaking, and he felt a slight nausea from 
 an internal quivering that still persisted. 
 
 It was not as if Graham had kissed her, he pon 
 dered. It was Paula who had kissed Graham. 
 That was love, and passion. He had seen it, and 
 as it burned again before his eyes, he felt his heart 
 surge, and the premonitory sensation of suffocation 
 seized him. With a sharp effort of will he con 
 trolled himself and got to his feet. 
 
 " By God, it came up in my mouth and I chewed 
 it," he muttered. " I chewed it." 
 
 Returning across the patio by the round-about 
 way, he entered the lighted room jauntily enough, 
 camera in hand, and unprepared for the reception he 
 received. 
 
352 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " Seen a ghost? " Lute greeted. 
 
 "Are you sick?" " What s the matter?" were 
 other questions. 
 
 " What is the matter? " he countered. 
 1 Your face the look of it," Ernestine said. 
 " Something has happened. What is it? " 
 
 And while he oriented himself he did not fail to 
 note Lottie Mason s quick glance at the faces of Gra 
 ham and Paula, nor to note that Ernestine had ob 
 served Lottie s glance and followed it up for her 
 self. 
 
 " Yes," he lied. " Bad news. Just got the word. 
 Jeremy Braxton is dead. Murdered. The Mexi 
 cans got him while he was trying to escape into Ari 
 
 zona." 
 
 " Old Jeremy, God love him for the fine man he 
 was," Terrence said, tucking his arm in Dick s. 
 " Come on, old man, tis a stiffener you re wanting 
 and I m the lad to lead you to it." 
 
 " Oh, I m all right," Dick smiled, shaking his 
 shoulders and squaring himself as if gathering him 
 self together. " It did hit me hard for the moment. 
 I hadn t a doubt in the world but Jeremy would make 
 it out all right. But they got him, and two engi 
 neers with him. They put up a devil of a fight first. 
 They got under a cliff and stood off a mob of half 
 a thousand for a day and night. And then the 
 Mexicans tossed dynamite down from above. Oh, 
 well, all flesh is grass, and there is no grass of yes 
 teryear. Terrence, your suggestion is a good one. 
 Lead on." 
 
 After a few steps he turned his head over his 
 shoulder and called back: " Now this isn t to stop 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 353 
 
 the fun. I ll be right back to take that photograph. 
 You arrange the group, Ernestine, and be sure to 
 have them under the strongest light." 
 
 Terrence pressed open the concealed buffet at the 
 far end of the room and set out the glasses, while 
 Dick turned on a wall light and studied his face in 
 the small mirror inside the buffet door. 
 
 " It s all right now, quite natural," he announced. 
 
 " Twas only a passing shade," Terrence agreed, 
 pouring the whiskey. " And man has well the right 
 to take it hard the going of old friends." 
 
 They toasted and drank silently. 
 
 " Another one," Dick said, extending his glass. 
 
 " Say * when, " said the Irishman, and with im 
 perturbable eyes he watched the rising tide of liquor 
 in the glass. 
 
 Dick waited till it was half full. 
 
 Again they toasted and drank silently, eyes to eyes, 
 and Dick was grateful for the offer of all his heart 
 that he read in Terrence s eyes. 
 
 Back in the middle of the hall, Ernestine was gayly 
 grouping the victims, and privily, from the faces 
 of Lottie, Paula, and Graham, trying to learn more 
 of the something untoward that she sensed. Why 
 had Lottie looked so immediately and searchingly 
 at Graham and Paula ? she asked herself. And 
 something was wrong with Paula now. She was 
 worried, disturbed, and not in the way to be ex 
 pected from the announcement of Jeremy Braxton s 
 death. From Graham, Ernestine could glean noth 
 ing. He was quite his ordinary self, his facetious- 
 ness the cause of much laughter to Miss Maxwell 
 and Mrs. Watson. 
 
354 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Paula was disturbed. What had happened? 
 Why had Dick lied? He had known of Jeremy s 
 death for two days. And she had never known any 
 body s death so to affect him. She wondered if he 
 had been drinking unduly. In the course of their 
 married life she had seen him several times in liquor. 
 He carried it well, the only noticeable effects being 
 a flush in his eyes and a loosening of his tongue to 
 whimsical fancies and extemporized chants. Had 
 he, in his trouble, been drinking with the iron-headed 
 Terrence down in the stag room? She had found 
 them all assembled there just before dinner. The 
 real cause for Dick s strangeness never crossed her 
 mind, if, for no other reason, than that he was not 
 given to spying. 
 
 He came back, laughing heartily at a joke of Ter- 
 rence s, and beckoned Graham to join them while 
 Terrence repeated it. And when the three had had 
 their laugh, he prepared to take the picture. The 
 burst of the huge snake from the camera and the 
 genuine screams of the startled women served to dis 
 pel the gloom that threatened, and next Dick was 
 arranging a tournament of peanut-carrying. 
 
 From chair to chair, placed a dozen yards apart, 
 the feat was with a table knife to carry the most 
 peanuts in five minutes. After the preliminary try- 
 out, Dick chose Paula for his partner, and chal 
 lenged the world, Wickenberg and the madrono 
 grove included. Many boxes of candy were wa 
 gered, and in the end he and Paula won out against 
 Graham and Ernestine, who had proved the next 
 best couple. Demands for a speech changed to 
 clamor for a peanut song. Dick complied, beating 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 355 
 
 the accent, Indian fashion, with stiff-legged hops 
 and hand-slaps on thighs. 
 
 " I am Dick Forrest, son of Richard the Lucky, 
 Son of Jonathan the Puritan, son of John who was 
 a sea-rover, as his father Albert before him, who 
 was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged 
 in chains and died without issue. 
 
 " I am the last of the Forrests, but first of the 
 peanut-carriers. Neither Nimrod nor Sandow has 
 anything on me. I carry the peanuts on a knife, a 
 silver knife. The peanuts are animated by the devil. 
 I carry the peanuts with grace and celerity and in 
 quantity. The peanut never sprouted that can best 
 me. 
 
 " The peanuts roll. The peanuts roll. Like At 
 las who holds the world, I never let them fall. Not 
 every one can carry peanuts. I am God-gifted. I 
 am master of the art. It is a fine art. The peanuts 
 roll, the peanuts roll, and I carry them on forever. 
 
 " Aaron is a philosopher. He cannot carry pea 
 nuts. Ernestine is a blonde. She cannot carry 
 peanuts. Evan is a sportsman. He drops pea 
 nuts. Paula is my partner. She fumbles peanuts. 
 Only I, I, by the grace of God and my own clever 
 ness, carry peanuts. 
 
 When anybody has had enough of my song, 
 throw something at me. I am proud. I am tire 
 less. I can sing on forever. I shall sing on for 
 ever. 
 
 " Here beginneth the second canto. When I die, 
 bury me in a peanut patch. While I live 
 
 The expected avalanche of cushions quenched his 
 song but not his ebullient spirits, for he was soon 
 
356 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 in a corner with Lottie Mason and Paula concoct 
 ing a conspiracy against Terrence. 
 
 And so the evening continued to be danced and 
 joked and played away. At midnight supper was 
 served, and not till two in the morning were the 
 Wickenbergers ready to depart. While they were 
 getting on their wraps, Paula was proposing for the 
 following afternoon a trip down to the Sacramento 
 River to look over Dick s experiment in rice-raising. 
 
 " I had something else in view," he told her. 
 " You know the mountain pasture above Sycamore 
 Creek. Three yearlings have been killed there in 
 the last ten days." 
 
