The Codes of Phoebe and Ernest

by Inez Haynes Irwin

 

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THE CODES OF
Phoebe and Ernest

BY

Inez Haynes Irwin
AUTHOR OF “PHOEBE AMONG THE THESPIANS,” ETC.

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ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. F. SCHABELITZ

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Well, I know one thing,” Ernest said. “A fellow never has to tell lies.”

“Well, I know another thing,” Phoebe said, “A girl has to tell lies al1 the time.”

The argument started early one Saturday morning. Ernest had asked casually and all by way of making conversation, “Going to the High School dance, Phoebe?” And Phoebe had answered with the preoccupied indifference of an acknowledged belle. “Don't know. Nobody has asked me yet.”

A little later, as Ernest still dawdled in his room, cleaning a gun, Phoebe's half of a telephone conversation floated up to him.

“Oh, hullo, Tug! ... Oh, the High School dance! That's awfully good ot you, Tug. I'm sorry I can't. But you see I'm going with somebody else.” ... “Oh I'd go if I were you, Tug. You'll have just exactly as good a time. Why don't you ask Florence Marsh? ... “Oh, well, of course if you don't want to.” ... Oh, I'd love to. This afternoon at four? ... All right. I'll be ready.” When Phoebe ascended the stairs, Ernest tackled her on the landing.

“See here, Phoeb'. I heard that spiel of yours on the phone. Either you lied to me or you lied to Tug.”

“I didn't lie to you. And I didn't lie to Tug. That is—not exactly. It isn't what I call a lie. Maybe it's a white lie—a fib. See here, Ern Martin, I'd like to know what right you've got to butt into to my affairs. It's none of your business and you can just cut it out.”

“But nobody had asked you to the dance. Come!”

“No—but——”

“Gee, how I hate people who don't tell the truth! I wouldn't lie for anything.”

“Yes, and many a time we've nearly died of mortification with you telling the truth on the least provocation, the way you do. Ask Mother Martin if you aren't always embarrassing her most to death by telling people just what you think of things when they ask you.”

“Just the same, I don't believe anybody's got to tell lies.”

“Well, you be a girl for twenty-four hours and get through without telling a young billion of white lies and I'll see that you get a Carnegie medal,” Phoebe declared with heat. “Girls are always up against the queerest propositions. Now, take the High School dance. Of course I knew Tug would ask me—he always does. But I didn't want to go with him. I knew somebody else was going to ask me, and I did want to go with him. He hadn't said that he was—but I knew it just the same. Well, Tug asks me first. Do you think I feel any obligation to go with him under those circumstances? Certainly not. And yet I wouldn't for the world hurt Tug's feelings. What was there for me to do but to tell a white lie? If you can show me any way out of such a situation, I shall be infinitely obliged to you. And if you think, Em Martin, that ail the Maywood girls don't have to do this, you are much mistaken. Every girl in this town is up against it whenever a dance is given. And the only way out of it is to fib and fib to the wrong ones until the right one asks you.”

Ernest was not at all impressed with this harangue. “I wouldn't have expected it of you, Phoeb'!” he said.

Half an hour later, the telephone rang again. Again, Phoebe's talk drifted to Ernest's ears.

Illustration: “'Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Eliot. I shall be perfectly delighted to go. It's awfully good of you'”

“Oh, Mr Eliot Good morning!” ... “Oh, thank you so much, Mr, Eliot. I shall be perfectly delighted to go. It's awfully good of you” ... “Yes, eight o'clock” ... “White and yellow.” ... “Oh, that's so thoughtful of you. I don't want white—it's so bridey. I should prefer a yellow flower, though I can't seem to think of anything but roses. And I'm so tired of roses.” ... “Oh, orchids would be perfectly ducky. I've never worn them before. Thank you ever and ever so much.”

“And you mean to tell me you'd throw Tug down for that wind-bag of a Page Eliot,” Ernest threw out to his sister as she passed.

Phoebe stopped, her slim length framed in the doorway.

