As Miss Eyester had opined, Miss Macpherson was taking her tonic, or about to.
"I"ve come to make a suggestion, Auntie," Wallie began, with a little diffidence.
"What is it?" Miss Macpherson was shaking the bottle.
"Let"s not go South this winter."
"Where then?" She smiled indulgently as she measured out the medicine.
"Why not California or Arizona?" he suggested.
"I don"t believe this tonic helps me a particle." She made a wry face as she swallowed it.
"That"s it," he declared, eagerly. "You need a change--we both do."
"I"m too set in my ways to enjoy new experiences, and I don"t like strangers. We might catch contagious diseases, and there is no place where we could be so comfortable as in Florida. No," she shook her head kindly but firmly, "we will go South as usual."
"Oh--_sugar!_" The vehemence with which Wallie uttered the expletive showed the extent of his disappointment.
"Wallie! I"m surprised at you!" She regarded him with annoyance.
"I"m tired of going to the same places year after year, doing the same thing, seeing the same old fossils!"
"Wallie, you are speaking of my friends and yours," she reminded him.
"They"re all right, but I like to make new ones. I don"t want to go, Aunt Mary."
She said significantly:
"Don"t you think you are a little ungrateful--in the circ.u.mstances?"
It was the first time she had ever reminded him of his dependency.
"If you mean I am an ingrate, that is an unpleasant word, Aunt Mary."
She shrugged her shoulder.
"Place your own interpretation upon it, Wallace."
"Perhaps you think I am not capable of earning my own living?"
"I have not _said_ so."
"But you mean it!" he cried, hotly.
Miss Macpherson was nearly as amazed as Wallie to hear herself saying:
"Possibly you had better try it."
She had taken two cups of strong coffee that morning and her nerves were over-stimulated, and perhaps with the intuition of a jealous woman she half suspected that "the girl from Wyoming" had something to do with his restlessness and desire to go West. The time she most dreaded was the day when she would have to share her nephew with another woman.
Wallie"s eyes were blazing when he answered:
"I shall! I shall never be beholden to you for another penny. When I wanted to do something for myself you wouldn"t let me. You"re not fair, Aunt Mary!"
Pale and breathing heavily in their emotion, they looked at each other with hard, angry eyes--eyes in which there was not a trace of the affection which for years had existed between them.
"Suit yourself," she said, finally, and turned her back on him.
Wallie went to his room in a daze, too bewildered to realize immediately what had happened. That he had quarrelled with his aunt, permanently, irrevocably, seemed incredible. But he would never eat her bread of charity again--he had said it. As for her, he knew her Scotch stubbornness too well to think that she would offer it. No, he was sure the break was final.
A sense of freedom came to him gradually as it grew upon him that he was loose from the ap.r.o.n-strings that had led him since childhood. He need never again eat food he did not like because it was "good for him." He could sit in draughts if he wanted to and sneeze his head off. He could put on his woollen underwear when he got darned good and ready. He could swim when there were white caps in the harbour and choose his own clothing.
A fine feeling of exultation swept over Wallie as he strode up and down with an eye to the way he looked in the mirror. He was free of petticoat domination. He was no longer a "squaw-man," and he would not be one again for a million dollars! He would "show" Aunt Mary--he would "show"
Helene Spenceley--he would "show" _everybody!_
CHAPTER VI
"BURNING HIS BRIDGES"
Wallie opened his eyes one morning with the subconscious feeling that something portentous was impending though he was still too drowsy to remember it.
He yawned and stretched languidly and luxuriously on a bed which was the last word in comfort, since Mr. Cone"s pride in The Colonial beds was second only to that of his pride in the hotel"s reputation for exclusiveness. With especially made mattresses and monogrammed linen, silken coverlets and imported blankets, his boasts were amply justified, and the beds perhaps accounted for the frequency with which the guests tried to get into the dining room when the breakfast hours were over.
A bit of yellow paper on the chiffonier brought Wallie to his full sense as his eyes fell upon it. It was the answer to a telegram he had sent Pinkey Fripp, in Prouty, Wyoming, making inquiries as to the possibility of taking up a homestead.
It read:
They"s a good piece of ground you can file on if you got the guts to hold it.
PINKEY.
Wallie grew warm every time he thought of such a message addressed to him coming over the wire. Though worse than inelegant, and partially unintelligible, it was plain enough that what he wanted was there if he went for it, and he had replied that Pinkey might look for him shortly in Prouty.
And to-day he was leaving! He was saying good-bye forever to the hotel that was like home to him and the friends that were as his own relatives! He had $2,100 in real money--a legacy--and his clothing. In his new-born spirit of independence he wished that he might even leave his clothes behind him, but he had changed his mind when he had figured the cost of buying others.
His aunt had taken no notice of Wallie"s preparations for departure. The news of the rupture had spread quickly, and the sympathies of the guests were equally divided. All were agreed, however, that if Wallie went West he would soon have enough of it and be back in time to go South for the winter.
Helene Spenceley had left unexpectedly upon the receipt of a telegram, and it was one of Wallie"s favourite speculations as to what she would say when she heard he was a neighbour--something disagreeable, probably.
With the solemnity which a person might feel who is planning his own funeral, Wallie arose and made a careful toilet. It would be the last in the room that he had occupied for so many summers. The hangings were handsome, the chairs luxurious, and his feet sunk deep in the nap of the velvet carpet. The equipment of the white, commodious bathroom was perfection, and no article of furniture was missing from his bedroom that could contribute to the comfort of a modish young man accustomed to every modern convenience.
As Wallie took his shower and dusted himself with scented talc.u.m and applied the various lotions and skin-foods recommended for the complexion, he wondered what the hotel accommodations would be like in Prouty, Wyoming. Not up to much, he imagined, but he decided that he would duplicate this bathroom in his own residence as soon as he had his homestead going. Wallie"s knowledge of Wyoming was gathered chiefly from an atlas he had borrowed from Mr. Cone. The atlas stated briefly that it contained 97,890 square miles, mostly arid, and a population of 92,531.
It gave the impression that the editors themselves were hazy on Wyoming, which very likely was the truth, since it had been published in Mr.
Cone"s childhood when the state was a territory.