 " Mountain lions! " Paula cried. 
 
 " Two at least. Strayed in from the north," he 
 explained to Graham. They sometimes do that. 
 We got three five years ago. Moss and Hartley 
 will be there with the dogs waiting. They ve lo 
 cated two of the beasts. What do you say all of 
 you join me. We can leave right after lunch." 
 
 " Let me have Mollie? " Lute asked. 
 
 " And you can ride Altadena," Paula told Ernes 
 tine. 
 
 Quickly the mounts were decided upon, Froelig 
 and Martinez agreeing to go, but promising neither 
 to shoot well nor ride well. 
 
 All went out to see the Wickenbergers off, and, 
 after the machines were gone, lingered to make ar 
 rangements for the hunting. 
 
 " Good night, everybody," Dick said, as they 
 started to move inside. " I m going to take a look 
 at Alden Bessie before I turn in. Hennessy is sit 
 ting up with her. Remember, you girls, come to 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 357 
 
 lunch in your riding togs, and curses on the head of 
 whoever s late." 
 
 The ancient dam of the Fotherington Princess 
 was in a serious way, but Dick would not have made 
 the visit at such an hour, save that he wanted to be 
 by himself and that he could not nerve himself for 
 a chance moment alone with Paula so soon after 
 what he had overseen in the patio. 
 
 Light steps in the gravel made him turn his head. 
 Ernestine caught up with him and took his arm. 
 
 " Poor old Alden Bessie," she explained. " I 
 thought I d go along." 
 
 Dick, still acting up to his night s role, recalled 
 to her various funny incidents of the evening, and 
 laughed and chuckled with reminiscent glee. 
 
 " Dick," she said in the first pause, " you are in 
 trouble." She could feel him stiffen, and hurried 
 on: ; What can I do? You know you can depend 
 on me. Tell me." 
 
 " Yes, I ll tell you," he answered. " Just one 
 thing." She pressed his arm gratefully. " I ll have 
 a telegram sent you to-morrow. It will be urgent 
 enough, though not too serious. You will just bun 
 dle up and depart with Lute." 
 
 " Is that all?" she faltered. 
 
 " It will be a great favor." 
 
 " You won t talk with me? " she protested, quiv 
 ering under the rebuff. 
 
 " I ll have the telegram come so as to rout you out 
 of bed. And now never mind Alden Bessie. You 
 run a long in. Good night." 
 
 He kissed her, gently thrust her toward the house, 
 and went on his way. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 ON the way back from the sick mare, Dick 
 paused once to listen to the restless stamp of 
 Mountain Lad and his fellows in the stallion 
 barn. In the quiet air, from somewhere up the 
 hills, came the ringing of a single bell from some 
 grazing animal. A cat s-paw of breeze fanned him 
 with sudden balmy warmth. All the night was 
 balmy with the faint and almost aromatic scent of 
 Opening grain and drying grass. The stallion 
 /stamped again, and Dick, with a deep breath and 
 I realization that never had he more loved it all, looked 
 I up and circled the sky-line where the crests of the 
 mountains blotted the field of stars. 
 
 " No, Cato," he mused aloud. " One cannot 
 agree with you. Man does not depart from life as 
 from an inn. He departs as from a dwelling, the 
 one dwelling he will ever know. He departs . . . 
 nowhere. It is good night. For him the Noiseless 
 One . . . and the dark." 
 
 He made as if to start, but once again the stamp 
 of the stallions held him, and the hillside bell rang 
 out. He drew a deep inhalation through his nos 
 trils of the air of balm, and loved it, and loved the 
 fair land of his devising. 
 
 " * I looked into time and saw none of me there, 
 he quoted, then capped it, smiling, with a second 
 
 358 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 359 
 
 quotation: " She gat me nine great sons. . . . 
 The other nine were daughters. 
 
 Back at the house, he did not immediately go in, 
 but stood a space gazing at the far flung lines of 
 it. Nor, inside, did he immediately go to his own 
 quarters. Instead, he wandered through the silent 
 rooms, across the patios, and along the dim-liHraibv^ 
 His frame of mind was as of one about to depart ^ 
 on a journey. He pressed on the lights in Paula s/ 
 fairy patio, and, sitting in an austere Roman seat of 
 marble, smoked a cigarette quite through while he 
 made his plans. 
 
 Oh, he would do it nicely enough. He could pull 
 off a hunting accident that would fool the world. 
 Trust him not to bungle it. Next day would be 
 the day, in the woods above Sycamore Creek. 
 Grandfather Jonathan Forrest, the straight-laced 
 Puritan, had died of a hunting accident. For the 
 first time Dick doubted that accident. Well, if it 
 hadn t been an accident, the old fellow had done it 
 well. It had never been hinted in the family that 
 it was aught but an accident. 
 
 His hand on the button to turn off the lights, 
 Dick delayed a moment for a last look at the mar 
 ble babies that played in the fountain and among the 
 roses. 
 
 " So long, younglings," he called softly to them. 
 " You re the nearest I ever came to it." 
 
 From his sleeping porch he looked across t 
 patio to Paula s porch. There was no light. The 
 chance was she slept. 
 
 On the edge of the bed, he found himself with one 
 shoe unlaced, and, smiling at his absentness, relaced 
 
360 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 it. What need was there for him to sleep? It 
 was already four in the morning. He would at least 
 watch his last sunrise. Last things were coming 
 fast. Already had he not dressed for the last time ? 
 And the bath of the previous morning would be his 
 last. Mere water could not stay the corruption of 
 death. He would have to shave, however a last 
 vanity, for the hair did continue to grow for a time 
 on dead men s faces. 
 
 He brought a copy of his will from the wall-safe 
 to his desk and read it carefully. Several minor 
 codicils suggested themselves, and he wrote them out 
 in long-hand, pre-dating them six months as a precau 
 tion. The last was the endowment of the sages of 
 the* madrono grove with a fellowship of seven. 
 
 He ran through his life insurance policies, veri 
 fying the permitted suicide clause in each one ; signed 
 the tray of letters that had waited his signature 
 since the previous morning; and dictated a letter 
 into the phonograph to the publisher of his books. 
 His desk cleaned, he scrawled a quick summary of 
 income and expense, with all earnings from the 
 Harvest mines deducted. He transposed the sum 
 mary into a second summary, increasing the expense 
 margins, and cutting down the income items to an 
 absurdest least possible. Still the result was satis 
 factory. 
 
 He tore up the sheets of figures and wrote out a 
 program for the future handling of the Harvest sit 
 uation. He did it sketchily, with casual tentative- 
 ness, so that when it was found among the papers 
 there would be no suspicions. In the same fash- 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 361 
 
 ion he worked out a line-breeding program for the 
 Shires, and an in-breeding table, up and down, for 
 Mountain Lad and the Fotherington Princess and 
 certain selected individuals of their progeny. 
 
 When Oh My x came in with coffee at six, Dick 
 was on his last paragraph of his scheme for rice- 
 growing. 
 
 " Although the Italian rice may be worth experi 
 menting with for quick maturity," he wrote, 
 shall for a time confine the main plantings in equal 
 proportions to Moti, loko, and the Wateribune. 
 Thus, with different times of maturing, the same 
 crews and the same machinery, with the same over 
 head, can work a larger acreage than if only one va 
 riety is planted." 
 
 Oh My served the coffee at his desk, and made 
 no sign even after a glance to the porch at the bed 
 which had not been slept in all of which control 
 Dick permitted himself privily to admire. 
 