“No, I in not throwing Tug down at all. I've been to a million dances with Tug. I just happened not to want to go to this dance with him. Again, may I request that you stop discussing what doesn't concern you, Mr. Buttinski?”

“Gee, I hate girls,” was Ernest's final shot. “I'll never believe anything they tell me.”

Thinking the matter over in the few minuses before he dismissed it for more important things, Ernest grew, as he would have expressed it, “sorer and sorer.”

For Ernest did not like Page Eliot.

Page was staying with Fred Partland. They bad been chums and roommates in Paris. In fact, Page had lived most of his life abroad. He had just returned from a five years' stay. He was one of those masculine meteors who, flashing suddenly into a small community, put the entire feminine half into a flutter—always to the bewilderment of the masculine half. It was not his popularity with the other sex which irritated Ernest. It was—well, they were naturally antagonistic. There was something in Eliot's gait, something in his manner, something in the very way he wore bis clothes, which rubbed Ernest the wrong way. In conversation it was the same. It was not so much what Page said, it was his whole Gallicized point of view. Then Page had a way of seeming to belittle Ernest's achievements. Again it was not what he said. It was what he did not say. In Page's presence, Ernest felt like the human equivalent to a large, affectionate, gambolsome Newfoundland pup, remarkable for intelligence. Whenever he spent an evening in a crowd of which Page formed a member, he was conscious always of a boiling inner tumult.

And yet Page had an interesting side, too. He was not without accomplishments, though they were rather of the parlor order. He played better billiards than anybody in Maywood. At bridge he was fairly brilliant. He could drive any kind of motor. He fenced well. He was a good talker. Ernest found himself occasionally drinking down his narratives. Duelling, bull fights, pelota, jai alai, jiu jitsu—it was extraordinary what he had picked up. And once he had held Ernest spellbound for the half hour :n which he described a sporting event held in France in which a third-class American “pug” had pounded to pieces a first-class French savatier.

In the Last analysis, Ernest's most scorching criticism of Page was that he was a fusser. Ernest half suspected that he lived by women's standards rather than men's. He had an idea that Page skulked behind petticoats, that he would not come out into the open and take punishment like a man.

Ernest emerged from these thoughts to the realization that his hands were fists. This always happened when he thought of Page Eliot. He had experienced the same sensation in regard to others. Suddenly it flashed across him what it all portended.

“Gee!” he said to himself. “I've got to lick that son of a gun before he leaves Maywood.”

This resolution brought its inevitable balm. As if released from mental clutches, the whole matter slipped automatically out of his conciousness.

Phoebe, on the other hand, furiously dusting her room, was considering the situation from a viewpoint essentially feminine.

Phoebe thought Page Eliot very fascinating. He was a tall, dark youth, thin to the point of emaciation, and yet with a suggestion, not unbecoming, of masculine muscularity. His hair was a little—but only a little—too long. It lay, thick and dense, close to his head. He parted it in the middle and then brushed it straight back. When he removed his hat, the circle that its rim made lay indented on the smooth, shining brownness. Phoebe had observed the same phenomenon in the case of handsome young leading men. Page bore about him an atmosphere, faint, unanalyzable, but definite, of dissipation. In common with the rest of nubile Maywood, Phoebe found this thrilling. He smoked a cigarette with grace and abandon. He danced well. He would have been spectacular if his clothes had not been correct rather than picturesque, and if the mocking light which never left his eyes had not seemed to include Page Eliot himself among the things at which it laughed.

Conversationally, he had all the charms of frank impertinence. He exulted in the expatriation which allured even while it shocked Phoebe. He compared American girls with Parisiennes to the disadvantage of the former. In particular, he disliked the American voice. He was witty. He was articulate to a degree almost feminine. He could appreciate a hat or a gown. Moreover, in Phoebe's desk there were a list of the French phrases that he threw out casually—fait accompli, jaute det mieux, en veine—it grew daily. In argument, he often introduced the phrase à la bonne heure, and always with a faint shrug of his shoulders. Phoebe considered this the deftest of conversational feats. And when he left her he always said, “Au 'voir” instead of “Au revoir” as Phoebe would have academically remarked.

