"Isn't he very prosperous, Austin?"
"Veryon paper. Long Island farm lands and mortgages on Hampton hen-coops are not fragrant propositions to me. But there's always one more way of making a living after you counted 'em all up on your fingers. If you've any capital to offer Neergard, he won't shriek for help."
"But isn't suburban property"
"On the jump? Yesboth ways. Oh, I suppose that Neergard is all rightif he wasn't I wouldn't have permitted Gerald to go into it. Neergard sticks to his commissions and doesn't back his fancy in certified checks. I don't know exactly how he operates; I only know that we find nothing in that sort of thing for our own account. But Fane, Harmon & Co. do. That's their affair, too; it's all a matter of taste, I tell you."
Selwyn reflected: "I believe I'd go and see Neergard if I were perfectly sure of my personal sentiments toward him. . . . He's been civil enough to me, of course, but I have always had a curious feeling about Neergardthat he's for ever on the edge of doing somethingdoubtful"
"His business reputation is all right. He shaves the dead line like a safety razor, but he's never yet cut through it. On principle, however, look out for an apple-faced Dutchman with a thin nose and no lips. Neither Jew, Yankee, nor American stands any chance in a deal with that type of financier. Personally my feeling is this: if I've got to play games with Julius Neergard, I'd prefer to be his partner. And so I told Gerald. By the way"
Austin checked himself, looked down at his cigar, turned it over and over several times, then continued quietly:
"By the way, I suppose Gerald is like other young men of his age and timesimmersed in his own affairsthoughtless perhaps, perhaps a trifle selfish in the cross-country gallop after pleasure. . . . I was rather severe with him about his neglect of his sister. He ought to have come here to pay his respects to you, too"
"Oh, don't put such notions into his head"
"Yes, I will!" insisted Austin; "however indifferent and thoughtless and selfish he is to other people, he's got to be considerate toward his own family. And I told him so. Have you seen him lately?"
"N-o," admitted Selwyn.
"Not since that first time when he came to do the civil by you?"
"No; but don't"
"Yes, I will," repeated his brother-in-law; "and I'm going to have a thorough explanation with him and learn what he's up to. He's got to be decent to his sister; he ought to report to me occasionally; that's all there is to it. He has entirely too much liberty with his bachelor quarters and his junior whipper-snapper club, and his house parties and his cruises on Neergard's boat!"
He got up, casting his cigar from him, and moved about bulkily, muttering of matters to be regulated, and firmly, too. But Selwyn, looking out of the window across the Park, knew perfectly well that young Erroll, now of age, with a small portion of his handsome income at his mercy, was past the regulating stage and beyond the authority of Austin. There was no harm in him; he was simply a joyous, pleasure-loving cub, chock full of energetic instincts, good and bad, right and wrong, out of which, formed from the acts which become habits, character matures. This was his estimate of Gerald.
The next morning, riding in the Park with Eileen, he found a chance to speak cordially of her brother.
"I've meant to look up Gerald," he said, as though the neglect were his own fault, "but every time something happens to switch me on to another track."
"I'm afraid that I do a great deal of the switching," she said; "don't I? But you've been so nice to me and to the children that"
Miss Erroll's horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.
The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl who had decided he was going to be good.
Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into Selwyn's temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss Erroll had made up her mindand Selwyn already had a humorous idea that this was no light matter. The horse found it serious enough, too, and suddenly concluded to be good. And the pretty scene ended so abruptly that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her:
"There was a man'Boots' Lansingin Bannard's command. One night on Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major's boots by mistakeseven-leaguers, you knowand his horse bucked him clean out of them."
"Hence his Christian name, I suppose," said the girl; "but why such a story, Captain Selwyn? I believe I stuck to my saddle?"
"With both hands," he said cordially, always alert to plague her. For she was adorable when teasedespecially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of hisand her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.
"But I wasn't a bit worried," he continued; "you had him so firmly around the neck. Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading pair of arms around the neck?"
"What you saw," she said, flushing up, "is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention."
"Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!"
"Not if you're bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn," she returned sweetly. "And you know you always are. And sometimes"she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively"sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good."
"What!" he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.
Later she remarked: "It's just as Nina says, after all, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," he replied suspiciously; "what?"
"That Gerald isn't really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so. It's a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn't it," she added innocently, "when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?"
"That," he said, "is the limit. I'm going to ride by myself."
Her pleasure in Selwyn's society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinageespecially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.
But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed to readjust their personal relationsyears and experience falling from his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch to her stature to redress the balance between them.
It had amused him immensely as he realised the subtle change; and it pleased him, too, because no man of thirty-five cares to be treated en grandpère by a girl of nineteen, even if she has not yet worn the polish from her first pair of high-heeled shoes.
"It's astonishing," he said, "how little respect infirmity and age command in these days."
"I do respect you," she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't believe you are of a particularly solitary disposition; are you?"