 At six-thirty the telephone rang and he heard 
 Hennessy s tired voice: " I knew you d be up and 
 glad to know Alden Bessie s pulled through. It 
 was a squeak, though. And now it s me for the 
 hay." 
 
 When Dick had shaved, he looked at the shower, 
 hesitated a moment, then his face set stubbornly. 
 I m darned if I will, was his thought; a sheer waste 
 of time. He did, however, change his shoes to a 
 pair of heavy, high-laced ones fit for the roughness 
 of hunting. 
 
 He was at his desk again, looking over the notes 
 in his scribble pads for the morning s work, when 
 
362 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 Paula entered. She did not call her " Good morn 
 ing, merry gentleman " ; but came quite close to him 
 before she greeted him softly with: 
 
 ; The Acorn-planter. Ever tireless, never weary 
 Red Cloud." 
 
 He noted the violet-blue shadows under her eyes, 
 as he arose, without offering to touch her. Nor did 
 she offer invitation. 
 
 " A white night? " he asked, as he placed a chair. 
 
 " A white night," she answered wearily. " Not a 
 second s sleep, though I tried so hard." 
 
 Both were reluctant of speech, and they labored 
 under a mutual inability to draw their eyes away 
 from each other. 
 
 4 You . . . you don t look any too fit yourself," 
 she said. 
 
 * Yes, my face," he nodded. " I was looking at 
 it while I shaved. The expression won t come off." 
 
 " Something happened to you last night," she 
 probed, and he could not fail to see the same com 
 passion in her eyes that he had seen in Oh Dear s. 
 " Everybody remarked your expression. What was 
 it?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. " It has been com 
 ing on for some time," he evaded, remembering that 
 the first hint of it had been given him by Paula s 
 portrait of him. " You ve noticed it? " he inquired 
 casually. 
 
 She nodded, then was struck by a sudden thought. 
 He saw the idea leap to life ere her words uttered it. 
 
 " Dick, you haven t an affair? " 
 
 It was a way out. It would straighten all the tan 
 gle. And hope was in her voice and in her face. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 363 
 
 He smiled, shook his head slowly, and watched 
 her disappointment. 
 
 " I take it back," he said. " I have an affair." 
 
 " Of the heart?" 
 
 She was eager, as he answered, " Of the heart." 
 
 But she was not prepared for what came next. 
 He abruptly drew his chair close, till his knees 
 touched hers, and, leaning forward, quickly but 
 gently prisoned her hands in his resting on her knees. 
 
 u Don t be alarmed, little bird-woman," he quieted 
 her. " I shall not kiss you. It is a long time since 
 I have. I want to tell you about that affair. But 
 first I want to tell you how proud I am proud of 
 myself. I am proud tjiat I am a lover. At my 
 age, a lover! It is urioelievable, and it is wonder 
 ful. And such a lover! Such a curious, unusual, 
 and quite altogether remarkable lover. In fact, I 
 have laughed all the books and all biology in the face. 
 I am a monogamist. I love the woman, the one 
 woman. After a dozen years of possession I love 
 her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly." 
 
 Her hands communicated her disappointment to 
 him, making a slight, impulsive flutter to escape ; but 
 he held them more firmly. 
 
 " I know her every weakness, and, weakness and 
 strength and all, I love her as madly as I loved her 
 at the first, in those mad moments when I first held 
 her in my arms." 
 
 Her hands were mutinous of the restraint he put 
 upon them, and unconsciously she was beginning to 
 pull and tug to be away from him. Also, there was 
 fear in her eyes. He knew her fastidiousness, and 
 he guessed, with the other man s lips recent on hers, 
 
364 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 that she feared a more ardent expression on his part. 
 
 " And please, please be not frightened, timid, 
 sweet, beautiful, proud, little bird-woman. See. I 
 release you. Know that I love you most dearly, and 
 that I am considering you as well as myself, and be 
 fore myself, all the while." 
 
 He drew his chair away from her, leaned back, 
 and saw confidence grow in her eyes. 
 
 " I shall tell you all my heart," he continued, " and 
 I shall want you to tell me all your heart." 
 
 This love for me is something new? " she asked. 
 " A recrudescence ? " 
 
 * Yes, a recrudescence, and no." 
 
 " I thought that for a long time I had been a habit 
 to you," she said. 
 
 " But I was loving you all the time." 
 
 " Not madly." 
 
 " No," he acknowledged. " But with certainty. 
 I was so sure of you, of myself. It was, to me, all a 
 permanent and forever established thing. I plead 
 guilty. But when that permanency was shaken, all 
 my love for you fired up. It was there all the time, 
 a steady, long-married flame." 
 
 " But about me? " she demanded. 
 
 " That is what we are coming to. I know your 
 worry right now, and of a minute ago. You are so 
 intrinsically honest, so intrinsically true, that the 
 thought of sharing two men is abhorrent to you. I 
 have not misread you. It is a long time since you 
 have permitted me any love-touch." He shrugged 
 his shoulders " And an equally long time since I 
 offered you a love-touch." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 365 
 
 " Then you have known from the first?" she 
 asked quickly. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " Possibly," he added, with an air of judicious 
 weighing, " I sensed it coming before even you knew 
 it. But we will not go into that or other things." 
 
 " You have seen . . ." she attempted to ask, 
 stung almost to shame at thought of her husband 
 having witnessed any caress of hers and Graham s. 
 
 " We will not demean ourselves with details, 
 Paula. Besides, there was and is nothing wrong 
 about any of it. Also, it was not necessary for me 
 to see anything. I have my memories of when I, 
 too, kissed stolen kisses in the pause of the seconds 
 between the frank, outspoken * Good nights. 
 When all the signs of ripeness are visible the love- 
 shades and love-notes that cannot be hidden, the un 
 conscious caress of the eyes in a fleeting glance, the 
 involuntary softening of voices, the cuckoo-sob in 
 the throat - why, the night-parting kiss does not 
 need to be seen. It has to be. Still further, oh 
 my woman, know that I justify you in everything." 
 
 " It ... it was not ever . . . much," she fal 
 tered. 
 
 " I should have been surprised if it had been. It 
 couldn t have been you. As it is, I have been sur 
 prised. After our dozen years it was unexpected 
 
 " Dick," she interrupted him, leaning toward him 
 and searching him. She paused to frame her 
 thought, and then went on with directness. : In our 
 dozen years, will you say it has never been any more 
 with you? " 
 
366 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " I have told you that I justify you in everything," 
 he softened his reply. 
 
 " But you have not answered my question/ she in 
 sisted, " Oh, I do not mean mere flirtatious pas 
 sages, bits of primrose philandering. I mean un 
 faithfulness and I mean it technically. In the past 
 you have? " 
 
 " In the past," he answered, " not much, and not 
 for a long, long time." 
 
 " I often wondered," she mused. 
 
 " And I have told you I justify you in everything," 
 he reiterated. " And now you know where lies the 
 justification." 
 
 " Then by the same token I had a similar right," 
 said. " Though I haven t, Dick, I haven t," she 
 tastened to add. " Well, anyway, you always did 
 preach the single standard." 
 
 " Alas, not any longer," he smiled. " One s im 
 agination will conjure, and in the past few weeks I ve 
 been forced to change my mind." 
 
 " You mean that you demand I must be faithful? " 
 
 He nodded and said, " So long as you live with 
 
 me." 
 
 11 But where s the equity? " 
 
 " There isn t any equity," he shook his head. 
 " Oh, I know it seems a preposterous change of view. 
 But at this late day I have made the discovery of the 
 ancient truth that women are different from men. 
 All I have learned of book and theory goes glim 
 mering before the everlasting fact that the women 
 are the mothers of our children. I ... I still had 
 my hopes of children with you, you see. But that s 
 all over and done with. The question now is, 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 367 
 
 what s in your heart? I have told you mine. And 
 afterward we can determine what is to be done." 
 