Perhaps all this would not have been enough to rouse the spirit of conquest in Phoebe. For with the clarity of vision which characterized her neat, clear, efficient mind, she knew that she did not really like Page Eliot, however much she was fascinated by him. Mentally they did not click. A great deal of raillery and laughing badinage covered the absence of a real sympathy. And yet some mysterious law of her sex impelled her to subjugate him. It seemed to her that it would establish that belledom of which it was the sign and seal.

For there was another complication—Miss Follis.

Miss Follis was a guest of the Marshes. She had been educated in a French convent. She, too, had lived much of her life abroad. In fact, she had known Page Eliot in Paris. Florence Marsh had once confided to Phoebe that Miss Follis left her native shores labeled Laura. She returned Laurette. Just as Page Eliot had enslaved feminine Maywood, so Laurette Follis had taken masculine Maywood by storm.

According to Page Eliot, she possessed a beauté troublante But Phoebe said, after her first glimpse of her: “Mother, she's the chicest girl I ever saw in rm life.”

Black and straight and moist of hair, black and long and oblique of eye, the pallor of her skin was the dead whiteness of the lily petal, the red of her lips that of the cherry. She intensified this curious coloring by the unvarying black and white of her costumes,

“I never saw such red lips, mother,” Phoebe said again and again. “Her mouth looks like a flower dropped on to her face.” Mrs. Martin's lips always tightened peculiarly on these rhapsodical occasions. And later Phoebe understood why. Mistaking Laurette's room for the genera] dressing-room at Mrs. Marsh's dance, she came upon Miss Follis in the art of transferring from a small alabaster box to lips perfect but colorless what looked like a cerise salve.

Undaunted by this artificiality, and still utterly fascinated, Phoebe did her best to make an intimate of her. But it was like scaling a high polished glass wall. It was not that Miss Follis objected to Phoebe personally.

“She's the kind of girl, mother,” Phoebe confided to her chief confidante, “that goes to sleep the moment the men leave the room and wakes up the instant they come back. Not that she's catty—I don't mean that. I've never heard her say a single spiteful thing. It's only that she's just bored to death with women, and that's all there is to it. It is something marvelous the way she just manages to keep every man in the room nailed to her side. If one of them starts to break away she pulls him back as quick. She wants to he surrounded. She isn't a twosing type at all. You never catch her tête-à-têteing in a corner. And the way she tries to use Tug against Page and Page against Tug—mother, you never saw anything like it.”

Whenever, in private, Phoebe recalled the blandishments that Laurette Follis threw in Tug's direction, she always smiled complacently. But when she thought of Laurette and Page, she frowned. Phoebe knew, as did all Maywood, that when Page Eliot was not taking her about in the Partland machine or beating her at tennis, he was doing the same things with Laurette Follis. Somehow that thought irritated her.

Phoebe was not a flirt. She was too forthright, too single-minded. Perhaps also it was that she was too pretty to need extraneous assistance. But even had she lacked her spirited comeliness she would have attracted attention anywhere just by being Phoebe. In point of fact, Phoebe did not enjoy flirting, did not approve of it. And yet, at the Marsh dance, two days before, she had coquetted openly with Page Eliot. She felt a surge of shame every time that she looked back upon it. It seemed to her that she had gone a little way over what constituted her line of girlish reserve. Somehow, it seemed to increase her half-intuitive, half-temperamental dislike of Page. And yet, following that mysterious law of her sex, she determined that he should escort her to the High School dance. All the other dances in the winter had been invitation affairs, given in houses. You went alone, or with your brother. But in this case Page would have to fly his colors. Phoebe knew that, once he had paid her the compliment of choice, she would not care a rap what he did for the rest of the season.

Ernest brought the core of their discussion to the table that night.

