The Business of Life

She had seated herself on the bed's edge, leaning over the girl where she lay on her pillows.

"Answer me," she insisted. "Of what use am I to you?"

For a full minute the girl lay there looking up at her without stirring. Then a smile glimmered in her eyes; she lifted both arms and laid them on the older woman's shoulders.

"You are useful – this way," she said; and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

The effect on Aunt Hannah was abrupt; she caught the girl to her breast and held her there fiercely and in silence for a moment; then, releasing her, tucked her in with mute violence, turned off the light and marched out without a word.

Day after day Desboro's guests continued to turn the house inside out, ransacking it from garret to cellar.

"We don't intend to do anything in this house that anybody has ever done here, or at any house party," explained Reggie Ledyard to Jacqueline. "So if any lady cares to walk down stairs on her head the incident will be quite in order."

"Can she slide down the banisters instead?" asked Helsa Steyr.

"Oh, you'll have to slide up to be original," said Betty Barkley.

"How can anybody slide up the banisters?" demanded Reggie hotly.

"You've the intellect of a terrapin," said Betty scornfully. "It's because nobody has ever done it that it ought to be done here."

Desboro, seated on the pool table, told her she could do whatever she desired, including arson, as long as she didn't disturb the Aqueduct Police.

Katharine Frere said to Jacqueline: "Everything you do is so original. Can't you invent something new for us to do?"

"She might suggest that you all try to think," said Mrs. Hammerton tartly. "That would be novelty enough."

Cairns seized the megaphone and shouted: "Help! Help! Aunt Hannah is after us!"

Captain Herrendene, seated beside Desboro with a half smile on his face, glanced across at Jacqueline who stood in the embrasure of a window, a billiard cue resting across her shoulders.

"Please invent something for us, Miss Nevers," he said.

"Why don't you play hide and seek?" sneered Mrs. Hammerton, busily knitting a tie. "It's suited to your intellects."

"Let Miss Nevers suggest a new way of playing the oldest game ever invented," added Betty Barkley. "There is no possibility of inventing anything new; everything was first done in the year one. Even protoplasmic cells played hide-and-seek together."

"What rot!" said Reggie. "You can't play that in a new way."

"You could play it in a sporting way," said Cairns.

"How's that, old top?"

"Well, for example, you conceal yourself, and whatever girl finds you has got to marry you. How's that for a reckless suggestion?"

But it had given Reggie something resembling an idea.

"Let us be hot sports," he said, with animation; "draw lots to see which girl will hide somewhere in the house; make a time-limit of one hour; and if any man finds her she'll marry him. There isn't a girl here," he added, jeeringly, "who has the sporting nerve to try it!"

A chorus of protests greeted the challenge. Athalie Vannis declared that she was crazy to marry somebody; but she insisted that the men would only pretend to search, and were really too cowardly to hunt in earnest. Cairns retorted that the girl in concealment would never permit a real live man to miss her hiding place while she possessed lungs to reveal it.

"There isn't," repeated Reggie, "a girl who has the nerve! Not one!" He inspected them scornfully through the wrong end of the megaphone. "Phony sports," he added. "No nerves and all fidgets. Look at me; I don't want to get married; but I'm game for an hour. There isn't a girl here to call my bluff!" And he ventured to glance at Jacqueline.

"They've had a chance to look at you by daylight, Reggie, and that is fatal," said Cairns. "Now, if they were only sure that I'd discover 'em, or the god-like captain yonder, or the beautiful Mr. Desboro – "

"I've half a mind to do it," said Helsa Steyr. "Marie, will you draw lots to see who hides?"

"Why doesn't a man hide?" drawled Miss Ledyard. "I'm very sure I could drag him to the altar in ten minutes."

Cairns had found a sheet of paper, torn it into slips, and written down every woman's name, including Aunt Hannah's.

"She's retired to her room in disgust," said Jacqueline, laughing.

"Is she included?" faltered Reggie.

"You've brought it on yourself," said Cairns. "Are you going to renig just because Aunt Hannah is a possible prize? Are you really a tin sport?"

"No, by heck! Come on, Katharine!" to Miss Frere. "But Betty Barkley can't figure in this, or there may be bigamy done."

"That makes it a better sporting proposition," said Betty coolly. "I insist on figuring; Bertie can take his chances."

"Then I'm jingled if I don't play, too," said Barkley. "And I'm not sure I'll hunt very hard if it's Betty who hides."

The pretty little woman turned up her nose at her husband and sent a dazzling smile at Desboro.

"I'll whistle three times, like the daughter in the poem," she said. "Please beat my husband to it."

Cairns waved the pool basket aloft: "Come ladies!" he cried. "Somebody reach up and draw; and may heaven smile upon your wedding day!"

Betty Barkley, standing on tip-toe, reached up, stirred the folded ballots with tentative fingers, grasped one, drew it forth, and flourished it.

"Goodness! How my heart really beats!" she said. "I don't know whether I want to open it or not. I hadn't contemplated bigamy."

"If it's my name, I'm done for," said Katharine Frere calmly. "I'm nearly six feet, and I can't conceal them all."

"Open it," said Athalie Vannis, with a shiver. "After all there's the divorce court!" And she looked defiantly at Cairns.

Betty turned over the ballot between forefinger and thumb and regarded it with dainty aversion.

"Well," she said, "if I'm in for a scandal, I might as well know it. Will you be kind to me, Jim, and not flirt with my maid?"

She opened the ballot, examined the name written there, turned and passed it to Jacqueline, who flushed brightly as a delighted shout greeted her.

"The question is," said Reggie Ledyard excitedly, "are you a sport, Miss Nevers, or are you not? Kindly answer with appropriate gestures."

The girl stood with her golden head drooping, staring at the bit of paper in her hand; then, as Desboro watched her, she glanced up with that sudden, reckless smile which he had seen once before – the first day he met her – and made a gay little gesture of acceptance.

"You're not really going to do it, are you?" said Betty, incredulously. "You don't have to; they're every one of them short sports themselves!"