Home-Seekers' Goal

Touched by this ingenuous tribute hardly less than by the appeal to his frugality, the Estate accepted the offer. From four to five on the following afternoon, Martin Dyke, appropriately clad in overalls, sat on a plank and painted. On the afternoon following that the lady of the house came home at four-thirty and caught him at it.

"That's going to be ever so much nicer," she called graciously, not recognizing him from the view of his industrious-appearing back.

"Thank you for those few kind words."

"You!" she exclaimed indignantly as he turned a mild and benevolent beam of the eye upon her. "What are you doing to my house?"

"Art. High art."

"How did you get up there?"

"Ladder. High ladder."

"You know that isn't what I mean at all."

"Oh! Well, I've taken a contract to tone down the Midway aspect of your highly respectable residence. One hour per day."

"If you think that this performance is going to do you any good--" she began with withering intonation.

"It's done that already," he hastened to assert. "You've recognized my existence again."

"Only through trickery."

"On the contrary, it's no trick at all to improve on the Mordaunt Estate's art. Now that we've made up again, Miss or Mrs. Leffingwell, as the case may be--"

"We haven't made up. There's nothing to make up."

"Amended to 'Now that we're on speaking terms once more.' Accepted? Thank you. Then let me thank you for those lovely flowers you've been sending me. You can't imagine how they brighten and sweeten my simple and unlovely van life, with their--"

"Mr. Dyke!" Her eyes were flashing now and her color was deeper than the pink of the roses which she had rejected. "You must know that you had no right to send me flowers and that in returning them--"

"Returning? But, dear lady--or girl, as the case may be [here she stamped a violent foot]--if you feel it your duty to return them, why not return them to the florist or the sender? Marked though my attentions may have been, does that justify you in assuming that I am, so to speak, the only floral prospect in the park? There's the Dominie, for instance. He's notoriously your admirer, and I've seen him at Eberling's quite lately." (Mendacious young scoundrel!)

For the moment she was beguiled by the plausibility of his manner.

"How should he know that pink roses are my favorites?" she said uncertainly.

"How should I, for that matter?" he retorted at once. "Though any idiot could see at a glance that you're at least half sister to the whole rose tribe."

"Now you're beginning again," she complained. "You see, it's impossible to treat you as an ordinary acquaintance."

"But what do you think of me as a painter-man?" inquired the bewildering youth.

Preparatory to entering the house she had taken off her gloves, and now one pinky-brown hand rested on the door lintel below him. "The question is," said she, "wasn't it really you that sent the roses, and don't you realize that you mustn't?"

"The question is," he repeated, "whether, being denied the ordinary avenues of approach to a shrine, one is justified in jumping the fence with one's votive offerings. Now I hold--"

Her left hand, shifting a little, flashed a gleam of gold into his eager eyes, striking him into silence. When he spoke again, all the vividness was gone from his voice. "I beg your pardon," he said. "Yes; I sent the roses. You shan't be troubled again in that way--or any other way. Do you mind if I finish this job?"

Victory for the defense! Yet the rosebud face of Anne Leffingwell expressed concern and doubt rather than gratification. There is such a thing as triumph being too complete.

"I think you're doing it very nicely," was the demure reply.

Notwithstanding this encomium, the workman knocked off early to sit on my bench and indulge in the expression of certain undeniable but vague truisms, such as that while there is life there is hope, and it isn't necessary to display a marriage license in order to purchase a plain gold band. But his usual buoyant optimism was lacking; he spoke like one who strives to convince himself. Later on the lady in the case paused to offer to me some contumelious if impersonal reflections upon love at first sight, which she stigmatized as a superstition unworthy of the consideration of serious minds. But there was a dreamy light in her eyes, and the smile on her lips, while it may not have been expressive of serious consideration, was not wholly condemnatory. The carnivorous orchid was having a good day and keeping its own counsel as a sensible orchid expectant of continued patronage should do.

There was an obviously somber tinge to Mr. Dyke's color scheme on the following afternoon, tending to an over-employment of black, when an impressive and noiseless roadster purred its way to the curb, there discharging a quite superb specimen of manhood in glorious raiment. The motorist paused to regard with unfeigned surprise the design of the house front. Presently he recovered sufficiently to ask:

"Could you tell me if Miss Leffingwell lives here?"

The painter turned upon his precarious plank so sharply that he was all but precipitated into the area. "Who?" he said.

"Miss Leffingwell."

"You don't mean Mrs. Leffingwell?" queried the aerial operator in a strained tone.

"No; I don't. I mean Miss Anne Leffingwell."

The painter flourished the implement of his trade to the peril of the immaculate garments below. "Toora-loo!" he warbled.

"I beg your pardon," said the new arrival.

"I said 'Toora-loo.' It's a Patagonian expression signifying satisfaction and relief; sort of I-thought-so-all-the-time effect."

"You seem a rather unusual and learned sort of house painter," reflected the stalwart Adonis. "Is that Patagonian art?"

"Symbolism. It represents hope struggling upward from the oppression of doubt and despair. That," he added, splashing in a prodigal streak of whooping scarlet, "is resurgent joy surmounting the misty mountain-tops of--"

The opening door below him cut short the disquisition.

"Reg!" cried the tenant breathlessly. Straight into the big young man's ready arms she dived, and the petrified and stricken occupant of the dizzy plank heard her muffled voice quaver: "Wh--wh--wh--why didn't you come before?"

To which the young giant responded in gallingly protective tones: "You little idiot!"

The door closed after them. Martin Dyke, amateur house painter, continued blindly to bedeck the face of a ruinous world with radiant hues. After interminable hours (as he reckoned the fifteen elapsed minutes) the tenant escorted her visitor to the door and stood watching him as the powerful and unassertive motor departed. Dazedly the artist descended from his plank to face her.

"Are you going?" he demanded.

A perfectly justifiable response to this unauthorized query would have been that it was no concern of his. But there was that in Martin Dyke's face which hurt the girl to see.

"Yes," she replied.

"With him?"

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