“Mother,” he began, “do you think there's ever any excuse for a person's telling a lie?”

Phoebe immediately took up the gauntlet with a “Father, don't you think girls just have to tell while lies sometimes, so's not to hurt people's feelings?”

“I don't know what they have to do, but I know what they do do,” Mr. Martin responded promptly, while still Mrs. Martin studied the problem.

“Why, Father Martin!” Phoebe exclaimed, veering immediately. Only Phoebe could argue on both sides of the case without weakening her original contention. “I'm ashamed of you. You know Mother Martin never told a lie in her life.”

“Oh, are you talking about your mother? That's different,” admitted Mr. Martin.

“Well, if every man is going to say his wife's different, what becomes of the argument, I'd like to know? That's the kind of talk, father, that makes suffragette of women.”

“Now don't you try to threaten me, Phoebe,” Mr. Martin rejoined, still jocular. “I should like nothing better than to see you president of the United States.”

“Phoebe Martin for president! Gussie Pugh for vice president! Wouldn't that be a knock-out!” Ernest exclaimed, in a voice full of falsetto admiration.

The sparks in the depths of Phoebe's eyes burst their surface softness, spread to a flash. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she retorted. “You couldn't force the job on me.”

Having darted into the very camp of the enemy, having in fact fought at his side, she returned unscathed to her original position. “Women do have to tell white lies sometimes, don't they mother?”

“They do, but they don't have to, do they, mother?” Ernest insisted.

Mrs. Martin, still considering the problem, looked troubled.

“The 'Ladies' Home Guide,'” I Phoebe went on, “says that if people call and you don't want to see them, it's perfectly proper to say 'Not at home.' Now, what is that but a white lie, I'd like to know?” Phoebe paused. Her mother did not speak. “Mother doesn't agree with you, Ern, because she can't,” she pointed out triumphantly.

“It isn't exactly that,” Mrs. Martin said. “I don't know just what to say, for I don't know how to put it. In a way I agree with both of you. I don't tell falsehoods outright any more than Ernie does. I can't. Ernie gets that from me. Something inside prevents me. But I don't like to hurt people's feelings any more than you do, Phoebe. And so I just keep quiet about a whole lot of things. I guess sometimes I sort of evade answering. And all my life it's troubled me. I've wondered if that wasn't one way of telling falsehoods.”

“And to think that for twenty-five years I've been living with the Baroness Munchausen and never suspected it,” Mr. Martin interpolated lightly.

“Father, I do wish you'd be serious,” Phoebe said. “I consider this a very important discussion. It's the sort of thing that might make a great deal of difference in your after life.”

Mr. Martin accepted his rebuke gracefully. He became as serious as the twinkles in his eyes would permit.

“Well, it may be all right for a woman,” Ernest broke in excitedly. A girl hasn't any more backbone than a quahaug, anyway. But with a fellow it's different. If you begin to lie, you get all balled up. I've tried it once, and I know. It's a fierce bother remembering what you said. No, sir, I don't care a darn about anybody's feelings. Anybody asks me a question, I'm going to answer it.”

“Goodness!” Phoebe returned in her most scathing accent. “Living in the house with you is going to be one grand sweet song, is it not—it is not.”

“I shall never tell anything but the truth to anybody,” Ernest reiterated obstinately.

Mr. Martin laughed suddenly. “Don't you be so sure, my son. It's all right when you're steering a straight course alone. But wait till you get mixed up in some social game a lot of women are playing. If you tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth then, why, you'll deserve to be canonized.”

“He'll probably be lynched,” Phoebe prophesied.

But “Just you wait and see” was all Ernest said.

There the matter ended, but only for that day. The next morning discussion broke out afresh between Phoebe and Ernest. It was continued at intervals for two weeks. Running out of self-made arguments, the disputants had recourse to authority. The Scriptures were consulted, dictionaries searched, history ransacked. Even verse, fiction, drama and the press contributed special incidents. One day the force of argument seemed to lean to Phoebe's side, the next, Ernest overpowered his sister with a fresh presentation of his case. Mrs. Martin, half-troubled, very much interested, followed the fortunes of this argumentative war with great seriousness. Mr. Martin, wholly amused, deftly fed the flames of controversy by injecting questions of a subtly misleading nature at the psychological moment.

