mermaid and monsieur guy vanton made friends with each other quickly, aided, perhaps, by the graces of the french language. at eleven years it is not hard to[100] learn french, especially if your instructor speaks with a pure accent and makes conversation in it the order of the day. mermaid found that guy did not go to school because his father didn’t wish him to, for reasons not given. guy said he didn’t know what was back of his father’s objections, unless it was that he would have to go away from home. “you see, i’ve had the equivalent of high school,” he told mermaid. “it would have to be college—or maybe a year somewhere to get ready for college. i don’t much care. i read a lot—we’ve heaps of books—and i—i write sometimes,” he confessed, diffidently.
“what do you write?” mermaid ventured. “say it in french,” he reminded her and after he had corrected her question so put, he replied in french: “mostly poetry.”
he got quite red, so that tommy lupton, who had been dishonourably spying from behind a shrub in the next yard, was incensed.
“some day i’m going to knock his block off,” tommy told himself.
afterward he accosted mermaid down the street, greeting her calmly but with a touch of sadness in his tone. she was a nice, if misguided, girl; tommy didn’t want to hurt her feelings but this business couldn’t be allowed to go on.
“say, mermaid,” he began, and then faltered a moment in the performance of his unpleasant duty.[101] “we—we never see anything of you any more these days,” he finished. it was not just the thing, but it was, perhaps, best to lead up to the point gradually.
mermaid seemed unaware that anything was wrong.
“come down to the house, tommy, and i’ll give you a cookie,” she invited him sweetly.
“i don’t believe i want a cookie. i don’t believe i want anything to eat,” answered mr. lupton, seriously.
mermaid looked at him with attention. “you aren’t sick, are you?” she said, anxiously. “there’s two cases of scarlet fever in patchogue, i heard. you ought not to be going there to high school if you feel that way.”
indignation at the turn the conversation was taking overcame mr. lupton. he did not want to talk about himself but about mermaid, and particularly about the dangerous acquaintances—well, acquaintance—she was cultivating. he abandoned the possible diplomatic approaches to the subject and blurted out: “what do you want to have anything to do with that vanton feller, for, anyway, mermaid? if we fellers don’t have anything to do with him i shouldn’t think you’d—you’d——” he stuck hopelessly.
mermaid’s very bright blue eyes were on him and he found it difficult to collect his thoughts and present his argument.
“shouldn’t think you’d—have him around,” he concluded, unhappily.
[102]mermaid lifted her chin and her eyes flashed.
“i’d like to know, tommy lupton, what you know about him, anyway!”
just the opening mr. lupton craved. he poured it all out eagerly.
“why—why, he’s a regular sissy, mermaid, and you know it. he’s a—a hermit. i mean he never mixes with us fellers, and of course we’re glad of it; we wouldn’t have anything to do with him,” tommy assured her, not bothering the logic. “he’s some kind of a foreigner, probably a dago,” he inferred, darkly. “he smokes cigarettes.” mr. lupton, who smoked only cornsilk in secret, saw the distinction clearly. “if you don’t look out some of these days he’ll be putting his arm around you!”
he stopped, appalled at his own frankness. but mermaid merely laughed.
“he’s not a foreigner; he only just speaks french. he lived in paris and learned it there,” she said quite easily. “that doesn’t make him a foreigner; besides, he learned good manners, tommy. and as for his not mixing with you and dickie and the rest, he’s older and doesn’t go to school—and anyway, you never go near him. i don’t care if he does smoke. you smoke. only you hide, and he doesn’t! i guess if he’s seventeen and has lived abroad where everybody smokes early he can smoke if he wants to. i guess if his father didn’t think it was all right he’d stop him. if he puts[103] his arm around me and i need your help i’ll scream, tommy, and when you come i’ll tell him you kissed me at your last birthday party! will you fight him, tommy? while he was in paris he learned all about duelling, and you two can have a duel. i’ll steal one of the swords from our front parlour and you can practise with it.”
mr. lupton was perfectly red with rage and white with mortification. he was two colours, and presented an alarming spectacle. mermaid, done with taunting, suddenly approached him and laid her hand on his arm.
“don’t be mad, tommy. i was only teasing. of course he’s different from you and dick, but he’s lived in strange places—in san francisco and paris—and he’s moved around a lot. and he has a sick mother and a queer father. you’d be funny in his place. and queer. and he’s seventeen, tommy, and no bigger than you and i are! don’t you think you could eat a cookie?” she asked, solicitously.
“it’s only—only that i think such a lot of you, mermaid,” he protested. his natural dignity reasserted itself. “i’ll walk home with you.”
the procession formed, two abreast, and they went on toward keturah smiley’s. mr. lupton ate three cookies and an apple and examined, with an air of interest, the swords and cutlasses in the front parlour, which he had never handled before.
[104]“does vanton really know how to fight with a sword?” he ventured, curiously.
“he had fencing lessons. not a sword, a rapier,” mermaid explained. “a sharp point that you stick into the other man. i think i’ll get him to give me lessons.”
“what would a girl be doing with fencing lessons?” exclaimed mr. lupton, scornfully.
“oh, i don’t know. just exercise. it might be useful sometime,” said mermaid, vaguely.
“you’re just thinking of something you two can do together.” jealousy reawakened in mr. lupton’s bosom.
“well, he writes poetry, and we can’t write poetry together.”
“no, but he can write it and read it to you,” the youth said, bitterly. “wishy-washy stuff, poetry. all except ‘marmion,’” he qualified.
“oh, tommy, don’t be foolish,” sighed the young woman.
an amusing thought struck mr. lupton.
“wait till i tell dick he writes poetry,” he cried. “ow! won’t he yell? won’t he?
“just like a foreigner to stab a man with a thing like this,” tommy continued, imperilling the haircloth seat of one of the “deacon’s chairs” with an unskilful lunge.
at this mermaid lost all patience.
[105]“he’s not a foreigner!” she snapped. “and if you think he can’t put up his fists you just try him some day. i’ll bet you’ll find you made a mistake!”
mr. lupton sulked for a moment, but recovered, and after borrowing a book and eating two more cookies took a calm departure. on the highway, however, the thoughts that had disturbed him returned.
“just the same i’ll have to give him a good licking yet, i bet,” he muttered. he hoped supper would be ready, for he felt hungry after the strife and passions of the afternoon.
