"What in thunder is the matter with you people?" shouted Van. "I"m not going to stay here with that man when there"s nothing the matter with me!"
"There, there," coaxed the boy, "you"re all right, sir; try to go to sleep, can"t you?"
Then Van turned over to the wall and wept salt Freshman tears, and the awe-struck boy gently closed the door. And Cupid, with his wings folded over his little arms, sat upon the bureau and laughed long and cynically.
It was now past twelve o"clock. Church was over, and Dolores was returning. Home-ward gently she rode with surging thoughts in her bosom, and an expression of sweet, religious calm hovering over her straight black brows. That was the Spanish of her. The moment the front door closed behind her she sprinted for the telephone. That was the American of her.
Had Papa Payson not been absorbed in the forty-eight-page Christmas edition of the Los Angeles _Herald_, he might have overheard the following semi-conversation:
"Main eight-double-eight."
"Yes."
"Is this the Westminster?"
"Will you--er--that is--did the Stanford Glee Club leave this morning?"
"Oh! Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Cecil Van d.y.k.e left with them?"
"Oh, I"m so sorry! What"s the matter?"
"Appendicitis!" The receiver dropped and swung against the wall. Dolores had fled to mamma.
Perkins and Mason, treating each other at every station short of the prohibition town of Pomona, would have felt less complacent over their little joke had they seen the procession that left the Hotel Westminster at one-thirty P. M. on that balmy Christmas day. The order of march, as inst.i.tuted by the American Dolores, was as follows:
1. The Payson carriage, with Mrs. and Miss Payson on the forward seat and a tenderly wrapped Freshman on the other, and the coachman instructed to drive gently.
2. Dr. Mead and the devoted bell-boy in a phaeton.
3. Small citizens on foot.
The doctor, obeying to the letter the orders of Perkins, who had commanded him not to leave his patient for one moment, smiled broadly as he gathered the lunatic into his arms and bore him past the fatal poinsettia bushes and up the broad steps where the grave major-domo was waiting to receive them. The scale upon which the Payson household was conducted just suited the ideas of that worthy pract.i.tioner.
On Sat.u.r.day, Perkins and Mason asked at the hotel for Van d.y.k.e and the doctor.
"They gave up their rooms last Monday, not very long after you left,"
said the clerk. "A lady took your friend to her house."
"Who was she?" asked Jimmy, with dark foreboding.
"A Mrs. Payson."
Perkins collapsed on his suit-case. Jimmy made for the desk and began to scan the directory.
"What are you looking for?"
"The P"s. I"m going to haze that rattle-weeded Freshman and slay the doctor."
When the two defeated joshers paused inside the Payson gate, a scene of touching domesticity met their gaze. Under a jasmine-covered corner of the piazza, nestling in the depths of a great easy chair, lay Freshman Van d.y.k.e. Senorita Dolores, in the role of ministering angel, was bending unnecessarily close. Dr. Mead, as near his patient as was consistent with delicacy, was lounging in a hammock, and smoking a good cigar. It is a tradition in Los Angeles clubdom that John Payson imports his cigars direct. In the middle-distance, Mrs. Payson was approaching with a cup of nourishing beef-tea.
Jimmy Mason, afraid to trust himself to the expression of his thoughts in the presence of ladies, was about to vanish gracefully, but Van d.y.k.e caught sight of them.
"h.e.l.lo, fellows. Hear you had a frost in San Diego," cried he.
"You must be very much better--able to be moved, I notice," with a look in Jimmy"s eyes that pointed to future trouble.
"Oh," said the Freshman, "almost recovered. I"ve had the very best of care--and a very satisfactory nurse," and for the last time, in this story, he gazed into those Andalusian eyes.
"But not the nurse we engaged," said the aggrieved Perkins.
"No," said Van, "this young lady was engaged only last evening."
"S-sh," said Senora Payson, pointing to the open window, "Papa may hear you."
POCAHONTAS, FRESHMAN.
Pocahontas, Freshman.
"But when they lookt round for the Ladye Pocahontas, she hadde gone to her Yorke woodes, weepyng they saye."
ROWE"S LIFE OF POCAHONTAS.
I.
To begin with, the college never called her Pocahontas to her face, and no one would have found anything pat in the name until a long-remembered spring afternoon in her Freshman year. After that day, although her instructors still registered her as Hannah Grant Daly, she was generally known as "Pocahontas." Students with visitors would point her out in the Quad. "That"s the girl they call Pocahontas." Then they would tell briefly her story. She knew through her room-mate that the college had nicknamed her, and she grieved over it. She did not know that John Smith himself never called her Pocahontas; she had never dared to look at him since the day they had named her.