It was not coincidence entirely that the controversy always raged hottest just after Ernest met Phoebe in company with Page Eliot. For after passing the two, Ernest invariably found himself walking at an accelerated pace, his clenched hands swinging and his shoulders hunched forward. Conversely, his biceps never hungered so desperately for action as when, immediately after an argumentative bout with Phoebe, he found himself forced to fraternize with Page.

The night of the High School dance, a self-constituted escort to his mother, he left the house early in order to avoid meeting bis sister's escort. Mrs Martin, Mrs. Warburton and Miss Selby were the matrons of the occasion. Ernest busied himself running innumerable errands until the dance was well under way. Returning from a talk with the caterer, he was witness to his sister's entrance. Phoebe wore a gown that, for tenuity, might have been sea foam—all white except where a coil of yellow velvet separated the warm marble of her neck from the cool fluffiness of her gown—one yellow-white orchid in her gold-shot brown hair, a mass of them fluttering at her waist. Straight, tall, very elegant, very distinguished, Page immediately drew her into a pretty dance in which they were the most notable pair.

In the first pause that the music made, Laurette Follis made an entrance even more effective—for this time the black of her costume was dazzling with embroidery of silver sequins. A great poinsettia made a jagged blood-red splash close to her bare shoulder.

Laurette's cavalier, it transpired, was Tug. Ernest's start of surprise was reflected—he saw it plainly across the room—in the sudden jerk of Phoebe's delicate eyebrows.

Ernest's morose mood of the last two weeks persisted. He danced only twice. Then he gave himself moodily up to watching the show.

The hall of the Maywood High School represented the last cry in artistic decoration. Walls tinted a cool dark green formed the background for huge framed photographs of masterpieces of Renaissance art. And the dancers surged and swayed under the plaster gaze of statues, heroic in size, of Greek and Roman gods. With the aid of palms and potted plants, the committee had established tête-à-tête places here and there about the pedestal.

Lounging sulkily in one of these, his back against the wooden block which supported a huge Minerva, Ernest became conscious of a conversation going on at the other side. It was Page Eliot and Laurette Follis. He started to leave. Then Phoebe's name suddenly leaped out of their talk. Involuntarily, he listened.

“Oh, your gown is charming, Laurette,” Page was saying. “A little chargée, perhaps. Now tell me why did you refuse to come here with me to-night?”

Miss Follis laughed. “Oh, I don't exactly know,” she said languidly; “caprice, I suppose.”

“Oh, come, I know you better than that, Laurette. See here; if I danced too often with the little Martin at the Marsh affair, it was only because you drove me to it. And then, let's be perfectly frank with each other, she roped me into it.”

“'The woman tempted me and I did eat.' You seem to enjoy your apples of Eden.”

“Oh, well, when you threw me down, what else was there to do? And then I knew she expected me to ask her. Laurette, what's the use of all this? You don't care a sou marquée for Warburton.”

“And how do you know?” Laurette caught him up. “I liked him enough to ask him to go——”

The intrusion of another name brought Eliot to his senses. Mechanically, he slid out of earshot. Mechanically he stopped and watched the dancers. They fused before his eyes and ran many colors, like layers of tinted sand in a revolving bottle. Suddenly the streaks stopped whirling, resolved themselves into units that were rainbow-colored girls and men sharply defined in black and white.

“Say, Ernest, how pale you are!” Molly Tate said in passing. “You must be dizzy.“

Ernest only stared at her.

