And just here, with a little clatter, her back comb struck the floor,
bounding to the other side of the pavilion. As I scrambled to get it,
her voice lifted through a choke of laughter:
"'It is not worth the keeping; let it go!'"
The idea!
I laughed as I caught the thing up and whirled, my hand outstretched to
lay it in her own. She was on her feet, pulling down her belt, and
paused to lift away a leaf that clung to her snowy skirt. And just here,
the gardener's voice lifted startlingly across the park to some one
distant and invisible:
"Better bring paris green, Jud; it's the only way we'll ever get rid of
'em," he bawled. "I see they're going after the leaves now, and they can
live on them and air. Pizen'll fix 'em, though!"
The comb outstretched, I stood staring at Frances, doubled over and
writhing. And then, with a long-drawn gasp that was half a screech, her
lithesome figure straightened, her head went back, and from her throat
there trilled the very joy of health and youth and happy days.
"Oh!" she gasped, her hand pressing to her side. And while I looked at
her anxiously, she went on pantingly, her eyes bright with tears:
"'But shall it? Answer, darling, answer no,
And trust me not at all or all in all.'"
"Jove!" I said delightedly, placing the comb in her outstretched hand
and pressing it--the hand, I mean, dash it! "I _do_, don't you know! I
trust you all in all!"
CHAPTER XXX
THE JUDGE FIXES "FOXY GRANDPA"
"But tell you, sir, he is _not_ my son!" The judge was bending over the
desk 'phone as I looked in a half hour later. His voice rose in a
crescendo of rage: "Wha--what's _that_? Do I want to speak with him?
Certainly _not_, sir--and I _won't_!... Um, yes--John W. Billings--yes,
that's his name.... Stuff and nonsense, sir! He's up-stairs now in his
room.... Says what?"--the judge's eyes rolled frowningly upward as he
listened; then he licked his lips and bent again, speaking with
passionate incisiveness: "Why, dammit, man, I've just this minute been
talking to him--just left him, y'understand.... _Certainly_ your man's
an impostor--_you_ ought to know that!... Yes, this is Judge Billings,
himself.... Eh? Oh, that's all _right_, but now let me tell you
something"--he cleared his throat and gathered his voice in cold,
deliberate accents: "You let me be annoyed again from your precinct, and
I can promise _you_ that.... Um, well that's all right then.... 'Bye!"
He banged the receiver to the hook and faced about, muttering things to
himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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