第4章

When he took possession of his hall bedroom the next day and came down to his first meal, all the boarders looked at him interestedly.

They had heard of the G.Destroyer from Mrs.Bowse, whose grippe had disappeared.Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger looked at him because they were about his own age, and shared a hall bedroom on his floor;the young woman from the notion counter in a down-town department store looked at him because she was a young woman; the rest of the company looked at him because a young man in a hall bedroom might or might not be noisy or objectionable, and the incident of the G.

Destroyer sounded good-natured.Mr.Joseph Hutchinson, the stout and discontented Englishman from Manchester, looked him over because the mere fact that he was a new-comer had placed him by his own rash act in the position of a target for criticism.Mr.Hutchinson had come to New York because he had been told that he could find backers among profuse and innumerable multi- millionaires for the invention which had been the haunting vision of his uninspiring life.He had not been met with the careless rapture which had been described to him, and he was becoming violently antagonistic to American capital and pessimistic in his views of American institutions.Like Tembarom's father, he was the resentful Englishman.

"I don't think much o' that chap," he said in what he considered an undertone to his daughter, who sat beside him and tried to manage that he should not be infuriated by waiting for butter and bread and second helpings.A fine, healthy old feudal feeling that servants should be roared at if they did not "look sharp" when he wanted anything was one of his salient characteristics.

"Wait a bit, Father; we don't know anything about him yet," Ann Hutchinson murmured quietly, hoping that his words had been lost in the clatter of knives and forks and dishes.

As Tembarom had taken his seat, he had found that, when he looked across the table, he looked directly at Miss Hutchinson; and before the meal ended he felt that he was in great good luck to be placed opposite an object of such singular interest.He knew nothing about "types," but if he had been of those who do, he would probably have said to himself that she was of a type apart.As it was, he merely felt that she was of a kind one kept looking at whether one ought to or not.She was a little thing of that exceedingly light slimness of build which makes a girl a childish feather-weight.Few girls retain it after fourteen or fifteen.A wind might supposably have blown her away, but one knew it would not, because she was firm and steady on her small feet.Ordinary strength could have lifted her with one hand, and would have been tempted to do it.She had a slim, round throat, and the English daisy face it upheld caused it to suggest to the mind the stem of a flower.The roundness of her cheek, in and out of which totally unexpected dimples flickered, and the forget-me-not blueness of her eyes, which were large and rather round also, made her look like a nice baby of singularly serious and observing mind.She looked at one as certain awe-inspiring things in perambulators look at one--with a far and clear silence of gaze which passes beyond earthly obstacles and reserves a benign patience with follies.Tembarom felt interestedly that one really might quail before it, if one had anything of an inferior quality to hide.And yet it was not a critical gaze at all.She wore a black dress with a bit of white collar, and she had so much soft, red hair that he could not help recalling one or two women who owned the same quantity and seemed able to carry it only as a sort of untidy bundle.Hers looked entirely under control, and yet was such a wonder of burnished fullness that it tempted the hand to reach out and touch it.It became Tembarom's task during the meal to keep his eyes from turning too often toward it and its owner.

If she had been a girl who took things hard, she might have taken her father very hard indeed.But opinions and feelings being solely a matter of points of view, she was very fond of him, and, regarding him as a sacred charge and duty, took care of him as though she had been a reverentially inclined mother taking care of a boisterous son.

When his roar was heard, her calm little voice always fell quietly on indignant ears the moment it ceased.It was her part in life to act as a palliative: her mother, whose well-trained attitude toward the ruling domestic male was of the early Victorian order, had lived and died one.A nicer, warmer little woman had never existed.Joseph Hutchinson had adored and depended on her as much as he had harried her.When he had charged about like a mad bull because he could not button his collar, or find the pipe he had mislaid in his own pocket, she had never said more than "Now, Mr.Hutchinson," or done more than leave her sewing to button the collar with soothing fingers, and suggest quietly that sometimes he DID chance to carry his pipe about with him.She was of the class which used to call its husband by a respectful surname.When she died she left him as a sort of legacy to her daughter, spending the last weeks of her life in explaining affectionately all that "Father" needed to keep him quiet and make him comfortable.

Little Ann had never forgotten a detail, and had even improved upon some of them, as she happened to be cleverer than her mother, and had, indeed, a far-seeing and clear young mind of her own.She had been called "Little Ann" all her life.This had held in the first place because her mother's name had been Ann also, and after her mother's death the diminutive had not fallen away from her.People felt it belonged to her not because she was especially little, though she was a small, light person, but because there was an affectionate humor in the sound of it.