 " Oh, Dick," she breathed, after silence had 
 grown painful, " I do love you, I shall always love 
 you. You are my Red Cloud. Why, do you know, 
 only yesterday, out on your sleeping porch, I turned 
 my face to the wall. It was terrible. It didn t 
 seem right. I turned it out again, oh so quickly." 
 
 He lighted a cigarette and waited. 
 
 " But you have not told me what is in your heart, 
 all of it," he chided finally. 
 
 " I do love you," she repeated. 
 
 " And Evan?" 
 
 " That is different. It is horrible to have to talk 
 this way to you. Besides, I don t know. I can t 
 make up my mind what is in my heart." 
 
 "Love? Or amorous adventure? It must be 
 one or the other." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " Can t you understand?" she asked. "That I 
 don t understand? You see, I am a woman. I 
 have never sown any wild oats. And now that all 
 this has happened, I don t know what to make of it. 
 Shaw and the rest must be right. Women are hunt 
 ing animals. You are both big game. I can t help 
 it. It is a challenge to me. And I find I am a puz 
 zle to myself. All my concepts have been toppled 
 over by my conduct. I want you. I want Evan. I 
 want both of you. It is not amorous adventure, oh 
 believe me. And if by any chance it is, and I do 
 not know it no, it isn t, I know it isn t." 
 
 " Then it is love." 
 
 " But I do love you, Red Cloud." 
 
368 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 " And you say you love him. You can t love both 
 of us." 
 
 " But I can. I do. I do love both of you. 
 Oh, I am straight. I shall be straight. I must 
 work this out. I thought you might help me. That 
 is why I came to you this morning. There must be 
 some solution." 
 
 She looked at him appealingly as he answered, " It 
 is one or the other, Evan or me. I cannot imagine 
 any other solution." 
 
 4 That s what he says. But I can t bring myself 
 to it. He was for coming straight to you. I would 
 not permit him. He has wanted to go, but I held 
 him here, hard as it was on both of you, in order to 
 have you together, to compare you two, to weigh 
 you in my heart. And I get nowhere. I want you 
 both. I can t give either of you up." 
 
 " Unfortunately, as you see," Dick began, a slight 
 twinkle in his eyes, " while you may be polyandrously 
 inclined, we stupid male men cannot reconcile our 
 selves to such a situation." 
 
 " Don t be cruel, Dick," she protested. 
 
 " Forgive me. It was not so meant. It was out 
 of my own hurt an effort to bear it with philo 
 sophical complacence." 
 
 " I have told him that he was the only man I had 
 ever met who is as great as my husband, and that 
 my husband is greater." \ 
 
 That was loyalty to me, yes, and loyalty to your 
 self," Dick explained. " You were mine until I 
 ceased being the greatest man in the world. He 
 then became the greatest man in the world." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 369 
 
 " Let me try to solve it for you," he continued. 
 " You don t know your mind, your desire. You 
 can t decide between us because you equally want us 
 both?" 
 
 "Yes," she whispered. " Only, rather, differ- 
 ently want you both." 
 
 " Then the thing is settled," he concluded shortly. 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " This, Paula. I lose. Graham is the winner. 
 Don t you see. Here am I, even with him, even 
 and no more, while my advantage over him is our 
 dozen years, together the dozen years of past 
 love, the ties and bonds of heart and memory. 
 Heavens ! If all this weight were thrown in the 
 balance on Evan s side, you wouldn t hesitate an in 
 stant in your decision. It is the first time you have 
 ever been bowled over in your life, and the expe 
 rience, coming so late, makes it hard for you to 
 realize." 
 
 " But, Dick, you bowled me over." 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " I have always liked to think so, and sometimes 
 I have believed but never really. I never took 
 you off your feet, not even in the very beginning, 
 whirlwind as the affair was. You may have been 
 glamoured. You were never mad as I was mad, 
 never swept as I was swept. I loved you first - 
 
 " And you were a royal lover." 
 
 " I loved you first, Paula, and, though you did re 
 spond, it was not in the same way. I never took you 
 off your feet. It seems pretty clear that Evan has." 
 
 " I wish I could be sure," she mused. " I have 
 a feeling of being bowled over, and yet I hesitate. 
 
370 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 The two are not compatible. Perhaps I never shall 
 be bowled over by any man. And you don t seem 
 to help me in the least." 
 
 " You, and you alone, can solve it, Paula," he said 
 gravely. 
 
 " But if you would help, if you would try oh, 
 such a little, to hold me," she persisted. 
 
 " But I am helpless. My hands are tied. I can t 
 put an arm to hold you. You can t share two. 
 You have been in his arms " He put up his hand 
 to hush her protest. " Please, please, dear, don t. 
 You have been in his arms. You flutter like a fright 
 ened bird at thought of my caressing you. Don t 
 you see? Your actions decide against me. You 
 have decided, though you may not know it. Your 
 very flesh has decided. You can bear his arms. 
 The thought of mine you cannot bear." 
 
 She shook her head with slow resoluteness. 
 
 " And still I do not, cannot, make up my mind," 
 she persisted. 
 
 " But you must. The present situation is intol 
 erable. You must decide quickly, for Evan must 
 go. You realize that. Or you must go. You 
 both cannot continue on here. Take all the time in 
 the world. Send Evan away. Or, suppose you go 
 and visit Aunt Martha for a while. Being away 
 from both of us might aid you to get somewhere. 
 Perhaps it will be better to call off the hunting. I ll 
 go alone, and you stay and talk it over with Evan. 
 Or come on along and talk it over with him as you 
 ride. Whichever way, I won t be in till late. I 
 may sleep out all night in one of the herder s cabins. 
 When I come back, Evan must be gone. Whether 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 371 
 
 or not you are gone with him will also have been de 
 cided." 
 
 " And if I should go? " she queried. 
 
 Dick shrugged his shoulders, and stood up, glanc 
 ing at his wrist-watch. 
 
 " I have sent word to Blake to come earlier this 
 morning," he explained, taking a step toward the 
 door in invitation for her to go. 
 
 At the door she paused and leaned toward him. 
 
 " Kiss me, Dick," she said, and, afterward: 
 " This is not a ... love-touch." Her voice had 
 become suddenly husky. " It s just in case I do de 
 cide to ... to go." 
 
 The secretary approached along the hall, but 
 Paula lingered. 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Blake," Dick greeted him. 
 " Sorry to rout you out so early. First of all, will 
 you please telephone Mr. Agar and Mr. Pitts. I 
 won t be able to see them this morning. Oh, and 
 put the rest off till to-morrow, too. Make a point 
 of getting Mr. Hanley. Tell him I approve of his 
 plan for the Buckeye spillway, and to go right ahead. 
 I will see Mr. Mendenhall, though, and Mr. Man- 
 son. Tell them nine-thirty." 
 
 " One thing, Dick," Paula said. " Remember, I 
 made him stay. It was not his fault or wish. I 
 wouldn t let him go." 
 
 " You ve bowled him over right enough," Dick 
 smiled. " I could not reconcile his staying on, under 
 the circumstances, with what I knew of him. But 
 with you not permitting him to go, and he as mad as 
 a man has a right to be where you are concerned, I 
 can understand. He s a whole lot better than a 
 
372 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 good sort. They don t make many like him. He 
 will make you happy " 
 
 She held up her hand. 
 
