Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 last night, Stephen and Nellie kept it up for an hour. I could hear their voices, but I couldn’t understand to save my life what they were saying.” “Did you try?” She looked at him sharply. “Young man,” she retorted, ‘the woman doesn’t live who can overhear a quarrel and not oe, to make out what the people are “T hope their quarrel was not a serious one?” Ward’s tone was light. He determined that he would not allow her to see how vitally interested he was in what she was saying. Yet he felt that, in some way, and probably a very direct one, this quarrel between Nellie and her uncle had an im- portant bearing upon Stephen Blaydon’s early-morning fishing-trip. “Well,” Mrs. Herriot mused, “I don’t know how serious it was. As I say, I - couldn’t make out much, but their tones were certainly serious enough. I couldn’t understand a thing until they got excited at -the end and then I heard Nellie say, ‘Uncle Stephen, I will never agree to it. You posi- tively must not do it.’ And then Stephen said, ‘I don’t give a—— whether you agree to it or not, Nellie. It’s got to be done.’ ” It was with considerable difficulty that Fenton maintained his pose of polite but distant interest. He stooped and picked up a shell from the beach and skimmed it out into the waves quite as if he were the most care-free individual in the world. His suspicions were correct, then. Nellie and her uncle were not working i in harmony. Stephen Blaydon was doing something of which the niece strongly disapproved, and it left Ward no doubt as to where he himself stood toward these two members of a divid- ed family. It lent additional light to the girl’s midnight trip alone down the coast to her uncle’s camp. “T suppose,”’ he said, carelessly skimming another shell, “that they have different plans of action in dealing with the very difficult puzzle of Caprice.” “JT don’t think so,’’ Mrs. Herriot replied. ‘Stephen tells me it isn’t a puzzle any more. Poor Otto’s dead, and it wasn’t altogether unexpected, for the yacht was in no condi- tion to put to sea, and Otto knew it.” “They have given up hope, then?” Again he made his tone as unconcerned as possible. ‘They accept the fact that the Adventure yacht was wrecked and Mr. lost?” She looked up at him with a suggestion of surprised suspicion. “Yes,” she said. ‘“‘Was there any reason why they shouldn’t?” “Oh, no. I only meant that there might have been a hope that Mr. Blaydon and his crew escaped in a boat or were picked up by a passing vessel. “No. Stephen says they would have been heard from by this time. Poor fellow; he’s badly broken up about it. He was very fond of his brother in spite of their differ- ences. You never met Otto, did you?”’ “No.” “He was nice enough, but he was queer. He and Stephen were just as different as day and night. Isn’t it funny that the good boy of a family usually dies first? Not that Stephen is bad, you know. He isn’t. He’s a perfect dear, and I love him a heap. But he’s just easy-going, and he does adore a jamboree now and then, and he simply wouldn’t work if you’d offer him a million a year. In fact, that’s almost what his father did offer him to settle down to busi- ness, but Stephen got so tired out after a month of it that he’s been resting ever since.” “Then Otto was the business man of the family?” “Huh! Otto! Why, young man, Otto Blaydon would rather protect the family fortune and the family name than do any- thing in the world. He was just like one of those old-fashioned gentlemen you read about in books. I never knew a man who was so much a stickler for honor and dignity and all that sort of thing. And serious! My gracious! Nellie takes after her father a lot. She has his pride—uppishness, I call it. Why, they think the name of Blaydon ought. to be in the Bible instead of in the social register.” “Tt is an old family, then?”’ “Ves; it’s one of the few that has blue blood dating away back before the flood and that produced men who could make enough money to keep up the style to go with it. They tell me Nellie’s grandfather was a genius in business, and Nellie’s father took after him, and more too, but poor Stephen missed all that. The only genius he has is for having a good time and show- ing a good time to everybody else.’ “But, if Otto Blaydon is dead, I suppose Blaydon (E(6) 000) MIG Ss) (EC) nm