Illustration: “Ernest became conscious of a conversation going on at the other side. It was Page Eliot and Laurette Follis. He started to leave. Then Phoebe's name suddenly leaped out of their talk. Involuntarily, he listened”

Fred Portland, who had been dancing with Phoebe, left her with a bow, humorously elaborate. Ernest walked over to his sister's side. “I've just heard a conversation that concerns you, Phoebe,” he said. “I didn't mean to listen. I got into it before I realized it. It was Page Eliot and Miss Follis. He asked her to go to this dance first. She threw him down, and that's why he asked you. He told her that he knew you expected him to do it. He explained to her that the reason why he flirted so with you at the Marsh dance was because you roped him into it.”

Ernest bit off the last word abruptly. He left his sister's side.

 

For the rest of the evening, Phoebe was the gayest of the gay. She chatted till she was breathless, and then her laughter took up the fight with silence. She danced with what, for Phoebe, seemed almost a temperamental fervor. A flush, wine-red, velvet-soft, fitful at first, grew permanent as the evening wore on.

Page Eliot began suddenly to ply her with compliments. Only when she answered him did her manner change. Then a certain sphinxlike look came into her eyes: it was as if a cool, dark curtain in rolled down ever their soft, smoky gray. She did not thrust or parry according to her habit with him. Once or twice she smiled enigmatically.

Ernest did not dance again. He disappeared to sanctuary the moment the music began. But the instant it stopped he reappeared, his eye finding and following Page Eliot. The gentleman seemed unusually hilarious, unusually busy. Not until the intermission, when he hurried to get some ice-cream and cake for Phoebe, did Ernest get a chance to speak with him.

“Come on outside a moment, Eliot,” he said, gripping Page's shoulder. “I've something important I want to tell you.”

In point of fact what Ernest told Page was not at all important. But it cannot he set down here.

Thereafter, Ernest disappeared from the hall. But never had Page been more in evidence. He danced, as was fitting, more often with Phoebe than with anybody else. He did not approach Laurette Follis.

The instant the last note of the final waltz sounded, Phoebe turned to him.

“Please take me home at once,” she said. “I have a dreadful headache.”

Eliot conducted her to his machine, cranked up, and deposited her at her father's door in an incredibly short time.

The speed of their progress accounted, perhaps, for the entire lack of conversation between them.

Having watched Phoebe safely indoors, Page jumped into his auto, drove back to the garage and left it. Then he strolled briskly in the direction of The Maywood Common. Halfway across the green, a black shape arose from a bench and intercepted him.

“”Better wait a while,” it said briefly. It was Ernest.

The width of the bench between them, they sat for several minuted without speaking. Overhead the moonless autumn sky sagged under a heavy weight of stars. About them, trees and bushes were as moveless as petrified things. But a feverish excitement sluiced through the streets radiating from the Common. Automobiles, head-on, seemed to boil through the air, seemed to inject conelike floods of light onto lawns and into windows. Passing, they tapered to a sigh and the pin-point red of their tail-lights. Groups walking in various directions, and singing as they went, plunged finally into darkness, distance and silence. At last there remained not a sound but the soft stir with which Eliot blew smoke rings, not a movement but the silent red arcs which his cigarette made.

“All right now, I guess,” Ernest said. Together they emerged from the Maywood Common. Together they walked to the Martin house. But they did not go in. Instead, tiptoeing through the shadows, they moved over to the stable. Ernest opened the door the width of his body. Eliot followed him in. The door closed. Ernest went about lighting the stable lanterns. There were several of these. They gave a good light. Page began rapidly to unpeel himself from his dress clothes. With an alacrity even greater, Ernest followed suit.

 

Ten minutes later, Ernest was swabbing Page's white, blank face with the stable sponge. When finally bis eyes opened, they were quite void of their usual mocking glint, and he stared at Ernest under faintly puckered brows.

“What did you hit me with?” he inquired stupidly.

“I crossed you with my right,” Ernest explained, “I'd been holding that punch until you got careless about guarding your jaw. Gee, but you're a whirlwind, all right!”

“I thought the rafters were coming in on me,” Page said. He relapsed into silence, closing his eyes an instant.