 " I don t know that I shall ever be happy again, 
 Red Cloud. When I see what I have brought into 
 your face. . . . And I was so happy and contented 
 all our dozen years. I can t forget it. That is why 
 I have been unable to decide. But you are right. 
 The time has come for me to solve the . . ." She 
 hesitated and could not utter the word " triangle " 
 which he saw forming on her lips. " The situa 
 tion," her voice trailed away. " We ll all go hunt 
 ing. I ll talk with him as we ride, and I ll send him 
 away, no matter what I do." 
 
 " I shouldn t be precipitate, Paul," Dick ad 
 vised. " You know I don t care a hang for morality 
 except when it is useful. And in this case it is ex 
 ceedingly useful. There may be children. Please, 
 please," he hushed her. " And in such case even 
 old scandal is not exactly good for them. Deser 
 tion takes too long. I ll arrange to give you the 
 real statutory grounds, which will save a year in the 
 divorce." 
 
 " If I so make up my mind," she smiled wanly. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 " But I may not make up my mind that way. I 
 don t know it myself. Perhaps it s all a dream, and 
 soon I shall wake up, and Oh Dear will come in and 
 tell me how soundly and long I have slept." 
 
 She turned away reluctantly, and paused suddenly 
 when she had made half a dozen steps. 
 
 " Dick," she called. " You have told me your 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 373 
 
 heart, but not what s in your mind. Don t do any 
 thing foolish. Remember Denny Holbrook no 
 hunting accident, mind." 
 
 He shook his head, and twinkled his eyes in 
 feigned amusement, and marveled to himself that her 
 intuition should have so squarely hit the mark. 
 
 " And leave all this? " he lied, with a gesture that 
 embraced the ranch and all its projects. " And that 
 book on in-and-in-breeding? And my first annual 
 home sale of stock just ripe to come off? " 
 
 u It would be preposterous," she agreed with 
 brightening face. " But, Dick, in this difficulty of 
 making up my mind, please, please know that- 
 She paused for the phrase, then made a gesture in 
 mimicry of his, that included the Big House and its 
 treasures, and said, " All this does not influence me 
 a particle. Truly not." 
 
 " As if I did not know it," he assured her. " Of 
 all unmercenary women " 
 
 " Why, Dick," she interrupted him, fired by a new 
 thought, " if I loved Evan as madly as you think, 
 you would mean so little that I d be content, if it 
 were the only way out, for you to have a hunting ac 
 cident. But you see, I don t. Anyway, there s a 
 brass tack for you to ponder." 
 
 She made another reluctant step away, then called 
 back in a whisper, her face over her shoulder : 
 
 " Red Cloud, I m dreadfully sorry. . . . And 
 through it all I m so glad that you do still love me." 
 
 Before Blake returned, Dick found time to study 
 his face in the glass. Printed there was the ex 
 pression that had startled his company the preceding 
 
374 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 /Evening. It had come to stay. Oh, well, was his 
 / thought, one cannot chew his heart between his teeth 
 / without leaving some sign of it. 
 
 He strolled out on the sleeping porch and looked 
 at Paula s picture under the barometers. He turned 
 it to the wall, and sat on the bed and regarded the 
 blankness for a space. Then he turned it back 
 again. 
 
 " Poor little kid," he murmured, " having a hard 
 time of it just waking up at this late day." 
 
 But as he continued to gaze, abruptly there leaped 
 before his eyes the vision of her in the moonlight, 
 clinging to Graham and drawing his lips down to 
 hers. 
 
 Dick got up quickly, with a shake of head to shake 
 the vision from his eyes. 
 
 By half past nine his correspondence was finished 
 and his desk cleaned save for certain data to be used 
 in his talks with his Shorthorn and Shire managers. 
 He was over at the window and waving a smiling 
 farewell to Lute and Ernestine in the limousine, as 
 Mendenhall entered. And to him, and to Manson 
 next, Dick managed, in casual talk, to impress much 
 of his bigger breeding plans. 
 
 " We ve got to keep an eagle eye on the bull- 
 get of King Polo," he told Manson. " There s all 
 the promise in the world for a greater than he from 
 Bleakhouse Fawn, or Alberta Maid, or Moravia s 
 Nellie Signal. We missed it this year so far, but 
 next year, or the year after, soon or late, King Polo 
 is going to be responsible for a real humdinger of a 
 
 winner." 
 
 And as with Manson, with much more talk, so 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 375 
 
 with Mendenhall, Dick succeeded in emphasizing 
 the far application of his breeding theories. 
 
 With their departure, he got Oh Joy on the house 
 phone and told him to take Graham to the gun room 
 to choose a rifle and any needed gear. 
 
 At eleven he did not know that Paula had come 
 up the secret stairway from the library and was stand 
 ing behind the shelves of books listening. She had 
 intended coming in but had been deterred by the 
 sound of his voice. She could hear him talking over 
 the telephone to Hanley about the spillway of the 
 Buckeye dam. 
 
 " And by the way," Dick s voice went on, " you ve 
 been over the reports on the Big Miramar? . . . 
 Very good. Discount them. I disagree with them 
 flatly. The water is there. I haven t a doubt we ll 
 find a fairly shallow artesian supply. Send up the 
 boring outfit at once and start prospecting. The 
 soil s ungodly rich, and if we don t make that dry 
 hole ten times as valuable in the next five years . . ." 
 
 Paula sighed, and turned back down the spiral to 
 the library. 
 
 Red Cloud the incorrigible, always planting his \ 
 acorns was her thought. There he was, with his 
 love-world crashing around him, calmly considering 
 dams and well-borings so that he might, in the years / 
 to come, plant more acorns. 
 
 Nor was Dick ever to know that Paula had come 
 so near to him with her need and gone away. 
 Again, not aimlessly, but to run through for the last 
 time the notes of the scribble pad by his bed, he 
 was out on his sleeping porch. His house was in 
 order. There was nothing left but to sign up the 
 
376 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 morning s dictation, answer several telegrams, then 
 would come lunch and the hunting in the Sycamore 
 hills. Oh, he would do it well. The Outlaw would 
 bear the blame. And he would have an eye-witness, 
 either Froelig or Martinez. But not both of them. 
 One pair of eyes would be enough to satisfy when 
 the martingale parted and the mare reared and top 
 pled backward upon him into the brush. And from 
 that screen of brush, swiftly linking accident to catas 
 trophe, the witness would hear the rifle go off. 
 
 Martinez was more emotional than the sculptor 
 and would therefore make a more satisfactory wit 
 ness, Dick decided. Him would he maneuver to 
 have with him in the narrow trail when the Out 
 law .should be made the scapegoat. Martinez was 
 no horseman. All the better. It would be well, 
 Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devil- 
 ishness for a minute or two before the culmination. 
 It would give verisimilitude. Also, it would excite 
 Martinez s horse, and, therefore, excite Martinez so 
 that he would not see occurrences too clearly. 
 
 He clenched his hands with sudden hurt. The 
 Little Lady was mad, she must be mad; on no other 
 ground could he understand such arrant cruelty, lis 
 tening to her voice and Graham s from the open win 
 dows of the music room as they sang together the 
 " Gypsy Trail." 
 
 Nor did he unclench his hands during all the time 
 they sang. And they sang the mad, reckless song 
 clear through to its mad reckless end. And he con 
 tinued to stand, listening to her laugh herself merrily 
 away from Graham and on across the house to her 
 wing, from the porches of which she continued to 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 377 
 
 laugh as she teased and chided Oh Dear for fancied 
 derelictions. 
 
