don’t want to get any idea in your head about her,” said Cousin Cora.
“What do you mean?” He knew with a start what she meant.
“Any ideas about Noel Garneau. You’ve got your own way to make.” Juan’s face burned. He was unable to answer. “I say that in all kindness. You’re not in any position to think anything serious about Noel Garneau.”
Her implications cut deeper than her words. Oh, he had seen well enough that he was not essentially of Noel’s sort, that being nice in Akron wasn’t enough at Culpepper Bay. He had that realization that comes to all boys in his position that for every advantage—that was what his mother called this visit to Cousin Cora’s—he paid a harrowing price in self-esteem. But a world so hard as to admit such an intolerable state of affairs was beyond his comprehension. His mind rejected it all completely, as it had rejected the dictionary name for the three spots on his face. He wanted to let go, to vanish, to be home. He determined to go home tomorrow, but after this heart-rending conversation he decided to put off the announcement until tonight.
That afternoon he took a detective story from the library and retired upstairs to read on his bed. He finished the book by four o’clock and came down to change it for another. Cousin Cora was on the veranda arranging three tables for tea.
“I thought you were at the club,” she exclaimed in surprise. “I thought you’d gone up to the club.”
“I’m tired,” he said. “I thought I’d read.”
“Tired!” she exclaimed. “A boy your age! You ought to be out in the open air playing golf—that’s why you have that spot on your cheek”—Juan winced; his experiments with the black salve had irritated it to a sharp redness—“instead of lying around reading on a day like this.”
“I haven’t any clubs,” said Juan hurriedly.
“Mr Holyoke told you you could use his brother’s clubs. He spoke to the caddie master. Run on now. You’ll find lots of young people up there who want to play. I’ll begin to think you’re not having a good time.”
In agony Juan saw himself dubbing about the course alone—seeing Noel coming under his eye. He never wanted to see Noel again except out in Montana—some bright day, when she would come saying, “Juan, I never knew—never understood what your love was.”
Suddenly he remembered that Noel had gone into Boston for the afternoon. She would not be there. The horror of playing alone suddenly vanished.
The caddie master looked at him disapprovingly as he displayed his guest card, and Juan nervously bought a half-dozen balls at a dollar each in an effort to neutralize the imagined hostility. On the first tee he glanced around. It was after four and there was no one in sight except two old men practising drives from the top of a little hill. As he addressed his ball he heard someone come up on the tee behind him and he breathed easier at the sharp crack that sent his ball a hundred and fifty yards down the fairway.
“Playing alone?”
He looked around. A stout man of fifty, with a huge face, high forehead, long wide upper lip and great undershot jaw, was taking a driver from a bulging bag. “Why—yes.”
“Mind if I go round with you?”
“Not at all.”
Juan greeted the suggestion with a certain gloomy relief. They were evenly matched, the older man’s steady short shots keeping pace with Juan’s occasional brilliancy. Not until the seventh hole did the conversation rise above the fragmentary boasting and formalized praise which forms the small talk of golf.
“Haven’t seen you around before.”
“I’m just visiting here,” Juan explained, “staying with my cousin, Miss Chandler.”
“Oh yes—know Miss Chandler very well. Nice old snob.”
“What?” inquired Juan.
“Nice old snob, I said. No offence … Your honour, I think.” Not for several holes did Juan venture to comment on his partner’s remark.
“What do you mean when you say she’s a nice old snob?” he inquired with interest.
“Oh, it’s an old quarrel between Miss Chandler and me,” answered the older man brusquely. “She’s an old friend of my wife’s. When we were married and came out to Culpepper Bay for the summer, she tried to freeze us out. Said my wife had no business marrying me. I was an outsider.”
“What did you do?”
“We just let her alone. She came round, but naturally I never had much love for her. She even tried to put her oar in before we were married.” He laughed. “Cora Chandler of Boston—how she used to boss the girls around in those days! At twenty-five she had the sharpest tongue in Back Bay. They were old people there, you know—Emerson and Whittier to dinner and all that. My wife belonged to that crowd too. I was from the Middle West … Oh, too bad. I should have stopped talking. That makes me two up again.”
Suddenly Juan wanted to present his case to this man—not quite as it was, but adorned with a dignity and significance it did not so far possess. It began to round out in his mind as the sempiternal struggle of the poor young man against a snobbish, purse-proud world. This new aspect was comforting, and he put out of his mind the less pleasant realization that, superficially at least, money hadn’t entered into it. He knew in his heart that it was his unfortunate egotism that had repelled Noel, his embarrassment, his absurd attempt to make her jealous with Holly. Only indirectly was his poverty concerned; under different circumstances it might have given a touch of romance.
“I know exactly how you must have felt,” he broke out suddenly as they walked toward the tenth tee. “I haven’t any money and I’m in love with a girl who has—and it seems as if every busybody in the world is determined to keep us apart.”
For a moment Juan believed this. His companion looked at him sharply.
“Does the girl care about you?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“Well, go after her, young man. All the money in this world hasn’t been made by a long shot.”
“I’m still in college,” said Juan, suddenly taken aback.
“Won’t she wait for you?”
“I don’t know. You see, the pressure’s pretty strong. Her family want her to many a rich man”—his mind visualized the tall well-dressed stranger of this morning and invention soared—“an easterner that’s visiting here, and I’m afraid they’ll all sweep her off her feet. If it’s not this man, it’s the next.”
His friend considered.
“You can’t have everything, you know,” he said presently. “I’m the last man to advise a young man to leave college, especially when I don’t know anything about him or his abilities; but if it’s going to break you up not to get her, you better think about getting to work.”
“I’ve been considering that,” said Juan frowning. The idea was ten seconds old in his mind.
“All