Ernest did nut speak. He was struggling with an emotion that he had experienced on similar occasions. No matter how you hated a fellow, you began to like him the moment you licked him. Especially when he put up so plucky a fight as Page. Ernest had won longer fights, but never before such a hard one. Page might be a fusser; but he was game.

All Ernest's sense of a sore antagonism had vanished. He felt as free and clear and happy as if somebody had given him a present. It passed vaguely through his mind that if you made out a list of the fellows you liked, the classification would have to include, somewhere and somehow, the ones with whom you had fought. And yet he was conscious of a kind of embarrassment, too. He would have liked to talk to Page, but he could not think of anything to say. He used his bleeding nose as an excuse to souse his head repeatedly in a pail of water.

Eliot arose. He began to dress.

“I guess I'll tell you something about this business,” he said suddenly. “You had a license to get sore if ever a man had. But the truth of the matter is that I've been engaged to Laurette Follis for three years, on and off. She's broken it off several times—always without reason, it seemed to me. Of course I should not have said what I did about your—what you overheard. And I apologize now. But these girls can play the very devil with a man, And Laurette—well, I guess that's all I want to say.”

“Oh, that's all right,” Ernest was painfully embarrassed.

But, curiously enough, now he could talk, and did. In fact, after they left the barn, following an inexplicable impulse, he walked a little way with his late enemy. Walked until suddenly, under the electric light at the entrance to the Marsh place, they ran into Mr. Marsh, father of Florence.

“What the—what are you two young bucks doing out at this hour of night?” he inquired genially, stopping them. Then he started. He burst into cackling laughter. “Well, I will be hanged! What have you been fighting about? Out with it, Ernest!”

Ernest, following the line of least resistance started to “out” with it.

“I heard Page say something about my——”

^Automobile!” Page interpolated swiftly, with a steelike clutch at Ernest's arm. “Then Ernest got gay and came through with too much lip. I replied with my best. After the dance, we had it out.”

Illustration: “Mr. Martin greeted his son at breakfast the next morning. 'Who hung the lamp on you?'”

Illustration: “I see now that it's up to a woman to tell the truth. I shall never tell another lie as long as I live—never—never!”

“Well, you two fools!” old Marsh commented. He looked at them, not an atom disturbed. There was even a suggestion of envy in his bullish, white, blue-eyed, silver-whiskered face. “Why, I haven't had a feeling like that for forty years! That's right, fight it out when you can. That's what it means to be young. I used to fight at the drop of the hat. When I begun to wonder whether it was up to me, I knew that I was growing old.”

 

“We-e-ell!” Mr. Martin greeted his son at breakfast the next morning. “Who hung the lamp on you?”

“Isn't it a pippin?” Ernest said lightly. “Page Eliot and I got into a discussion about automobiles last night and we settled it after the dance. That's all.”

“Oh, Ernie,” Mrs. Martin's tone was heart-broken..“I thought when you fought with Horrie Tate it would surely be the last time. Why will you keep getting into trouble? If you should get any of your teeth knocked out— I'm so proud of them. Now come right up in the bathroom with me and I'll see what I can do about that eye.”

Phoebe did not come down to breakfast. But later, when Ernest went up to his room, she arose from the telephone, presenting to him a white, wan face that had not known sleep.

“I saw you and Page go into the barn,” she said in a dull voice. “I sat up and watched for you to come home. I've just called Tug up on the phone and told him about last night from beginning to end.”

“Well, I've got one thing to say to you, Phoebe,” Ernest said listlessly. “You were right about that proposition of telling the truth. There are some times when a man's got to lie.”

Never had words so simple produced an effect so complex. Phoebe's head dropped to the telephone-table. She burst into a frenzy of weeping, the more terrifying because it was silent. “Oh, Ern,” she begged when the sobs came far enough apart to let the words out, “don't say that! Because it makes me feel I've been such a bad influence over you. Please keep on just the way you were. I see now that it's up to a woman always to tell the truth. I shall never tell another lie as long as I live—never—never—never!”