 From far off came the dim but unmistakable trum 
 peting of Mountain Lad. King Polo asserted his 
 lordly self, and the harems of mares and heifers 
 sent back their answering calls. Dick listened to all 
 the whinnying and nickering and bawling of sex, 
 and sighed aloud : " Well, the land is better for my 
 having been. It is a good thought to take to bed." 
 
 L ^ 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 A RING of his bed phone made Dick sit on the 
 bed to take up the receiver. As he listened, 
 he looked out across the patio to Paula s 
 porches. Bonbright was explaining that it was a call 
 from Chauncey Bishop who was at Eldorado in a 
 machine. Chauncey Bishop, editor and owner of 
 the San Francisco Dispatch, was sufficiently im 
 portant a person, in Bonbright s mind, as well as 
 old friend of Dick s, to be connected directly to him. 
 
 " You can get here for lunch," Dick told the news 
 paper owner. " And, say, suppose you put up for 
 the night. . . . Never mind your special writers. 
 We re going hunting mountain lions this afternoon, 
 and there s sure to be a kill. Got them located. 
 . . . Who? What s she write? . . . What of it? 
 She can stick around the ranch and get half a dozen 
 columns out of any of half a dozen subjects, while 
 the writer chap can get the dope on lion-hunting. 
 . . . Sure, sure. I ll put him on a horse a child can 
 ride." 
 
 The more the merrier, especially newspaper chaps, 
 Dick grinned to himself and grandfather Jona 
 than Forrest would have nothing on him when it 
 came to pulling off a successful finish. 
 
 But how could Paula have been so wantonly cruel 
 as to sing the " Gypsy Trail " so immediately after- 
 
 378 
 
THE LITTLE LADY 379 
 
 ward? Dick asked himself, as, receiver near to ear, 
 he could distantly hear Chauncey Bishop persuading 
 his writer man to the hunting. 
 
 " All right then, come a running," Dick told 
 Bishop in conclusion. " I m giving orders now for 
 the horses, and you can have that bay you rode last 
 
 time." 
 
 Scarcely had he hung up, when the bell rang again. 
 This time it was Paula. 
 
 " Red Cloud, dear Red Cloud," she said, " your 
 reasoning is all wrong. I think I love you best. 
 I am just about making up my mind, and it s for you. 
 And now, just to help me to be sure, tell me what 
 you told me a little while ago you know- 
 love the woman, the one woman. After a dozen 
 years of possession I love her quite madly, oh, so 
 sweetly madly. Say it to me, Red Cloud." 
 
 " I do truly love the woman, the one woman," 
 Dick repeated. " After a dozen years of possession 
 I do love her quite madly, oh, so sweetly madly." 
 
 There was a pause when he had finished, which, 
 waiting, he did not dare to break. 
 
 " There is one little thing I almost forgot to tell 
 you," she said, very softly, very slowly, very clearly. 
 " I do love you. I have never loved you so much 
 as right now. After our dozen years you ve bowled 
 me over at last. And I was bowled over from the 
 beginning, although I did not know it. I have made 
 up my mind now, once and for all." 
 
 She hung up abruptly. 
 
 With the thought that he knew how a man felt 
 receiving a reprieve at the eleventh hour, Dick sat 
 on, thinking, forgetful that he* had not hooked the 
 
380 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 receiver, until Bonbright came in from the secre 
 taries room to remind him. 
 
 " It was from Mr. Bishop," Bonbright explained. 
 " Sprung an axle. I took the liberty of sending one 
 of our machines to bring them in." 
 
 " And see what our men can do with repairing 
 theirs," Dick nodded. 
 
 Alone again, he got up and stretched, walked ab 
 sently the length of the room and back. 
 
 " Well, Martinez, old man," he addressed the 
 empty air, " this afternoon you ll be defrauded out 
 of as fine a histrionic stunt as you will never know 
 you ve missed." 
 
 He pressed the switch for Paula s telephone and 
 rang her up. 
 
 Oh Dear answered, and quickly brought her mis 
 tress. 
 
 " I ve a little song I want to sing to you, Paul," 
 he said, then chanted the old negro spiritual : 
 
 " Fer itself, fer itself, 
 Fer itself, fer itself, 
 Every soul got ter confess 
 Fer itself/ 
 
 " And I want you to tell me again, fer yourself, 
 fer yourself, what you just told me." 
 
 Her laughter came in a merry gurgle that de 
 lighted him. 
 
 " Red Cloud, I do love you," she said. " My 
 mind is made up. I shall never have any man but 
 you in all this world. Now be good, and let me 
 dress. I ll have to rush for lunch as it is." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 381 
 
 "May I come over? for a moment?" he 
 begged. 
 
 " Not yet, eager one. In ten minutes. Let me 
 finish with Oh Dear first. Then I ll be all ready 
 for the hunt. I m putting on my Robin Hood out 
 fit you know, the greens and russets and the long 
 feather. And I m taking my 30-30. It s heavy 
 enough for mountain lions." 
 
 " You ve made me very happy," Dick continued. 
 
 " And you re making me late. Ring off. Red 
 Cloud, I love you more this minute - 
 
 He heard her hang up, and was surprised, the 
 next moment, that somehow he was reluctant to yield 
 to the happiness that he had claimed was his. 
 Rather, did it seem that he could still hear her voice 
 and Graham s recklessly singing the " Gypsy Trail." 
 
 Had she been playing with Graham? Or had she 
 been playing with him? Such conduct, for her, was 
 unprecedented and incomprehensible. As he groped 
 for a solution, he saw her again in the moonlight, 
 clinging to Graham with upturned lips, drawing Gra 
 ham s lips down to hers. 
 
 Dick shook his head in bafflement, and glanced at 
 his watch. At any rate, in ten minutes, in less than 
 ten minutes, he would hold her in his arms and know. 
 
 So tedious was the brief space of time that he 
 strolled slowly on the way, pausing to light a ciga 
 rette, throwing it away with the first inhalation, 
 pausing again to listen to the busy click of type 
 writers from the secretaries room. With still two 
 minutes to spare, and knowing that one minute would 
 take him to the door without a knob, he stopped in 
 
382 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 the patio and gazed at the wild canaries bathing in 
 the fountain. 
 
 When they startled into the air, a cloud of flutter 
 ing gold and crystal droppings in the sunshine, Dick 
 startled. The report of the rifle had come from 
 Paula s wing above, and he identified it as her 30-30 
 as he dashed across the patio. She beat me to it, 
 was his next thought, and what had been incompre 
 hensible the moment before was as sharply definite as 
 the roar of her rifle. 
 
 And across the patio, up the stairs, through the 
 door left wide-flung behind him, continued to pulse 
 in his brain : She beat me to It. She beat me to it. 
 
 She lay, crumpled and quivering, in hunting cos 
 tume complete, save for the pair of tiny bronze spurs 
 held over her in anguished impotence by the fright 
 ened maid. 
 
 His examination was quick. Paula breathed, al 
 though she was unconscious. From front to back, 
 on the left side, the bullet had torn through. His 
 next spring was to the telephone, and as he waited 
 the delay of connecting through the house central 
 he prayed that Hennessy would be at the stallion 
 barn. A stable boy answered, and, while he ran 
 to fetch the veterinary, Dick ordered Oh Joy to 
 stay by the switches, and to send Oh My to him at 
 once. 
 
 From the tail of his eye he saw Graham rush into 
 the room and on to Paula. 
 
 " Hennessy," Dick commanded. " Come on the 
 jump. Bring the needful for first aid. It s a rifle 
 shot through the lungs or heart or both. Come right- 
 to Mrs. Forrest s rooms. Now jump." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 383 
 
 " Don t touch her," he said sharply to Graham. 
 " It might make it worse, start a worse hemorrhage." 
 
 Next he was back at Oh Joy. 
 
 " Start Callahan with the racing car for Eldorado. 
 Tell him he ll meet Doctor Robinson on the way, 
 and that he is to bring Doctor Robinson back with 
 him on the jump. Tell him to jump like the devil 
 was after him. Tell him Mrs. Forrest is hurt and 
 that if he makes time he ll save her life." 
 
 Receiver to ear, he turned to look at Paula. Gra 
 ham, bending over her but not touching her, met his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Forrest," he began, " if you have done " 
 
 But Dick hushed him with a warning glance di 
 rected toward Oh Dear who still held the bronze 
 spurs in speechless helplessness. 
 
 " It can be discussed later," Dick said shortly, as 
 he turned his mouth to the transmitter. 
 
 u Doctor Robinson? . . . Good. Mrs. Forrest 
 has a rifle-shot through lungs or heart or maybe 
 both. Callahan is on his way to meet you in the rac 
 ing car. Keep coming as fast as God ll let you till 
 you meet Callahan. Good-by." 
 
 Back to Paula, Graham stepped aside as Dick, on 
 his knees, bent over her. His examination was 
 brief. He looked up at Graham with a shake of the 
 head and said: 
 
 " It s too ticklish to fool with." 
 
 He turned to Oh Dear. 
 
 " Put down those spurs and bring pillows. 
 Evan, lend a hand on the other side, and lift gently 
 and steadily. Oh Dear, shove that pillow under 
 easy, easy." 
 
384 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 He looked up and saw Oh My standing silently, 
 awaiting orders. 
 
 u Get Mr. Bonbright to relieve Oh Joy at the 
 switches," Dick commanded. " Tell Oh Joy to 
 stand near to Mr. Bonbright to rush orders. Tell 
 Oh Joy to have all the house boys around him to 
 rush the orders. As soon as Saunders comes back 
 with Mr. Bishop s crowd, tell Oh Joy to start him 
 out on the jump to Eldorado to look for Callahan 
 in case Callahan has a smash up. Tell Oh Joy to 
 get hold of Mr. Manson, and Mr. Pitts or any two 
 of the managers who have machines and have them, 
 with their machines, waiting here at the house. Tell 
 Oh Joy to take care of Mr. Bishop s crowd as usual. 
 And you come back here where I can call you." 
 
 Dick turned to Oh Dear. 
 
 " Now tell me how it happened." 
 
 Oh Dear shook her head and wrung her hands. 
 
 " Where were you when the rifle went off? " 
 
 The Chinese girl swallowed and pointed toward 
 the wardrobe room. 
 
 " Go on, talk," Dick commanded harshly. 
 
 " Mrs. Forrest tell me to get spurs. I forget be 
 fore. I go quick. I hear gun. I come back quick. 
 I run." 
 
 She pointed to Paula to show what she had found. 
 
 " But the gun? " Dick asked. 
 
 " Some trouble. Maybe gun no work. Maybe 
 four minutes, maybe five minutes, Mrs. Forrest try 
 make gun work." 
 
 " Was she trying to make the gun work when you 
 went for the spurs? " 
 
 Oh Dear nodded. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 385 
 
 " Before that I say maybe Oh Joy can fix gun. 
 Mrs. Forrest say never mind. She say you can fix. 
 She put gun down. Then she try once more fix gun. 
 Then she tell me get spurs. Then . . . gun go 
 off." 
 
 Hennessy s arrival shut off further interrogation. 
 His examination was scarcely less brief than Dick s. 
 He looked up with a shake of the head. 
 
 " Nothing I can dare tackle, Mr. Forrest. The 
 hemorrhage has eased of itself, though it must be 
 gathering inside. You ve sent for a doctor? " 
 
 "Robinson. I caught him in his office. He s 
 young, a good surgeon," Dick explained to Graham. 
 " He s nervy and daring, and I d trust him in this 
 farther than some of the old ones with reputations. 
 What do you think, Mr. Hennessy? What 
 chance has she? " 
 
 " Looks pretty bad, though I m no judge, being 
 only a horse doctor. Robinson ll know. Nothing 
 to do but wait." 
 
 Dick nodded and walked out on Paula s sleeping 
 porch to listen for the exhaust of the racing machine 
 Callahan drove. He heard the ranch limousine ar 
 rive leisurely and swiftly depart. Graham came out 
 on the porch to him. 
 
 " I want to apologize, Forrest," he said. :< I was 
 rather off for the moment. I found you here, and I 
 thought you were here when it happened. It must 
 have been an accident. " 
 
 " Poor little kid," Dick agreed. " And she so 
 prided herself on never being careless with guns." 
 
 " I ve looked at the rifle," Graham said, " but I 
 couldn t find anything wrong with it." 
 
386 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 I 
 
 " And that s how it happened. Whatever was 
 wrong got right. That s how it went off." 
 
 And while Dick talked, building the fabric of the! 
 lie so that even Graham should be fooled, to him-l 
 self he was understanding how well Paula had played 
 the trick. That last singing of the " Gypsy Trail " 
 had been her farewell to Graham and at the same 
 time had provided against any suspicion on his part 
 of what she had intended directly to do. It had 
 been the same with him. She had had her farewell 
 with him, and, the last thing, over the telephone, had 
 assured him that she would never have any man but 
 him in all the world. 
 
 He walked away from Graham to the far end of 
 the-porch. 
 
 " She had the grit, she had the grit," he muttered 
 to himself with quivering lips. u Poor kid. She 
 couldn t decide between the two, and so she solved it 
 v this way^ ^ 
 
 The noise of the racing machine drew him and 
 Graham together, and together they entered the 
 room to wait for the doctor. Graham betrayed un 
 rest, reluctant to go, yet feeling that he must. 
 
 " Please stay on, Evan," Dick told him. " She 
 liked you much, and if she does open her eyes she ll 
 be glad to see you." 
 
 Dick and Graham stood apart from Paula while 
 Doctor Robinson made his examination. When he 
 arose with an air of finality, Dick looked his ques 
 tion. Robinson shook his head. 
 
 " Nothing to be done," he said. " It is a matter 
 of hours, maybe of minutes." He hesitated, study 
 ing Dick s face for a moment. " I can ease her off 
 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 
 
 387 
 
 if you say the word. She might possibly recover 
 consciousness and suffer for a space." 
 
 Dick took a turn down the room and back, and 
 when he spoke it was to Graham. 
 
 u Why not let her live again, brief as the time 
 may be ? The pain is immaterial. It will have its 
 inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I would wish, 
 what you would wish. She loved life, every mo 
 ment of it. Why should we deny her any of the lit 
 tle left her?" 
 
 Graham bent his head in agreement, and Dick 
 turned to the doctor. 
 
 " Perhaps you can stir her, stimulate her, to a 
 return of consciousness. If you can, do so. And 
 if the pain proves too severe, then you can ease her." 
 
 When her eyes fluttered open, Dick nodded Gra 
 ham up beside him. At first bewilderment was all 
 she betrayed, then her eyes focused first on Dick s 
 face, then on Graham s, and, with recognition, her 
 lips parted in a pitiful smile. 
 
 " I ... I thought at first that I was dead," she 
 aid. 
 
 But quickly another thought was in her mind, and 
 Dick divined it in her eyes as they searched him. 
 The question was if he knew it was no accident. He 
 gave no sign. She had planned it so, and she must 
 pass believing it so. 
 
 "I ... was . . . wrong," she said. She spoke 
 slowly, faintly, in evident pain, with a pause for 
 strength of utterance between each word. ; I was 
 always so cocksure I d never have an accident, and 
 look what I ve gone and done." 
 
388 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 :t It s a darn shame," Dick said, sympathetically. 
 What was it? A jam?" 
 
 She nodded, and again her lips parted in the piti 
 ful brave smile as she said whimsically: " Oh, 
 Dick, go call the neighbors in and show them what 
 little Paula s din. 
 
 "How serious is it?" she asked. " Be honest, 
 Red Cloud, you know me" she added, after the 
 briefest of pauses in which Dick had not replied. 
 
 He shook his head. 
 
 " How long? " she queried. 
 
 " Not long," came his answer. " You can ease 
 off any time." 
 
 You mean . . .? " She glanced aside curiously 
 at the doctor and back to Dick, who nodded. 
 
 " It s only what I should have expected from you, 
 Red Cloud," she murmured gratefully. " But is 
 Doctor Robinson game for it? " 
 
 The doctor stepped around so that she could see 
 him, and nodded. 
 
 Thank you, doctor. And remember, I am to 
 say when." 
 
 " Is there much pain? " Dick queried. 
 
 Her eyes were wide and brave and dreadful, and 
 her lips quivered for the moment ere she replied, 
 " Not much, but dreadful, quite dreadful. I won t 
 care to stand it very long. I ll say when." 
 
 Once more the smile on her lips announced a 
 whimsey. 
 
 "Life is queer, most queer, isn t it? And do 
 you know, I want to go out with love-songs in my 
 ears. You first, Evan, sing the Gypsy Trail. 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 389 
 
 Why, I was singing it with you less than an hour 
 ago. Think of it! Do, Evan, please." 
 
 Graham looked to Dick for permission, and Dick 
 gave it with his eyes. 
 
 " Oh, and sing it robustly, gladly, madly, just as 
 a womaning Gypsy man should sing it," she urged. 
 " And stand back there, so, where I can see you." 
 
 And while Graham sang the whole song through 
 to its: 
 
 " The heart of a man to the heart of a maid, light of my 
 
 tents be fleet, 
 
 Morning waits at the end of the world and the world is 
 all at our feet," 
 
 Oh My, immobile-faced, a statue, stood in the far 
 doorway awaiting commands. Oh Dear, grief- 
 stricken, stood at her mistress s head, no longer 
 wringing her hands, but holding them so tightly 
 clasped that the finger-tips and nails showed white. 
 To the rear, at Paula s dressing table, Doctor Rob 
 inson noiselessly dissolved in a glass the anodyne pel 
 lets and filled his hypodermic. 
 
 When Graham had finished, Paula thanked him 
 with her eyes, closed them, and lay still for a space. 
 
 " And now, Red Cloud," she said when next she 
 opened them, " the song of Ai-kut, and of the Dew- 
 Woman, the Lush-Woman. Stand where Evan did, 
 so that I can see you well." 
 
 And Dick chanted: 
 
 " I am Ai-kut, the first man of the Nishinam. 
 Ai-kut is the short for Adam, and my father and 
 my mother were the coyote and the moon. And 
 
390 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 this is Yo-to-to-wi, my wife. Yo-to-to-wi is the short 
 for Eve. She is the first woman of the Nishinam. 
 
 " Me, I am Ai-kut. This is my dew of women. 
 This is my honey-dew of women. Her father and 
 her mother were the Sierra dawn and the summer 
 east wind of the mountains. Together they con 
 spired, and from the air and earth they sweated all 
 sweetness till in a mist of their own love the leaves 
 of the chaparral and the manzanita were dewed with 
 the honey dew. 
 
 Yo-to-to-wi is my honey-dew woman. Hear 
 me ! I am Ai-kut ! Yo-to-to-wi is my quail-woman, 
 my deer-woman, my lush-woman of all soft rain and 
 fat soil. She was born of the thin starlight and the 
 brittle dawn-light, in the morning of the world, and 
 she is the one woman of all women to me." 
 
 Again, with closed eyes, she lay silent for a while. 
 Once she attempted to draw a deeper breath, which 
 caused her to cough slightly several times. 
 
 4 Try not to cough," Dick said. 
 
 They could see her brows contract with the effort 
 of will to control the irritating tickle that might pre 
 cipitate a paroxysm. 
 
 " Oh Dear, come around where I can see you," 
 she said, when she opened her eyes. 
 
 The Chinese girl obeyed, moving blindly, so that 
 Robinson, with a hand on her arm, was compelled to 
 guide her. 
 
 " Good-by, Oh Dear. You ve been very good 
 to me always. And sometimes, maybe, I have not 
 been good to you. I am sorry. Remember, Mr. 
 Forrest will always be your father and your mother. 
 . . . And all my jade is yours." 
 
OF THE BIG HOUSE 391 
 
 She closed her eyes in token that the brief audience 
 was over. 
 
 Again she was vexed by the tickling cough that 
 threatened to grow more pronounced. 
 
 " I am ready, Dick," she said faintly, still with 
 closed eyes. " I want to make my sleepy, sleepy 
 noise. Is the doctor ready? Come closer. Hold 
 my hand like you did before in the little death." 
 
 She turned her eyes to Graham, and Dick did not 
 look, for he knew love was in that last look of hers, 
 as he knew it would be when she looked into his eyes 
 at the last. 
 
 " Once," she explained to Graham, " I had to go 
 on the table, and I made Dick go with me into the 
 anaesthetic chamber and hold my hand until I went 
 under. You remember, Henley called it the drunken 
 dark, the little death in life. It was very easy." 
 
 In the silence she continued her look, then turned 
 her face and eyes back to Dick, who knelt close to 
 her, holding her hand. 
 
 With a pressure of her fingers on his and a beck 
 oning of her eyes, she drew his ear down to her 
 lips. 
 
 " Red Cloud," she whispered, " I love you best. 
 And I am proud I belonged to you for such a long, 
 long time." Still closer she drew him with the 
 pressure of her fingers. " I m sorry there were no 
 babies, Red Cloud." 
 
 With the relaxing of her fingers she eased him 
 from her so that she could look from one to the 
 other. 
 
 " Two bonnie, bonnie men. Good-by, bonnie 
 men. Good-by, Red Cloud." 
 
392 THE LITTLE LADY 
 
 In the pause, they waited, while the doctor bared 
 her arm for the needle. 
 
 " Sleepy, sleepy/ she twittered in mimicry of 
 drowsy birds. " I am ready, doctor. Stretch the 
 skin tight, first. You know I don t like to be hurt. 
 Hold me tight, Dick." 
 
 Robinson, receiving the eye permission from Dick, 
 easily and quickly thrust the needle through the 
 stretched skin, with steady hand sank the piston 
 home, and with the ball of the finger soothingly 
 rubbed the morphine into circulation. 
 
 " Sleepy, sleepy, boo ful sleepy," she murmured 
 drowsily, after a time. 
 
 Semi-consciously she half-turned on her side, 
 curved her free arm on the pillow and nestled her 
 head on it, and drew her body up in nestling curves 
 in the way Dick knew she loved to sleep. 
 
 After a long time, she sighed faintly, and began 
 so easily to go that she was gone before they guessed. 
 From without, the twittering of the canaries bathing 
 in the fountain penetrated the silence of the room, 
 and from afar came the trumpeting of Mountain 
 Lad and the silver whinny of the Fotherington 
 Princess. 
 
 THE END 
 
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